ENGL XR023 - African American Autobiography

Course Description

An introduction to African American literature, focusing on how black literature in the United States has been shaped by self-narrated responses to terror and oppression. Examines autobiographies by:

• Frederick Douglass
• Harriet Jacobs
• Langston Hughes
• Ida Wells-Barnett
• Malcolm X.

Learner Outcomes

• Examine what it means to write about oneself, and particularly about how that process is complicated when the hand which pens this writing is black and “American.”
• Discuss the genre’s coming-of-age plots and narratives of self-actualization contested when they are taken up by a black public who has been historically positioned as objects. 
• Analyze how autobiographical writing is challenged when its subject is enslaved, illiterate, immigrant, queer, or otherwise positioned against normative subjectivity.
• Discuss the term “African American” when confronted by border crossings, forced migrations, and histories of sexual violence.