African American Poetry and Poetics
AS.362.200
Syllabus, Spring 2012
MW 3-4:15, Dunning 206
Dr. Hollis Robbins
Scope and Purpose
This course will explore the category, history, and development of African American poetry from Phillis Wheatley to the present. We will focus on poetry and poetics specifically but will consider the general movement of literature produced by African American writers over the course of three centuries. We will read works by the key contributors to this particular American literary tradition with the goal of understanding the aesthetic, cultural, and critical legacy of African American poetry to the American literary and musical sensibility of the twenty-first century. From eighteenth-century odes to the blues, hip hop, and rap tradition, we will examine the role that race, cultural identity, legal status, and the impersonal structures (or shackles) of poetic forms have played in shaping and reshaping African American verse.
Required Texts:
The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, McKay and Gates, 2004
Critical Course Readings (on reserve):
- Bolden, Tony, “Trouble in Mind: Early African American Criticism as a Site of Ideological Conflict,” and “Meditations: Black Arts Criticism and Cultural Nationalist Aesthetics” in Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture. Chicago: U Illinois Press, 2004.
- Ramey, Lauri, Preface and Chapter 1, “Slave Songs and the Lyric Poetry Traditions,” of Slave Songs and the Birth of African American Poetry. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
- Brown, Faramisha Patricia, Introduction and Chapter 1, “Mother Tongue,” of Performing the Word: African American Poetry as Vernacular Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1999.
- Ward, Jerry W. Jr., “Illocutionary Dimensions of Poetry: Lee’s ‘A Poem to Complement Other Poems’” in The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry, Ed. Joanne V. Gabbin, Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.
- Gabbin, Joanne V.: “Furious Flower: African American Poetry, An Overview,” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Ed. William L. Andrews, Trudier Harris and Frances Smith Fosterhttp://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/blackarts/gabbin.htm
- Shelley, Percy Bysse, “A Defence of Poetry” (1821) http://www.thomaslovepeacock.net/defence.html
- Peters, Erskine, “The Poetics of the Afro-American Spiritual” Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 23, No. 3, Poetry Issue. (Autumn, 1989), pp. 559-578.
- Wideman, John Edgar, “Charles Chesnutt and the WPA Narratives: The Oral and the Literate.” The Slave's Narrative. Eds. Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. 58-77.
- Garner, Lori Ann, “Representations of speech in the WPA slave narratives of Florida and the writings of Zora Neale Hurston.” Western Folklore, Summer 2000.
Requirements:
Attendance
Midterm paper (5-7 pages)
Midterm Exam (IDs)
Class Presentation (10 minutes long introduction to discussion)
Final paper (10-12 pages)
You will be required to read and be prepared to discuss all of the assignments. The schedule below indicates the date by which particular works should be read and the amount of reading to be done each day to stay current with class discussion. Bring the text to class each week. You will be required to lead class discussion at least once in the course of the semester.
You will be required to write a midterm paper on rhetoric and genre in African-American poetry and a longer final paper on the influence of African-American poetics on rhetoric and genre. There may be a short midterm. I do not accept late papers unless there is a compelling reason for missing the deadline.
Attendance for this class is critical. Much of what you will learn in this course will be the result of class exercises and discussion. Discussion and debate are crucial to the learning process. You are expected not only to attend but also to participate. Three absences (excused or not) will begin to push your final grade downward.
Writing Policy:
All papers should be double-spaced, numbered, with your name on every page. Neatness and excellence in punctuation, spelling, and grammar should always be a goal.
All written work should be your own. This means that either: A) you are telling me what you think, or B) you are telling me what you think about what someone else thinks—which means you will tell me where you found this person’s opinion, when and where he/she expressed it, and how it is related to your own opinion. You may embrace someone else’s opinion, but you may not pass it off as your own. This is called plagiarism and it is wrong.
Grade: Your grade will be calculated as follows:
Class Participation (includes attendance and contributions to class discussion): 20%.*
*You are expected to arrive on time for all scheduled classes having read all of the assigned materials and having completed all required tasks. For each absence over two your grade for Participation will be reduced by a full grade. 0-2 = A, 3=B, 4=C, 5=D, 6+=F. The only excuses allowed for missing a class will be a documented medical emergency, documented illness or death in the family, and religious holidays.
ID Exam: 10%
Midterm Paper: 25%
Presentation Grade: 10%
Final paper: 35%
A note about my grading on papers and essays:
A grade of A means you have produced a paper exemplary in almost every way. You have presented your thesis coherently, you have organized your thoughts effectively, and you have supported your interpretations meticulously. An A paper is also one that is excellent in style and voice or tone. And in an A paper, attention to form (spelling, punctuation, grammar, documentation) is as rigorous as it is to the content. Your work on the paper is superior.
A grade of B means you have gone beyond the minimum requirements of the assignment and have successfully balanced description with analysis. You express yourself more clearly, meaningfully, and imaginatively than in a C paper. Your work on the paper is good.
A grade of C means you have successfully completed the minimum requirements of an assignment. Your paper has no major problems of any kind, but there is still much for you to do to better your grade. Your work on the paper is fair.
A grade of D means your work is seriously deficient in some way.
A grade of F means your work has failed to meet the minimum requirements.
Course Schedule:
1/30 Week 1: Categorical Questions
Examining the history and category of African American literature. What is gained by constructing such a category? What is the relationship between this category and the history of European poetic forms? Genre, oral traditions, writing in English, the notion of a “Zulu Tolstoy.”
Shelley, Percy Bysse, “A Defence of Poetry” (1821) http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html
Gabbin, Joanne V.: “Furious Flower: African American Poetry, An Overview,”
2/6 Week 2: The Eighteenth Century
Lucy Terry (c 1745-1821) p. 186
Phillis Wheatley (c 1753-1784) pp. 213-226
Jupiter Hammon, (1711-1806?) p. 162-167, (esp. “Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley”)
George Moses Horton (1797-1883?) pp. 239-244 (read all, esp. his biography)
Read: Ramey, Lauri, Preface and Chapter 1, “Slave Songs and the Lyric Poetry Traditions,” of Slave Songs and the Birth of African American Poetry. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Presenter Reading: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Trial of Phillis Wheatley (excerpts)
http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/gates/lecture.html
2/13 Week 3: Antebellum Contexts
The Protest Tradition: David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, pp. 227-238, 345-351.
Frederick Douglass (c1818-1895) pp. 385-482.
James. F. Whitfield (1822-1871) pp. 483-490.
Read: Bolden, Tony, “Trouble in Mind: Early African American Criticism as a Site of Ideological Conflict”
2/20 Week 4: The Vernacular Tradition: Spirituals, Shouts, Gospel
Spirituals, pp. 8-18, esp. “City Called Heaven,” “Ezekiel Saw de Wheel” “Soon I will be Done”
Gospel, pp. 19-24, esp. “This Little Light of Mine” “Down by the Riverside” “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”
Secular, pp. 25-47, esp. “No More Auction Block,” “Run, Nigger, Run,” “Frankie and Johnny,” “John Henry”
Critical Reading: Erskine Peters, “The Poetics of the Afro-American Spiritual”
2/27 Week 5: War, Stowe, Harper, the Sentimental Protest Tradition
Frances E. W. Harper (1825-1911), pp. 491-520, esp. “Ethiopia,” “Eliza Harris,” “Bury Me in a Free Land,” “Aunt Chloe’s Politics,” “An Appeal to my Country Women,” “Our Greatest Want.”
Uncle Tom’s Cabin reviews, http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/reviews/rehp.html
H. Robbins, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Matter of Influence” http://www.historynow.org/06_2008/
George Moses Horton, “General Grant: The Hero of the War”
Grimke, Charlotte Forten (1837-1914), pp. 554-569 (skim journals)
Fordham, Mary Weston “Magnolia Leaves” (not in Norton Anthology)
http://digilib.nypl.org/dynaweb/digs-p/wwm979/@Generic__BookView
Critical Reading: Brown, Faramisha Patricia, Introduction and Chapter 1, “Mother Tongue,” of Performing the Word: African American Poetry as Vernacular Culture.
3/5 Week 6: Aftermath, Diaspora & The Beginning of the Flowering
Dunbar, Paul Laurence (1872-1906), pp. 905-928 (read all)
Dunbar-Nelson, Alice (1875-1935), pp. 936-941
Braithwaite, William Stanley (1878-1962), pp. 942-945
3/12 Week 7: Critical Questioning: What is Black Poetry? What is Jazz?
Critical Discussion: The politics of compilation and anthologies. Who is let in/left out?
Arthur A. Schomburg (1874-1938), pp. 963-967, “The Negro Digs Up His Past” (1925)
James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), pp. 883-904, “The Book of American Negro Poetry” (1922)
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), pp. 777-784 “Criteria of Negro Art” (1926)
George Samuel Schuyler (1895-1977), pp. 1220-1224, “The Negro-Art Hokum” (1926)
PAPER DUE 3/14
3/19 NO CLASS SPRING BREAK
3/26 Week 8: Harlem Renaissance
Grimke, Angelina W. (1880-1958), pp. 968-970
Claude McKay (1889-1948), pp. 1003-1018 (read all)
Sterling Brown (1901-1989), pp. 1248-1266
Langston Hughes (1902-1967), pp. 1288-1339 (read closely as many as you can)
Countee Cullen (1903-1946), pp. 1339-1352 (read all)
4/2 Week 9: Post-Renaissance
Gwendolyn Bennett (1902-1981), pp. 1266-1268
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), pp. 1623-1695 (read all)
Melvin B. Tolson (c. 1900-1966), pp. 1368-1381
Robert Hayden (1913-1982), pp. 1516-1535
4/9 Week 10: “Been Here So Long”: WPA and the Poetics of Memory
John Edgar Wideman, “Charles Chesnutt and the WPA Narratives: The Oral and the Literate.” The Slave's Narrative. Eds. Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. 58-77.7
Lori Ann Garner, “Representations of speech in the WPA slave narratives of Florida and the writings of Zora Neale Hurston.” Western Folklore, Summer 2000.
http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=3915
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snintro00.html
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/wpahome.html
4/11: ID EXAM
4/16 Week 11: Post War: Black Arts and Protest
Presentations Shundeena, Mwende
Audre Lord (1934-1992)
Lucille Clifton (b. 1936)
Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
Haki Madhubuti (Don Lee), (1942-
4/23 Week 12: Recent Poetry: “Culmination” of a Tradition?
Elizabeth Alexander (b. 1962)
Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
Rita Dove (b. 1952)
Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947)
Harryette Mullen (b. 1953)
Alice Walker (b. 1944)
4/30 Week 13: 2 Live Crew Controversy
Project TBA
FINAL PAPER DUE: MAY 10
