Topic:  Black Artists in Paris
(meets with C670, AFRO A400, A590)
Professor Julien TR 9:30-10:45
*meets A&H and Cultural Studies requirements*

As early as the 1800’s, free New Orleanians of color journeyed to
France, a country that seemed to offer them greater freedom.  Since
that time, countless African-American writers, musicians, visual
artists, and performers from the U.S.- Claude McKay, Josephine
Baker, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Lois Mailou Jones, Miles Davis,
Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Chester Himes, Melvin Dixon, Barbara
Chase-Riboud, and others--have journeyed to Paris especially and
made it their adopted (or spiritual) home.  A spate of recent
critical and historical works—by Tyler Stovall, Paul Gilroy, Benetta
Jules-Rosette, Brent Edwards, and Didier Gondola—have offered
important perspectives on these French connections and the idea of
African diaspora more generally.  In light of this recent research
and thinking, we shall focus on the lives and work of several
African American artists and their African, Caribbean, and French
counterparts (the Nardal sisters, Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire,
Jean Paul Sartre, Jean Genêt).  We will examine a range of issues
including the historical and cultural ties of New Orleans to the
Caribbean and French traditions, the négritude movement and the
Harlem Renaissance, the jazz age, the making of multi-faceted
identities, the relationship of displacement and exile to creativity.