Instructor: Prof. John McCluskey, Jr.
4:00-5:l5 PM TR WH 118

Novelist Richard Wright once remarked, "The Negro is America's metaphor."  This seminar will
test Wright's statement as it relates primarily to the outpouring of creative literature produced by
Afro-Americans during 1918-1940.  To what extent did Black writing during this period reflect,
refute, or refine the experiments of William Carlos Williams, e. e. cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
et. al.?  Since one issue basic to any artistic renaissance is the role of traditional modes, we must
consider the degree to which Black writers of the Twenties countered or elaborated on the work
of earlier writers, principally Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles Chesnutt, both of whom
produced at the turn of the century.  How did writers such as Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown,
Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston exploit Afro-American folk forms?  Still further, how did
the works of these writers anticipate the works of the Negritude poets, the poets from the
Caribbean and West Africa at work in Paris during the late Twenties and early Thirties?  The
range of questions posed reflects the large number of literary/aesthetic concerns which the
examination of the period insists upon.

Crucial to an understanding of the artistic issues are the dramatic migration from the rural South
to the urban North; the impact on and involvement of Blacks in the first World War; the great
debates between scholar-activist W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington; and the spectacular
rise of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and its challenge to more
traditional Black leaders and spokesmen.  Thus, with focus on the primary tests, we will attempt
to identify the major national and international forces of the moment, forces that affected the
direction of literature.

The course requires one short paper (four to five pages), one brief oral report, and a longer paper
due at the course's end (fifteen pages).  The oral report can serve as the basis for the longer
research paper.

Probable texts are as follows:
Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, Nathan Huggins
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
New Negro, Alain Locke
Banana Bottom, Claude McKay
Black No More George Schuyler
Cane, Jean Toomer
Tropic Death, Eric Walrond