ENGL222CG: Major Writers: The Harlem Renaissance

This course examines one of the most tumultuous and exciting moments of early twentieth-century literary and cultural history: the "Harlem Renaissance." As a cultural and artistic explosion, the Harlem Renaissance signaled a spiritual emancipation unparalleled in African American experience; at the same time, its aesthetics reflect gender and racial tensions. Through consideration of literary texts, with careful attention to historical, biographical, political, and artistic contexts, we will probe the meaning and legacy of this movement. We will explore debates surrounding whether it was, as many critics have argued, a flowering of Black art, or, as others claim, a period when Black artists allowed their work to be appropriated or exploited. Our study will focus on literary discourses of raced and gendered identity, cultural nationalism, and modernist aesthetics in writings by such luminaries as W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, and Jean Toomer. Visual art, music, and film will accompany the literary texts.