LI 251 AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE, FILM, AND CULTURE II

This course explores literature, film, music, and art in political, historical, social, and psychological contexts by foregrounding and privileging African American worldviews. Students explore issues such as the intersectionality of nationalism, usurpation of Native American and African American land, American exceptionalism, suffrage, industrialization, post-colonization, race and racism, gender, gender identification and sexual orientation, mass immigration and Black migration, civil and human rights, Western religion and African cosmologies, globalization, workers’ rights and labor movements, feminism and womanism, environmentalism, class mobility, and more. The course asks students to interrogate how African American literature, film, and culture can help multicultural America understand the larger issues and structures of the Americas and other international powers; to demonstrate how literature and artistic endeavors create national and cultural identities; and to investigate how literature and art advance or deny social justice, diversity, and equity efforts. 3 Credits Prerequisite: EN 101 (Completion of EN 102 is recommended).