World, Spring 2005
There are any number of directions we could have taken in this final unit of the course--comparing literature by writers of African descent from outside the borders of the United States with African American literature, examining writings by African Americans who were active in colonizationist or pan-Africanist or third worldist movements, considering the reception of African American literature and cultural productions outside the United States, or discussing the impact of Africa and the slave trade on patterns in world history and political economy. We could have focused even more on the figure of W.E.B. Du Bois, whose novel Dark Princess and autobiography Dusk of Dawn situate African American history in a world context, or on Paule Marshall's novel The Chosen Place, The Timeless People which links the history of the slave trade and of slavery with the politics of development and neo-colonialism in the 1960s Caribbean, or on Gayl Jones's 1975 novel Corregidora, or on Maryse Conde's novel I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem which connects North and South American histories, or on Martin Delany's 1867 novel Blake; or the Huts of America, or....
Instead, we're going to focus on how a few selected twentieth-century poets and essayists represent global issues and on the ways in which W.E.B. Du Bois situates black America in the world in Dusk of Dawn.
Suggestions for further exploration: