Mar 28, 2024  
2022-2023 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
2022-2023 Undergraduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

EN 231 Short Fiction of the African Diaspora


This course will examine short stories that reflect different historical moments in the African and African American experience from the seventeenth century to the present in order to address key topics such as the transatlantic slave trade, the fight for civil rights, anti-Black racism and violence, Black utopia-building, cultural expression, and the return to origins as the world evolved and the concept of Black identity began to take form. We will examine the works of major writers such as Chinua Achebe, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright as well as those of contemporary writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. Through this course, we will gain a better understanding of the power of fiction and the ways in which Black authors used the short story form to address oppression but also to envision counter-futures centered on Black liberation and racial uplift.

Prerequisite: EN 101 .