Course information

In this course, we consider the life writings of African Americans living from the 19th through the 21st century. We explore the Black experience from the vantage point of men and women who struggled to negotiate their racialized and gendered identities in a society that often denigrated both. Historically, Black women and men were prevented from exercising a voice. In The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism, Henry Louis Gates describes the struggle of Blacks historically to write themselves into being, that is, to accord legitimacy to their racialized, gendered, and multifaceted selves. As one of the few legitimated forms of self-expression to which Black people had access, autobiographical writing took on critical importance for Black men and women. In this course, we investigate the nuanced ways in which the life writings of Black men and women not only facilitated freedom of expression but served as a form of resistance by challenging the status quo. [AH, PPRE, SJ, W]