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African American

October 27, 2006

Class and Race In America: The Legacy of Hurricane Katrina

October 27th 2006 Posted to Announcements, Specific U.S. Racial Groups, African American, Visual Art / Posters

boy-and-flag.jpgThe picture to the left of a father using the American flag as a blanket to shield his son points to the contradictions and complexity of the United States when it comes to dealing with race and class together. Images such as this broadcast across the nation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina illustrate the economic stratification and racial inequality that still exists in a country that refuses to come to terms with its history of slavery and economic disparity between the rich and the poor. Spike Lee’s four hour documentary about Hurricane Katrina, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, serves to highlight this disparity, as well as the system wide failure of the government on all levels, and gives a voice to the survivors and victims of the storm. (Read the article)

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Corregidora: The Blues as Narrative

October 27th 2006 Posted to Specific U.S. Racial Groups, African American, Literature

Billie HolidayThe blues and music play an integral part in Gayl Jones’ novel Corregiadora. Ursa as a blues singer uses music as a narrative to map the historical trajecotories of slavery onto the present. Because she cannot bear the children that her grandmother deems as necessary in preserving the hertiage of slavery and the seuxal exploitation her family endured the narrative becomes Ursa’s to bear alone. The blues in Corregidora serve as an outlet with which to negotaite this history of violence and degradation and ultimately Ursa’s performace of the blues transforms into an act of resistance. (Read the article)

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Beloved: The Story of Margaret Garner

October 27th 2006 Posted to Announcements, Specific U.S. Racial Groups, African American, Literature 230b

Margaret Garner Painting Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987) is based on the true story of Margaret Garner, a fugtive slave who in her recaputre committed the act of infanticide rather than see her child grow up in slavery. Morrison’s rearticulation of Garner’s story through the character of Sethe is as much about telling and speaking as it is about silence; about the “unspeakable thoughts, unspoken” (Beloved 199). Morrison’s writing of a story “not to pass on” points to what is said in the silences, as that which is not said is often revealed through its very refusal of disclosure.Newspaper Clipping

(Read the article)

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September 5, 2006

Lesson Plan: Using/Misusing the Black Vernacular: Hurston, Hughes and Toomer

September 05th 2006 Posted to Lesson Plans, English 104A, African American, Literature

untitled-harvest-jules-smith.jpeg“But now, the sun and the bossmen were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.”
–Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

Assigned Readings:
(From The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Ed. Paul Lauter, 5th Ed., 2005):
“Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston
“The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes
“Blood Burning Moon” from Cane by Jean Toomer

Background:
One of the most striking qualities of Hurston’s prose is her use of the black vernacular. In Hurston’s novels and short stories it is often the dialogue and not the narration that drives the story forward. Consider the following passage from “Sweat”: (Read the article)

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September 4, 2006

Zora Neale Hurston

September 04th 2006 Posted to English 104A, African American, Biography

hurston_vetchen.jpgZora Neale Hurston was born in the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida. She attended Howard University and then later Barnard College where she studied with the anthropologists Franz Boas and Gladys Reichard. While living in New York in the 1920’s she became an active participant in the literary and cultural innovations of The Harlem Renaissance. During this period she grew fascinated in the scholarly study of her hometown and, in 1927, revisited Eatonville to collect folktales, spirituals, sermons, work songs, blues, and children’s games. Hurston spent six years documenting the art of “the Negro farthest down,” who, she contended, had made the greatest contribution to American culture. The product of her “literary anthropology” was Mules and Men, a novel which she published in 1935. (Read the article)

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September 1, 2006

The Harlem Renaissance

September 01st 2006 Posted to English 104A, African American

blues_motley.jpgThe Harlem Renaisssance occurred during the 1920s, a result of the confluence of black American writers and artists in a district which was already fashionable among the white smart set as the music-and-entertainment capital of New York. The early years of the century had seen the publication of works such as W. E. B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk and Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery, indicating the future role of black people in America. In 1925, Alain Locke, a professor at Howard University, brought together a collection of short stories, poems, and prose by divers hands, under the title The New Negro. As the abstraction was held to characterize the ‘spiritual Coming of Age’ of the black race, so the volume itself could be seen as a mark of its cultural maturity. (Read the article)

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Lesson Plan: “The Weary Blues”: Langston Hughes and Bessie Smith

September 01st 2006 Posted to Lesson Plans, English 104A, African American, Literature, Music Recordings

“The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes
weary-blues.jpgLangston Hughes was one of the first of the Harlem Renaissance poets to incorporate jazz, spirituals and the blues into his writing. In the 1920’s Hughes steeped himself in the jazz culture of Harlem and began to weave the rhythm and feeling of Harlem jazz into his poetry. Perhaps the most obvious example of Hughes’ experimentation with new musical forms appears Hughes’ poem “The Weary Blues,” published first in 1923 in New York’s Amsterdam News and two years later in Hughes’ first collection The Weary Blues. (Read the article)

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August 23, 2006

Langston Hughes Web Resources

August 23rd 2006 Posted to English 104A, External Resources for Teachers, African American

Modern American Poetry Site
This site, edited by Cary Nelson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is a an online companion to the Anthology of Modern American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2000). It includes a biography, criticism and several of Hughes’ poems and writings.

The Academy of American Poets
This site includes a biography, several of Hughes’ poems and related prose.

Yale New Haven Teachers Institute Curriculum Unit
This curriculum unit, compiled by G. Casey Cassidy, includes an extensive biography and a long bibliography (both for teachers and students), but includes only a few suggested in-class activities. It is geared towards grades 7-12.

Internet School Library Media Center
This is a teacher resource file for the Langston Hughes. It includes biographies, lesson plans and useful links.

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August 22, 2006 23ea

Harlem Renaissance Web Resources

August 22nd 2006 Posted to English 104A, External Resources for Teachers, African American

Harlem: 1900-1940. An Exhibition Portfolio from The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
This aesthetically appealing site provides lesson plans focused around the “Harlem: 1900-1940” photo exhibition at the Schomburg Center. Lessons are geared towards middle or high-school age students, although this material could also supplement a college-level course. In addition to teacher resources, this site also provides and overview of the photo exhibition, including historical material on each photo displayed.

“Rhapsodies in Black” Art Exhibition and Book
This site includes photos from “Rhapsodies in Black” a traveling art exhibition designed by Richard J. Powell and David A. Bailey that toured London, the University of Warwick, Bristol, San Francisco and Washington D.C. in 1997-1998. The site also features selections from scholarly articles in the exhibition’s accompanying book. There is excellent material here on the art, music and culture of the Harlem Renaissance.

Yale-New Haven Teachers Institue Harlem Renaissance Unit (Gr.9-12)
This is a curriculum guide for a 9 week high school English unit on the Harlem Renaissance. It was designed by Caroline Jackson who works for the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. It includes an excellent historical background, a sequence of lessons, a student reading list and a bibliography for teachers.

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August 21, 2006

Langston Hughes

August 21st 2006 Posted to English 104A, African American, Biography

A prohughes3.jpglific poet, novelist, essayist and playwright, James Langston Hughes was a seminal figure of the Harlem Renaissance, a period during the 1920s of unprecedented artistic and intellectual achievement among black Americans. Hughes integrated the rhythm and mood of jazz and blues music into his work and used colloquial language to reflect working-class African American culture. His often-bestowed title of the “Poet Laureate of the Negro Race” reflects the extent to which Hughes’ career both shaped and was shaped by the music, art and lifestyle of black Harlem during the 1920s and ’30s. Unlike many of his fellow Harlem Renaissance writers, Hughes continued to write into the 1950’s. He died in New York City May 22, 1967. (Read the article)

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