Afr-Am Lit: Beginnings to 1900

This introductory survey course will trace African American movement towards literary and aesthetic mastery beginning with what Henry Louis Gates calls oral writing. Readings begin with the first known written poems and progress from slave narratives and autobiography to essays and fiction. Authors include Phillis Wheately, Harriet Jacobs, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Solomon Northup, Charles Chesnutt, W.E.B. Du Bois, among others.