350:660

Index # - 72876

Distribution Requirement:  A5, C

Monday – 9:50 a.m.  

MU 207

Abena Busia

Seminar:  In Search of Diaspora Literacy:  Black Women Writers

This course is a quest for the African cultural roots of contemporary African-American aesthetic practices as it is evidenced in African American Literature.  The question "What Is Africa To Me?" can be sensed hovering over works as diverse as August Wilson’s plays, Toni Morrison’s fictions, Ntozake Shange’s essays, and Kamau Brathwaite’s poetry.  This course however focuses on the gendered ways in which Africa is ‘re-membered’, as legacy and metaphor, in twentieth century Black literature and culture. With reference to a wide range of African-American cultural texts such as Quilts, Paintings and Collages, Sculpture, Music and Cookery Books, this course will focus on the literature and cultural production of Black Women. Juxtaposing Toni Morrison's Beloved with the Sculpture of Alison Saar; Nkozake Shange's Sassafrass Cypress and Indigo with Jessica Harris' Cookbooks, or Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow with Faith Ringold's Quilts, we will explore the ways in which women cultural workers in the latter half of the century offer their texts as a means of embodying ways of knowing and being that have withstood histories of dispersal.