Spring 2026 Undergraduate English Courses

01  TTH5   CAC  24142     KERNAN  SC-205 This course provides a broad survey of canonical African American plays and playwrights that shine light on a panorama of African American theatrical production spanning from (1858 to 2002). Issues addressed will include: the place of “plantation performances” in the development of minstrelsy and its mimetic inversions, the central role played by the pulpit (or African American Christianity) in determining the function of performance before and after Civil War,...

01   MW4  CAC  12260   OWENS  SC-220

01   MW6   CAC  12261     BROWN     HH-B2 Black Avant-Gardism   In this course we will read formally experimental novels and poems by writers of the African diaspora. We will consider how black writers have turned toward highly stylized, strange, and abstract literature to interrogate the relationships between modernity, blackness, gender, and sexuality. We will explore these relationships by asking: What is at stake in representing blackness in print cultures? How do we interpret race in highly abstract and...