Course Name: Black Radicalism, Anti-Colonialism, Marxism, and Communism: literary and critical studies
Instructor:
Guest Lecturer: Laura Chrisman
SLN: 14334
Meeting Time: MW 11:30am - 1:20pm
Term: Winter 2021
Black Radicalism, Anti-Colonialism, Marxism, and Communism: literary and critical studies
Instructor: Laura Chrisman
This course explores the complex interactions of anti-colonial, communist, and Black radical political cultures across the long 20th century. Drawing upon the resources of Marxist and postcolonial studies, this course fuses literary criticism, archival enquiry and critical theory. Under consideration are writers and movements from Europe, continental Africa, the Caribbean, and North America.
Keywords: postcolonial studies; theories of colonialism/anti-colonial nationalism/postcoloniality; Marxism; African studies; socialism; communism; black radicalism; global literatures (1900s-present); postcolonial literatures; Caribbean political culture; African political culture; black diasporic political culture.
List of Books & Readings:
Langston Hughes, selections from The Ways of White Folks [1934] and poetry (1920s-1930s)
Richard Wright, selections from Uncle Tom’s Children [1938]
CLR James, Toussaint Louverture: the story of the only successful slave revolt in history [1934]
Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism [1950]
Alice Childress, Gold Through the Trees [1952], in Selected Plays
Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun [1958]
Sembene Ousmane, God’s Bits of Wood [1960]
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth [1963], trans. Philcox
Alex la Guma, A Walk in the Night [1962]
Dionne Brand, Inventory [2006]