Suggested Topics for Research Paper:

Phillis Wheatley and the Abolitionist Movement/ African Emigration

Phillis Wheatley's Poems in the Context of Her Life (views of race, African, religion, death)

Frances Harper's Anti-Slavery Poems and the Abolitionist Movement Movement/ Frances Harper's Poems in the Context of Her Speeches

Gender Relations in the Poetry of Frances Harper

African-American Spirituals and Slavery

African Religious Traditions and the Origins of African-American Spirituals

Spiritual and Work Song Traditions and the Origins of African-American Spirituals

African-American Song Traditions in the Poems of James Weldon Johnson/Fenton Johnson/Stirling Brown/any others

Fenton Johnson and the Chicago Reniassance

Themes of Race and Identity in the Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar/James Whitfield/any of the poets on our list (background can be biographical and historical)

The Theme of Lynching in Early Twentieth-Century Poetry (Dunbar, Grimke, Nelson, McKay, Cullen, Hughes, Brown)

African-American Poems about the First World War

The Crisis and the Poems of Countee Cullen/Gwendolyn Bennett/Jessie Fausset/any others

Contemporary Events Surrounding W. E. DuBois's Souls of Black Folk and "A Litany of Atlanta"

The Development of Claude McKay's Poery/McKay's Poetry and Fiction/McKay, Jamaica and Themes of Immigration

Autobiographical Elements in Langston Hughes/Langston Hughes' Poetry and The Best of Simple

Langston Hughes and the Blues

Changing Musical Traditions in the Poetry of Langston Hughes

Women Blues Singers in Harlem Renaissance Poetry

Gender in the Poems of Anne Spencer

Homoerotic Themes in the Poetry of Angelina Grimke

Rural South/Urban North: Location in the Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance

Gwendolyn Brooks and the Chicago Defender

Gwendolyn Brooks and the Chicago Arts Movement

Robert Hayden's Midle Passage and the Amistad Incident; Robert Hayden's Evocation of African-American History

Africa as an Image and Ideal in the Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance