This course will examine works of African-American women poets, novelists and autobiographers from colonial times to the present in their historical context (slavery, post-Civil War advances, "reconstruction," lynchings, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights movement, Black Arts and beyond).

More particularly, we will examine as time permits autobiographies by Harriet Jacobs and Maya Angelou, plays by Lorraine Hansberry and Ntozake Shange, poetry by Phillis Wheatley, Frances Harper, Angelina Grimke, Anne Spencer, Gwendolyn Brooks and Rita Dove, and fiction by Hannah Crafts, Harriet Wilson, Frances Harper, Zora Neal Hurston, Ann Petry and Toni Morrison.

I will ask each student to write two 6 page critical and research papers, post short reading responses on the class website, and prepare a background-study of one of the course's authors for presentation in class. We will also devote some time in and out of class to discussions of preliminary drafts for the required papers.