Major texts of the African American tradition with the emphasis determined any given year by the instructor. Students can expect to explore a range of genres and historical periods, from the conception and discovery of the “New World” to the present. The course may further consider how Black literatures and other Black art forms (such as music and film) allow us to think critically about Blackness in diaspora, particularly within the Americas. Authors may include Anna Julia Cooper, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead, and Jesmyn Ward.