WS 415A CDQ - Black Women Writers

Minimum Credit(s) Awarded: 4
Maximum Credit(s) Awarded: 4

This course offers a study of selected novels, short stories, and essays by African American women writers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Emphasizing the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality, and informed by critical studies of race and ethnicity and Black feminist criticism, we will explore the following main questions: What are the major themes and issues in Black women’s literature? What textual strategies do African American women writers employ to represent Blackness, womanhood, and Black womanhood? In what ways do these writers challenge or accommodate dominant discourses of race, gender, class, and sexuality? What does it mean to be a Black feminist reader, and what does it mean for non-Black and/or non-female readers to interpret Black women’s writings? Cross-listed ENG 415A and ETHS 415A

Prerequisite(s): Completion of W Tag.