Reading Black (LIFE) Narratives by Malcolm X, Anne Moody, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington and other African American writers, our panel from this section of an Honors "Humanities" course present excerpts from our final projects examining connections between "historical," "canonical" works by African American writers. Reading these works as "Black (Life) Narratives" we discuss them in terms of "Black (Life) Matters", understood as an ongoing African American freedom struggle. Our discussion focuses on contemporary dialogues on race and identity put forth in recent works by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Randall Horton and Danzi Senna.
We, the African American modernism class, will be presenting on our final projects on Black Literary works by writers such as Wideman, Larsen, Ellison, Reed, and Harper. Some of our works include: a comparison of novels by Ellison and Reed to fiction by fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson, an examination of jazz poetry from Michael S. Harper that explores Black identity and experience in terms of visibility and invisibility and a postmodern reading of Ellison's Invisible Man that recognizes its power as a literary model. Another looks at literary innovations and experiments by Toomer, Reed, and Nella Larsen, while two others offer distinct readings of Wideman's Philadelphia Fire: one frames a historical discussion of the novel with respect to Shakespeare's play, "The Tempest" and the other reads it against literary theory by Houston A. Baker Jr. and Henry Louis Gates Jr.
In this round table discussion, ITW students will present their studies regarding Black music, and its influence on American Culture. Building upon foundations laid by LeRoi Jones' (Amiri Baraka) Blues People and Tricia Rose's Hip Hop Wars, students from this section of Introduction to Thinking and Writing made inquires to the field of Black Music. These student projects evaluated the impact that African American cultural production has made upon the United States using musical examples and critical discussions about musicians and the music industry as a whole. Students will discuss their projects pertaining to concepts such as 'gangsta rap' and 'rolling stone' and musicians ranging from NWA, to Benny Goodman. This discussion also aims to consider their development as writers and researchers.
A group of Black women are marching down a side walk with a sign. A white man is on the left leaning against a building drinking and smoking a cigarette
