This course examines how black writers used black girls as tools to put forward their social and political agendas. Often these agendas touched upon national issues of concern to the black community, such as safety and survival during the decades when the Fugitive Slave Act was in effect, strategies for achieving full citizenship rights, working for the abolition of slavery, finding work in the post–Civil War industrialized North, and crafting strategies for educating the next generation. Just as often, writers relied upon black girls as emblems of home and family. Whatever platform they chose for their writing, the black girls they wrote about appeared to carry stories of warning and hope, concern and optimism, struggles and success. Students will read canonical and rarely read texts that include articles from the early black press, autobiographies, short stories, speeches, novels, conduct books, and visual images that feature representations of black girls as models for achieving cultural legitimacy. In mining this rich archive of early African American texts, this course seeks to challenge the longstanding argument that racial discourse has figured black citizenship and racial progress as masculine from the early nineteenth century onward. As we trace shifts in representations of black girlhood across literary history, students will consider key questions: Why did nineteenth century black writers convey racial inequality, poverty, and discrimination through the prism of black girlhood? Why did black writers and activists emphasize certain types of girls? What tropes can we identify in the early literature of black girlhood? Where do these girlhood tropes originate? Readings will include articles on black girlhood from the early black press, “Theresa, A Haytien Tale” (1828), Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig (1859), Maria W. Stewart’s “The First Stage of Life” (1861), Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), William Steward’s “The Gem of the Alley” (1878), Frances E. W. Harper’s Trial and Triumph (1888-1889), Gertrude Bustill Mossell’s Little Dansie’s One Day at Sabbath School (1902), E. Azalia Hackley’s The Colored Girl Beautiful (1916), Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry (1929), Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Gwendolyn Brooks’s Annie Allen (1949) and Maud Martha (1953), Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), artwork by Kara Walker, and Simone Leigh’s Brick House (2019). To frame class discussions, we will engage a wide selection of critical scholarship on black girlhood. Course requirements include a detailed presentation in which each student selects a day to lead class discussion and a 25 paged seminar paper.

ENG 781 001 SEMINAR IN FILM: 21st-Century American War Films
T 5:00 Alan M Nadel

This course exams two genres of American war film that have emerged in the 21^st Century, reflecting cultural narratives that inform the concept of international war and the modes of resistance to the warfare state in the first and second decades of the century. The first genre, which emerged shortly after President Bush’s declaration of “Mission Accomplished,” includes Jarhead, The Hurt Locker, Redacted, The Green Zone, American Sniper, 13 Hours, Hacksaw Ridge, and Dunkirk. We will also look at the cultural narratives informing these films, as they are reflected in other works, including the first season of LOST, as well as Get Out, Us, Deepwater Horizon, Sully, and Captain Phillips. In addition to readings about film and about contemporary cultural history, you will be required to write three short (800-word) analytic papers, make a conference-style presentation, and produce a publishable length (6000 to 9000 words) research paper.