This course will investigate the contours of the troubled and troubling relationship between the law and African American literature. Exploring the archives of both traditions and their canonical texts, we will ask how each informs the other’s formal and aesthetic modes. We will map the literary and legal histories of the seminar’s primary texts. And finally, we will inquire into the political efficacy of the literature’s engagement with the law – how have the texts of the African American literary tradition shaped, and shaped themselves in response to, the law’s (in)ability to read the narratives of black Americans?
Associated course analyses
AAS359-ENG366