| This course examines the shifting relationship between African-American literature and the sociology of race. Over the course of the twentieth century, sociology was the discourse most often used in policy decisions regarding black populations. It has always been an object of contention amongst intellectuals. On the one hand, the sociology of race played a crucial role in revealing the damage inflicted by American's systematic racism - in particular during the deliberations leading up to Brown vs. Board of Education (1954). On the other hand, sociology's depiction of African Americans as damaged products of their social environment has also lent itself to questionable policy initiatives, such as Daniel Moynihan's "The Negro Family" (1965), which described black families as prey to a "tangle of pathologies" arising from the historical consequences of slavery segregation. These two attitudes toward damage sociology from a rift that has run through African-American literature since the 1930's. Chicago naturalists like Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks derived inspiration, ideas and even stylistic techniques from the sociology of race, while post - World War II writers like Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin defined their aesthetic against it. In this course, we will explore the origins of this rift and trace its impact upon African-American letters. |
