Course Level: Undergraduate

Ethnic Literatures of the United States (3)

With an emphasis on the situation and experiences of African American women, this course examines the unusually strong connection African American artists often portray between conceptions of love on one hand and ideals of political liberation on the other, especially since the civil rights movement. Putting the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. in conversation with contemporary theories of culture, gender, and sexuality, the class interrogates the fraught assumptions and nostalgic principles behind the claim that versions of love are central to empowering cultural self-knowledge, egalitarian citizenship, and race-conscious leftist political radicalism. Also considered are the formal innovation through which these writers both adapt and resist traditional love story conventions in order to imagine alternative expressions of love, sexuality, and justice. In short, the course investigates how certain African American writers seek to characterize the liberating love at the heart of the collective political resistance that Dr. King called the "beloved community."