ENROLL

Kofi Owusu

This course gives Africana Studies majors and minors the opportunity to apply what they have learned by preparing for and presenting at the annual National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) conference. Under the guidance of Africana Studies faculty members, students will interrogate the origins and institutionalization of Africana Studies; revise an Africana Studies-themed research paper completed in a previous course into a conference paper; and prepare and submit a paper proposal for NCBS. At NCBS, students will present their own research and engage with the work of Africana Studies scholars at panels, plenaries and workshops. Afterward, they will write a short assessment of the conference and their experience in Africana Studies at Carleton. 

1st 5 weeks

Kofi Owusu

We will explore developments in African American literature since the 1950s with a focus on literary expression in the Civil Rights Era; on the Black Arts Movement; on the new wave of feminist/womanist writing; and on the experimental and futuristic fictions of the twenty-first century. Authors to be read include Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Malcolm X, Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, August Wilson, Charles Johnson, Ntozake Shange, Gloria Naylor, Suzan-Lori Parks, Kevin Young, and Tracy Smith.