Evolution of the Black Narrative Tradition: Nature and Cultivation

This class will focus on the impact of nature or the natural world on African American narratives from Frederick Douglass through to James Baldwin and beyond. We will attempt to locate elements within Black narratives that tie such works one to the other. Ultimately, beyond attempting to use close readings to detect how each text speaks to another, we will also observe such touchstones as Black music, religion, and especially issues of assimilation. Take note, Professor Thompson is a structuralist who works to uncover the inner structure of narratives in order to expose the aesthetic coherency of each text. We may spend much more time, hence, performing close readings of short excerpts of each text in order to see how a single part may help to explicate the whole. This class will not shy away from taboo subjects of sexuality and sticky issues of inter- and intra-racial matters, not only in the text itself, but with references to related to issues in the so-called “real” world.