Writing Black: African American Literature and Racial Consciousness

This module explores the historical development of racial consciousness in African American writing from the nineteenth century to the present. With the legacies of transatlantic slavery and W.E.B. Du Bois’s classic notion of “double consciousness” as central through-lines, the module addresses texts from across a range of genres: fiction, autobiography, drama, poetry, film, and theory. We will explore how consciousness of race and racialization has been articulated by Black writers in a variety of historical contexts, from slave narratives through the New Negro Renaissance and Civil Rights era to the contemporary moment of Black Lives Matter. We will also examine how race has intersected for African American writers with other concerns, including class, gender, sexuality, economy, and political activism. The title of the module is intended to signify in multiple ways: as a suggestion that blackness can be as much a question of writing as of being; as a gesture towards the figure of black type on a white page, found in the work of many African American writers; and as an allusion to “writing back,” a mobilizing phrase for many anti-colonial literary movements. Attending to these varying resonances, the module offers students an opportunity to explore how African American writers have grappled with and shaped American racial consciousness, in the political sphere and on the page.