Fall 2006

WGS 340 • Contemporary African American Women's Fiction

Course Description

In this course we will examine the novels, films and poetry of African American women produced from the 1970s to the present. We will focus on issues of memory and its relation to past violence and violations suffered under systems of racism, misogyny and homophobia. How do our memories shape who we are?  How do they construct our relationships with other people?  What role should individual accounts have in collecting the history of a people? What does trauma have to do with identity formation? In this course, we will use the work of history and psychoanalytic, cultural, queer and feminist theories to assist our exploration of these questions and issues.

Texts

Zami by Audre Lorde Meridian by Alice Walker Corregidora by  Gayle Jones Kindred, by Octavia Butler Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat Getting Mother's Body by Suzanne Lori Parks

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