MALA 60343 Black Lives/White Law in American Literature
Prerequisites: Enrollment in the MLA program. This course will examine how American literature from the 1800s to the present has explored the racial divide between African Americans and white authority. We will achieve a broad historical and political perspective by reading a range of genres, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry composed by black, white, and biracial authors, with the purpose of using the literary tradition as a lens through which we assess the contradictory nature of American democracy and the vulnerable position of African-Americans within it. Our discussion will address slavery, abolition, segregation and Jim Crow laws, police brutality, the white gaze, white privilege, white guilt, cultural appropriation, racial passing, faith as propaganda, and the commonplace assumptions and fears about race, law enforcement, and national identity that have helped perpetuate the constraints of institutional racism in the United States.