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ENG 5053/ 6063 Topics in Literary Genres

African American Autobiography

Fall 2009: Tues 5:30-8:15 p.m. Main Building 1.208

Dr. Joycelyn Moody

Office location: 2.306C Main Office phone: 210.458.6857

Office hours: Wednesdays 3-5 pm & by appt Email: joycelyn.[email protected]

Since racism’s most damaging insult is internal, to “self” as perception, it strikes me that, especially for a black writer, the process of coming to the creation of a great work of art is also a process that entails the re-creation and revision of the self.—Toi Derricotte, The Black Notebooks (1997)

Course Description: The socioliterary influence of the institution of slavery has been apparent since enslaved Africans first narrated their experiences of bondage. From the advent of slavery to the present, life writing—a genre that includes captivity accounts, slave narratives, religious confessions, travel diaries, memoirs, prison letters, and coming of age stories—has remained the genre of choice for African Americans. Many texts that make up “the African American literary canon” incorporate conventions of autobiography and self-representation, thus underscoring the urgency and the irony of blacks as a marginalized people to express a collective racial identity, in individual terms. This graduate seminar explores a central paradox in African American autobiography from slavery to the present: blacks’ use of the nation’s most individualistic and exclusive literary genre (the story of the individual self) to tell the collective story of an excluded race. Not every assigned reading demonstrates that paradox, however. Consequently, we will also read autobiographies that allow us to trace both rhetorical patterns and stylistic shifts in US black life writing; to this end, the black personal narratives eamined in this seinar represent a variety of autobiographical forms, occasionally hybridized in a single text.

Course Requirements:

Regular, engage, and prepared attendance (two excused absences granted).
Prompt written work; late work will be penalized per diem.
Readings for each session should be thoroughly and thoughtfully read before due dates.
Individual meeting with professor before Sept 15.
Educational Autobiography (due Sept 8) & Final Self-Assessment (due Dec 11)
Intermittent critical reading notebook (CRN) entries, 2 single-spaced pages, to be collected in final portfolio on Dec 11.
Collaborative oral discussion leadership with assigned colleague. Topics/dates must be chosen by Sept 15.
A 3-5 pp double-spaced formal "close reading" on a brief passage from an (assigned or optional) autobiography of your choice, due Oct 20.
Final project for 5053 students: Seminar conference paper (9-12 pp).
- Call for papers (cfp) selection due: Oct 27
- 150-300 word proposal/ abstract specifying topic, hypothesis, and metholodgy, due: Nov 3
- Bibliography of works consulted due: Nov 10
- Draft due: Dec 3
- Revised final version due: Dec 11
Final project for 6063 students: Seminar article draft (25-35 pp).
- Topic selection due: Oct 27
- 150-300 word proposal/ abstract specifying topic, hypothesis, and metholodgy, due: Nov 3
- Bibliography of works consulted due: Nov 10
- Draft due: Dec 3
- Revised final version due: Dec 11

All written work should be typed in 12-point font with one-inch margins on all sides. Use the current MLA style sheet to document sources for all citations.

All written work must be punctually submitted for successful completion of the seminar; no written assignment is optional. “Incomplete” grades will be granted only in extreme circumstances.

Students are expected to act on the highest ethics of academic honesty. Such conduct as plagiarism, collusion to cheat, the use of another person’s research without appropriate acknowledgement or attribution, or the misuse of previously prepared course material will not be tolerated. If charges of academic dishonesty are found valid, a student may be reported to the Department Chair for disciplinary probation, suspension, or expulsion. Adjudicated cases of plagiarism will result in immediate failure of the entire course.

Assignment Details:

Educational Autobiography and Final Self-Assessment (pass-fail). The first writing assignment should be 1-2-pages typed, single-spaced; it should give details of your personal history as a student. Use it to clarify some of the academic and unique experiences that you bring to the seminar, and also to outline the goals you have set for the course.

The final self-assessment essay should also consist of 1-2 typed, single-spaced pages. This essay might be a narrative about your overall intellectual experience in this seminar—why you took it, what problems and challenges it presented to you along the way, and how you addressed them. Or it might focus specifically on your writing for the course, what you learned from generating one or more particular required texts, what you learned about your strengths and weaknesses as a scholar. Or it might enumerate critical insights you gained during the seminar. Use this essay to reflect on your overall intellectual growth in the seminar.

Critical reading notebook (CRN) (25%). This assignment provides a chance to select the topics you find most compelling and the space outside of class to reflect at length on those topics. So, write your entries as your personal scholarly interests dictate. Although notebook entries are required on assigned dates, you can move around the organization of the syllabus for your focal points. A portfolio of the original (i.e., marked by professor) notebook entries will be graded as a unit at the end of the term.

Collaborative oral discussion leadership (10%). At the beginning of the semester, you will be paired with a seminar colleague with whom you will select an assigned text and lead an hour of class session. Together you will decide how to spend the time, what to ask the seminar participants to contemplate, and how we will learn specific ideas or concepts you want to highlight. This assignment is meant to provide an opportunity to tailor a seminar discussion according to your mutual interests as well as to practice collaboration.

"Close reading" of a selected autobiographical passage (20%). This essay requires an in-depth analysis of a literary passage of your choice, from an assigned text or another autobiography by an African American author; the primary goal is to develop your skills in textual analysis and interpretation. The labor should be intensive, meticulous, and rewarding. You should examine your chosen passage for its historical frameworks, the author’s application of particular literary conventions and influences, its traces of biographical information, and so on. Once you have articulated such apparent observations, then you should move into more idiosyncratic inferences to argue a concentrated thesis about the passage.

The Final Project assignment has five parts (45%). First, you must choose a topic and, if enrolled for ENG 5053 credit, find and respond to a published CFP (pass-fail). Then you will generate an original proposal about your topic, and write it as abstract that includes a proposed title of the paper, an hypothesis (or tentative main claim), and a statement of the primary methodology by which you will develop the argument of your paper (5%). Shortly thereafter, you will submit an annotated bibliography composed of your revised title, a 100-word revised hypothesis, and a list of 10-12 print and multimedia resources that you have consulted for information on your topic (10%). The annotations can be single spaced; feel free to print on both sides of the page. A complete draft of the final project (20%) will be read and comments offered before the revised final version becomes due (10%).

*****

This course will undoubtedly challenge many of your values, attitudes, beliefs, and ideas. You will need not only to come to class open-mindedly, but you will also need to approach your reading assignments open-mindedly. I expect you to raise questions in class and to see me in my office hours for further help if needed. It is your responsibility to contact me with any problems or issues you feel are getting in the way of your learning.

Predictably, many of the course readings deal with controversial issues that may prove difficult to discuss: racism, sadism, xenophobia, physical atrocities, and sexual violence. At alternate points in the course, each of us will feel upset, discouraged, angry, distraught, proud, relieved, ashamed, and guilty about issues raised in discussion and course texts. If we are brave enough, we will engage in difficult, transformative discussions. Let me highlight one issue in particular that the class will encounter: the word nigger, which appears in many course readings. Given both the intense cultural weight and the sociopolitical history of this epithet, please refrain from using it unless you are reading aloud from a course text. Obviously, our guiding principle is to respect each other at all times.

Addenda. Often I will email you with updated assignments, downloaded resources, or Internet links. Please plan to check your UTSA email account regularly.

Please silence cell phone ringers before each class session. Please do not eat in class except during announced breaks.

Course Calendar. Always subject to change. Additional readings will probably be assigned during the semester. Assigned readings should be completed before each class period.

Introductions and Goals

Sept 1

Petition of Belinda to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1783

“Theme for English B,” by Langston Hughes

“Girl,” by Jamaica Kincaid

Centering “Race” in the Classroom

Sept 8

DUE: Educational Autobiography

Readings:

Beverly Daniel Tatum, “Talking about Race, Learning about Racism: 'The Application of 'Racial Identity Development Theory in the Classroom” (1992)
Robert M. Sellers, et al. “Multidimensional Model of Racial Identity: A Reconceptualization of African American Racial Identity” (1998)
B. Marks, et al. “African American racial identity: A review of contemporary models and measures.” Black Psychology. 4th ed. Ed. R. L. Jones. Hampton, VA: Cobb & Henry, 383-404. (2004)
Robin J. Diangelo, “The Production of Whiteness in Education: Asian International Students in a College Classroom” (2006)

Sept 14: Last day to meet individually with Prof Moody

Theorizing Autobiography

Sept 15

DUE: Last day to notify Prof Moody of selected oral presentation topic.

1-Hr Writing workshop directed by Melissa Thomas, Rivera Center Asst Director of Learning

Readings:

David L. Dudley, Introduction, My father's shadow: intergenerational conflict in African American men's autobiography (electronic resource, 1991)
Kenneth Mostern, Chapter 2 (“African American Autobiography and the Field of Autobiography Studies”), Autobiography and Black identity politics: racialization in twentieth-century America (electronic resource, 1998)
Paula Brush, “The Influence of Social Movements on Articulations of Race and Gender in Black Women’s Autobiographies” (1999)
Patricia Bauer, et al., “Representation of the Inner Self in Autobiography” (2003)

Antebellum Slave Narratives as Early Black Autobiography

Sept 22

1-Hr Research workshop directed by Melissa Thomas, Rivera Center Asst Director of Learning

Readings:

http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/hammon/hammon.html
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave

Sept 29

Collaborative Presentation:___________________________________________________

Reading:

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Thurs Oct 1 Due (optional): CLA Convention proposals

Postbellum Black Autobiography

Oct 6

Collaborative Presentation:__________________________________________________

Readings:

Rosalyn Collings Eves, “A Recipe for Remembrance: Memory and Identity in African-American Women’s Cookbooks”
Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes

Becoming a New Negro

Oct 13

Collaborative Presentation:__________________________________________________

Readings:

Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery
Selections from The William Wells Brown Reader

Oct 20

DUE: Close reading essay.

Readings:

Ida B. Wells, Memphis Diary
Paula Giddins, “Missing in Action: Ida B. Wells, the NAACP, and the Historical Record.” Meridians 1.2 (2001): 1-17.

Race and Blackness at Midcentury

Oct 27

Collaborative Presentation:_________________________________________________

DUE: Call for papers (cfp) selection

Reading:

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

Mon Nov 2 Due (optional): a/b: Auto/Biography Studies submissions for a special issue on African American life writing.

Post-Civil Rights Movement African American Autobiography

Nov 3

Collaborative Presentation:__________________________________________________

DUE: Final Project proposal/ abstract

Reading:

Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery

Nov 10

Collaborative Presentation:__________________________________________________

DUE: Final Project bibliography

Reading:

McCall, Makes Me Wanna Holler

Post-Black? 21^st-Century Race Demons

Nov 17

Collaborative Presentation:__________________________________________________

Readings:

June Cross, Secret Daughter
France Winddance Twine, “Transgressive Women and Transracial Mothers: White Women and Critical Race Theory.” Meridians 1.2 (2001): 130-53.

Nov 24

Collaborative Presentation:__________________________________________________

Reading:

John Francis, Planetwalker

Final Considerations: Postmodern Black Life “Writing”

Dec 1

Due (optional): COLFA Research Conference Application Submissions

Course Evaluations

Readings:

John P. Bowles, “Adrian Piper as African American Artist”
Marianetta Porter, “Memory and Oblivion”

“Looking Back to Move Forward: Katrina’s Black Women Survivors Speak,” by Elizabeth Murakami-Ramalho and Beth A. Durodoye (2009)

Thurs Dec 3, 5 p.m.

DUE: Complete drafts of final projects

Dec 8 University Study Day

Fri Dec 11, noon

DUE: Final projects & portfolios.

Seminar celebration! (location tba)

ENG 5053/6053, p.

ACTIVE TOPICS ACTIVE POSTS UNANSWERED POSTS YOU ARE NOT
BACHELOR STATE EXAM TOPICS 1 LINGUISTIC SUBJECTS INTRODUCTION TO
BPM 5 DESIGNER TOPICS INTEGRATION STANDARDS ACTIVITIES INTEGRATION

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