ENG 384 - When Whites Write Black

This course examines literary texts with prominent Black characters, written by 20^th century American and South African Caucasian writers. Analyses will be focused on characterization of people and cultural images which might shed insight upon the sensibilities of various writers as well as on the impressionistic effects such characterizations might have on student readers. Inspired by Toni Morrison’s challenge in her essay, Romancing the Shadow, that “Reading and charting the emergence of an Africanist persona in the development of a national literature is both a fascinating project and an urgent one if the history  and criticism of our literature is to become accurate,” the course will engage in close readings of fiction by American writers such as Eudora Welty, Fred Chappell, Truman Capote, Sue Monk Kidd and Harper Lee, and South African writers such as Nadine Gordimer, Alan Paton and John Coetzee. The Modern Civil Rights Movement and Apartheid are the historical landscapes within which most of these texts were written.

Satisfies English major and minor requirement.
Satisfies Africana Studies major requirement.
Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing and Rhetoric requirement.
Satisfies Justice, Equality and Community requirement.