For various reasons, I always like to teach David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829) in my Early American literature courses. Typically, I do not have students read selections from Walker’s Appeal until later in the semester; however, as I noted in a previous post, I am having students read it at the very beginning of the semester before moving … Read More David Walker and the Composition Classroom?
+ african american literature, american literature, david walker, olaudah equiano, phillis wheatley, syllabus, thomas jefferson, Uncategorized
Note: Here is the syllabus I am discussing. This semester, I’m teaching an Early American Literature survey course (through 1865). Typically, I have approached this course chronologically, having students read Native American creation stories, Christopher Columbus, William Bradford, and so on, in that order until we reached Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. However, this semester, I am trying something different. Instead of assigning students … Read More Early American Literature Survey Syllabus
+ african american literature, american literature, busdriver, lecrae, melting pot, olaudah equiano, schoolhouse rock, southern literature, titus andronicus, Uncategorized, william lloyd garrison
If, after the last post, you are still thinking about various ways to connect what students read in Early American literature survey courses to their day-to-day lives, I have a few more examples of contemporary cultural products that either draw inspiration or allude to texts that students would read in these courses. Over the past few years, of course, there have been adaptations of … Read More Getting Students Excited About Early American Literature?, Part 2
+ a darkness at ingarahm's crest, african american literature, american literature, cult of domesticity, frank yerby, patricia hill collins, southern literature, southern womanhood, the dahomean, Uncategorized
Over the past couple of posts, I have written about the way that Frank Yerby challenges stereotypes and the Cult of True Womanhood in The Dahomean (1971) and A Darkness at Ingraham’s Crest (1979). Today, I want to conclude this discussion by briefly highlighting the ways that Yerby constructs his African, African American, and mixed-race female characters in these two novels as counters to … Read More Frank Yerby and the Myth of White Southern Womanhood, Part 2
+ a darkness at ingarahm's crest, african american literature, american literature, cult of domesticity, frank yerby, gillian, southern literature, southern womanhood, the dahomean, Uncategorized
As mentioned in my recent post on Gillian (1960), Frank Yerby challenges the myth of Southern womanhood in his works. While I did not discuss how he does that in Gillian, I want to explore how he shatters the myth in A Darkness at Ingraham’s Crest (1979), the follow up to his 1971 book The Dahomean. While The Dahomean chronicles Hwesu’s life in Africa, … Read More Frank Yerby and the Myth of White Southern Womanhood
Interminable Rambling 