Comm. 437: U.S. Black Culture and Performance:
“I Too Sing America”
SPRING 2010
Tuesdays 2-4:50 pm
Bingham 203
Prof. Renee Alexander Craft
Office: Bingham 215
[email protected] (allow 24 hours for response)
Office hours: 12:30-1:30pm Tuesdays and Thursdays
Nature of the Course:
Taking its subtitle from Langston Hughes’ now famous poem, “I, Too, Sing America,” this course
concentrates on African American literary art and oration around the themes of U.S. identity, citizenship
and belonging in five key eras from the late 19th century through the present. Participates will create
written and performed scholarship to guide their inquiry. “Performance” will serve as a process–
oriented, participatory, and experiential way to critically engage, interpret, and analyze course
materials.
We will focus on each era for three weeks using the following rhythm:
Week One: Lecture/Discussion
Week Two: Workshop/Rehearsal
Week Three: Performance/Critical Feedback
Within Each Era, The Questions That Drive Our Inquiry Are:
What have been the major debates, preoccupations, and longings articulated through African American
literary art and oration related to national identity and belonging?
How did US Black literary artists and orators use discourses of ideal American national identity to
articulate their calls for civil rights, human rights, equality and national belonging?
How have US Black literary artists and orators variously defined and contested black art and aesthetics?
Required Text:
Call & Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition (Paperback)
*Additional Reading Posted on Blackboard*
Responsibilities:
Attendance and Participation:
Your presence and active participation are CRITICAL to your success and the success of this class. We
need your ideas, questions, curiosities, innovations, and challenges to make this course move! If you
need to miss class for an official purpose (job interview, medical appointment, etc.) email me at least
two class periods prior to the class you need to miss. In the case of emergencies, email me at your
earliest opportunity and be prepared to provide some form of written documentation.
All students will be afforded no more than one “unexcused” absence before it affects your grade. Each
additional absence will lower your participation grade by 5 points. An unexcused absence on the day
you are scheduled to perform/present will result in a failing grade on the assignment. If you play a
sport, you must provide me with a schedule of your anticipated absences during the first two weeks of
class. We have a lot of work to do together this semester. So make a concerted effort to arrive early or
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on time. If you should arrive late on a day when we are performing, do not interrupt the performance.
Wait outside the door until there is a break between performances before entering.
Outside Performances and Performance Reviews:
As good citizens of the department and invested scholars of performance, you are required to attend
and write a one-page review of at least two departmental performances and one outside performance
over the course of the semester. Reviews should be posted under on our Blackboard discussion forum
under “Performance Reviews” within one week of each show. This will count as part of your
participation grade.
Weekly Presentations, Round Robin and Potluck Discussions:
Each lecture/discussion week, I will divide the poems, fiction and essays among you. Each student will
have five minutes to present his/her “offering.” In addition to the over-arching questions outlined on
the first page of the syllabus, presentations should address the following questions:
What is the significance of this piece?
Given a deep analysis of its message and structure, what does it do?
Why did this piece matter? (Use contextual material provided in Call & Response as well as
outside readings to address this question.)
How did you interpret it alongside the other readings offered during this week?
What did it make you “think”/How did it make you “feel”?
What did this piece help you understand about the condition of being black in the U.S. during
this historical period? What questions did it raise for you?
After each student has had an opportunity to present, anyone is welcome to place an offering on the
table for discussion. Everyone is responsible for placing one thoughtful question on the table to
consider during our discussion period.
Performance Projects:
In small groups, you will have four opportunities over the course of the semester to engage in embodied
performance as a means to question, analyze and better understand our texts. You will script your
performances by taking excerpts from various sections of the same text or various genres of texts and
placing them together. You will create an inter-textual script, juxtaposing and putting voices in dialogue
according to meanings and forms. You must create your performance based on a rhetorical and artistic
purpose. Your script, voice, gesture, props, and blocking must all work toward this purpose. You will be
graded on the following:
Group Grades: (a) scripting (b) blocking (c) props or specials (d) program
Individual Grades: (e) voice clarity and projection (f) empathy and embodiment (g) reflection papers
Each performance project will include the following written documentation:
Reflection Paper:
Each member of the group will provide a 2-3 page reflection paper on
readings and performance process.
Script:
Each group will provide a clean, typed copy of your performance text.
Post scripts to “Discussion Board” 24 hours prior to workshops and
performances. Also, submit one hard copy with your journal and
program on your performance dates.
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Program:
On the day of your performance, each group will distribute a one-page
double-sided program including the following:
Cover: Title, a photograph or other graphic representation, and
poignant quote created and/or chosen by group
Inside and/of back: Names of group members with character
titles/roles, a one-paragraph artist statement, and a list of works cited
Performance proposals are due on the dates marked “Workshop” and will consist of a presentation of
each groups’ script draft and plan of action (no more than ten minutes).
Mid-Term and Final Project:
You will notice that the period marked “1990-present” is currently blank on your syllabus. This is your
era and your opportunity to make an argument for the poetry, fiction and essays that most dramatically
and poignantly mark this historical moment.
Mid-Term Paper: Due March 23
Write a 5-page proposal of your final paper. Each proposal should include:
-A compelling argument and rationale for why you have chosen your various selections.
(Include no less than three authors and no fewer than five original pieces.)
-A review of literature (critical essays regarding each selection)
-An outline of your major arguments and themes
-An annotated bibliography of your selections
I will choose a representative selection of your offerings, which will constitute our April 20th
readings. Your final performance project will consist of a research paper and the creation of an
art object (see description below).
Final Paper: Due April 27
Based on feedback from your mid-term proposals, your final paper will be a 12-15 page research
paper focused on a constellation of the major creative, critical and political thinkers from 1990present. Given your research, how do these thinkers and their work define the criteria for black
art during any part of this period? How do you define it? How does this reflect, reinterpret
and/or contradict the criteria articulated and demonstrated in earlier periods. All written
assignments should be double-spaced, 12pt times roman font, with 1-inch margins printed as
single-sided documents. Seek assistance early from the Writing Center to make sure your
writing is carefully crafted and clear.
Art Object: Due May 6
Using course materials, outside readings, and your journal entries, create an art object or
installation piece, which expresses your critical perspective on U.S. Black Culture and
Performance as we have engaged them over the arc of the semester. These may be threedimensional original objects, media pieces or some combination. If you sculpt, paint, build
things, knit, doodle, create scrapbooks, etc., as part of your creative expression, I encouraged
you to bring that part of your skill set to bear on this project.
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Grading Scale:
A/(90-100)—Exceptional! Exceeded requirements with high degree of proficiency
B +/- (80-89)—Very Good! Met requirements with a higher than average degree of proficiency
C +/- (70-79)—Good. Met requirements with an average degree of proficiency
D
(60-69)—Below Average. Did not meet all requirements and/or did so with a lower than average
degree of proficiency
F
(Below 60)—Well below Average. Failed to meet course requirements and/or consistently
displayed a lack of proficiency
Distribution:
Participation:
Attendance and active participation
Round Robin and Potluck
Performance Reviews
10%
10%
10%
Performance Projects:
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
10%
10%
10%
10%
Final Project:
Mid-Term/Final Paper Proposal
Final Paper:
Art Object:
10%
10%
10%
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30%
40 %
30%
ITINERARY
(Note: “*” indicates texts located in Course Documents file on Blackboard)
1/12
Orientation and Overview
1852-1915
Voices of Abolition, Reconstruction, and Post-Reconstruction
1/19
Lecture/Discussion
Poetry:
Paul Laurence Dunbar
James Weldon Johnson
Frances W. Harper
James Whitfield
Essays/Speeches:
Fredrick Douglass
“We wear the mask”
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” Negro National Anthem *
“The Slave Auction”
“The Slave Mother”
“America”
Ida B. Wells
"What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”: An Address Delivered
in Rochester, New York, on 5 July 1852
From “The Souls of Black Folk”
“Remarks before the 1893 World’s Congress of Representative
Women on the Status of the Black Woman in the United States”
From “Southern Horror: Lynch Laws in All Its Phases”
1/26
Workshop/Rehearsal:
Performance Proposal Due
2/2
Performance Project One
W. E. B. Du Bois
Anna Cooper
2/9
Lecture/Discussion
Poetry:
Claude McKay
Countee Cullen
Langston Hughes
Gwendolyn Bennett
Essays/Speeches:
Marcus Garvey
Walter White
1915-1945
Renaissance and Reformation
“America”
“If We Must Die”
“Incident”*
“I, Too”
“Dream Variations”
“Harlem”
“Mother to Son”
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
“Heritage”
“To a Dark Girl”
“Speech on Disarmament Conference Delivered at Liberty Hall,
New York
“I Investigate Lynchings”
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W. E. B. Du Bois
Alain Locke
James Weldon Johnson
“Criteria of Negro Art”
“The New Negro”
From The Book of American Negro Poetry
2/16
Workshop/ Rehearsal:
Performance Proposal Due
2/23
Performance Project Two
3/2
Lecture/Discussion
Poetry:
Melvin B. Tolson
Robert Hayden
Dudley Randall
Margaret Walker
Gwendolyn Brooks
1945-1960
Post-Renaissance and Post-Reformation
Essays/Speeches:
Ralph Ellison (Fiction)
Hugh M. Gloster
Nick Aaron Ford
“Dark Symphony” (Parts I-VI)
“Frederick Douglass”
“Booker T and W.E.B.”
“The Ballad of the Free”
“We Real Cool”
“The Wall”
“The Children of the Poor”
“Prologue” From Invisible Man
“Race and the Negro Writer”
“A Blueprint for Negro Authors”
SPRING BREAK
3/9
3/16
Workshop/ Rehearsal
Performance Proposal Due
3/23
Performance Project Three
Mid-Term Due
1960-1990
Social Revolution, Second Reconstruction and New Renaissance
3/30
Lecture/Discussion
Poetry:
Amiri Baraka (Leroy Jones)
Sonia Sanchez
Jane Cortez
Yusef Komunyakaa
Essays/Speeches:
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Malcolm X
Stokely Carmichael
Jessie Jackson
“A Poem Some People Will Have to Understand”
“The Final Solution”
“right on: white america"
“So Many Feathers”
“Hanoi Hannah”
“I have a Dream”
“Speech to African Summit Conference—Cairo, Egypt”
“Black Power”
“Address: Democratic National Convention,
San Francisco, July 17, 1984
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Larry Neal
“The Black Arts Movement”
4/6
Workshop/ Rehearsal
Performance Proposal Due
4/13
Performance Project Four
4/20
4/27
5/6
1990-Present
To Be Constructed Collaboratively (Mid-Term Project)
Course Wrap Up
Final Papers Due
FINAL EXAM:
Thursday, May 6 @ 12 noon
Art Object Due
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