ENGL 345(S) Black Aesthetics*

The Black Arts Movement, a cultural correlate to the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, was an attempt to create a radically new kind of art, rejecting white, elitist values in favor of a popular, black aesthetic. This course will examine various aspects of the Movement, including its polemics, its poetry and drama, and its attempt to create cultural institutions. We will give special attention to the Movement's attempts to create "popular" art forms by using vernacular speech and black music as aesthetic models, and by taking art to "the people" through readings, poetry broadsides, and community-based workshops and performances. How, we will ask, did these artists envision a black "popular" art? What does the experience of the Movement have to tell us about the criteria by which we define both "popularity" and "art" in America? Authors will include Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez, Toni Cade Bambara, and Ntozake Shange. Requirements: two 3- to 5-page papers and a final paper (15 pages) or project. Prerequisite: English 101. Enrollment limited to 25.

Hour:  D. L. SMITH