Friday, May 9, 2014

Readings for African American Literatures & Cultures Institute (2014)

This June at the University of Texas San Antonio, I'll work with Fellows in the African American Literatures and Cultures Institute, a program founded and directed by literary scholar and super hero Joycelyn Moody. I run the day-to-day seminar duties and reading assignments for the institute.

And what is the reading list looking like this summer? Well, I'm glad you asked.

Week 1
• From The Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker
• Excerpt from Out of the House of Bondage by Thavolia Glymph
• Poetry Packet #1: Works by Elizabeth Alexander, Opal Palmer Adisa, Amiri Baraka, Lucille Clifton, Robert Hayden, Vievee Francis, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Dudley Randall, Ishmael Reed, Phillis Wheatley
• “Message to the Grassroots” by Malcolm X
• Poetry Packet #2: Works by Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Helene Johnson,  Claude McKay, and Margaret Walker

Week 2
• "The 32-Million Word Gap" by David Shenk
• Poetry Packet #3: Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Lucille Clifton, Jayne Cortez, Allison Joseph, Carolyn Rodgers, and Sonia Sanchez  
• "Black Nerds" [also published as "Mind Work"] by Trudier Harris
• "Acting White" by Roland Fryer 
• "Terms of Disengagement" by Kelly Rodgers
• "Afrofuturism" by Alondra Nelson 
• "African Americans and Technology Use" by Aaron Smith
• “Black Women and Fat” by Alice Randall
• “Do Black Women Really Want to Be Fat?” By Noliwe M. Rooks
• "The Breast Cancer Racial Gap" by Tara Parker-Pope 
• "Why Black Women Die of Cancer" by Harold P. Freeman 
• Poetry Packet #4: Saul Williams, Tracie Morris, Tyehimba Jess, Patricia Smith, Adrian Matejka, and Kevin Young 
• “The Economic Plight of Inner-City Black Males” by William J. Wilson

Week 3
• Excerpt from The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Writings on Trayvon Martin by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Poetry packet #5: Amiri Baraka
• "The Tweaker" by Malcolm Gladwell
• Excerpts from The Boondocks by Aaron McGruder and (Th)ink by Keith Knight 

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