Professor Hans Ostrom

English 375: The Harlem Renaissance

Fall 2002

Welcome to English 375. Here is some basic information:

My Office: Wyatt 336. Fall 2002 Office Hours: Tuesday-Thursday, 9:30-10:30 a.m.; Monday, 1:00-2:00 p.m., and by appointment, of course.

Office phone (voice mail): x3434. English Department office: x3235. Electronic mail: ostrom@ups.edu. Home page: www.ups.edu/faculty/ostrom/. A copy of this syllabus is posted on the home page.

The University of Puget Sound does not discriminate in education or employment on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, religion, creed, age, disability, marital or familial status, sexual orientation, Vietnam-era veteran status, gender identity, or any other basis prohibited by local, state, or federal laws. This policy complies with the spirit and the letter of applicable federal, state and local laws, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Sections 503 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Questions about the policy may be referred to the University's Director of Human Resources and Affirmative Action (253-879-3116) or the Office of Civil Rights, Department of Education, Washington, D.C. 20202.

Harlem, of course, is a part of New York City, a metropolis built on top of an island that so-called Europeans purchased from so-called Native Americans. After the purchase, this part of Manhattan was resettled by colonists from the Netherlands and Germany. (Harlem takes its name from Haarlem, a Dutch city.) In the early part of the 20^th century, so-called African Americans and so-called West Indians resettled in Harlem. Shortly thereafter, a cultural transformation occurred. Its influence is still felt, every day, in the United States and worldwide. In this course, we will study the transformation, focusing on the literary part of it, with the understanding that the literature cannot be studied properly without reference to the broader cultural context.

If we were to locate Harlem geographically, both today and in 1920, we might say that it lies north of 114^th Street , east of St. Nicholas Avenue and the Hudson River, west of the Harlem River and the Bronx, and south of 156^th street.

Locating Harlem in our minds—our "consciousness," if you will—is a much more complicated task, one that the course is designed to help accomplish.

This course features the reading and analysis of, the writing and talking about, literature. It is also bound to look at "values," or what people believe is important. The University

Bulletin indicates that a "course in Comparative Values develops a critical understanding of different value systems--a value system being a structure of beliefs about the relative worth of ideas, acts, or objects--found in intellectual, moral, or aesthetic traditions. Such a course explores the cultural choices individuals and societies make."

Why do people believe that a particular concept, version of history, or particular work of art is important? Who disagrees with them and why? When and how did certain judgements about values arise? How do we know what people really believe? Who gets to decide what is "valuable" in literature, in culture? We will tailor such basic, broad questions to the literary and cultural transformation labeled "the Harlem Renaissance," which featured many explicit, implicit, and competing statements of what is valuable, is necessary, in literature and other arts and in society. As we read the literature and ask the questions, we will also reveal our own judgements, reaffirm them, doubt them, place them in contrast to the judgements of others.

One assumption with which I begin, with which the course begins, is that many issues, values, and conflicts in the Harlem Renaissance and its literature persist, so that as we study Harlem then we will also be studying the United States and the world now. Only a very few literary periods and groups of writers have received as much widespread renewed attention as the Harlem Renaissance and its writers. Works of these writers have been republished at an astonishing rate in recent years; moreover, the renewed attention has come not just from scholars but also from the public at large. This literary era, the core of which belongs to the years 1920-1930, may not be unique, but it is distinctive in powerful, interesting, and enduring ways. Therefore another aim of the course is to develop an understanding of this distinctiveness. The Harlem Renaissance is also a maddeningly complicated era, a kind of puzzle that satisfies and frustrates simultaneously. One additional aim is to balance the satisfaction and frustration as we honor the complexity.

David Levering Lewis, editor. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. New York: Penguin, 1994. Paperback.

Wallace Thurman, editor. FIRE!! [facsimile reprint of a literary magazine published in Harlem in 1926]. 48 pages. Paperback.

Claude McKay. Selected Poems. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1999. Paperback. Many of the poems first appeared in McKay’s book Harlem Shadows, first published in 1922.

Langston Hughes. The Ways of White Folks. New York: Vintage, 1990. Paperback. A collection of short stories first published in 1934.

Jessie Redmon Fauset. Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990. Paperback. The book was first published in 1929.

Jean Toomer. Cane. New York: Liveright, 1993. Paperback. A novel, perhaps; it was first published in 1923.

Ishmael Reed. Mumbo Jumbo. New York: Scribners, 1996. A novel, first published in 1972, that, among other things, re-presents the Harlem Renaissance.

Participation (attendance; productive contribution to discussions and group-work; etc.): about 20 per cent, total

Two essays: about 50 per cent

Two tests: about 20 per cent, total

One presentation (a brief biography of a notable person or an institution associated with the Harlem Renaissance): about 10 per cent.

Please try to come to class each session unless you are ill. Please do try to come to class on time or a few minutes early. Please do not eat in class (every professor has his or her pet peeves), but do feel free to bring in a cup of coffee or a soft drink.

We will work on drafts of essays in class. Please do not think of this work as optional; take due-dates for drafts seriously.

I regard electronic mail as useful for answering brief questions about assignments or due dates. In-person discussions during office hours or over coffee in Diversions seem better for more complicated questions about essay-drafts, works we’re reading, and so on.

Tuesday, September 3: To help you decide whether you want to remain in the course, we will look at the syllabus carefully. An overview of the course. "Harlem." Music. Distribute photocopy from The Harlem Renaissance, by Steven Watson.

Thursday, September 5. For today, read the photocopied section from Watson’s book. Also read, in The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (hereafter known as HRR), the "Chronology," as well as essays by Du Bois (3-6), Woodson (6-10), Locke (46-52), and Rogers (52-58). Also read Cane, 1-35. Always read the brief biographies (in the back of HRR) of writers assigned. Music.

Tuesday, September 10. Read Cane through page 153 (the end of "Bona and Paul"). Also, in HRR, read "The Negro Artist and Modern Art," by Romare Bearden, 138-141. A discussion of literary genres and values. To what genre(s) does Cane belong? What works does it remind you of? To what extent is Cane a "difficult" book and/or belong to a "difficult" genre? We’ll begin a discussion of the Harlem Renaissance and Modernism.

Thursday, September 12. In HRR, read the selections from The Big Sea, by Langston Hughes, 77-91, as well as "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (91-95). Also read "The Negro-Art Hokum," by George Schuyler," 96-99, and "Criteria of Negro Art," by W.E.B. Du Bois, 100-105. What are the implicit and explicit debates about "Negro Art"? What are key areas of dispute? What purposes of art emerge in these debates? What do you think art should "do"—for whom and why?

Tuesday, September 17. In HRR, read all the poems by Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. Distribute photocopy of essay about Carl Van Vechten’s novel, Nigger Heaven.

Thursday, September 19. For today, read the essay about Van Vechten. In HRR, read "Critiques of Carl Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven" by Du Bois and Johnson (106-109), "The Caucasion Storms Harlem," by Rudolph Fisher (110-117), and "The Harlem Intelligentsia," by Claude McKay. In McKay’s Selected Poems, read "A Midnight Woman to the Bobby" (p. 4) and "My Native Land, My Home" (p. 5), as well as the poems on pages 30-37, from Harlem Shadows.

Tuesday, September 24. For today, read the poems on pages 38-50 in McKay’s Selected Poems. In HRR, read "Harlem Runs Wild" by McKay, 190-193. Some topics to consider: "Negritude"; so-called "West Indians" and the Harlem Renaissance; why did Marxism appeal to so many people, writers included, in the 1920s and 1930s? Also think about form, language, and genre with regard to McKay’s poetry. First essay assigned, discussed.

Thursday, September 26. For today, in HRR, read the poetry by Bennett, Bontemps, Brown, Fauset, and the three Johnsons (Fenton, Georgia Douglas, and James Weldon). Remember to read the biographical notes on each author. Looking ahead to Tuesday: what is a cultural "artifact"?

Tuesday, October 1. For today, with someone else in class, look at FIRE!! Examine it as an artifact—its shape, its layout, its alleged purpose then, how you respond to it as an object now, the messages its physical presence sends, the circumstances of its creation, etc. Also, read the four-page insert that came with the facsimile reprint. And read the works on pages 1-23. Looking ahead: make sure you read pages 24-48 by October 10.

Thursday, October 3. Draft of essay due. Review for first test.

Tuesday, October 8. First test. Music and art. List of Harlem-Renaissance notables distributed. Each of you will choose one notable and prepare a brief oral presentation on her or him. Presentations discussed: what will be expected?

Thursday, October 10. First essay due. For today, read FIRE!! pages 24-48. We will also probably view parts of Langston Hughes: The Dream Keeper, a video.

Tuesday, October 15. For today, in The Ways of White Folks, read "Cora Unashamed," "Slave on the Block," "Home," "Passing," and "A Good Job Gone." In HRR, read the selection from Walter White’s The Fire in the Flint, 351-362.

Thursday, October 17. Film: Looking For Langston. For today, read, in The Ways of White Folks, "The Blues I’m Playing."

Tuesday, October 22. For today, read the introduction to Plum Bun and pages 11-86 of the novel.

Thursday, October 24. For today, in HRR, read "The Task of Negro Womanhood" by Elsie Johnson McDougald, 68-76. Video: Against All Odds: Artists of the Harlem Renaissance. [Continue reading Plum Bun.]

Tuesday, October 29. For today, read the rest of Plum Bun.

Thursday, October 31. Presentations. Distribute copies of "On the Road" and Simple stories.

Tuesday, November 5. Presentations.

Thursday, November 7. For today, read, in The Ways of White Folks, "Father and Son," "On the Road," and Simple stories. Presentations.

Tuesday, November 12. Presentations. Second essay assigned, discussed. Review for test.

Thursday, November 14. Video: Black American dance. Presentations.

Tuesday, November 19. Second test.

Thursday, November 21. Ishamael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo. Selections from video: Duke Ellington.

Tuesday, November 26. Video: Robert Johnson.

Tuesday, December 3. Mumbo Jumbo.

Thursday, December 5. Draft due. Mumbo Jumbo.

Tuesday, December 10. Essay due. Wrap-up.