LIT 130 - African-American Literature

1. Apply college-level reading skills to literary texts written by African American authors
   1. Read a variety of forms, including slave narratives, folktales, music, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama
   2. Demonstrate understanding of genre distinctions
   3. Apply terminology appropriate to reading literary texts
   4. Use effective reading techniques such as rereading, annotating, close reading, paraphrasing, and summarizing
2. Analyze African American literature by focusing on textual, structural, cultural, and thematic elements
   1. Explain the relationship between literary form and content
   2. Discuss literary forms including vernacular traditions, slave narrative, folktales, call-and-response, spoken word, and canonical literary traditions
   3. Discuss connections between authors and texts
   4. Examine the relationships between literary texts, culture, and historical contexts from the centuries of slavery into the Reconstruction, Turn-of-the-Century, New Negro Renaissance, Harlem Renaissance, Black Arts Movement, and Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, and other contemporary contexts
   5. Analyze literature through the application of one or more critical approaches, such as Formalism, Marxism, Feminism and Gender Studies, Mythological, Psychological, Cultural Studies, and others
3. Interpret African American literature using elements of literary criticism
   1. Interpret literature in context
   2. Discuss how multiple interpretations exist simultaneously
   3. Interpret literature using one or more critical approaches, such as Formalism, Marxism, Feminism and Gender Studies, Mythological, Psychological, Cultural Studies, and others
4. Evaluate literature’s continuing relevance to the human condition
   1. Review the contributions of African American writers in adding racial and culturally diverse voices to the study of literature
   2. Correlate assigned texts with current events, global contexts, and material from other disciplines
   3. Reflect on how texts shape identities
5. Create effective writing to demonstrate understanding of course goals
   1. Demonstrate awareness of academic conventions for organization, audience, research, and language
   2. Generate writing as an active process, using planning, drafting, revising, and editing
   3. Produce written analyses or interpretations
6. Integrate standard college-level documentation practices
   1. Understand definitions and consequences of plagiarism
   2. Identify reasons for documentation
   3. Integrate sources effectively within the given context
   4. Document sources using MLA style