The Gothic was once a genre understood to be best exemplified by figures such as Mary Shelley's creature in Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe's raven, and Charlaine Harris' world with Sookie Stackhouse. While each of these texts draw upon similar themes (e.g. the supernatural, dread, the uncanny, horror, etc.), the Gothic conventions of the texts limit the ability of the Gothic to be represented elsewhere. In other words, the Gothic, as it has been usually written, are typically drawn upon unreal or fictitious events. When the Gothic came to life with the horrors of slavery, African American Gothic was born. A murderous master, dark bodies swaying in the breeze, and hapless women chased by tyrannical males became prominent tropes in African American Gothic texts. After slave narratives, 20th century African American writers used these tropes to textualize the terror of being Black in America. The result was a breadth of something unusual. To be American but at the same time not American (as Du Bois would put it) was truly uncanny -- and as such it is to be African American.
This course, AFC 279 (Special Topics): African American Gothic Literature, is designed for eligible students at Eastern Michigan University. The course seeks to uncover what African American Gothic literature is, and if it can be a genre of its own. In addition, the course will be open to any student who has already taken and passed AFC 101 (Introduction to African American studies) and is currently enrolled at the University within any major or program.
The course will be offered in the Africology & African American Studies department at EMU. The department is most likely to address the topic of African American Gothic literature due to the department's continued interest in, knowledge of, and student retention rate in Black literature courses. While this course is specifically designed for use in Black studies, it could also easily be adapted for use as a cross-listed course in English Language/Literature Studies.
While there has been considerable discontent in academia on what to call the discipline and what to study, Black Studies (or African-American Studies, Africology, Africana Studies, etc.) has become the systematic study of persons of African descent. In other words, Black Studies includes the study of "Black people everywhere -- their history, their institutions, their culture" (Asante 492). Studying the Black (or more specifically, African American) experience serves as a means to understand the world from an Afrocentric perspective (not to replace Eurocentrism, though), or African-centered point of view. Primary goals of the discipline that this course seeks to meet are within the grounding of Africological subject areas first described by Molefi Kete Asante (1990): social, communication, historical, cultural, political, economic, and psychological (12). In order to meet these goals, this course will ensure the following issues plaguing the African American experience are addressed and (hopefully) answered: education and re-education of students about the dynamics of the Black experience in regards to literature and Gothicism; typically omitted information about Black authors/texts; distortions and stereotypes about Black literature; development of Black communities; reformation in regards to literature; Black culture; humanity, inferiority, and multiculturalism.
*Last updated 11.7.13
