ENGL 280B

The Ethics of Black Verbal Aesthetics

Survey of the interaction between aesthetics and ethics in African-American literature. Emphasizing a call-and-response verbal aesthetic-prominent in the oral traditions of segregated communities throughout the African Diaspora-as an extension of a diasporic ethics of improvisational black identity that, especially late twentieth century literature recovers as basis for challenging the fixed, essentialist ethoi and aesthetics of earlier African-American literature more greatly influenced by traditional, Christian-Humanist discourses on ethnicity.

Units: 3.0