This collection of electronic text files and internet links is designed as a supplement to required course texts and reserve readings in English 165 (African American Literature) at Illinois State University. My aim is to give students access to information on a wide variety of critical and historical issues and perspectives, and to introduce students to some useful tools for literary and cultural studies research.

Ron Strickland

• Syllabus for English 165, Spring 1997

• Micro-essays

• Formal Essays

Topics and Related Materials for English 165

• Topic 1: Universalism and the Black Arts Movement
  
• Topic 2: Jeffersonian Rhetoric and African-American Orations
  
• Topic 3: On the Wilson-Brustein Debate
  
• Topic 4: On Amiri Baraka's critique of Spike Lee's Malcolm X
  
• Topic 5: Generic Conventions in Classic Slave Narratives
  
• Topic 6: On Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
  
• Topic 7: On Amiri Baraka's and/or Ntozake Shange's Poetry
  
• Topic 8: On Langston Hughes, "Theme for English B"
  
• Topic 9: The Limited-Omniscient Narrator in Octavia Butler's Kindred
  
• Topic 10: On the Psychological Effects of Color Prejudice as Portrayed in Black Skins, White Masks and The Bluest Eye
  
• Topic 11: Allegorical Characterization in Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo
  
• Topic 12: Comparing Characters in Anna Deveara Smith's "Fires in the Mirror"

• S. Hartman, "Seduction and the Ruse of Power": Article on Rape against Black Women and 19th-century Law

• Malcolm X's speech: "To the Grass Roots"

• "Two Mouths Running": New York Times story on Black Aesthetic debate between August Wilson and Robert Brustein