Africa in the Black Atlantic Imagination

DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURES IN ENGLISH

LITS 3113/E31M: Africa in the Black Atlantic Imagination

Essay Topics Due date: March 30, 2012 @ 4pm

Instructions: Write a coherent essay (2500-3000 words) on one of the following topics, using MLA documentation. Please do not plagiarize! Submit 2 copies (electronic and hard) of your essay; use my email address (loganmkl@gmail.com) to submit the electronic copy (as a "doc" file attachment).

1--Discuss the narrative design of Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.

2--Discuss the ways in which The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano fails to transcend the prevalent 18th-century (ethnographic) discourse on Africa.

3--"Larsen takes the theme of psychic dualism, so popular in Harlem Renaissance fiction, to a higher and more complex level, displaying a sophisticated understanding and penetrating analysis of black female psychology." Discuss Passing in light of this statement.

4--"Passing is a national--as well as a personal--tragedy." Discuss.

5--Discuss the significance of oral tradition in I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem.

6--"I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem is arguably Condé's attempt to re-write/right history." Discuss.

7--"Johnson, through the artifice of Rutherford Calhoun's adventures aboard the Republic, imagines, for the first time, an interrupted space in African-American history...In this era, our era, the real work to be done consists of filling in historical gaps with countless variations of the narrative of the subaltern" (Brian Fagel). Discuss Middle Passage in light of Fagel's statement.

8--Discuss the title--"middle passage"--of Johnson's novel as a trope.

9--"Mr. Malcolm X, what I don't understand is why you call yourself Black. You look more like a White man than a Negro" (Angelou 150). Critique the concept and reality of "race" in All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes.

10-- In what ways does Maya Angelou's All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes exemplify and/or challenge the philosophy and tenets of the Negritude movement?