This course seeks to provide an introduction to the expansive body of African American literature, including poetry, speeches, slave narratives, essays, short stories, novels, speculative fiction, and lyrics, from the 1700s until today. We will explore the major themes, literary strategies and narrative strategies that shape this body of literature with attention to questions of justice, and the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Students who want to gain knowledge about the canon of African American literature and its place in American literature will benefit from taking this class.

Rhetoric and Composition (ENGL 15) an intensive, rhetorically based experience in reading and writing that will prepare you both to understand the communications that surround you and to succeed in your own communication efforts. Thus, in this course, we will focus specifically on analyzing verbal and visual texts (our reading) as well as on producing such texts (our writing), always in terms of rhetorical principles. ENGL 15 fulfills 3 credits of the writing and speaking requirement for general education.