African American Dramatic Literature

"In Defense of RUINED: Five Elements that Shape Lynn Nottage's Masterwork," Randy Gener's critical essay on Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer winning drama RUINED is published in "The Bedford Introduction to Drama" (Bedford/St. Martin's Press) Seventh Edition ©2013.

"Fifty-four chronologically arranged plays are illuminated by insightful commentaries and casebooks that enrich students’ contextual understanding and encourage critical thinking"

Because so much is lost concerning Pleasant, until more is discovered she may continue to anchor herself within dialogues of history and race through the speculative imaginings of those willing to posit the meanings within and behind her existence. Black female writers and scholars are utilizing access to publishing venues, digital media and the Internet to steadily create a postmodern counter-myth of Pleasant which circumvents her usual characterization as at once a wicked and subservient Mammy figure.

Twenty-three authors, twenty-three plays covering a period of nearly sixty years (1935-1992) from the New Deal to the Clinton era. The plays are classified by theme which makes the book rather strange in a way instead of having chronological order: the value of a play does not come from the theme only but from the author and the period when it was written and performed. I will follow the book though to cover the twenty-three plays in the order of the book.

A number of foreign language versions of Lope de Vega's Fuenteovejuna appeared in the 1930s, which reflected the political outlook of both the far left and the far right at the time. Among these translations and adaptations, the one made by Dorothy Peterson for the Harlem Suitcase Theater in 1937 is of special interest. Although her work was intended as an aid for a free verse adaptation by Langston Hughes, this article argues that Peterson's ostensibly “literal” translation made a conscious attempt to link the late-medieval setting of the play with the faux-medieval mythology of the antebellum South, thus exposing the idea of Southern “chivalry” as based on sexual violence. Peterson's translation contains a racial coding of the original drama's characters that would have been immediately intelligible to the Harlem Suitcase Theater's audiences, and which was designed to make a culturally distant work immediately comprehensible and relevant to a specifically African American public.

Written in an especially turbulent period, when the civil rights movement in the U.S. and the anti-colonial uprisings in Africa filled the firmament with their apocalyptic prophecies, Dutchman stands out as Baraka‟s earliest and most unsettling response to the absolutist rhetoric of white ideology....

This 14-week course is a writing-intensive course with a focus on developing close reading techniques.  In Literary Studies, reading comprehension and analytical skills are important to developing critical thinking that is needed for any career or profession you are pursuing.  Reading as a discipline requires much practice and each student should aspire to become more attuned to both the historical and social context of literary works.  We will close read literary texts and films.

This 14-week course is a writing-intensive and discussion-based course with a focus on surveying the works of women in theater and film.  In this course, we will examine narratives by women playwrights and screenwriters from the 1980s to the present; examine the styles and techniques used by women authors; and identify and explore themes that are often featured in plays and films written by women writers.  During the semester, students should expect to investigate the complexities and intersectionality of race, ethnicity, class, and gender, respectively.  The assigned reading and writing assignments will help students develop further their own critical thinking and help refine their writing skills.