3.0

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In this course, we will explore the use of satire in black literary and artistic traditions. Reading will likely include poems and novels by Paul Laurence Dunbar, George S. Schuyler, Claude McKay, William Melvin Kelly, Ishmael Reed, Fran Ross, Percival Everett, and others. In addition, we will venture into the genres of film (“Get Out”) and visual art (work by Glenn Ligon and Kara Walker, the latter currently on exhibit at the BMA). The politics of satire emerge in these texts particularly through the treatment of racial uplift and respectability ideologies, race relations, the legacies and histories of slavery, visions of utopia and dystopia, and the concept of the “post-racial.” With attention to the historical and cultural conditions under which these works were produced, we will address the ways in which satire can (or cannot) effect change in the world.