PFA (0192) 135 - Black Arts and Artists

Credits: 3.00

Students will examine the Black experience through the evolution of the Black Arts Movement, learning how Black culture has been expressed through the Arts. The course begins in the Harlem Renaissance and charts the evolution of the Black Arts and the artists whose creative work has defined the Arts up to the present.

Distribution Requirement Arts

Free Note: Cross-listed with 0101-135.

This course utilizes an interpretive critical methodology to explore, analyze and write about African American culture and artistic expression dating from the Harlem Renaissance, through the Civil Rights Movement and beyond to the present day. Students will be able to apply critical thinking in response to African American literature and creative writing genres (poetry, fiction, chapbooks, nonfiction commentary, plays, screen writing), filmmaking, artistic production (painting, sculpture, quilting, etc.), musical production, directing, acting, and dance choreography. The course explores the myriad ways in which African Americans have made sense of what William E. B. DuBois noted were the two worlds in which they have lived in the United States since Emancipation. The course investigates, interprets, and analyzes varied texts and visual artistic productions, and requires students to critically assess and interpret African American ways of knowing about the world (racial, national, and international) since the post-Reconstruction Era. The course content is multidisciplinary in scope, and is unique within the Adelphi curriculum as it is history, literature, films, material popular culture, drama, and music.