This article presents a brief, incisive teaching unit on discrimination from the Global Issues SIG Newsletter by the late Israeli EFL educator Esther Lucas, who saw “teaching as a political act” (Ridder, 2012), focusing on a famous short... more
This article presents a brief, incisive teaching unit on discrimination from the Global Issues SIG Newsletter by the late Israeli EFL educator Esther Lucas, who saw “teaching as a political act” (Ridder, 2012), focusing on a famous short poem by the African-American poet Countee Cullen (1903-1946) and a brief story by a young ethnic minority woman Vesna, aged 18. Exploring the topic of bias and discrimination is integral to bringing “creative, critical and compassionate thinking into ELT” (Pohl & Szesztay, 2015), a guiding aim inside the Global Issues SIG (GISIG) in IATEFL―where all are committed to including (whenever possible) current critical issues into EFL classrooms, under the motto CARE GLOBAL TEACH LOCAL! and ENGLISH FOR CHANGE.
Early draft version of a lengthy biographical essay on the influential literary and cultural figure, Alain Locke, whose anthology _The New Negro_ is one of the seminal texts of the Harlem Renaissance.
“Harlem Renaissance.” The African American Experience: The American Mosaic. Edited by Marian Perales, Spencer R. Crew, and Joe E. Watkins. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2013.
Surveys the changing critical discussions of homosexualty in the Harlem Renaissance up through the mid-1990s. Focus on Thurman's Infants of the Spring. For an extension of the discussion of Cullen's "Heritage" and Locke developed in this... more
Surveys the changing critical discussions of homosexualty in the Harlem Renaissance up through the mid-1990s. Focus on Thurman's Infants of the Spring. For an extension of the discussion of Cullen's "Heritage" and Locke developed in this essay, see Hutchinson, George. “Representing African American Literature: or, Tradition against the Individual Talent.” Publishing Blackness: Textual Constructions of Race Since 1850. Ed. George Hutchinson and John Young. University of Michigan Press, 2013. 39-66.
Abstract This essay explores how sites of memory work a specific cultural function through what Melvin Dixon refers to as" a memory that ultimately rewrites history." I look at two of the most well-known poems of the... more
Abstract This essay explores how sites of memory work a specific cultural function through what Melvin Dixon refers to as" a memory that ultimately rewrites history." I look at two of the most well-known poems of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes's" The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and Countee Cullen's" Heritage," one of which reveals a vested interest in producing identity by turning to the body as a locus of cultural memory, while the other ostensibly seeks to dismantle what it articulates as a fundamentally nostalgic and ...
During a roughly twenty-year period in the aftermath of World War I, the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City played host to a localized flowering of artistic and intellectual output that was relatively unprecedented in American... more
During a roughly twenty-year period in the aftermath of World War I, the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City played host to a localized flowering of artistic and intellectual output that was relatively unprecedented in American cultural history. What made it all the more unique was that it was primarily an African American event, driven by a massive influx of artists and thinkers from not only other parts of the United States, but also the Caribbean. We will spend this semester examining a wide sampling of texts from this period, looking at the ways in which they collectively envision black identity within a country that still largely excluded African Americans from full and equal participation in its cultural, political, and economic realms. We will also look at some of the tensions within the artistic-intellectual community of the Harlem Renaissance with an eye toward seeing how those divergent perspectives shaped later developments in both literary and non-literary contexts.
