Sections offered SPRING 2021:
#12635 |
EILEEN JULIEN |
TR 11:30am-12:45pm |
BH 008 |
CLASS NOTES: COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit
Above class meets In Person. For more information visit https://fall2020.iu.edu/learning-modes/
As early as the 1800s, free New Orleanians of color journeyed to France, a country that seemed to offer them greater freedom. Thereafter, countless African Americans, including writers, musicians, visual artists, and performers, have made Paris (or France)—however temporarily—their home. By examining the lives and work of prominent 20th century figures such as our own David Baker, Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, Lois Mailou Jones, Claude McKay, Richard Wright, and their African, Caribbean, and French intellectual counterparts (Aimé Césaire, Jean Genêt, Paulette Nardal, Jean Paul Sartre, Léopold Senghor), we will consider the broad intellectual issues arising from this displacement:
- the historical and cultural ties of New Orleans to the Caribbean and France
- diaspora, exile, expatriation and cosmopolitanism
- “African primitivism” and the jazz age
- the Harlem Renaissance and the négritude movement
- transnationalism
- race and the performance of identity.
We will conclude with an examination of Paris as a diasporic crossroads today.