ENGL4884: 21st Century Black Writers (49617)

Pavlic, Edward

TR 3 :55 PM

MLC 277


This course features new and recent Black voices and visions that depict of a wide variety of contemporary African American experience. We’ll examine writing broadly reading between and across genre and form (novels, essays, non-fiction, poetry, memoir) and platform (TV, film, music, podcasts, social media). We’ll read and discuss a list of books mostly written in the second decade of the 21st century by writers such as: Kiese Laymon, Jesmyn Ward, Brandon Taylor, Robert Jones, Jr., Deesha Philyaw, Shauna Barbosa, Bryan Washington, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Donika Kelly, Tyree Daye and others. We’ll also encounter and discuss recent voices and visions to be found in contemporary films / TV (Ava DuVernay, Ryan Coogler, Donald Glover, Barry Jenkins, and Issa Rae Diop, Michaela Coel) and those of select musicians (Cecile McLorin Salvant, No Name, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, 6lack, H.E.R., Jazmine Sullivan, and who ever appears next).