HW for April 21. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands

Answer either:

How cold you read the text taking the border out of the equation?

What can ou comment on regarding formal/genre aspects of the chapter? Look at the initial poem in inverted position and speculate on it.

HW for April 18

Choose either (or both):

1. Do some research about the musical genre of blues and extrapolate on what it meant for Langston Hughes to transfer this form into his modernist poetry.

 

2. Offer a close reading either of “Madam’s Calling Cards” or “Madam’s Past History” (pp. 80—81)

100 Years of African American Affirmation in the US - an overview

 1859-65 - Civil War, Slavery Abolished

1870 - 15th Amendment: African American men are granted the right to vote (women would only earn it in the19th Amendment of 1920).

HOWEVER, the conditions to be eligible for voting (ballot-toll, literacy, etc) prevented in practice the majority of Afro-Americans from casting their votes.  Also in the South active seggregation was enforced through the so-called Jim Crow laws from 1876 to 1965.

1910 - Foundation of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) with the monthly magazine Crisis 

1914 - Marcus Garvey establishes the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), whose motto is 'One God, One Aim, One Destiny'. 

1919 - W. E. B. Dubois organizes de Pan-African Congress in Paris

1920-1933 - Prohibition 

1920's: the jazz wave hits Beale Street (Memphis Blues: Armstrong, Muddie Waters, Albert King...)
 1921 - Langston Hughes enrolls in Columbia Univ (will leave one year later on account of racial prejudice) and publishes  "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" in Crisis.

1920's: emergência da onda do jazz na Beale Street (Memphis Blues: Armstrong, Muddie Waters, Albert King...)

1922 - Publication of the anthology The Book of American Negro Poetry.

1924 - Countee Cullen wins the Witter Bynner Poetry Competition

1925 - Anthology The New Negro (ed. Alain Locke), with Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston. consecrates the Harlem Renaissance.

1930 - Foundation of the Nation of Islam, associated with Black Nationalism

1934 - Elijah Muhammad directs the Nation of Islam. 

1937 - Zora Neale Hurston publishes Their Eyes Were Watching God.

1952 - Malcolm X earns parole from prison and quickly rises to become one of the Nation of Islam's most influential leaders

1954 - Brown v. Board decision declares segregation in public schools illegal. However, desegregation was not a peaceful choice (neither for whites nor blacks, since the former preferred racial balance to open social arrangements of where to study, work, live, etc.)

1955- The Montgomery Bus Boycott begins on December 5 after Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on the bus.

1957- The Southern Christian Leadership Conference establishes and adopts nonviolent mass action as its cornerstone strategy to gain civil rights and opportunities for blacks. Working initially in the South under the leadership of Martin Luther King, by the mid 1960's King enlarges the organization's focus to address racism in the North.

1963 - March to Washington and "I have a dream" speech.

1963 (Nov. 22) - John Kennedy is assassinated.

1964, Apr. 3 - Malcolm X delivers "The Ballot or the Bullet" speech, after having parted with the Nation of Islam, but still defending separatism rather than integration.

1964, July2 - Civil Rights Act (Lindy Johnson) - civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin

1965 - On February, Malcolm X is assassinated. On March, blacks begin a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights but are stopped at the Pettus Bridge by a police blockade. Fifty marchers are hospitalized after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The incident is dubbed "Bloody Sunday" by the media. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the voting rights act five months later. 

1968 - Martin Luther King is murdered.

HW for April 14: Toni Morison, "Recitatif"

 Please comment here on character description, race, class, stereotypes, expectations, assumptions, and whatever else you find meaningful

HW for March 31st - Linda Hogan

photo by Diana V. Almeida (pp.62-67)

Reading prompts by our invited guest (and photographer) based on Linda Hogan's texts (pp. 62-27 in the anthology):

How does historiography shape power relations? 

In which ways paying attention may transform our relationship with the living world? 

What are the boundaries of individual identity?

 

HW for March 24: Erin Mouré

 Here is an interview with Eirin Mouré

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/02/poetries-languages-and-selves-the-being-of-erin-moure/

In the light of this and any other factors, namely the preface to Sheep's Vigil by a Fervent Person (anthology, pp. 57-58), comment on text II's "transelation" by Erin Mouré (p. 61)

HW For March 21st (poetry day!)

 Answer this question fully or partially:

Bearing in mind the categories that Steve Mentz proposes in order to "deterritorialize" our academic humanities (anthology pp. 190-123), which of them do you think applies to the excerpt of Anderson's Azorean Suite and how? ; or do you see Anderson's writing as fitting in bettwer with the following precepts of Gary Snyder's "Unnatural Wriring"?