Course Description
This class will be an introduction to African American artists and writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance. Although often overlooked, Chicago’s South Side experienced a cultural flowering during the Depression, what was a more socially and politically engaged movement than its Harlem predecessor. We will discuss authors such as Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lorraine Hansberry, all of whom were significantly shaped by their experience in Chicago. We will also look at artists like Archibald Motley, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Margaret Burroughs, and Gordon Parks. We will learn about influential institutions including the Hall Branch Library, South Side Community Arts Center, and Rosenwald apartments, where these artists lived and worked. This was a community in which poets, painters, scholars, dancers, and musicians all intermingled, leading to much aesthetic and cultural cross-fertilization. We will examine the ways in which they recreated the sights and sounds of the historic “Bronzeville” district―its kitchenette apartments, street corners, restaurants, theaters, and nightclubs. We will consider the various influences cited by scholars as shaping this period such as the Chicago school of sociology, social realism, the New Deal, black radicalism, and women’s activism. We will study poetry, short stories, paintings, photographs, and songs to see the different ways African American artists and writers have depicted the Black Metropolis.

Required Texts:
The Muse in Bronzeville by Robert Bone and Richard Courage
Native Son by Richard Wright