AAAS 91.02 20th Century Protest Poetry
In light of recent protest movements that target issues of race and gender, the prescient words of numerous artists continue to be evoked and volleyed about in contemporary media outlets. Yet the contexts of many of these utterances are largely ignored. Delving into some of these contexts and engaging many of these artists’ larger oeuvre, this course is a multidisciplinary investigation of major protest poets of the twentieth century. It explores the ways in which poets living in the United States, and particularly members of historically marginalized communities, not only pushed back at the powers-that-be, but continuously saw and articulated themselves as simultaneously a part of and a part from larger “American” society. The course wrestles with the well-known and often contentious topics: race, class, and gender. Starting with turn-of-the-century writers like Claude McKay—whose words have become synonymous with outspoken critiques of World War I and the “Red Scare”—and ending with contemporary writers like Balakian and Chin, the course moves chronologically. Some of the writers it examines include, Peter Balakian, Amiri Baraka, Staceyann Chin, Lucille Clifton, Mayda Del Valle, Karen Garrabrant, Allen Ginsberg, Zbignew Herbert, Robert Lowell, Juan Felipe Herrera, Langston Hughes, Etheridge Knight, Denise Levertov, Haki Madhubuti, Jill McDonough, Claude McKay, Alice Notley, Emmy Perez, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Sonia Sanchez, and Dorothy Tse.
Cross Listed Courses
ENGL 73.30