English 1101Co is a writing- intensive course designed to strengthen your composition skills. Writing a variety of essays, in addition to a research paper, will help you develop skills such as building an argument, adopting your writing for different needs and situations, interpreting and responding to a text, incorporating secondary source material effectively, and mastering the mechanics of quoting, citing, and documenting sources. The poems, short stories, essays, and newspaper articles we will read together are focused on New York City and urban issues. We will be reading pieces both for their inherent literary value and also as models of composition that you may employ in your writing assignments. Reflecting on your own experiences alongside these texts will ensure active discussion regarding communities, public space, urban art forms, education, class, race, gender, crime, gentrification, and other topics of debate.
A study of African American dramatic literature to explore the complex ways in which the black experience is constructed and presented by playwrights. Students may have an opportunity to experience a theatrical production in New York City.
More specifically, this course is divided into distinct sections. It includes a historical overview of early Black theatre throughout the diaspora. It considers how mid-twentieth century playwrights like Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka, and Ntozake Shange shape the aesthetics and discourses within Black theatre, and in doing so, create trajectories for contemporary Black playwrights, who also explore the social, political and cultural experiences of Africana people.
