This course surveys canonical literature by African Americans from the long 19th century through the turn-of the-century. Authors include Phyllis Wheatley, Charles Chesnutt, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Pauline Hopkins, W. E. B. DuBois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Jessie Fauset, and others. We’ll pay attention to critical, representational, and social concerns like form and structure, gender, community, power, and history.