For this offering of English 191, we will survey African American Literature and Cultural production from the Harlem Renaissance era. “The Harlem Renaissance” names the explosion of cultural and literary African American artistic expression during the 1920s and 30s centered in New York. This course will introduce you to themes and structures of expression during this major period in American thought. In this class we will focus on literary expression and performance, two of many forms of artistic expression that proliferated in “Negro” culture in the early 20th century. This class is particularly concerned with the ways in which modernism, transnationalism, and notions of performance pervaded and defined ideologies and experiences of cultural producers and explorations of identity.