Subject: T/Q: Materials on Harlem Renaissance
***T/Q: TEXT/QUERY***
Here is a short, but ambitious request for materials on the Harlem
Renaissance. This is a huge topic, of course. But if people contribute
a title or two each, we should be able to put together a nice set of
resources for ourselves.
Personally, I would enjoy seeing interesting groupings people have
discovered between traditionally literary and nonliterary pieces in
the Harlem Renaissance. Any other materials--per the posting--on
anthologies and A-V materials are most welcome too.
RBass
******************************************************************
From: IN%"reuben@koko.csustan.edu"
Subj: Harlem Renaissance
Help! Teaching a course on the Harlem Renaissance, Fall 1994. Need info on audio-
visual materials, texts, anthologies, literary criticism, etc. related to African-American
writers, 1920-40. Thanks.
***T/Q: TEXT/QUERY****
As I suspected, the query for texts and materials on the Harlem
Renaissance aroused the collective wisdom and generosity of
T-AMLIT Folk everywhere, even in this most harried of times. What
follows is a series of postings. I've tried to find a balance between
sending out an avalanche of individual posts and grouping them in such
large groups to make saving and editing unwieldy.
The longest, most comprehensive posts are coming to you by
themselves in (I) and (II); then I'm forwarding two medium length
responses specifically about courses taught or taken on the Harlem
Renaissance, as (III); and finally a compendia of short text and
audio-visual suggestions (IV).
Thanks to all who responded. Together these four mailings are quite
an impressive resource on the Harlem Renaissance.
RBass
**************************************************************
When I taught courses on the Harlem Renaissance in 1993, I could not locate any anthologies of the period in print, except a reprint edition of Alain Locke's _The New Negro_ (useful, but contains material only through 1925) [NEXT Locke]. Recently two new anthologies of the Harlem Renaissance have been announced: one edited by William Andrews that concentrates on short fiction [NEXT Andrews] and another, more general one edited (I think) by David Levering Lewis. I have seen a copy of the Andrews anthology; it offers a good, but limited selection of texts.
Several of the novels of the period are now out in reprint editions, including George Schuyler's _Black No More_ (a satire my students enjoyed), James Weldon Johnson's _The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man_ [NEXT Autobiography...], Nella Larsen's _Quicksand_ and _Passing_ , Claude McKay's _Home to Harlem_, Jessie Redmon Fauset's _There Is Confusion_ and _Plum Bun_, and of course several of the novels of Zora Neale Hurston.
Poetry is a little more difficult to locate, especially in affordable editions. Vintage offers Langston Hughes' _Selected Poems_, which contains a wealth of poems from his long and productive career but unfortunately does not provide dates or original publication information for the poems. A new collection of Countee Cullen's work, _My Soul's High Song_, edited by Gerald Early, is quite good but perhaps too much for an undergraduate class; yet I know of no other Cullen in print. Penguin has recently published new editions of James Weldon Johnson's _God's Trombones_ (including an audio tape of famous African American preachers reading each sermon in verse) [NEXT God's...] and _St. Peter Relates an Incident_. I had absolutely no luck locating any collections of Claude McKay's poetry in print (listings in Books in Print proved to be misleading). Few, if any, editions of poetry by women of the period exist, but there is a good anthology edited by Maureen Honey, _Shadowed Dreams: Women's Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance_ (Rutgers, 1989).
A good, readable history of the period is David Levering Lewis' _When Harlem Was in Vogue_. When I say readable, I perhaps understate the case. Lewis writes superb prose, and his text would be suitable for students as well as teachers of the period. I plan to use it as a text when I teach the course again in our Spring 1995 term. The first volume of Lewis' biography of W.E.B. Du Bois (it goes through 1919) just won the Pulitzer Prize; it, too, is excellent.
Other histories include Nathan Irvin Huggins' _Harlem Renaissance_ and Cary D. Wintz' _Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance [NEXT Wintz]. On the art of the period, I have found _Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America_ (published by The Studio Museum of Harlem) especially useful and full of examples of artists' work. There are numerous studies of the music of the Harlem Renaissance. I was surprised to find that our local public library had excellent resources ( including audio and video tapes) on blues and jazz.
Standard reference works may help you or your students gain an overview of certain writers and their work. Volumes 50 and 51 of the Dictionary of Literary Biography cover "Afro-American Writers before the Harlem Renaissance" and "Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940." [NEXT Dictionary...] John E. Bassett has put together a useful collection of reviews, _Harlem in Review: Critical Reviews to Black American Writers, 1917-1939_. For brief information on women writers, check out _Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Literary Biographies of 100 Black Women Writers, 1900-1945. _Black Literature Criticism_ provides a quick review of critical assessments of the major figures of the period, but it is not limited to 1920-1940.
This is a long reply, I know, to "a short, but ambitious request." I hope it
helps. I am curious, however: Who will be taking this course?
undergraduates? majors? non-majors? graduate students? How will you approach
the topic? I had a great time teaching this course. I hope you will too.
***T/Q: TEXT/QUERY****
Here is the second installment of the responses for Harlem Renaissance
materials. This is a substantive bibliographic response that covers a
lot of ground.
RBass
**********************************************************
Harlem Renaissance 1920-1940
A good beginning is J.W. Johnson
This bibliography focuses on Black authors, but it is important to
notice that people from Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and South America were also a
vital part of the Harlem Renaissance and that music, art, and politics were
changed, in addition to literature. As with any literary study, a study of
the Harlem Renaissance must include the humanities.
General Reference Works:
A Library of Literary Criticism: Modern American Literature
Dictionary of Literary Biography pub. Gale Research
American Writers pub. Scribners
Encyclopedia of Multiculturism pub. Marshall Cavendish
Reference Library of Black America pub. Gale Research
Collections or Individual Works:
I Am the Darker Brother ed. Arnold Adoff
My Soul's High Song by Countee Cullen
Book of American Negro Poetry by J. W. Johnson [NEXT Book...]
Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay
Color by Countee Cullen
The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
There Is Confustion by Jessie Redmon Faust
Walls of Jericho by Rudolph Fisher
Tropic Death by Eric Walrond
Critical Analyses:
American Poetry 1915-1945 ed. Harold Bloom
Langston Hughes by James A. Emanuel
American Fiction 1915-1945 ed. Harold Bloom
Langston Hughes ed. Harold Bloom
James Baldwin ed. Harold Bloom
Jamae K. Bruton
Media Specialist
Palm Bay High School
#1 Pirate Lane
MELBOURNE FL 32901
407-952-5900 ext 155
407-952-5915 FAX
Internet bruton@sci-ed.fit.edu
"In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an
invincible summer." --Albert Camus
***SYL: SYLLABUS INFO***
Here is the third installment of materials on the Harlem Renaissance.
Because they both refer to courses taken or taught (and for variety)
I've given them a SYL prefix. Other Syllabi out there on the Harlem
Renaissance or with a major Harlem Renaissance Unit?
RBass
***************************************************************
What an appropriate request for my early visitations to this Discussion Group!
I just took a seminar on the Harlem Renaissance last quarter and have been
working furiously on a paper that resulted from the course (the paper is on
Marita Bonner, who is one of the lesser known writers of the HR). Here are
some of the texts we browsed: we began with DuBois Souls of Black Folk as an
ideological precursor to the HR. Of course, The New Negro edited byAlain Locke is the "manifesto" of the HR,
albeit not without controversy [NEXT Locke]. The
Sleeper Wakes edited by Marcy Knopf offers a decent variety of short stories
by HR women--the "famous" ones and the ones who have for some reason fallen by
the wayside. This is where I discovered Marita Bonner, so it is a good spring-
board for further exploration. Gloria T. Hull's Color, Sex, and Poetry has
an interesting overview of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Angelina Weld Grimke, and
Georgia Douglas Johnson. As for AV material, we watched an interesting pair of
videos on Langston Hughes: one was a BBC production, I think (or maybe PBS),
just a typical bio with interviews, etc. Then we watched Looking for Langston,
the more controversial and more discussion-prompting film that addresses his
homosexuality and his legacy today. You're right: there is much to read and
see about the HR, but I hope these suggestions help.
Nancy Chick
University of Georgia
I taught a course on the Harlem Renaissance this spring here at
Washington Jefferson College (English 341).
The reading list was:
Alain Locke, The New Negro
Countee Cullen
Claude McKay, Home to Harlem
Jessie Fauset, Plum Bun
Langston Hughes, Not Without Laughter
We also read Cary Wintz's Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance for context on the history, geography, and ideas of the era. It is particularly good on publishing history.
When I was putting this course together I was frustrated by the lack of collections of Harlem Renaissance writings. Nathan Huggins's Voices from the Harlem Renaissance is an excellent collection but is out of print. I saw just the other day that William Andrews has edited a new collection of Harlem Renaissance fiction which includes Home to Harlem and Nella Larsen's Quicksand in full as well as works by Toomer, Hurston, and others. In any case, I chose to use anthologies from the 1920's and was very pleased with how that worked. We read The New Negro cover to cover, as a book. We read most of Caroling Dusk, Countee Cullen's anthology of black poetry which included biographical notes by the poets. Another poetry anthology which is in print is James Weldon Johnson's Book of American Negro Poetry. The first (and only) issue of Fire!! is also available as a reprint. If I taught this class again, I would make it part of the reading.
The single most useful reference work is:
Kellner, Bruce
This includes not only a dictionary of authors, works, and events but wonderful appendices, a glossary of slang, and an extensive bibliography.
A few other recommended secondary works:
Jervis Anderson
Nathan Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, 1971.
David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue, 1981.
I also recommend an exhibition catalog published by The Studio Museum in Harlem, Harlem Renaissance Art of Black America.
Carolyn Kyler
Assistant Professor of English
Washington and Jefferson College
Washington, PA 15301
ckyler@washjeff.edu
***T/Q: TEXT/QUERY****
Here are SEVEN short(er) responses to the request for materials on the
Harlem Renaissance. As always, there is a little duplication, but
mostly, great stuff! Thanks again.
RBass
************************************************************
Try _The Harlem Renaissance: A selected Bibliography_ by Robert A. Russ
, NY: AMS, 1987. it's a 362pp bib. so it covers just about all the texts you'll need with the exception, of course, of recent additions.
Patrick Bjork
Dept. of English
Bismarck State College
bjork@badlands.nodak.edu
In my opinion, the essential text for such a course should be the reprint of Alain Locke's 1925 anthology The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance, now available in a handsome reprint from Atheneum. Unlike retrospective collections, this reprint allows you to teach the Harlem Renaissance through one of its own artifacts and documents. A resource for good xerox material is Gerald Early's new anthology Speech and Power, vol. 2, which is subtitled The African-American Essay and Its Cultural Content From Polemics to the Pulpit.
I have a video catalogue I'll check at my office. Highly recommended to me is a video called "Looking for Langston," which apparently is candid on the subject of homosexuality.
The section devoted to the Harlem Renaissance in Lauter's Heath Anthology
of American Lit volume 2 is also an outstanding resource. And for a
contemporary pespective one could end by teaching Toni Morrison's Jazz,
which looks back at and interprets the era.
Good luck.
This past spring I taught Jean Toomer
's _Cane_ in an American Literature class. It was a good experience and an interesting book to use for this period. There are also several good documentaries, including _Looking for Langston_, the PBS documentary on Langston Hughes (I think part of the Voices and Vision series), and the PBS documentary on the Harlem Renaissance done this past spring.
Benay Blend
blend@alpha.nsula.edu
There's a new anthology from Penguin, which I havent yet seen; it was due out i n April I think. Also, when I taught this class we had fun by ending the cours e with an ahistorical delve into Ishmael Reed
's Mumbo Jumbo.
This suggestion doesn't respond directly to your request, but an interesting text providing historical background is the article on the Harlem Renaissance (I don't have it with me and I forget it's name and author) in _Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past_ ed. Martin Duberman
, Martha Vicinus, George Chauncey Jr. Discusses the social and sexual culture of the HR, the possibilities and limitations of sexuality and artistic production it engendered, and the nature of the cross-racial encounters it produced.
A couple of my favorites:
James Weldon Johnson
A good A-V sidelight to Zora Hurston (marginalized by the mainly male Harlem figures, and a latecomer to boot) is the PBS video _Zora!_
David Fenimore
University of Nevada, Reno
fenimore@unr.edu
A few suggestions: There's an excellent audiotape called "Langston Hughes Reads and Talks About His Poems" (Spoken Arts, 1969) [and playing some contemporaneous jazz and blues would be useful with Hughes and other H.R. writers]. Also, although more for faculty than the students, there's Houston Baker's _Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance_ (Chicago, 1987). See, too, _A Pictorial History of the Negro in America_, ed. Langston Hughes and Milton Meltzer (Crown; 3rd ed. is 1968, but there may be a newer ed.); it's got a chapter on H.R. There are a number of books on the H.R./New Negro Movement, of course, and on individual writers assoc. with it; I'm sure many suggestions will be rolling in, along with references to A/V sources.
Marilyn Edelstein, English, Santa Clara U
medelstein@scuacc.scu.edu
medelstein@scu.bitnet
***SYL: SYLLABUS***
Here are two more responses to the query on materials of the Harlem
Renaissance. As before, I've sent this out as a "Syllabus" because the
first post outlines a whole course on the Harlem Renaissance. The
second post has some suggestions on drama.
This should probably be the last post on this for now. Thanks again
for all your suggestions.
RBass
************************************************************
I did not see the original post, so I'm not sure what kind of information the person requested on the Harlem Renaissance but here is a little more info. I took a grad course last fall entitled "Disparate Voices of the Harlem Renaissance" taught by Edgar Tidwell at Miami University. One of the goals for the course was to challenge "traditional" notions of the Harlem Renaissance by calling into question the time and place normally thought of in conjunction with this peried (i.e challenging the 1917-1935 dates and the idea that it was a mostly urban, mostly Harlem movement). To do so we read:
Tidwell (ed.) _Livin' The blues_ (Frank Marshall Davis' memoirs)
Sterling Brown's collected poems
Fauset's _Plum Bun_
Cullen's big anthology edited by Gerald Early
Locke's _The New Negro_
Claude McKay's memoirs _ A Long Way From Home_
Richard Wright's _Black Boy_
Margaret Walker's _Jubilee_
We also read Dorothy West, Anne Spencer, Langston Hughes, and other more canonical writers. I really like the idea of extending the Harlem Renaissance (and one way to do so is use Locke's term the New Negro Movement) especially into the "second wave" of New Negro writers--like the South Side Writers Group in chicago--people like Marian Minus, Dorothy West, Margaret Walker, Richard Wright, Sterling Brown, Ralph Ellison, and Frank Marshall Davis.
Marcy Knopf
mlknopf@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu
It includes plays by such writers as Katherine D. Chapman Tillman, Willis
Richardson, Zora Neale Hurston, George A. Towns, etc. The plays range from
the popular humor of Black Vaudeville to the use of biblical figures to
parallel the plight of the African American in our culture. I hope this is a
help for some of you.
Return to Collaborative Bibliographies Topics Page
