An exciting new single author course, taught by Lang Dean Stephanie Browner in Spring 2017, will engage Black Lives Matter through the life of Charles Chesnutt! This class will collaborate with a Parsons Design class on editing and presenting manuscripts.
LLST 3524 – Black Lives Matter: Reading and Editing Charles Chesnutt – CRN 7604 – Fridays 12:10-2:50pm
This course engages in intensive close readings of Charles Chesnutt, one of America’s most important fiction writers on race after the Civil War. As an African American youth, he saw African Americans elected to office and taking on major civic roles as they laid claim to their full civil rights. And then as an adult he witnessed the utter political disenfranchisement of blacks and the rise of white supremacy through economic oppression and physical terror. We read Chesnutt’s perceptive novels and short stories closely and explore his writing process by studying manuscripts of his key works. Students will have the unusual opportunity to contribute to ongoing work on a set of complete works by Chesnutt to be published by Oxford University Press. Scholarly editing raises complex questions, many of which have never been considered in the context of race since so few black writers have had their works appear in major scholarly editions. Students will be introduced to scholarly editing, including digital and print editing, and will do hands-on editorial work with manuscripts, collaborating with Parsons design students. This course fulfills the Single Text/Single Author requirement in Literary Studies.