Question1
Defining the Harlem Renaissance
Use these two articles to answer the questions below:
1. Dickson-Carr_African Americans and the Making of American Modernity.pdf
2. Phillipson_Harlem Renaissance as Postcolonial Phenomenon.pdf
Post a reply to these questions, providing MLA in-text citations to indicate the source of your information.
a) what is meant by the term “Harlem Renaissance”?
b) what social, historical, and political contexts influenced the “Harlem Renaissance”?
c) what can we expect from literature developed by writers in this movement?
Question2
Analyzing American Modernist Literature: Hughes
Read and annotate Hughes’ “Theme for English B”
Answer the questions below in your response using MLA in-text citations where appropriate:
a) How does “Theme for English B” fit the expectations for literature of the Harlem Renaissance? (Consider how you defined this for your Defining the Harlem Renaissance assignment.)
b) How does your identity affect the way you respond to “Theme for English B”?
c) What is the “college on the hill”?
d) Look up the Harlem branch of the YMCA online. Describe the type of accommodations that Hughes’ narrator might have experienced. Why is this important to the poem?
e) What is Hughes’ message or theme in this poem? How does this relate to modernism and the Harlem Renaissance in particular?
