Blogging for African American Literature

The blog is a curious, hybrid form--somewhere between private journaling and public journalism--so it’s fitting that in this course it fulfills a couple of different functions. To a certain extent, you can treat the course blog as a kind of writing journal--a place where you make note of patterns, motifs, connections, and ideas that are catching your eye as you read, where you articulate questions you hope to write through, where early drafts of your essays first coalesce. At the same time, though, this blog is a shared space, one in which you place your ideas in dialogue with your peers’. It’s a space where you can do a kind of thinking “aloud”--where you can collaborate, brainstorm, debate, support and challenge one another. It’s an informal extension of the classroom discussion space, and a jumping-off point from which you (individually or as a group) can also get involved in the larger debates bouncing around the literary blogosphere. Printing out your and others’ recent contributions to the blog and bringing them to class with you may also help you organize your thoughts and participate more meaningfully in our discussions.

Each week, please contribute 200 words to the class blog before class time on Friday--unless otherwise directed. For example, this week I’d like you to contribute 450 words. This week I’m asking you some questions to get your blogging started, but usually you’ll be free to write about whatever you’d like (as long as it’s related to class discussion, or to your outside reading about African American literature). Responding to your classmates’ posts can be a great way to avoid writer’s block and to keep the conversation rolling!

Please remember that the blog is a public forum. Don’t write anything here you’re not okay with your professors, your grandma, and your future employers reading. Broaching touchy, tense, or vexed topics is okay and even encouraged--and feel free to be completely honest--but remember to do so with respect.