Course Description: In this class, we’ll read fiction and poetry (as well as some short non-fiction supplements) that address national, racial and cultural identity, whiteness and the relationship between social/personal politics and literary arts. We’ll consider our authors’ views on family, community, nation, history and the role of art in our culture. Featured writers include: Phillis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, W. E. B Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Niki Giovanni, June Jordan, Alice Walker, N. K. Jemisin, Jericho Brown, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, among others.

Required Materials: *Access to a good computer with internet capabilities Brightspace: https://brightspace.uvm.edu/d2l/login *Ability to print out materials for annotation and study Course Expectations: Students will be expected to: 1. Read through course expectations and track due dates (this course moves quickly). 2. Complete Five "Follow the Trail" units, which involve reading through a series of primary texts and online research links. You are expected to take notes as you read (I recommend keeping a Word or Pages file open as a space in which you might copy/paste, write thoughts and questions you might bring to the discussion on the Wikis). When you finish each section of the "Follow the Trail" units, you'll be prompted to bring some questions and critical observations to a Discussion Board Thread. 3. Complete Discussion Board Posts When Prompted: Students will start with an “Ice Breaker” post. Then, at the end of each unit, you’ll post a "Starter" Message to the Discussion Board (these are your more formal responses to each unit, and you will be responding to questions I’ve posted on the Discussion Board), and you will also post "Peer Response" Messages (in which you respond to a peers’ Starter for each unit). Starters should d be a minimum of 300 words long. Responses should be a minimum of 100 words long. In the end, you will have posted six “Starters” and six “Responses” over the course of the semester. These posts will be evaluated for their depth of thought, their analytical engagement, their detailed discussion of the primary texts, their use of direct quotes and their polish. See “Discussion Board Rubric” on the Course Menu for more details. 4. Complete a Final Project. This project involves creating your own "Follow the Trail" online research paper building on particular themes, concepts and texts from our reading and/or a related text and modeled on the "Follow the Trail" online lectures you read for the course. The project is equivalent to a 4-5 page research paper. See “Final Projects” on the Course Menu for more info. Email: You are expected to check your UVM email frequently for announcements, etc. (Sometimes important information sits on the web for a while before people log back into the class, so I'll send announcements via email when they're important and timely).

Grading: Grades will be based on the following percentages: *Timeliness 15% *Discussion Board Starter and Response Posts 60% (10 posts, 6% each) *Final Project 25%