Go There To Know There

The Tar Baby Stories: Joel Chandler Harris *From Wikimedia Commons Joel Chandler Harris (1845-1908), was an American fiction writer, folklorist, and a journalist for the Atlanta Constitution . From 1862-1866, Harris served as an apprentice at Turnwold Plantation, in Eatonton, Georgia. While there, he spent much of his leisure time among the slaves of the plantation from whom he learned the storytelling tradition among African Americans whose oral tradition became the basis for his collection of Uncle Remus Tales . Though Harris has been credited for having revolutionized children's literature with his collection of folktales about the post-Reconstruction American South, contemporary critics argue that his rendition of these tales fosters an erroneous and romanticized image of the plantation South. Joel Chandler Harris Our texts cautions that "like other oral forms these tales were originally invented not for the printed page but for the spoken p...

We lost one of my biggest heroes this week: Prince Rogers Nelson passed away due to complications from an influenza virus. I do not know the full details of his passing, I only know that he is gone and he will be sorely missed. He was obviously one of the greatest musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries, but few got to see his humorous side. This video from his appearance on The View gives us a rare glimpse of his gentler, funny personality.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online describes the Sentimental Novel, or the Novel of Sensibility, "...any novel that exploits the reader's capacity for tenderness, compassion, or sympathy to a disproportionate degree by presenting a beclouded or unrealistic view of its subject. In a restricted sense the term refers to a widespread European novelistic development of the 18th century, which arose partly in reaction to the austerity and rationalism of the Neoclassical period. The sentimental novel exalted feeling above reason and raised the analysis of emotion to a fine art..." "The assumptions underlying the sentimental novel were Jean-Jacques Rousseau's doctrine of the natural goodness of man and his belief that moral development was fostered by experiencing powerful sympathies. In England, Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela (1740) was recommended by clergymen as a means of educating the heart. In the 1760s the sentimental novel developed into the 'novel of...

"Unchained Memories," produced and presented by HBO, is perhaps one of the most comprehensive, enlightening, and moving recreations of slave life as told by those who suffered and lived to tell the tale. The readings and reenactments in this documentary are taken from interviews conducted by sociologists, ethnographers, and anthropologists--as well as historians, with former slaves in the 1930s. Many of these former slaves were in their late eighties, nineties, some were over 100 years old. They tell tales of forced starvation, deprivation, beatings and whippings, as well as surviving in the harshest climates without sufficient clothing to cover their bodies, or shoes on their feet. They speak of brutal planters who assumed their own sexual access to black female bodies as a natural right emasculated slave men and tore slave families apart. Most of all, they speak of work, work, work , with no respite for their endless labor. An interesting note to keep in mind about ...

Now available for your classroom, Jonathan Scott Holloway's new introduction to an iconic text of the 20th century paper $7.95 Request an  e-exam copy Request a  print exam copy The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois; With an Introduction and Chronology by Jonathan Scott Holloway "Given that thousands of pages have been written on Du Bois and his magnum opus,  it is truly remarkable that Holloway manages to convey the richness and diversity of both man and text in so short a space ."—Nico Slate, Carnegie Mellon University " Jonathan Scott Holloway's graceful new introduction brings  Souls  forward to a new generation  as more than a primary source of our racial past, now serving as a scythe to help cut through the maddening claims of a post-racial present."—Davarian L. Baldwin, author of  Chicago's New Negroes A masterpiece in the African American canon—part prose poem, part sociological tract, part memoir, part ma...

In our text, Henry Louis Gates points out the nebulous line between the 'spiritual' and 'gospel' music. This line, according to Gates "is so slight that it seems contrived" (19). The Spirituals that are featured in our text represent the early modes of coping during the early days of slavery. Spirituals such as "Go Down Moses" were the means by which slaves articulated their earthly sufferings and covertly militated against the horrors of bondage. These songs were not restricted to the church, but were integrated into the daily life of the slave. For the slave of the plantation, there was no finite distinction between 'the sacred and the secular,' for spirituality was part of daily existence. Gates quotes Lawrence Levine who observed that for the slave, "the concept of the sacred signified a strong will to incorporate 'within this world all the elements of the divine'": a characteristic thread that connected the generations ...

Southwest’s Language s  and Literature Department    presents Samantha Thornhill Thornhill is a Brooklyn-based poet, educator, and curator from Trinidad and Tobago who will visit Southwest Tennessee Community College on  April 23  at 1 p.m. She will be presenting at the Union Avenue Campus, Parrish 101.  Thornhill has been invited to share her versatile works in a variety of contexts across the U.S., Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. After graduating with her MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia, Thornhill moved to New York City, where for the past decade she’s been teaching poetry to actors at The Juilliard School. She teaches creative workshops to the elderly, as well as urban and rural youth. Seventeen literary journals and anthologies have featured her poems, and in 2010,  Scholastic Books  published her ode to the folk legend Odetta in picture book form. She is currently producing and co-directing a documentary...