Usually an introduction to non-traditional or specialized topics in literary studies, (e.g., native American literature, gay and lesbian studies, techno-literacy, Arthurian romance, Grub Street in eighteenth-century England, and American exceptionalism). For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.

In this course, we will trace the history of reggae music and explore its influence on the development of Jamaican literature. With readings on Jamaican history, we will consider why so many reggae songs speak about Jah and quote from the Bible. Then, we will explore how Marcus Garvey's teachings led to the rise of Rastafarianism, which in turn seeded ideas of black pride and black humanity into what would become reggae music.

This course takes up topics in the study of literature in English in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.

Studies the development of the Anglophone African novel as a genre, as well as the representation of the post-colonial dilemma of African nations and the revision of gender and ethnic roles. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.

Over the course of the semester, we will explore the genre of the contemporary musical novel in order to better understand why writers and readers are so intrigued by the figure of the musician as a literary trope. Pairing close listening and music theory with close readings of seminal blues, jazz, reggae, mambo, calypso and rock novels set in the US, UK, Jamaica, Trinidad, France and Germany.

In this course, we will read a sampling of some exciting new works of fiction from Africa's young and established writers. In particular, we will examine the literary innovations that African writers use to narrate issues affecting the continent such as dictatorship, the lingering effects of colonization, the postcolonial nation state, the traumas of war and geo-politics, religion, gender and sexuality, and migration, among others.

This course is an introduction to Afrofuturism, exploring race and alienness, race and technology, and race and modernity through global futuristic representations of blackness in TV, film, music, art, and literature.

Second-semester DMP students should enroll in this course to complete their theses.

Limited enrollment. Topics vary from year to year. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.

Reading, class discussion, and research on a special topic in African-American and African Studies culminating in the composition of a research paper. Topics change from term to term, and vary with the instructor. Primarily for fourth-year students but open to others.