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Honors 210 Section 001
We Wear the Mask: Race and
Representation in American Culture
Instructor: Dr. Michael Kobre
This seminar will investigate how cultural
representations of racial differences between whites and blacks are
threaded through American culture and have shaped many distinctive
elements of that culture, from literature to popular music. Moving
historically from minstrel shows and literature in the 19th century
through the development of blues, jazz, and rock ‘n’ roll in the 20th
century, we’ll look at how African American culture was both represented
and appropriated by whites and how African American cultural expressions
responded to that process in what the musician Wynton Marsalis has called
“this strange dance that we’ve been doing with each other since the
beginning of our relationship in America.” Our cast of characters in this
seminar will include Phyllis Wheatley, T.D. Rice, Nat Turner, Herman
Melville, Mark Twain, “Sociable Jimmy,” Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong,
Ralph Ellison, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Toni Morrison, and many others.
Likely texts include the following: --Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface
Minstrelsy and the White Working Class --The Confession of Nat Turner
--Herman Melville, Benito Cereno --Mark Twain, The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn --Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and
African American Voices --Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man --Ralph Ellison,
Shadow and Act --Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the
Literary Imagination We will also use extensive film and musical
selections, drawing heavily from Ken Burns’ documentary Jazz among other
sources.
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