This course analyzes the literary and visual representation of black women from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. It explores how selected writers, working across different genres, render black female characters in ways that perpetuate, contest, or subvert stereotypical images of black women. Texts and authors may include Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Frances Harper's Trial and Triumph, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks' Maud Martha (1953), Toni Cade Bambara's Gorilla, My Love (1972), Toni Morrison's Sula (1973), and contemporary authors such as Ann Allen Shockley, Gayl Jones, Nikky Finney, and others. Open to students from any major. Provides ENG Major Elective credit and ENG minor credit.