Description
The Black Arts Movement, as it is commonly known, was an aesthetic, cultural and ultimately deeply political artistic movement loosely linked to and in philosophical agreement with many aspects of the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Despite its brief historical span, we will explore why the Black Arts Movement remains significant for the course of contemporary African American, African Diasporic and American literature today, by looking first at its antecedents in the Harlem Renaissance, the first major African-American literary movement of the 20th century and a central moment in American modernism, and then contrast the rhetoric and discourse of key Harlem Renaissance figures with those of the Black Arts writers and artists, noting the centrality and model of the former, while also discussing the ways in which Black Arts writers diverge and participate actively in the construction of a (Pan-African(-American)/Black nationalism. Indeed, the question of "nationa