Harlem Semester Project Proposal

              At the start of this semester, I was thinking that I wanted to focus on artwork in this class, specifically the paintings of Jacob Lawrence. Going into this class I knew that the Harlem Renaissance was a literary movement, but I also had a vague idea that there was an artistic element to the movement, which I was interested in. While taking this class, the things I found myself interested in expanded from art to include representation and identity, a theme that my blog posts reflect. For the final in this class, I want to focus on the multidimensionality of the Harlem Renaissance and point out that it was much more than just a literary movement.

We have talked about a lot of different themes in this class and our readings have varied, and while all have a central theme about exploring the Black experience of the early 1900s, they have all covered different subject matters. My blog posts reflect that, and so I want to focus my final project on connecting these different ideas and highlighting how expansive the movement was. From Du Bois highlighting contemporary Black intelligentsia in Crisis Magazine, to the ideas of self-identity explored in   Passing and in Zora Neale Hurston’s essays, to the artwork of Lawrence and his peers, I want to show that the movement was not limited to literature and that it was also a complex cultural movement. The blog posts that I believe will best illustrate the broadness of the movement are blog post 2,3 and 5. These posts all focus on different aspects of the movement, focusing on literature, art, and identity, respectively, and will help to prove my thesis.