ABSTRACT

This chapter addresses some of the strategies that shaped the design and implementation of author's college curricula, developed over the course of nearly twenty years of teaching at the University of Oklahoma. It discovers that the process of creation and self-revelation was a psychologically liberating thing for all students across racial and cultural lines; it was something that made them feel empowered when they were studying material that was psychologically disempowering. The chapter covers literature and critical debates from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as contemporary drama, poetry, film, and theories of race and subjectivity. It discusses essays, books, and documentaries, with both an ancient to contemporary historical reach, the goal being to give students an historical understanding of the social conditions that shaped the emergence of the music and poetry. The book describes the albums as texts that had been strategically organized with the same coherence as a novel or a collection of short stories.