AML 4604 – Spring 2027 – Montgomery

This course investigates how contemporary African American and Diasporic fiction engages with the "archive"-- both as a physical repository of historical records and as a conceptual space of power, erasure, and authority. In the wake of transatlantic slavery, Jim Crow, and systemic displacement, the institutional archive is frequently marked by radical silences, structural violence, and the outright absence of Black subjectivities.
Over fifteen weeks, we will interrogate how Black writers utilize literature as an alternative archival record. We will examine how these authors employ memory, folklore, speculative genealogy, and oral history to reconstruct histories that have been omitted, stolen, or redacted. Through critical readings and close textual analysis, students will explore how fiction functions not merely as entertainment, but as a site of historical reclamation, counter-history, and archival justice.

This course satisfies the Upper-Division Writing requirement, and the Exploring the Human Experience requirement.