The course presents a comprehensive survey of the literature produced by writers of the Black Diaspora in North America (USA and Canada) and the English-speaking Caribbean. The course also focuses on the literary response to the history, socio-economic and political movements during the last three hundred years and in more recent trends in African-American and Caribbean literature by focusing on the evolution of a canon from the beginning through the folk songs and the spirituals to the works of very prominent names in this literature.  Emphasis is on the enduring themes and movements particularly the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro of the 1920s, the Black Arts movement of the 1960s, the discovery of heroes such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and other Civil Right leaders, the autobiographical current in this literature.