RELG219

(Malcolm & Martin: The Literature of Peace & Resistance.) Malcolm X (el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz) and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., two prominent leaders of the Civil Rights Movement so often put into conversation with each other, have left us a legacy for how we think about social struggle—whether it be through the message of non-violence and Christian love that Martin Luther King, Jr. preached, or through the message of fearless self-defense and resistance "by any means necessary" for which Malcolm X came to be known. Both leaders were prolific authors whose works, singular in style and rich in rhetoric, comprise a seminal part of the American literary canon, and have been regularly featured by authors of creative works in fiction, drama, poetry, etc. since their publication. This course is an opportunity to delve deeply into the words of both men, long considered the authors of two disparate ways of viewing and engaging in civic struggle in America. We look at the creative activist writings of each-speeches, letters, interviews, autobiographical material—and complicate what at first seems a simple battle between "violent" and "non-violent" approaches to liberation. No prerequisites.