Comprehensive exams take place over a course of 48 hours based on the reading and notation of major and minor area lists. These are those lists…
The Lists.
Major (20th-21st Century African American Literature)
Fiction/Novels
1899, The Conjure Women, Charles Chestnutt
1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, James Weldon Johnson
1923, Cane, Jean Toomer (JM)
1928, Quicksand, Nella Larsen (JM)
1929, Passing, Nella Larsen (LH)
1931, Black No More, George Schuyler
1937, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston (SadieC)
1938, Uncle Tom’s Children, Richard Wright
1940, Native Son, Richard Wright (BT)
1946, The Street, Ann Petry
1952, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (JM)
1953, Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin
1953, Maud Martha, Gwendolyn Brooks
1956, Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin (Liz)
1970, Bloodline, Ernest Gaines
1970, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
1973, Sula, Toni Morrison (NS)
1976, Flight to Canada, Ishmael Reed
1976, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Mildred Taylor*
1976, Meridian, Alice Walker
1977, Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
1979, Kindred, Octavia E. Butler**
1980, The Salt Eaters, Toni Cade Bambara
1982, Let the Circle Be Unbroken, Mildred D. Taylor*
1982, The Color Purple, Alice Walker (SadieC)
1983, Praisesong for a Widow, Paule Marshall
1984, Everett Anderson’s Goodbye, Lucille Clifton* --
1986, Dessa Rose, Sherley Anne Williams
1987, Beloved, Toni Morrison
1987, Mama Day, Gloria Naylor
1989, A Visitation of Spirits, Randall Kenan
1990, Middle Passage, Charles R. Johnson
1990, Philadelphia Fire, John Edgar Wideman
1993, Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler (ordered)
1993, A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines
1996, The White Boy Shuffle, Paul Beatty
1997, Paradise, Toni Morrison
1999, Caucasia, Danzy Senna
1999, The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead
2001, Erasure, Percival Everett (JM)
2003, The Known World, Edward P. Jones
2003, The Fall of Rome, Martha Southgate
2006, Nat Turner, Kyle Baker
2009, Bayou, Jeremy Love
2011, Salvage the Bones, Jeremy Ward
2012, Home, Toni Morrison (JM)
2013, March: Book One, Andrew Aydin and John Lewis
2015, Counternarratives, John Keene
Poetry
1895, Lyrics of a Lowly Life, Paul Laurence Dunbar
1922, Harlem Shadows, Claude McKay
1925, Color, Countee Cullen
1927, God’s Trombones, James Weldon Johnson
1942, For My People, Margaret Walker
1945, A Street in Bronzeville, Gwendolyn Brooks
1959, Selected Poems, Langston Hughes
1961, Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note, Amiri Baraka
1966, Selected Poems, Robert Hayden
1968, In The Mecca, Gwendolyn Brooks
1983, Collected Poems, Sterling A. Brown
1986, Thomas and Beulah, Rita Dove (JM)
1994, Neon Vernacular, Yusef Komunyakaa
1996, The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1995, Nikki Giovanni
2000, Shake Loose My Skin, Sonia Sanchez
2006, Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey
2007, For the Confederate Dead: Poems, Kevin Young
2010, Lighthead, Terrence Hayes
2011, Head Off & Split, Nikky Finney
2012, The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, Lucille Clifton
2016, Olio, Tyehimba Jess
Dramas
1928, The Purple Flower, Marita Bonner
1959, A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
1964, Blues for Mister Charlie, James Baldwin
1964, Dutchman & The Slave, Amiri Baraka (CX)
1976, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Ntozake Shange
1986, Fences, August Wilson
1996, Venus, Suzan-Lori Parks
2001, Topdog/Underdog, Suzan-Lori Parks
Nonfiction
1901, Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington (JM)
1903, The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois
1945, Black Boy, Richard Wright
1955, Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin
1963, The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
1964, Shadow & Act, Ralph Ellison (JM)
1965, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X
1969, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
1974, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Alice Walker
1982, Zami, Audre Lorde (KR)
1984, Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde
2006, Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman
2013, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, Kiese Laymon
2015, Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates (NS)
Critical Works
1979, From Behind the Veil, Robert Stepto
1986, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture, Werner Sollors
1988, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, Henry Louis Gates
1989, selections from Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women, edited by Cheryl Wall
1992, Playing In the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Toni Morrison
1993, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Paul Gilroy
1995, “Who Set You Flowin’?”: The African-American Migration Narrative, Farah Jasmine Griffin
1995, selections from “The Changing Same”: Black Women’s Literature, Criticism, and Theory, Deborah McDowell
1996, The Power of the Porch: The Storyteller’s Craft in Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan, Trudier Harris
1997, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-making in Nineteenth-Century America, Saidiya Hartman
2003, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism, Brent Edwards
2003, In the Break, Fred Moten
2010, Extravagant Abjection, Darieck Scott
2011, What Was African American Literature?, Kenneth S. Warren
2014, Writing Through Jane Crow, Ayesha K. Hardison
2017, Posthuman Blackness and the Black Female Imagination, Kristen Lillvis
2018, Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction, Sami Schalk
Minor List (20th-21st Century Children's and Young Adult Literature
Fiction (early readers, chapter books, novels)
1908, Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maude Montgomery (ED)
1922, Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams --
1924, The Boxcar Children, Gertrude Chandler Warner (ED)
1926, Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne
1945, Stuart Little, E.B. White
1951, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
1955, Beezus and Ramona, Beverly Cleary
1962, A Wrinkle In Time, Madeleine L’Engle (SadieC)
1963, The Watson’s Go To Birmingham, Christopher Paul Curtis
1967, The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton
1970, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, Judy Blume
1970, Sounder, William H. Armstrong
1971, Black Troubador: Langston Hughes by Rollins, Charlemae
1974, The Slave Dancer, Paula Fox
1975, Forever, Judy Blume
1978, Africa Dream, Eloise Greenfield--
1978, Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson (ED)
1979, Escape to Freedom, Ossie Davis
1983, Dicey’s Song, Cynthia Voigt
1987, The Whipping Boy, Sid Fleischman
1987, Justin and the Best Biscuits in the World, Mildred Pitts Walter
1989, Number the Stars, Lois Lowry
1994, The Giver, Lois Lowry
1994, Toning the Sweep, Angela Johnson
1995, Her Stories, Virginia Hamilton
1997, I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly, Joyce Hansen
1997, Slam, Walter Dean Myers
1997, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
1999, Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson**
1999, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
1999, Heaven, Angela Johnson
1999, Holes, Louis Sachar
1999, Monster, Walter Dean Myers
2000, Quinnie Blue, Dinah Johnson--
2002, Feed, M.T. Anderson
2002, Postcards from No Man’s Land, Aiden Chambers (MG)
2003, Bronx Masquerade, Nikki Grimes
2003, Boy Meets Boy, David Leviathan (ordered)
2003, The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, Carolina Mackler
2005, Looking for Alaska, John Green
2006, An Abundance of Katherines, John Green
2006, Day of Tears, a Novel in Dialogue, Julius Lester
2006, American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
2006, The Book Thief, Markus Zuzak (NS)
2007, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
2007, Copper Sun, Sharon Draper
2007, Warriors Don’t Cry, Melba Pattillo Beals
2008, The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
2009, Going Bovine, Libba Bray
2009, When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead
2010, Shipbreaker, Paolo Bacigalupi
2010, Smile, Raina Telgemeier**
2011, Where Things Come Back, John Corey-Whaley
2011, Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor
2011, One Crazy Summer, Rita Williams-Garcia
2012, Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans, Kadir Nelson
2012, Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein
2013, Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures, KateDiCamillo
2014, El Deafo, Cece Bell **
2014, Gabi, A Girl in Pieces, Isabel Quintero
2014, This One Summer, Mariko Tamaki**
2015, Simon v. The Homo-Sapiens Agenda, Becky Albertalli (ED)
2015, The Crossover, Kwame Alexander
2015, Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson
2016, Island of the Blue Dolphins: The Complete Reader’s Edition, Sara Schwebel
2016, The Serpent King, Jeff Zentner
2017, All American Boys, Jason Reynolds, Brendan Kiely
2017, The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas
2017, The Sun Is Also A Star, Nicola Yoon
2018, Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi
2018, The Stars Beneath Our Feet by Moore, David Baraclay
2018, We Are Okay, Nina LaCour
2018, Merci Suárez Changes Gears, Meg Medina
2018, Piecing Me Together, Renee Watson
2019, Finding Langston, Lesa Cline-Ransome
2019, Frankly in Love, David Yoon
2019, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, Mariko Tamaki
2019, The Stuff of Stars, Ekua Holmes
Non-Fiction
1970, Martin Luther King, Jr.: Man of Peace, Lillie Patterson
1972, 17 Black Artists by Fax, C. Elton
2001, Sir Walter Ralegh and the Quest for El Dorado, Marc Arnson
2003, The Life and Death of Adolph Hitler, James Corss Giblin
2005, The Voice that Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights, Russell Freedman
2007, Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon, Catherina Themish
2010, Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream, Tanya Lee Stone
2012, Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade, Melissa Sweet
2013, Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America, Andrea Davis Pinkney
2018, Twelve Days in May: Freedom Ride 1961, Larry Dane Brimner
2019, The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian’s Art Changed Science, Joyce Sidman
2019, A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919, Claire Hartfield