MCLA Blog

The Shaping Role of Place

“connecting local African American History and Culture to the American story”

Shaping Role of Place Home | NEH Curriculum Project

“Call and Response: An Interdisciplinary High School Unit Using the Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance as a Stepping Stone to Explore the Interactive Nature of the Writing, Art, and Music of the Era” has been designed to follow an introductory poetry unit in an 11th grade American Authors and Expository Writing course. Students will have spent a couple of weeks studying poetic devices and terms such as theme, imagery, tone, voice, alliteration, meter, etc., and will apply and extend their knowledge of these elements to the African American poetry that we explore in this unit. My plan involves using the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance era as a springboard to discover other art forms of the period, and to begin to recognize the influences and techniques these forms share. For example, poetry and visual arts include such elements as imagery, tone, and theme; poetry and music include phrasing, rhythm, syncopation and repetition. Exploring these connections should be a compelling way to incorporate a Humanities approach into the English classroom—and to help students make connections between different art forms and genres.
The goals of the unit include: reinforcing an understanding of poetic devices; introducing students to the beauty, grace, and power of African American poetry, music, and art; and providing students with a historical background of an element of American history with which they might not be familiar.