Following the Great Migration to the North and Midwest in the early 20th century, a wave of intellectual work developed fundamentally in the 1920s in Harlem, New York. African American writers, artists, musicians, folklorists, and activists— also known as the New Negroes—relocated or passed through Harlem and established a vibrant intellectual community. This course will examine selected New Negro women representatives such Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Jessie Fauset, and other lesser-known figures, through their life experiences, racial activism and literary work. Ideally, we will read selected books/pieces in preparation for class. As race is intricate (and crucial) to their writings, we will, ultimately, reflect on the social circumstances that motivated their art and what their fictional narratives accomplish. Dr. Vanessa Rouillon is an Assistant Professor of English at Bridgewater College, Bridgewater, VA, where she teaches Composition; Grammar, Editing, and Style; Business and Technical Writing, and Black Literature (Harlem Renaissance); She specializes in African American rhetorics. Her research examines African American citizenship efforts and rhetorical activism during the first half of the twentieth century. She is currently writing the biography of an outstanding African American man, Albert R. Lee, who worked at the University of Illinois, at the President’s Office, and became the unofficial, but first dean of Black students. She is the author of a documentary on Lee’s contributions to Illinois, “A Man of Substance, One of Illinois’ Finest Traditions,” (2018) https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=TPLPhhkQMe4, produced by the University of Illinois. Her work has appeared in Challenge, Language Assessment Quarterly, The Public i, the Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, and Peitho. She is also coauthor of Transnational Literate Lives in Digital Times (2012).