Part One
Listen to Elaine Brown's speech about chairing the Black Panther Party. Please note that this video is long.  Make sure that you watch enough to get what she is really saying, especially if you do not know who Elaine Brown is. Just give yourself enough time to listen to this speech.

You will also read any autobiographical text by Elaine Brown, Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, or Safiya Bukhari.  Take the speech by Elaine Brown and the document you have read and make notes in two columns.  You can do this in handwritten form or as something that looks like more like an essay.  It does not need to be NEAT (you are basically just trying to come to class with notes to discuss with a small group.) One one side, take notes on the different issues that these women address.  On the other side, takes notes on what these women rhetorics sound like and do.  

Part Two
Today's homework is a viewing and listening assignment.  You are going to listen to, really hear, and juxtapose videos about TWO different black female poets from two different generations.  You are going to be bombarded with many performances here so don't get overwhelmed but do let yourself really sink into the words. YOU are going to choose these videos yourself so keep in mind that your goal is to choose TWO POETS today. 
You are going to do a few things that will be a bit different from what we have done before:
  1. This is the first occasion when we are really looking at poetry as rhetoric (as you will notice, we have not used literature in this class as that is not traditionally studied in rhetoric studies.)  You have been asked to think about how musicians--- in our case so far, Blueswomen--- were rhetors.  Now you need to think about how spoken word poets are also rhetors.
  2. You are going to do the unthinkable, for many historians that is, and make the claim that what black women/black women rhetors did in the Black Arts Movement (BAM) is the foundation for and sister-elder to black female spoken word artists today.
So that's two new things for us to do: make an argument for poetry as part of rhetoric studies (and maybe even make the case that spoken word poetry is equal to written poetry which is not a sentiment widely accepted in most English departments) AND make a historical connection between 50 years of black female poets.  Please take these points seriously as all three are quite contested.
TASK ONE: CHOOSE TWO POETS TO COMPARE
For the first part of your assignment, you are going to choose between Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jayne Cortez,  Ntozake Shange, and Carolyn Rodgers.  Look at the slide show for an introduction to these women and to what BAM Is. Choose one of these poets to focus on!

For the second part of your assignment, you are going to chose one contemporary spoken word artist: Mahogany Brown, Stayceyann Chin, Zora Howard, Aja Monet, jessica Care moore, Sunni Patterson, Rha Goddess, OR Liza Jessie Peterson. Look at the video below for an introduction to these women. ​​Choose one of these poets to focus on!
TASK TWO: LISTEN TO TWO POETS & WRITE ABOUT IT
The second part of your assignment asks you to listen to & compare one historical BAM artist & one contemporary artist. 

At the right, you will see our playlist where all of the performances for this class are located. The opening video reviews this assignment for you again.  Remember to choose TWO artists! 

​You will need to open the playlist (just clock on the title) and choose your videos from youtube.
For your writing assignment, come to class with a BOLD DECLARATIVE COMPARISON.   NAME the two women you have chosen and DISCUSS the rhetorical continuities you see between their works and performances.   Are these women effective rhetors?  Why or why not? Be ready to share your work with a partner.   The Youtube playlist will also repeat these directions for you. PLEASE BRING EARBUDS w/ LAPTOP, PHONE, or iPAD TO CLASS TODAY SO WE CAN SHARE YOUR VIDEO CHOICES IN SMALL GROUPS.

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