- Become familiar with key aspects of US history and culture
- Understand African American drama and theatre as significant parts of US culture and as literary and artistic productions through which American national identity has been constructed and deconstructed.
- Learn about the most influential twentieth- and twenty-first-century American playwrights and their work.
- Understand the conventions of dramatic literature and a range of different dramatic and performative styles (melodrama, realism, naturalism, expressionism, symbolism, Epic Theatre, postmodern theatre).
- Learn and use effective terminology for reading and analyzing dramatic texts.
- Analyze an African American play by considering elements such as dramatic structure and action, dialogue, monologue, stage directions, textual and visual metaphors and symbols.
- Translating a short excerpt (a brief scene or a monologue) from an African American play.