What Is Langston Hughes Shadow in Let America Be America Again

In spring quarter 2017, undergraduate students, graduates, and faculty members of the UCSB English Department embarked on a project to paint a series of panels that interpret and illustrate Langston Hughes' iconic poem "Let America Be America Again." This page documents our journeying! You can run across the completed panels at the lesser of this page, and you can also click here to go directly to the panels gallery. Plus, read the UC Santa Barbara Current'south article on the art project here!

Timelapse video of painting mean solar day, thanks Jeremy Douglass and Tyler Shoemaker of the English Department!

In the wake of the 2017 election, UCSB'due south English language Department issued a argument reaffirming "[o]ur cadre values of fostering dialogue, civic appointment, and social justice" and asserting our "commit[ment] to protecting our students from a culture of fear, loathing and terror." At present that vicious campaign rhetoric is turning into "policy that," as the department feared, "violates the rights of some, threatens the lives of others, and compromises our shared environment," we must do more than make a argument. In add-on to continuing to advocate for our students, we came together as a section to paint a series of murals that mark S Hall as an inclusive, welcoming space for our students, specially those who are targeted by these new policies. Using art to put Hughes' words on our walls brings live the linguistic communication of one of America'south greatest poets to remind our community that, as our department claims, "[h]ow we use words matters— equally language, equally literature, as culture. How we use words makes our earth." Bringing together undergraduates, graduate students, and professors, the project built customs and created lasting fine art to aid motility our shared space towards the world we want to alive in.

Langston Hughes was the ideal poet for this project not only considering of his unquestioned condition in the American catechism, just also because his verse continues to articulate the anxieties and aspirations of the people of the U.s.a.. Written in 1935, Hughes' poem is not only an aesthetic innovation, simply also a withal relevant critique and plea for this customs that we share. "Let America Be America Again" both reaches backward to Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" and forward to Native poet Allison Hedge Coke'south "America, I Sing You Back." We promise that the success of this projection paves the way for hereafter murals that depict these and other poems!

At two planning meetings, undergraduates and graduates met up to read the poem, hash out its resonance, and share ideas for the art project. This was a great opportunity to appoint with poetry exterior of the classroom, and participants took turns reading stanzas and close reading the words of Langston Hughes. At these meetings, we decided to create a 14 panel series, with 7 panels depicting the words of the poem and half dozen complementary panels that would illustrate the selected stanzas.

Part of the planning process involved choices about composition, layout, and methodology. As you lot tin can encounter above, the panels with the words from the poem were delicately traced by an all-star team of dedicated wordsmiths. Nosotros used projectors to trace words and some of the images, and you can see how we gave new meaning to the term "close reading"!

Undergraduates from various majors, graduates from many different years, faculty (and faculty "Jr!"), friends of the department, and fifty-fifty a very good domestic dog came to participate in the two painting days.

Information technology took two Saturdays of sketching, drawing, tracing, and painting to realize the completed mural project. We were able to use the natural low-cal of Due south Hall and the ample hallway space to spread out yet stay cozy.

We fifty-fifty branched out a little chip into the Collaborative Educatee Commons! As each panel of the mural came closer to completion, our work became more than and more detail oriented, from shading the panels that featured night scenes to calculation more depth to Lady Liberty's cloak.

Proud faces at the projection's completion!

We are very grateful for the back up of Department Chair Enda Duffy, the American Cultures and Global Contexts Center, COMMA, Hemispheric South/southward, Literature and the Mind, and Transcriptions. Thank you to everyone who contributed their fourth dimension, efforts, and imagination to this project!

If you tin can't make it out to South Hall, you lot tin can see the completed panels straight below.