Five Student Perspectives On Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is considered to be one “of the finest achievements in African American literature.”[1] I have taught the novel several times in LIT 315 Multiethnic Literature and am continually amazed at the way ONU students connect with and respond to this text. The story follows Janie Crawford, an African American woman whose journey is about finding love and finding her own identity, separate from how others attempt to define and limit her. This panel will include the works and perspectives of five different students who have written about the novel in either literary analysis papers or literary research papers. The students’ approaches to the novel vary. However, by placing them together on this panel, we hope to achieve two goals. First, we want to highlight for the broader university community the excellent work our students do. Second, we seek to create a conversation about the novel among the student presenters and the audience while demonstrating a variety of ways young scholars can interpret and discuss literary texts. [1]. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie y. Mckay, eds., The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2004), 1019