Beyond Nommo: Contextualizing the Literary Genealogy within Radical, Socially Responsible Black Poetry KazembeLasana 2012 This study explores the literary genealogy of the Black Arts Movement (1965-1976) and attempts to situate Black Arts inquiry and pedagogy as a worthwhile curricular paradigm, a critical literacy intervention, an alternative learning modality, and a tool for social transformation. Overall, the project seeks to leverage Black Arts aesthetic inquiry and pedagogy to improve the academic, aesthetic, and cultural literacies of African American students. The narrative representation of this study is intentionally rooted in and drawn from a criticalist orientation that seeks to leverage the sentient voices, collective traditions, interpretive frameworks, and accumulated folk experiences of African Americans. The proposed Black Arts curricular paradigm encourages pedagogues and practitioners to reflect and champion the best of the African American cultural epistemology including: 1) promoting its activist philosophy; 2) critical resistance to [any form of] cultural hegemony, marginalization, or appropriation; 3) deepening inquiry into and authentic representation of its cultural antecedents and inherited traditions; 4) conveyance to and support of younger generations of students, teachers, and artists.