"To Hell with Milton in African American Literature" This 900-level course considers the role of John Milton's often (in)visible influential presence in creative works by diverse African American poets and novelists. In addition to understanding the art of intertextual sampling in African American fiction and poetry, this course will specifically engage with Milton's "Satanic epic" as unorthodox intertexts signaling black revolt, freedom, justice, equality, and citizenship via diverse writers' "uppity" receptions of Paradise Lost. We will evaluate these rhetorics of freedom and black cultural responses to Milton's signature epic in the English language as a pedagogical route for causing "good and necessary trouble" with race in the English classroom. Close readings, spirited class discussions, exercises in the teaching of African American literature, and a final paper of original research will equip 21st century graduate students to make startling (re)discoveries as cutting-edge researchers. This portfolio of work also will prepare 21st-century graduate students to be transformative teachers for the future generations of students they shall teach in social climates where black lives and the politics of freedom have and must always matter.