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Theorizing Blackness (350-0-20)

Instructors

Marquis Bey West

Meeting Info

Parkes Hall 223: Mon, Wed 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class

What is blackness? Often it is assumed that we can all tell who and what is black simply at a glance, but this course deeply troubles this assumption. In this course, students will interrogate what, when, where, and how blackness—as phenotype, culture, and analytic—is known. Students will encounter black feminist approaches to blackness, nihilistic and pessimistic understandings of blackness, philosophically capacious meditations on blackness, and literary depictions of blackness. In short, this course will complicate the very meaning of blackness and generate, beautifully, more questions rather than answers.