Gender and Black Masculinity (334-0-20)

Instructors

Marquis Bey West

Meeting Info

Louis Hall 119: Mon, Wed 11:00AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

This course will take as its focus not only discussing (cisgender) black men but, more rigorously, interrogating gender as a racialized regime and masculinity itself as a subtle form of violence. Students will be invited to think about race and gender as co-constitutive (rather than simply and innocently intersectional), and about what might be possible after the interrogation—and possibly dismantling—of masculinity even when affixed to blackness. Overall, our aim in this course is to establish a robust understanding of gender, of racialized gender, of blackness, and of masculinity as a gendered and racialized mode of imposed existence. To examine these topics, we will explore the writing of scholars and activists and novelists, documentaries on manhood, black feminist critiques of masculinity, and transgender perspectives on gender.

Learning Objectives

• Have a clearer, firmer sense of gender's impact on our lives, social institutions, histories
• Be able to articulate more robustly how you position yourself with respect to gender as a social apparatus, but also with various theories and ideas concerning gender's impact
• Understand the ways that race and gender are intertwined, such that gender is understood as a racialized mode of existence
• Develop a more robust sense of compassion and generosity toward nonnormative expressions and ideas
• Be able to write and think out loud in productive, clear ways concerning gender

Class Attributes

Social and Behavioral Science Foundational Discipl
U.S. Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity
Social & Behavioral Sciences Distro Area