First-Year Writing Seminar (101-8-24)
Topic
What Are Black Masculinities?
Instructors
William Harrison Graves
Meeting Info
University Hall 118: Tues, Thurs 12:30PM - 1:50PM
Overview of class
Topic: What Are Black Masculinities?
What are Black masculinities? In current events, Black masculinities have been depicted as criminal or deathly in the circulation of viral videos of state-sanctioned violence and popular culture. These popular depictions have led to images of Black men and Black family as pathological. We will understand and probe beyond this context to have a more nuanced conversation about Black masculinities and the interior lives of Black people that are made to be invisible in the shadow of these popular depictions. We will be analyzing 20th and 21st century novels, memoirs, and films. This class will read the works of black writers and filmmakers concurrently with popular mainstream depictions, to think through the dynamics of group identity formation, power, and violence as it relates to black masculinities.
This First Year Seminar will include canonical and non-canonical authors and filmmakers from the 1970s-present. Authors such as Toni Morrison, Jesmyn Ward, and Kiese Laymon are all a part of a literary lineage that explore themes of death, black interiority, and sexual violence in relationship to black masculinities. Films such as Moonlight (2016) and Bruiser (2022) think about the pitfalls that constrict one's conceptions of black masculinities, while providing openings to expand these definitions.
Evaluation Method
Discussion Participation (20%); Weekly Responses (20%); Critical Analysis (20%); Final Project (40%)
Number of writing assignments: Weekly Discussion Responses (1 page double spaced; Critical Analysis (3-4 pages); Final Writing Project (6-7 pages) [This project will be a creative project that will incorporate writing and other methods].
Class Materials (Required)
Novel: Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977)
Memoirs: Jesmyn Ward Men We Reaped (2013) and Kiese Laymon's Heavy (2018)
Films: Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney's Moonlight (2016), and Miles Warren's Bruiser (2022)
Class Notes
Wm. Harrison Graves (He, Him, His) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English at Northwestern University with certificates in African American Studies and Critical Theory. He works in twentieth and twenty-first-century African American literature and film with specific emphasis on studies of Black masculinity.
Class Attributes
WCAS Writing Seminar