Topics in African-American Studies (380-0-20)

Topic

Black Feminist Theory

Instructors

Marquis Bey West

Meeting Info

Parkes Hall 223: Tues, Thurs 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class

This course begins not from the premise, necessarily, of an intellectual and political genealogy of black women. Though also not to the exclusion of this. Rather, this course is one that thinks black feminist—not black "women's"—theory and theorizing; this course chronicles the ways that the political, intellectual, ethical, and social resound radically and progressively and names that resonance—and all its vibrations and textures—black feminist theory. Thus, we will, of course, be reading a variety of black women along the jagged gendered spectrum between and beyond "cis" and "trans," but more specifically we will be tracing the ways radical politics and ethics arise in such a way as to interrogate the established parameters of race and gender normativity, of our social world.

Learning Objectives

How to express complex thoughts in verbally and in writing
The lineage of black feminism, as well as its related fields of the black radical tradition, structures of racial and gender power and hegemony, and justice
How to think critically about social life and socio-political issues
How to collaborate across difference

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline