Beyond the Binary (235-0-20)

Instructors

Marquis Bey West

Meeting Info

Harris Hall L28: Tues, Thurs 9:30AM - 10:50AM

Overview of class

BLACK LIFE. TRANS LIFE.

This course will introduce students to the parameters and textures of black life, trans life, and black trans life. Popular discourse has either depicted black trans people as glamorous superstars or always and already predisposed to death. This course, then, seeks to usefully complicate these narratives and focus on black and trans life. To that end, the course will task students with gaining an understanding of the nuances of black life via its entanglement with the afterlife of slavery and contemporary radicalism; with trans life via its troubling of the gender binary; and black trans life via the ways that blackness and transness interact and converge. This is, in short, a course on black life, full stop; trans life, full stop; and black trans life, full stop.

Class Attributes

U.S. Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity