First-Year Writing Seminar (101-8-21)

Topic

Black Life. Trans Life.

Instructors

Marquis Bey

Meeting Info

University Library 3322: Mon, Wed 9:30AM - 10:50AM

Overview of class

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.

Learning Objectives

Be able to:
Articulate a history of the formation of racialized and gendered identities across the 20th and 21st centuries in the U.S.

Clearly express verbally and discursively one's ideas concerning power, race, gender, nation, and their intersections

Reflect how one's personal position in the world interacts with larger social structures

Class Materials (Required)

All materials will be provided digitally at no cost

Class Attributes

WCAS Writing Seminar

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: PRE-REG: Reserved for Black Studies majors & minors. Weinberg First Year Seminars are only available to first-year students.
Add Consent: Department Consent Required