In this course, we will consider and study how Black feminist writing, specifically prose, operates as a mode of "living and feeling, dreaming and being," as Jennifer Nash calls it. Examining and theorizing Black life in the first quarter of the twenty-first century and drawing on examples from the past, Black feminism today questions theories that would reduce Black life to Black death. In refusing this reduction, Black women offer alternatives through their aesthetic choices to center "beauty, intimacy, and care . . . as fierce and rigorous practice[s] of Black survival" and thriving, as Tina Campt argues.
A Note on Identity: Each of the identity categories and the subject matters related to them, at the center of this course, is contested in Black feminism with writers working to challenge the groundings of these categories in dominant thought and to provide radically alternative ways of conceiving these categories. We will explore these radical alternatives by working through the literature and producing writing and other projects that analyze the material and aesthetic foundations for considering the social construction of identity itself.
A Note on Identity: Each of the identity categories and the subject matters related to them, at the center of this course, is contested in Black feminism with writers working to challenge the groundings of these categories in dominant thought and to provide radically alternative ways of conceiving these categories. We will explore these radical alternatives by working through the literature and producing writing and other projects that analyze the material and aesthetic foundations for considering the social construction of identity itself.
- Teacher: Allyse Brockington
- Teacher: Sheila Lloyd