Black Life
Winter 2016
Black Life
This course will look at the relationship between Blackness and different concepts of life to highlight how Black life functions as a constitutive ontological limit for the workings of modern humanity. To that end, we will study texts from such recent fields as new materialism, animal studies, disability studies, and affect theory in tandem with writings from a variety a Black Studies approaches in order ascertain how they might fruitfully speak to each other. We will pay particular attention to the complex ways gender and sexuality function in the barring of Black flesh from the category of the human-as-Man, while also as providing the conditions of possibility for alternate ways of inhabiting the world.
Requirements
*Weekly blog posts
*In-class presentation
*Active in-class participation
*Final essay or Project
*Creating/editing three Wikipedia entries related to the course topic
Quarter Schedule
January 7
Diana Coole & Samantha Frost, “Introducing the New Materialisms;” Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Chapter 1); Donna Jones, Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy (Introduction & Chapter 4); Arun Saldanha, “Reontologising Race: The Machinic Geography of Phenotype;” & Mel Y. Chen, “Introduction: Animating Animacy”
January 14
Denise Ferreira da Silva, Toward A Global Idea of Race (Chapters 4 & 8); Katherine McKittrick, “Mathematics Black Life”; Amit S. Rai, “Race Racing: Four Theses on Race and Intensity;” Nahum D. Chandler, “Of Exorbitance: The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Thought.”
January 21
Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation (excerpts); Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway (Part I: Entangled Beginnings); Lisa Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents (Chapter 1); Leopold Senghor, “The Spirit of African Civilization.”
January 28
Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, “Animal: New Directions in the Theorization of Race and Posthumanism;” Dossier: Theorizing Queer Inhumanisms; Mel Y. Chen, Animacies (Part II Animals); Amber Musser, Sensational Flesh (Chapter 4).
February 4
Simone Browne, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness; C. Riley Snorton, Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (Introduction & Chapter 1)
February 11
Calvin Warren, “Onticide: Toward an Afro-Pessimistic Queer Theory;” Ronald Judy, “On the Question of Nigga Authenticity.” Enoch Page and Matt Richardson, “On the Fear of Small Numbers: A Twenty-First-Century Prolegomenon of the U.S. Black Transgender Experience.”
February 18
Nirmala Erevelles, Disability and Difference in Global Contexts (Chapters Chapter 1 & 3); Dagmawi Woubshet, The Calendar of Loss: Race, Sexuality, and Mourning in the Early Era of AIDS (Introduction & Chapter 4); Jasbir K. Puar, “Bodies with New Organs: Becoming Trans, Becoming Disabled.”
February 25
J. Kameron Carter, “Paratheological Blackness;” M. Shawn Copeland, “Blackness Past, Blackness Future—and Theology;” Patrice Haynes, “Creative Becoming and the Patiency of Matter;” Lewis Gordon, Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (excerpts); C. Riley Snorton, Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (chapter 3).
Three-page abstract & bibliography due via Canvas at noon Friday, Feb. 26
March 3
Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route; Dionne Brand, A Map to The Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging (excerpts); Kara Keeling, “LOOKING FOR M—Queer Temporality, Black Political Possibility, and Poetry from the Future;” Calvin Warren, “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope.”
March 10
Final Paper Presentations