EACS 2016

AfAm 420: Fall 2016

Alex Weheliye

Th 2:00pm - 5:00pm

Expressive Arts and Cultural Studies

The trope of the talking book that conferred humanity and power upon its owners is one starting point for the study of Afro-diasporic expressive arts. The very term points to an oxymoron, juxtaposing the alleged fixity of the written word against the ephemeral polysemy of the body in performance that artists, critics, and lay people have sought to negotiate and complicate in order to articulate individual subjectivity and collective identity. Using crosscutting thematic, historical, and generic grids, the course will utilize slave narratives, fiction, poetry, music, critical theory, and the visual arts to survey how African-descended writers, artists, and theorists have grappled with the constitution of blackness as it relates to the modern conception of humanity. Afro-diasporic cultures provide singular, mutable and contingent figurations of the human, and thus do not represent mere bids for inclusion into or critiques of the shortcomings of western liberal humanism. Since blackness has functioned as one of the key signifiers for apportioning and delimiting which humans can lay claim to full human status and which humans cannot, black expressive arts have developed a series of comprehensive conceptual and poetic frameworks—both critical and utopian—in the service of better understanding and dismantling the modern figuration of racialized humanity.

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

Sept. 22, 2016 Course Introduction

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection (excerpt), Fred Moten, In the Break (excerpt), Deborah McDowell, “In the First Place: Making Frederick Douglass and the Afro-American Narrative Tradition,” Alexander Weheliye, Habeas Viscus (excerpt), and Ronald Judy, (Dis)Forming the American Canon (Chapters 1 & 2)

Sept. 29, 2016 No Class

Oct. 6, 2016 Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” Katherine McKittrick, Demonic Grounds (Chapter 2)

Oct. 13, 2016 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

Nahum Chandler, “Originary Displacement,” Hazel Carby, “The Souls of Black Men,” Charles Nero, “Queering The Souls of Black Folk,” Eric Sundquist, “W. E. B. Du Bois: African America and the Kingdom of Culture.”

Oct. 20, 2016 Toni Morrison, Sula

Barbara Smith, “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism,” Deborah McDowell, “New Directions in Black Feminist Criticism,” “Boundaries: Or Distant Relations and Close Kin” and responses, Roderick Ferguson, “Something Else to Be: Sula, The Moynihan Report, and the Negations of Black Lesbian Feminism.”

Oct. 27, 2016 Gayl Jones, Corregidora

Christina Sharpe, Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects (Introduction & Chapter 1), Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman, Against the Closet: Black Political Longing and the Erotics of Race (Chapter 4), Ann Ducille, “Phallus(ies) of Interpretation: Toward Engendering the Black Critical ‘I’”

Nov. 3, 2016 Jackie Kay, Trumpet

Matt Richardson, The Queer Limit of Black Memory: Black Lesbian Literature and Irresolution (excerpt), J. Halberstam, “Telling Tales: Brandon Teena, Billy Tipton, and Transgender Biography.”

Nov. 10, 2016 Samuel R. Delany, Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand

Jeffrey Tucker, “The Necessity of Models, of Alternatives: Samuel R. Delany's Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand,” Thomas Foster, “Innocent by Contamination”: Ethnicity and Technicity in Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand,” Robert F. Reid-Pharr, “Clean: Death and Desire in Samuel R. Delany's 'Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand.'”

Nov. 17, 2016 No Class.

Three page abstract & bibliography due via Canvas at noon Friday, Nov. 18

Nov. 24, 2016 No Class: Genocide Remembrance Day

Dec.1, 2016 Octavia E. Butler, Fledgling and Jewelle Gomez, The Gilda Stories

Susana M. Morris, “Black Girls Are from the Future: Afrofuturist Feminism in Octavia E. Butler's Fledgling,” Theri Pickens, “’You're Supposed to Be a Tall, Handsome, Fully Grown White Man’: Theorizing Race, Gender, and Disability in Octavia Butler's Fledgling,” LaMonda Horton-Stallings, Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures (Chapter 4), Jerry Rafiki Jenkins, “Race, Freedom, and the Black Vampire in Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories,” Susana M. Morris, “More than Human: Black Feminisms of the Future in Jewelle Gomez's The Gilda Stories,” and Jewelle Gomez, “Speculative Fiction and Black Lesbians.”

Dec. 8, 2016 Final Paper Presentations