Theorizing Blackness

Fall 2017 AfAm 350

Theorizing Blackness

Popular discourses about the ‘post-racial’ era notwithstanding, race still suffuses many aspects of culture and policy in the western world, especially blackness. Moreover, critical arguments about the ways gender, sexuality, class, and nationality fracture race, have questioned unitary notions of blackness. Why does blackness still persist despite these challenges? How is this category continually reconstituted through social, economic, cultural, legal, political, etc. discourses and institutions? Drawing on theoretical discourses from the social sciences and humanities, the course surveys blackness as a global category of critical analysis for both historical and contemporary social formations in the African Diaspora. In addition, by considering the different manifestations of Blackness as well as other forms of racialized identity across the globe from historical, empirical, and theoretical perspectives, it also considers how gender, class, sexuality, and nationality shape the territory of blackness. We will study scholarly works that address, on the one hand, the continued significance of slavery, colonialism, incarceration, segregation, other forms of racialized violence, and, on the other hand, texts that imagine future forms of blackness.

Requirements

*Regular attendance

*Essay

*Final multimedia group project and presentation

*Weekly blog posts/responses

*In-class participation

*Creating or editing three Wikipedia entries related to the course topic

Grading

Essay, Multimedia Project/Presentation, Blog Posts, and Wikipedia Entries 70%

Participation and Attendance 30%

Rules

*Laptops may only be used for class related activities; otherwise they will be taken away.

*Cell phones and other mobile devices should be turned off during class time

*You are required to bring reading materials to class, either in hard copy or electronic form.

*Please familiarize yourself with the “Avoiding Plagiarism” document posted on the Lore Website site.

*Attendance is mandatory. Missing more than one class will result in a lower grade.

*In-class/online behavior should be based on mutual respect. I encourage and appreciate active, informed, and critical interchanges during our discussions, but these should be conducted in a manner that is considerate of others. This means that we should not use discriminatory and non-inclusive language whenever possible, even if we encounter this language in some of the materials on the syllabus. If you are unsure about using any particular terms, you should ask about them.

Students with Disabilities

Any student requesting accommodations related to a disability or other condition is required to register with Services for Students with Disabilities (ssd@northwestern.edu; 847-467-5530) and provide professors with an accommodation notification from SSD, preferably within the first two weeks of class. For more information: http://www.northwestern.edu/disability. All information will remain confidential. I can best accommodate students if they let me or the TA know about their specific needs related to learning and fulfilling the requirements of the course.

Required Texts:

Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return

Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route

Bettina Judd, Patient

Quarter Schedule

Please note: the most up-to-date version of the quarter schedule will always be available online

Tuesday 9/19 Course Introduction

Thursday, 9/21 Fanon, “The Fact of Blackness” & “The Negro and Psychopathology” (excerpt)

Film: Black Is, Black Ain’t

Tuesday 9/26 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (excerpt) & Fields & Fields, Racecraft (excerpt)

Thursday, 9/28 Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom”

Tuesday, 10/3 Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe”

Film: Dreams Are Colder than Death

Thursday, 10/5 Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return

Tuesday, 10/10 Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return

Thursday, 10/12 Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” & Gilroy, The Black Atlantic (Chapter 1).

Tuesday, 10/17 Tinsley, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic;” Lorde, “The Uses of the Erotic;” & Cohen, “Punks,Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens.”

Essay due at 5pm via Canvas Website

Thursday, 10/19 Glissant, Poetics of Relation (excerpts)

Tuesday, 10/24 da Silva, On Matter Beyond the Equation of Value

Thursday, 10/26 Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

Tuesday, 10/31 McKittrick, Demonic Grounds (Chapters 1 & 2) & Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic (Chapter 1)

Thursday, 11/2 Scott, Extravagant Abjection (Intro & Chapter 1) & Keeling, “Looking for M”

Film: Moonlight

Tuesday, 11/7 Roberts, Fatal Invention (Preface & Chapter 1) & Washington, Medical Apartheid (excerpts)

Thursday, 11/9 No Class

Tuesday, 11/14 Judd, Patient

Thursday, 11/16 Jordan, “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You;” Christian, “The Race forTheory,” & Walker, “In Search of Our Mothers Gardens.”

Tuesday, 11/21 Pierre, The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race (Preface, Introduction, & 6).

Thursday, 11/23 NO CLASS: National Genocide Remembrance day

Tuesday, 11/28 Hartman, Lose Your Mother

Thursday, 11/30 Hartman, Lose Your Mother

Tuesday, 12/5 Final Presentations