English 41 (H) - Spring, 2021

Introductory Topics in Literature & Media

Topic: Topic: RESTRICTED TO UNIVERSITY HONORS PROGRAM STUDENTS ONLY. TOPIC: TO BE ANNOUNCED

Class Information

Instructor: Gray, Erin
Time: TR 3:10-6:00

Description

TOPIC: Creating Abolition Feminism

Feminist theorizations of gender domination, sexual violence, and socially reproductive labor have been central to movements to abolish racial slavery in the transatlantic world. In this class, we study Black women's aesthetic contributions to abolitionist theory and practice in literary works, visual art, photography, cinema, music, and dance from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Our focus is two-fold: we concentrate on Black feminist critiques of gender, sexuality, race, and class as inter-animated relations of power as well as Black feminist practices for building worlds beyond relations of property and policing normalized by colonial capitalism, settler nationalism, and neoliberal ideology. In addition to learning the political histories, contested presents, and visionary futures that animate abolition feminism in the U.S. and globally, students learn interdisciplinary methods for analyzing works of art and popular culture as sites for political contestation and transformation.

In addition to the texts below, we will watch films such as Atlantic is a Sea of Bones, Illusions, Free Cece!, and Palante! Siempre Palante!

Grading

Participation: 25%
Essay 1: 25%
Essay 2: 30%
Final: 20%

Texts

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs
Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic?s Life, Alice Childress
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name , Audre Lorde
A Map to the Door of No Return, Dionne Brand
Voyage of the Sable Venus, Robin Coste Lewis