Black Feminisms
Black feminist theory coheres around a singular claim: another world is possible. Our collective task is to study the myriad ways black feminists have engaged in freedom-dreaming, acts of radical imagination, and practices of world-making in the midst of a world marked by spectacular and quotidian violence. This undergraduate seminar focuses on the visionary work of black feminists, and attends to a series of texts that pose questions like: How do we survive – and thrive – in a world marked by vast inequities? What would another world look and feel like? What are other ways of being that might feel more equitable, more free, more transgressive? What would togetherness, belonging, and community look and feel like in that world? What does it mean to dream as if our very lives depended on it? We will pay careful attention to the theoretical, methodological, and political work that these texts advance, understanding what terms like freedom, community, belonging, intimacy, self-making, histories, activism, vulnerability, desire, and eroticism have meant to black feminists seeking to build a theoretical and political toolkit for surviving and thriving.