In this course we will foreground questions around visibility and memory. We will explore representations of Black queer bodies in experimental and documentary film. This course will begin by engaging foundational texts from Black Queer Studies that coheres most strikingly in the late 1990s and early 2000s with the first gathering of folks at The Black Queer Studies conference, which lead to The Black Queer Studies Anthology. We will pair texts with film in order to examine the various relationships between art and scholarship. In this course we will screen films such as Looking for Langston (Isaac Julien, 1989), The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1996), U People (Olive Demetrius and Hanifah Walidah, 2009), Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, 1989) and Litany for Survival (Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson, 1995).
