Black Queer Life

Catalog description

This course explores how Black writers and artists represent and theorize a diverse array of Black genders and sexualities. We will begin with a series of conversations on the origins of Black queer theory, and then use these conversations to anchor us in our readings of Black queer life in literary and popular culture. Reading across a range of genres, including film, music, poetry, comics, and short fiction, we will collectively consider the ways sex, gender, and sexuality work with other markers of difference and social status such as race, class, ability, and nationality to demarcate possibilities, freedoms, choices, and opportunities available to Black people. We will learn from theorists, writers, and artists including Audre Lorde, Cathy Cohen, E. Patrick Johnson, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Danez Smith, Janelle Monae, among many others.