Gender, Race, and the Human

Catalog description

The modern Western category, or “genre,” of the Human has become a central preoccupation in Black, feminist, queer, and trans studies. Following Sylvia Wynter, Hortense Spillers, and Saidiya Hartman, scholars have asked: What, or who, qualifies as (fully) Human? How do constructions of race and gender circumscribe the boundaries of the Human? And how has liberal humanism shaped modern science and political philosophy, as well as critical theory and emancipatory politics? To approach these questions, the course will begin by close reading foundational texts from Wynter, Spillers, and Hartman. We will situate these texts within the various traditions of thought that they disrupt, as well as those traditions they have enabled. The latter half of the course will turn toward contemporary theoretical debates about the Human, with a focus on Afropessimism, antisocial queer theory, Black optimism, and queer/trans utopianism.