The Intellectual History of Black Women

Catalog description

This course will introduce students to the intellectual productions and theoretical traditions of African American women. Focused on the canonical texts of African American women, this class gestures toward diaspora as well. Moving chronologically from the history of slavery to the present will require that we simultaneously confront the question of what counts as “intellectual” history. Thus even as we will read the written words of black feminists across time, we will also call into question what Barbara Christian calls “the race for theory,” turning also to resistance practices, material culture, and bodily performance as sites of black feminist theorization.