FWS: Listen to Understand: Writing Black Performance & Black Lives

Catalog description

Blues and jazz music are central to American culture and will be a major focus of our writing in this course. We will explore the work of iconic artists such as Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Janelle Monae, whose transmission of the Black experience collapses the distinctions between art, philosophy, the erotic, and the struggle for liberation. We will also read key philosophers and intellectuals such as Angela Davis and Fred Moten, combining the pleasure of appreciating music with rigorous intellectual exploration in our seminar discussion that presents higher-order thinking and university level writing. Writing projects will include critical essays, research-based papers, and a video essay as we develop our understanding of Black experience and performance in our capacities as writers.