Reading Against Racism

Catalog description

This course takes as its starting point Audre Lorde’s 1981 Keynote presentation at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference, "The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism." Lorde, critiquing white feminists, states, "I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness." Eschewing defensiveness, ignorance, and innocence, and opening to meaningful change by engaging the writings of anti-racist and anti-imperialist thinkers, including those focused on the transformation of higher education, this course examines the responsibilities scholars take on when we affirm that "Black Lives Matter," and acknowledges that higher education, including the humanities, is actively implicated in the structures and operations of white privilige Eschewing defensiveness, ignorance, and innocence, and opening to meaningful change by engaging the writings of anti-racist and anti-imperialist thinkers, including those focused on the transformation of higher education, this course examines the responsibilities scholars take on when we affirm that "Black Lives Matter," and acknowledges that higher education, including the humanities, is actively implicated in the structures and operations of white privilege and anti-black racism as well as in other intersectional modes of exclusion, including all forms of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national original,…