Black Women's Creative Work

This course surveys Black women's autobiographical
archival work and writing throughout the diaspora.
We'll
survey how Black women artists, writers, and
performers have responded to the erasure of black
women's
identities and experiences throughout the globe,
with particular focus on their chosen tools of
artistic
engagement.We 'll also observe how Black women
negotiate with the failure of Black
counter-historical projectsnamely
the task of writing "about a history that is this
encounter with nothing; or writ[ing] about a past
that has
been obliterated so that even traces aren't left."
Throughout the semester we'll ask questions such
as: How do
these projects create new meanings of failure? How
does failure become perhaps a new necessity for
engaging
with the archive and counter-historical endeavors?
How do these projects proffer dynamic and risky
ways of
articulating the self through the archive? How do
they navigate between the personal and collective
in the
context of black women's identities? How do they
necessitate understandings of Black women's
identities? How
do they offer interesting ways of
re-contextualizing archival spaces, moments,
encounters, and feelings?
To thoroughly engage with literary work from
Saidiya Hartman, Dionne Brand, Alexis Pauline
Gumbs, and Hazel
Carby, we'll read them alongside criticism from
theorists such as Barnor Hesse, Trinh T. Minh Ha,
Antoinette
Burton, and Christina Sharpe, alongside the work
of visual/performance artists Robbie McCauley,
Phoebe
Boswell, Rosana Paulino, Kameelah Janan Rasheed,
Zanhele Muholi, and others.