Doing Blackness: Performance Studies and Theorizing Black Identity
AFAM 292
Fall 2020
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01
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The idea of blackness is one that is ever shifting, sometimes in conflict with itself, and constantly accommodating new contexts. This course addresses the concept of blackness through performance, through the various methods of doing, being, and feeling that mark bodies, gestures, and places as black. It should be noted that performance, in this context, not only encompasses the framed/staged productions that have come to evoke blackness symbolically in the public imagination, but also performative approaches to evoking blackness in scholarship and the mundane negotiations of black identity in everyday life. This course centers on performance studies, but also pulls from African American studies, gender/women's studies, musicology, and literary theory in order to address both performance and blackness from an interdisciplinary perspective. Ultimately, this is a course that revels in the gray areas that exist between various competing constructions of authentic blackness and offers performance as a useful frame for understanding the simultaneous fixity and fluidity of blackness as a concept. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS AFAM |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (AFAM-MN)(AFAM) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Bial, Henry and Sarah Brady THE PERFORMANCE STUDIES READER. Ebron, Paula PERFORMING AFRICA. Jackson, John L. REAL BLACK: ADVENTURES IN RACIAL SINCERITY. Johnson, E. Patrick APPROPRIATING BLACKNESS: PERFORMANCE AND POLITICS OF AUTHENTICITY. Stalligs, L.H. FUNK THE EROTIC: TRANSAESTHETICS AND BLACK SEXUAL CULTURES. Taylor, Monique M. HARLEM: BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Two in-class group presentations based on reading assignments. One midterm assigment. One final paper (approx 3000-4000 words). |
| Instructor(s): Holt,Kevin Times: .M.W... 11:10AM-12:30PM; Location: SCIE309; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 5 | JR major: 5 | | |
| Seats Available: 6 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 3 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 3 | FR: X |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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