Eating the Other: Critical Perspectives on Difference and Desire
AFAM 289
Spring 2027
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01
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How does difference (race, class, sex) engender or attenuate desire? How does desire manifest as a wish to commodify, enjoy, or transcend racial difference? In this course we will study difference and desire as terms which inform one another and as sites through which discourses on race, sexuality, and power converge. We will explore these terms in relation to African American literary production, gender and sexuality studies, and film and queer theory. We will also take them up as they emerge as themes in the narrative fiction of James Baldwin and Marci Blackman as well as in essays by bell hooks, Jennifer Nash, Saidiya Hartman, Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman, and Audre Lorde, among others. How do these key terms, alone and together, elucidate the contours of Black social and psychic life? |
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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: (African American Studies Minor)(African American Studies) |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman, AGAINST THE CLOSET (2012)
James Baldwin, ANOTHER COUNTRY (1962)
James Baldwin, THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN (1985)
Marci Blackman, PO MAN'S CHILD (1999)
bell hooks, BLACK LOOKS (1992)
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Examinations and Assignments:
One presentation, one midterm essay, one final paper
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Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
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| Instructor(s): Anderson,Amanda Faith Times: ..T.R.. 10:20AM-11:40AM; Location: TBA |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 3 | JR major: 4 | | |
| | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 2 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 4 | FR: 3 |
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