Eating the Other: Critical Perspectives on Difference and Desire
AFAM 289
Fall 2025
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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, Hortense Spillers, 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) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
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Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman, AGAINST THE CLOSET
James Baldwin, ANOTHER COUNTRY
Marci Blackman, PO MAN'S CHILD
bell hooks, BLACK LOOKS
Jenner Nash, THE BLACK BODY IN ECSTASY
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Examinations and Assignments:
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Two short essays and one final paper |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
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| Instructor(s): Anderson,Amanda Faith Times: .M.W... 01:20PM-02:40PM; Location: TBA |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 4 | JR major: 4 | | |
| Seats Available: 19 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 3 | JR non-major: 4 | SO: 4 | FR: 0 |
| 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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