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CS92PROD
Black Literary Theory
AFAM 315
Spring 2022
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: ENGL 318

This course will bring together readings both literary and critical/theoretical, beginning with Frantz Fanon's "Black Skin, White Masks" (1952). Taking Fanon as its point of departure, then, this course will necessarily turn to a discussion of the recent discourse on Afro-pessimism and Black optimism, attempting to introduce students to important issues and questions of race, race relations, anti-Black racism, Black sociality, the universality of whiteness and white supremacy, the fungibility of the Black body, and the vulnerability and precarity of Black life; and together we will think more closely about how the complex and "unthinkable" histories and afterlives of chattel slavery, racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and the Middle Passage, for examples, continue to challenge the representational limits and potentialities of traditional literary genres and modes of emplotment. In addition to Fanon, authors will include Orlando Patterson, Toni Morrison, Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Achille Mbembe, Frank Wilderson, Jared Sexton, Fred Moten, and others.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA AFAM
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (AFAM-MN)(AFAM)(CSCT)(ENGL)
Past Enrollment Probability: 90% or above

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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