• Instructor: Brittney Cooper
  • Course Delivery: H 45 0200 P - 0500
  • Current Course Description: Black women’s relationship to the politics of gender identity has a been a subject of both interrogation and theorization since the 19thcentury when Black women began widely publishing on matters of both race and gender. Beginning here, this graduate seminar traces the long history of Black feminist thought, arguing primarily for Black women as theorists of their own experience. We will approach Black feminisms, as a plurality, as a site of contestation, and as what Hazel Carby once called “a locus of contradiction,” which is to say there is no one-size fits all approach to Black women’s experience of or thinking about gender. After grounding ourselves in the 19thcentury, we will move forward to focus more specifically on the last fifty years of Black feminist knowledge production considering how Black women have theorized intersectionality, epistemology, affect, sexuality, hip hop, social movements, queer and trans theory, and abolition.

This course provides a broad survey of contemporary Black feminist theory, including the emergence of Black feminist thought and political action, key actors and debates, theoretical engagements with questions of gender, racial, and sexual difference.