Africana Studies 341MT - Topics in Africana Studies: 'Bodies of Thought: Metaphors of Embodiment in Black Literature'

This course tracks uses of the body as a metaphor in literature by black writers in the 20th and 21st centuries. Thinking about the body as a conceptual unit that refers to a broad range of configurations -- the physical body, the national body, bodies of knowledge, and so on -- this course will ask students to think about the limits and potentials of the body as form when it is marshaled by black writers toward a range of political, social, and aesthetic projects. We will read texts by Frantz Fanon, James Hannaham, Jesmyn Ward, Octavia Butler, Jamaica Kincaid, and others.

This course is open to juniors and seniors