English 350AT - Topics in African American Literature: 'Race and the Aesthetics of Taste'

This 300-level seminar will examine race and taste in the literatures of slavery and colonialism. We will analyze taste as a mode of racial perception and a practice of racial discrimination. To do this, taste will be interpreted as a metaphor for aesthetic discernment ('you have great taste!') and at the register of gustatory perception ('what does it taste like?') to reveal that taste does not name a neutral operation of judgment; rather it names a field of interaction with the world that produces and extends social values, cultural commonsense, and racial categories. Together we will trace how subjectively experienced affects associated with the consumption of food and drink recapitulate arrangements of racial and epistemic power.

This course is open to juniors and seniors