English 209 - TOPICS IN BLACK STUDIES

Topics course. Same as AAS 202. In this class, we study the ways that black essayists negotiate ideas about race through notions of love: what does it mean to figure one's humanity through the miasma of race; and how is love as a concept and the form of the essay relevant to this figuring? Here, we think race intersectionally, as a term that is only meaningful if one notices its invocation of gender, class, sexuality. We read works by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith, Reginald Shepherd, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Alice Walker, Cornel West, Jamaica Kincaid, Essex Hemphill, Hilton Als, Toni Cade Bambara. Prerequisite: AAS 111 or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 20.

Topic: Race and Love.