Women, Gender, Sexuality 393T - S-Writing Love/African Dispora

This course explores how various forms of intimacy and human connection are imagined in contemporary writing of the African Diaspora. From parent-child affections, to heterosexual romance, to queer intimacies, to the closeness between friends, "love" is a central theme in literature and a crucial part of how we define humanity. Focusing on twentieth and twenty-first century texts such as Junot Diaz's This is How you Lose Her, Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter, Ben Okri's The Famished Road, Dee Rees's Pariah, and Toni Morrison's Love, we will consider how various forms of intimacy are written and read in the African Diaspora. We will take up these works alongside key texts from earlier moments in Afrodiasporic literature, as well as theoretical and critical work in Diaspora feminism, queer theory, and affect studies. Reading through these lenses, we will consider several questions: How do processes of Diaspora, including enslavement, colonization, migration, and war shape how love is imagined in Afrodiasporic literature? What do literary affective relationships reveal about cultural notions of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and race? How are intimacy and human connection evoked through various Diasporic modernist, magical realist, and other literary techniques? How are notions of love and intimacy used to invoke transnational connection in Diasporic spoken word and hip-hop?

Course requirements include two short papers, a final paper, and a short presentation. Prior coursework in WGSS, English, African-American Studies, Latino/a Studies, or other related fields will be helpful.