English 395A - S-Poetry/Black FeministThought

From Pauli Murray to Audre Lorde to the contemporary practice of Alexis Pauline Gumbs, many of our most visionary black feminist theorists have also been poets. Taking seriously Lorde's insistence on poetry's thought- and world-building function, this course traces a history of black feminist theorizing that puts poetry at the center in order to ask after how and what poetry allows us to know. Possible reading includes: poetry/theory by Pauli Murray, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Dionne Brand, fahima ife, the Trans Day of Resilience project, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs and criticism by Hortense Spillers, Kevin Quashie, Theri Alice Pickens, and Christina Sharpe. This is a theory class but will ask you to exercise your creative capacities.