English 891BR - S-Blackness&RaceAftrlfeSlavery

This seminar is organized around the question of how Blackness figures into (or should figure into) our study of race in the United States in what Saidiya Hartman calls the afterlife of slavery. We will begin with a historical formulation of that question, and move on to interventions in and re-theorizations of it, particularly in the context of the institutionalization of multiculturalism in the latter twentieth century and contemporary scholarships that make connections between Black studies and questions of Indigeneity and Asianness. Readings may include key texts by W. E. B. Du Bois, Kimberle Crenshaw, Cathy Cohen, Saidiya Hartman, Fred Moten, Hortense Spillers, Frank Wilderson, Sylvia Wynter, and others.

This class is open to English graduate students only.