English 305 - Poetry/Black Fem Thought

From Pauli Murray to Audre Lorde to the twenty-first-century 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 and poetics at the center in order to ask after how and what poetry allows us to know. Possible authors include: Pauli Murray, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Dionne Brand, M. NourbeSe Philip, the Trans Day of Resilience project, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Hortense Spillers, Denise Ferreira da Silva, and Christina Sharpe. This is a theory class but will ask you to exercise your creative capacities.