AFRO 597

Fall 2020 All Classes

All Classes

Problems in African-Am Studies

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Credit: 4 hours.

Focused reading and study of special problems in African American Studies.

May be repeated to a maximum of 8 hours. Prerequisite: Graduate standing, AFRO 500 or equivalent, or consent of instructor.

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AFRO 597 class schedule data for fall 2020
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	46593	Online	B	2:00PM -4:50PM	M	n.a.	Jenkins, C	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/24/20-12/09/20 Section Info: Speculative Pessimisms - This course will engage with the literary and cultural movement called Afrofuturism, as well as black speculative fiction more broadly, alongside theories of Afro-Pessimism. Our project will be to consider how these two movements might have both a similarly pessimistic and a similarly imaginative provenance. The Afro-Pessimist position insists that the violent exclusion of black non-being creates the conditions for the existence of the Human, and indeed that civil society’s structuring around anti-blackness, and the position of the black subject vis-a-vis that society, is one of irreconcilable antagonism. How might we understand this analysis as a speculative one—in Jared Sexton’s words, how might we unpack “the rhetorical dimensions of the discourse of Afro-Pessimism [. . .] and the productive theoretical effects of the fiction it creates”? Conversely, how might we consider the increasingly wide reach of the speculative, writ broadly, in 21st century black literature and culture, concomitantly with the evident pessimism about the world, as it exists, that would elicit such imaginative projects? Throughout this semester, we will unpack not only what possibilities thinking Afro-Pessimism and Afrofuturism/the black speculative together might open up for the analysis of 21st century African American literature and culture, but also what we might learn from this juxtaposition about both the potential and the pitfalls of each mode of theorizing contemporary black life. Primary texts and other media will include work by, among others, Jesmyn Ward, Ryan Coogler, N.K. Jemisin, Victor LaValle, Colson Whitehead, and Jordan Peele; secondary readings will include work by scholars including Frank Wilderson, Christina Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman, Calvin Warren, Fred Moten, Terrion Williamson, Hortense Spillers, Kara Keeling, and Jared Sexton. Attendance/participation, short papers, presentation, final seminar paper.