AFR 347
Negative Affects in African American Literature
Last Offered Spring 2018
Division II Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed ENGL 346
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Class Details

“My pessimism was stronger than my longing,” wrote Saidiya Hartman in her genre-breaking Lose Your Mother in her search for the afterlife of kinship in the remains of a Ghanaian slave fort. In this course we will discuss a mixture of contradictory “bad” feelings burdening the individual and the collective; for example, how hope and desire compete in Hartman’s statement with habituated disappointment and exhaustion. How do black subjects creatively overcome the racial foreclosure to write and recite violence, rage, refusal, anxiety, depression, idleness, grief, silence, etc.? And, further, how do we make sense of the sorts of affects that become negative when practiced by black subjects, such as love, empathy, and desire? Together, we will explore interventions by critical theorists of blackness, gender, and sexuality including Saidiya Hartman, Darieck Scott, Abdul JanMohamed, Christina Sharpe, Frantz Fanon, Ann Cvetkovich, Heather Love, and Lauren Berlant to assist us in confronting the sometimes perilous terrain of negative expression for black subjects. Primary texts will include work by Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Kara Walker, Jamaica Kincaid, and Richard Wright. This course will be driven by student discussion and collaboration.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 25
Expected: 20
Class#: 4018
Grading: no pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: one 10 pg paper, one 4 pg paper, engaged feedback process, presentations, thoughtful class participation
Prerequisites: a 100-level ENGL course, or a score of 5 on the AP English Literature exam, or a score of 6 or 7 on the Higher Level IB English exam
Enrollment Preferences: none
Distributions: Division II Exploring Diversity Initiative
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
AFR 347 Division II ENGL 346 Division I
Attributes: ENGL Criticism Courses

Class Grid

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