GSWS2200 - Journeys in Black Feminism

This course, Journeys in Black Feminism, is a survey of Black feminist thought and theory, both in the United States and transnationally. The course considers what constitutes Black feminism and womanism, and it allows students to learn about the expansiveness of Black feminist theory. Journeys in Black Feminism is divided into three sections: 1) Black Feminism: What Is It?, 2) Transnational Black Feminism, and 3) New Horizons in Black Feminism. In the first section, we will read fundamentals in Black feminist theory such as the Combahee River Collective’s “The Combahee River Collective Statement” (1977), selections from Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), chapters from bell hooks’ Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), essays from Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider (1984), and selections from Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (1990). In section 2, the transnational section, we will read from Carol Boyce Davies Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (2008), Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem (translated from French) (1986), the introduction and chapter about I, Tituba from Kaiama Glover’s A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being (2020), and selections from Lorraine Leu and Christen Smith’s Black Feminist Constellations: Dialogue and Translation Across the Americas (2023). Finally, in the third section, we will read contemporary Black feminist theory such as the introduction and preface to C. Riley Snorton’s Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (2017), selections from Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (2019), and the introduction to Régine Michelle Jean-Charles’ Looking for Other Worlds: Black Feminism and Haitian Fiction (2022). Ultimately, students should leave this course feeling knowledgeable in the fundamentals of Black feminist theory and thought.