Africana Studies

Images wavered in the sunlit trim of appliances, something always moving, a brightness flying, so much to know in the world. —Don Delillo, Libra

A few cartoons lead to cataclysmic events in Europe. A man’s statement that he “can’t breathe” ricochets across North America. A photograph printed in a newspaper moves a solitary reader. A snapshot posted on the Internet leads to dreams of fanciful places. Memories of a past year haunt us like ghosts. What each of these occurrences has in common is that they all entail the force of images in our lives, whether these images are visual, acoustic, or tactile in nature; made by hand or machine; circulated by word of mouth; or simply imagined. In this seminar, we will consider the role that images play in the lives of people in various settings throughout the world. In delving into terrains at once actual and virtual, we will develop an understanding of how people throughout the world create, use, circulate, and perceive images—and how such efforts tie into ideas and practices of sensory perception, time, memory, affect, imagination, sociality, history, politics, and personal and collective imaginings. Through these engagements, we will reflect on the fundamental human need for images, the complicated politics and ethics of images, aesthetic and cultural sensibilities, dynamics of time and memory, the intricate play between the actual and the imagined, and the circulation of digital images in an age of globalization and social media. We will also consider the spectral, haunting qualities of many imaginal moments in life. Readings are to include a number of writings in anthropology, art history, philosophy, psychology, cultural studies, and critical theory. Images are to be drawn from photographs, films and videos, paintings, sculptures, drawings, street art and graffiti, religion, rituals, tattoos, inscriptions, novels, poems, road signs, advertisements, dreams, fantasies, and any number of fabulations in the worlds in which we live and imagine. The seminar will be held during two class sessions each week during the fall and spring terms. Along with that, students will meet individually with the instructor every other week through the course of each semester to discuss their ongoing academic and creative work. In the fall semester, we will all also meet every other week in an informal group setting to watch films together, discuss student research and writing projects, and engage creatively with images and imaginal thought.

In this course, we will investigate the concept of language ideologies—beliefs and attitudes about language—and their impact on the lived experiences of racial and ethnic groups and other minoritized communities within the United States. Through a series of lectures, discussions, and hands-on projects, students will gain an understanding of how language practices reflect and reinforce social hierarchies, cultural norms, and power dynamics. Special attention will be paid to the meaning accomplished through language use and the informative role of ideologies of language and people in understanding these dynamics. We will delve into diverse language contexts, with a primary focus on the United States, examining case studies to understand how language serves as a site of struggle and resistance. Key linguistic topics will include language attitudes and linguistic discrimination, the politics of race and language, standard language ideologies, the role of language in shaping social and racial identities, language use and its social meaning, and multilingualism and multiculturalism in the United States. Specific examples will include ethnographic case studies of race and language, such as H. Samy Alim’s examination of his own experiences as a Black man or person of color under white gaze (“the white listening subject”); political persona and discourse of US presidential candidates; racialization of Asian-American, Black, and Latinx students in US classroom contexts; language revitalization efforts and identification of the Chickasaw Nation; race, gender, and sexuality performances in RuPaul’s Drag Race; identification practices and language use in indigenous communities such as the “Taino” identity in Puerto Rico. Assessments for this class will involve regular written reflections, a midterm paper, a research proposal, and a final research paper on a topic of the student’s interest related to language use, race, and identity. Core readings for our class will be drawn primarily from US-based, peer-reviewed linguistic journals and foundational texts. All readings will be provided beforehand.

How does a chronic illness affect a person’s orientation to the everyday? What are the social and political forces that underpin life in a homeless shelter? What is the experiential world of a blind person, a musician, a refugee, or a child at play? In an effort to answer these and like-minded questions, anthropologists have become increasingly interested in developing phenomenological accounts of particular lived realities in order to understand—and convey to others—the nuances and underpinnings of such realities in terms that more general social or symbolic analyses cannot achieve. In this context, phenomenology offers an analytic method that works to understand and describe in words phenomena as they appear to the consciousnesses of certain peoples. The phenomena most often in question for anthropologists include the workings of time, perception, selfhood, language, bodies, suffering, and morality as they take form in particular lives within the context of any number of social, linguistic, and political forces. In this course, we will explore phenomenological approaches in anthropology by reading and discussing some of the most significant efforts along these lines. Each student will also try their hand at developing a phenomenological account of a specific social or subjective reality through a combination of ethnographic research, participant observation, and ethnographic writing.

This course follows the transition from late modernist art after World War II to the heterogeneous practices of contemporary art in the 21st century. Attention will be paid to formative artistic movements—such as Pop, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Performance, and Institutional Critique—as well as to how marginalized artists continually challenged the hegemony of the mainstream artworld with political activism along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, and class. The final section of the course will examine current trends, including postcolonial art, digital technologies, Indigenous art, and ecological art in an era of climate change. The course will include a field trip to a New York City museum, where students will select artworks for their own research papers. Other assignments will include visual analysis, a comparative research paper, and a group presentation. Alternative proposals for final projects, such as exhibition designs, are also welcome. One weekly lecture on the history and theory of each topic will prepare students for weekly group conferences involving close reading of primary and secondary sources, visual analysis of artworks, and guided discussion.

Inspired by the work of Katherine Dunham, you will be invited to explore her movement vocabulary, often used in jazz dance, and then find the interconnections between Dunham’s contributions to film and concert stage with the current techniques used in commercial and concert dance, as well as learn vernacular Jazz movement. Open to all levels, this high-energy class inspires fun and freedom of expression through artistry, improvisation, and embellishment of choreography—regardless of skill and dance experience, yet challenging enough for more experienced dancers.  For each meeting, a classic Dunham warm-up will be given, followed by lively, Dunham-inspired jazz progressions and a combo. Join us for a transformative exploration of jazz dance, honoring tradition while embracing innovation!

This course will use physical embodiment as a mode of learning about and understanding various West African cultures. In addition to physical practice, supplementary study materials will be used to explore the breadth, diversity, history, and technique of dances found in West Africa. Traditional and social/contemporary dances from countries such as Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast will be explored. Participation in end-of-semester or year-end showings will provide students with the opportunity to apply studies in a performative context.

This studio practice course introduces students to hip-hop culture through the classic hip-hop styles of dance. Cumulative technical dance training brings to light the ethos of the street-dance culture and how it counteracts and sometimes adopts mainstream media misconceptions. Through the study of classic hip-hop dance styles, students expand their awareness of connections between various dance forms that pre-date hip-hop while exploring the dilemma of belonging, yet standing apart. Through dialogue, students will begin learning about the history of the original dance styles in their communities and then discuss mainstream factors that either helped or harmed the evolution of the community. Occasional guest teachers will offer a class in a club or street style that will help students get a feel for the New York City dance scene of the 1980s, which influenced today’s trends. Students will watch Internet footage to aid them in understanding the similarities and differences between previous trends and today’s social exchanges in dance. Students will receive dance training at a beginner level done to hip-hop music from past to present. If there are intermediate-level dancers, they will be taught at respective levels in order to make advancements in their grasp of vocabulary.

This yearlong course, based on the professor’s new book—Legal and Political Foundations of Capitalism: The End of Laissez Faire?—introduces students to the emerging Law and Political Economy tradition in economics. The course will deal with four interrelated questions: (1) What does economic regulation mean? (2) What is the relationship between institutions, legal ones in particular, and the economy? (3) How does one theoretically analyze the nature of property rights, money, corporations, and power? (4) How does rethinking the relationship between law and the economy challenge conventional ideas about the nature of economic regulation? The course will seek to understand the nature of power and its relationship to institutions, especially legal ones, by considering property rights and money, the business corporation, constitutional political economy, the links between “free markets” and authoritarianism, colonialism and race, and inequality as it intersects across class, race, and gender lines. We will deal with these questions by focusing on the insights of the Original Institutional Economics and American Legal Realists and their relationship to the classical political economy tradition (especially Adam Smith and Karl Marx). The Law and Political Economy framework will be contrasted with the insights of New Institutional Economics, with the latter’s basis in neoclassical economics. Core questions that will be addressed include: What is laissez faire, and does legal-economic history show any proof of its existence? What is assumed when dueling perspectives advocate “more” or “less” government intervention; and are these, in fact, false binaries that distract from core questions of public policy and key challenges such as climate instability, growing inequality, and threats to democracy? No prior background in economics is required.

This course examines the intersection of law, environmental policy, and justice, focusing on the legal frameworks that shape the right to a clean and healthy environment—particularly for historically marginalized communities. The first part of the course explores urban environmental-justice issues, including the history of waste management, housing policy, food justice, access to green spaces, and the legacy of redlining and its ongoing effects on access to resources in urban areas. Students will also address infrastructure challenges and pollution in urban settings, as well as the social and legal dimensions of environmental inequities in cities. In the second half of the course, students will turn to more traditional environmental-justice topics, including the impacts of hazardous and nuclear waste, industrial pollution, energy generation, mining, agriculture, and the long-term effects of environmental disasters. Special attention will be paid to the environmental and legal challenges facing Native American communities, particularly in relation to mining and nuclear waste disposal. Through a study of key environmental legislation—including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), alongside relevant federal and state case law—students will critically assess how environmental laws and policies have shaped the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens, particularly in relation to marginalized communities. As part of the course, students will work on a conference project focused on either an environmental-justice neighborhood in a US city or a historic environmental-justice case study and participate in field trips to industrial and polluted communities in New York City, which will provide firsthand insight into the legal, social, and environmental challenges that these communities face. By the end of the course, students will gain a comprehensive understanding of how environmental law—through both statutes and case law—has addressed disparities and how legal tools can be used to promote more equitable environmental outcomes.

The founders of the Négritude movement saw a direct line between how we use words and how we shape the world. Like the Black nationalists of the 1960s and ’70s, who championed Black power and informed the world that “Black is beautiful,” these artists and intellectuals from French colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and South America who met in Paris in the 1930s appropriated the French word nègre and developed a poetics to combat colonialism and racism. They were both poets and politicians: The poet Léopold Senghor became the first president of Senegal, while the Martinician poet and playwright Aimé Césaire became a member of the French National Assembly. In this course, we will study the Négritude movement as a test case for the notion that poetry can serve as a form of social and political action. To better understand where the founders of the Négritude movement were coming from, we will begin our study with an introduction to the history of French colonialism and France’s participation in the triangular slave trade. Using historical documents, we will look at the modern development of the concept of race at a time when cultural support for the slave trade was waning. Some of the themes that we will explore are colonialism and modernism, gender politics, Créolité, and debates around the legacy of Négritude. Readings will include works by Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Césaire, Léopold Senghor, Léon Damas, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paulette Nardal, Jane Nardal, Jean Barnabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant, Franz Fanon, and Maryse Condé.

This course will offer a systematic review of French grammar and is designed to strengthen and deepen students’ mastery of grammatical structures and vocabulary. Students will also begin to use linguistic concepts as tools for developing their analytic writing. We will study a series of scenes from francophone literature from its origins to today. From the 11th-century Chanson de Rolanditalic and 12th-century lais and fables of Marie de France to contemporary works by Aimé Césaire, Aminata Sow-Fall, and Annie Ernaux, we will explore what it is about literary scenes that differs from those created in other media and what happens when we encounter them as part of a class rather than on our own. Readings may also include letters by Marie de Rabutin-Chantal (Madame de Sévigné), excerpts from novels by Madame de La Fayette or Gustave Flaubert, and poetry by Léon-Gontran Damas. Where possible, our discussion will include points of comparison with scenes in visual media, such as theatre and photography. The Intermediate I and II courses in French are specially designed to help prepare students for studying in Paris with Sarah Lawrence College during their junior year.

In this yearlong seminar, we will begin by examining competing paradigms and approaches to understanding “development” and the “Third World.” We will set the stage by answering the question: What did the world look like 500 years ago? The purpose of this part of the course is to acquaint us with and to analyze the historical origins and evolution of a world political economy of which the "Third World" is an intrinsic component. We will thus study the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the rise of merchant and finance capital, and the colonization of the world by European powers. We will analyze case studies of colonial "development" to understand the evolving meaning of this term. These case studies will help us assess the varied legacies of colonialism apparent in the emergence of new nations through the fitful and uneven process of decolonization that followed. The next part of the course will look at the United Nations and the role that some of its associated institutions have played in the post-World War II global political economy, one marked by persistent and intensifying socioeconomic inequalities as well as frequent outbreaks of political violence across the globe. By examining the development institutions that have emerged and evolved since 1945, we will attempt to unravel the paradoxes of development in different eras. We will deconstruct the measures of development through a thematic exploration of population, resource use, poverty, access to food, the environment, agricultural productivity, and different development strategies adopted by Third World nation-states. We will then examine globalization and its relation to emergent international institutions and their policies; for example, the IMF, World Bank, AIIB, and WTO. We will then turn to contemporary development debates and controversies that increasingly find space in the headlines—widespread land grabbing by sovereign wealth funds, China, and hedge funds; the “global food crisis”; epidemics and public-health challenges; and the perils of climate change. Throughout the course, our investigations of international institutions, transnational corporations, the role of the state, and civil society will provide the backdrop for the final focus of the class: the emergence of regional coalitions for self-reliance, environmental and social justice, and sustainable development. Our analysis of development in practice will draw upon case studies primarily from Africa but also from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the United States. Conference work will be closely integrated with the themes of the course, with a two-stage substantive research project beginning in the fall semester and completed in the spring. Project presentations will incorporate a range of formats, from traditional papers to multimedia visual productions. Smaller creative projects are also a component of the course, including podcasts, videos, art, music, and other forms. Where possible and feasible, students will be encouraged to do primary research during fall study days and winter and spring breaks. Some experience in the social sciences is desired but not required.

Why this course and speaker series/community conversations now? The rise of the New Right is a critically important phenomenon of our time, shaping politics, policies, practices, and daily life for everyone. The insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is only one egregious expression of long-term ideas and actions by a newly emboldened collective of right-wing ideologues. The violent challenges to the realities of a racially and ethnically diverse America is not a surprise. Nor is the normalization of White Power politics and ideas within mainstream politics and parties. The varied nature of the New Right’s participants—their ideologies, grievances, and goals—requires deep analysis of their historical roots, as well as their contemporary manifestations. The wide range of platforms and spaces for communicating hate, lies, and calls for violence against perceived enemies require their own responses, including the creation of platforms and spaces that offer analysis and alternatives. Seriously engaging the New Right, attempting to offer explanations for its rise, is key to challenging the authoritarian drift in our current political moment and its uncertain evolution and future. To do so requires our attention. It also requires a transdisciplinary approach, something inherent to our College and to geography as a discipline, be it political, economic, cultural, social, urban, historical, or environmental geography. The goal of this seminar, one that is accompanied by a planned facilitated speaker series and community conversations, is to build on work in geography and beyond and engage a wide array of thinkers from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, institutions, and organizations. In addition to teaching the course itself, my hope is that it can be a vehicle to engage our broader communities—at the College and in our region, as well as by reaching out to our widely dispersed, multigenerational alumni. Pairing the course with a subset of facilitated/moderated speaker series, live-streamed in collaboration with our Alumni Office, offers the chance to bring these classroom conversations and contemporary and pressing course topics, grounded in diverse readings and student engagement, to a much wider audience and multiple communities. In this class, we will seek to understand the origins and rise of the New Right in the United States and elsewhere as it has taken shape in the latter half of the 20th century to the present. We will seek to identify the origins of the New Right and what defines it, explore the varied geographies of the movement and its numerous strands, and identify the constituents of the contemporary right coalition. In addition, we will explore the actors and institutions that have played a role in the expansion of the New Right (e.g., courts, state and local governments, Tea Party, conservative think tanks, lawyers, media platforms, evangelical Christians, militias) and the issues that motivate the movement (e.g., anticommunism, immigration, environment, white supremacy/nationalism, voter suppression, neoliberal economic policies, antiglobalization, free speech). This is a reading-intensive, discussion-oriented, open, large seminar in which we will survey a broad sweep of the recent literature on the New Right. While the class focuses most specifically on the US context, conference papers based on international/comparative case studies are welcome. Students will be required to attend all associated talk and film viewings; write weekly essays and engage colleagues in conversation online the night before seminar; and write two short research papers that link the themes of the class with their own interests, creative products, research agenda, and/or political engagement. Students will also do two associated creative projects/expressions. Transdisciplinary collaborative activities across the College and community are encouraged. Film, performance, written commentary, podcasts, workshops, and other forms of action can provide additional outlets for student creative projects and engagement.

Where does the food we eat come from? Why do some people have enough food to eat and others do not? Are there too many people for the world to feed? Who controls the world’s food? Will global food prices continue their recent rapid rise; and, if so, what will be the consequences? What are the environmental impacts of our food production systems? How do answers to these questions differ by place or by the person asking the question? How have they changed over time? This course will explore the following fundamental issue: the relationship between development and the environment—focusing, in particular, on agriculture and the production and consumption of food. The questions above often hinge on the contentious debate concerning population, natural resources, and the environment. Thus, we will begin by critically assessing the fundamental ideological positions and philosophical paradigms of “modernization,” as well as critical counterpoints that lie at the heart of this debate. Within this context of competing sets of philosophical assumptions concerning the population-resource debate, we will investigate the concept of “poverty” and the making of the Third World, access to food, hunger, grain production and food aid, agricultural productivity (the Green and Gene revolutions), biofuels, the role of transnational corporations (TNCs), the international division of labor, migration, globalization and global commodity chains, and the different strategies adopted by nation-states to “‘develop” natural resources and agricultural production. Through a historical investigation of environmental change and the biogeography of plant domestication and dispersal, we will look at the creation of indigenous, subsistence, peasant, plantation, collective, and commercial forms of agriculture. We will analyze the physical environment and ecology that help shape but rarely determine the organization of resource use and agriculture. Rather, through the dialectical rise of various political-economic systems such as feudalism, slavery, mercantilism, colonialism, capitalism, and socialism, we will study how humans have transformed the world’s environments. We will follow with studies of specific issues: technological change in food production; commercialization and industrialization of agriculture and the decline of the family farm; food and public health, culture, and family; land grabbing and food security; the role of markets and transnational corporations in transforming the environment; and the global environmental changes stemming from modern agriculture, dams, deforestation, grassland destruction, desertification, biodiversity loss, and the interrelationship with climate change. Case studies of particular regions and issues will be drawn from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the United States. The final part of the course examines the restructuring of the global economy and its relation to emergent international laws and institutions regulating trade, the environment, agriculture, resource-extraction treaties, the changing role of the state, and competing conceptualizations of territoriality and control. We will end with discussions of emergent local, regional, and transnational coalitions for food self-reliance and food sovereignty, alternative and community-supported agriculture, community-based resource-management systems, sustainable development, and grassroots movements for social and environmental justice. Films, multimedia materials, and distinguished-guest lectures will be interspersed throughout the course. One farm/factory field trip is possible if funding/timing permits. The lecture participants may also take a leading role in a campus-wide event on “the climate crisis, food, and hunger,” tentatively planned for spring. Please mark your calendars when the dates are announced, as attendance for all of the above is required. Attendance and participation are also required at special guest lectures and film viewings in the Social Science Colloquium Series approximately once per month. The Web Board is an important part of the course. Regular required postings of short essays will be made here, as well as follow-up commentaries with your colleagues. There will be occasional short, in-class essays during the semester and a final exam at the end. Group conferences will focus on in-depth analysis of certain course topics and will include short prepared papers for debates, the debates themselves, and small-group discussions. You will prepare a poster project on a topic of your choice, related to the course, which will be presented at the end of the semester in group conference, as well as in a potential public session.

How does an individual’s gender expression determine how s/he/they receive health care in Africa? In what ways does gender influence who provides health care, the kind of care that they offer, or the social determinants of peoples’ health? In the 19th, 20th and early-21st centuries, African citizens, refugees, and internally displaced persons have had to cope with a range of health care challenges. These include: high levels of disability as a result of car accidents and work-related injuries; disruptions to health care services and food provision, stemming from war or political unrest; lack of supplies and access to quality care, resulting from neoliberal economic policies; and, most recently, the challenges of food insecurity due to seasonal locust infestations. These concerns paint a bleak picture of the status of health and health care provision in Africa. Epidemics like ebola and cholera complicate conditions for people seeking to improve the quality of their health. In addition, pandemics like HIV/AIDS and now COVID-19 have transformed demographics and gender relations in both predictable and unexpected ways. Despite these challenges, millions of African men, women, and children find ways to survive and respond creatively in order to address their needs for health and well-being. This class is organized around the understanding that the idea of “good health” is a useful critical lens through which to analyze gender-related questions. How do women, men, and LGBTQ+ individuals organize, navigate, and seek care in order to attain good health? What historical, political, and economic factors influence the provision of quality health care? How have African citizens, governments, faith communities, activists, and indigenous healers responded to the challenges associated with disease and the goal of maintaining good health? Because the African continent is massive and every country is complex and diverse, this class will use case studies from countries such as Rwanda, South Africa, Nigeria, Tunisia, Ethiopia, and Kenya to answer these questions. In addition, students will be able to choose other African countries to study in depth in order to gain as broad a picture as possible of this complex and important topic. While we will primarily focus our inquiries by using historical works, we will actively monitor innovations in African countries resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic with the goal of developing a deeper understanding of what it takes to maintain a sense of “good health” in Africa.

Close your eyes and listen. The human experience is highly sonic. Along with touch, hearing is among the most personal of our bodily senses. Now, you may hear the sound of passing cars, a lawnmower outside, or the murmur of voices from the hallway. But does race have a sound? What does Jim Crow sound like? Are there sonic dimensions to Black Power? Can popular music propel social movements, or can we hear social change? This lecture guides students through a survey of color and sound. We will explore historical case studies where concepts of race and recorded music collide. Through a careful analysis of a variety of cultural texts—including memoirs from specific artists and critical reviews of albums—and a consideration of contextual historical events and phenomena, students will consider how popular culture and music have shaped concepts of race and ethnicity over the 20th century.

“But if you ask me what offices they may fill, I reply—any. I do not care what case you put; let them be sea-captains, if you will,” Margaret Fuller wrote in Woman in the Nineteenth Century in 1845. Not 10 years later, Fanny Fern’s autobiographical protagonist tells her daughter, when asked if she would write books when a woman, “God forbid,” because “no happy woman ever writes.” In this seminar, we will discuss what US women writers imagined they could be and why they wrote (happy or not). We will read both major and forgotten works of literary activism from women writers of the 19th and early-20th centuries, focusing around issues of gender and gender convention, race, racial prejudice and enslavement, immigration, migration and national identity, class and elitism, sex and sexuality. Course readings will mainly be primary sources, coupled with historical essays to help contextualize them. Emphasis will be placed on choosing women writers outside of the mainstream, who actively worked with their writing to change the status quo—to “reconstruct” womanhood.

Can the biography of Black leaders replace the history of African Americans? Or does biography raise of the problem of the "Great Man" theory of history? In terms of history, what is gained and what is lost in the biographical approach? In this lecture, students will consider this question as they examine the recent award-winning biographies of Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and so forth. Students will look at the lives of several artists and writers to explore different definitions of leadership. The weekly readings will be complemented by weekly film screenings, placing Black leadership in historical context.

For decades, historians sought the origins of Jim Crow in the South; however, Jim Crow was born on the stage and in the streets of places like New York City. Thus, recent historiography focuses serious attention on the rise of the Jim Crow North, beginning with northern slavery and the Atlantic Slave Trade in important port cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. Some historians think that interrogating those neglected northern roots will fill serious gaps in our knowledge of how racial oppression took shape in American democracy.

Marches, walkouts, and occupations roiled the campus of San Francisco State University in the fall of 1968. Among the organizers’ demands was the institution of the first Black studies department in the country. More than 50 years later, Black studies has both reshaped existing disciplines and formed departments in colleges across the nation. How might returning to this history reshape our understanding of Black studies, of student movements, of American universities, and of history more generally? This interdisciplinary course seeks to answer these and more questions by studying the archival documents on Black studies at Sarah Lawrence alongside history, literature, film, and theory. In this course, students will participate in a traditional seminar and will spend one session a week in the campus archives. The latter will both engage students in rigorous archival research and result in a conference project helping to narrate the understudied history of Black studies at Sarah Lawrence. Authors and filmmakers may include W. E. B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, Zadie Smith, Spike Lee, Robin Kelley, and more.

The ideas of John Locke were deeply influential to the development of American government and society. But while Locke may have helped popularize the concept of representative democracy, serving as a North Star for the framers of the US Constitution, he also authored white-supremacist texts that reaffirmed a body of knowledge known today as “race science,” as well as a series of colonial laws that solidified African American slavery in the New World. Such “slave laws” retained their power well after the American Revolution. This lecture traces key currents of race ideology and the belief in white superiority and Black inferiority within the bedrock of the American political landscape. Through a study of primary source documents, guided by an interdisciplinary array of scholarly readings, students will be exposed to the ways in which white-supremacist thought has provided an intellectual foundation supporting a system of white wealth, power, and privilege. Students will explore how racist ideas have shaped crucial concepts related to American democracy.

“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge,” according to F. Scott Fitzgerald, “is always the city seen for the first time, in its first promise of all the mystery and the beauty of the world.” While poetic, this romantic rendering, however, eludes the social struggle that pervades New York City’s history. Conversely, the City seen on the silver screen can bring its contradictions into sharp focus. From this perspective, New York City appears as a complicated metropolis, replete with power dynamics along lines of race, gender, and sexuality. In this lecture, students will explore ways in which cinematic representations of New York City map onto distinct permutations and arcs in the City’s history. Each week, we will locate a specific film within a web of historical meaning. This is not a film-studies class, per se; rather, using cinema as a point of departure, we will explore the rich cultural history surrounding specific films. We will think about the connections between films and public policy, poetry, journalism, fine art, popular music, and more. Students will learn to derive historical insights through the analysis of film. Movies like Dog Day Afternoon (1975), for example, signal the rise of mass incarceration and the militarization of NYPD units; but the film also gives expression to the emerging LGBTQ movement and transgender subjectivity. Similarly, lesser-known gems, such as Baby Face (1933), can help illustrate the complex social and cultural terrain through which some women achieved power and independence in Depression-era New York.

Within the last two decades, there has been an exponential increase in mainstream discussions of LGBTQ issues. For many within the LGBTQ community, however, these mainstream images bring with them the sense that to be gay is to be white. Although a few exceptions exist, minorities are still left asking: Where are all the black, brown, and yellow faces? This course addresses this question, alongside another equally important one: How do black, brown, and yellow gays and lesbians experience their sexualities in and apart from these mainstream images? Focusing on 21st-century texts (read broadly to include, but not limited to, literature, poetry, nonfiction, and film), we will work toward a deeper understanding of what it means to be queer and a racial minority. In so doing, we will work toward a better understanding of what it means to belong to this (queer) nation.

This is an introductory queer and feminist studies course that centers the intellectual work of theorists within the traditions known as Black Feminism and Queer of Color Critique with the US academy. Each week, we will take up a key debate or concern within the interdisciplinary field of women, gender, and sexuality studies, pairing influential works from the past alongside contemporary scholarship. We’ll visit work by scholars including, but not limited to, Sara Ahmed, Gloria Anzaldúa, Joshua Chambers-Letson, Barbara Christian, Cathy Cohen, the Combahee Collective, Roderick Ferguson, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Saidiya Hartman, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Vivian Huang, E. Johnson Patrick, Audre Lorde, Cherríe Moraga, José Muñoz Esteban, Jennifer Nash, C. Snorton Riley, Hortense Spillers, and Patricia Williams. Some topics will include survival, loss, care, “the academy,” archives, identity politics, respectability, and language. Conference projects will be based on archival research at the Sarah Lawrence College Archives. Students will meet every two weeks at the SLC library in one of four conference groups organized around overarching topics of concern and debate from the class, including “identity and intersectionality,” “institutionality and the academy,” “violence, resistance, and care,” and “emotion.” Alongside individual seminar projects, these four research groups will each produce a co-authored archival “finding aid,” a guide for future scholars who visit the SLC Archives.

Afro-Latin American subjects have had a long tradition of employing literature, newspapers, and films to participate in national and international debates, such as the push for a republic in Brazil and progress in the Dominican Republic at the end of the 19th century, the integration and celebration of Afrodescendent culture in Puerto Rico in the 1930s, and the implementation of Afrodescendent-conscious initiatives in contemporary Colombian society. While these outlets certainly served as a vehicle to disseminate their thoughts on a variety of topics, their materiality also attested to the undeniable existence and agency of these subjects in such nations. In this course, we will explore and evaluate cultural artifacts that have impacted intellectual and artistic discourses in Latin American societies from the 19th century to today. Through poems, short stories, novels, newspaper articles, and films by cultural thinkers including Maria Firmina dos Reis, Salomé Ureña, Manuel Zapata Olivella, Victoria Santa Cruz, and Marie Vieux-Chauvet, we will delve into the visions that these thinkers had for themselves and their respective societies. We will critically discuss their artistic and political achievements at both local and international levels to better situate their epistemology in the tradition of the African diaspora. Students will learn the principles of literary analysis and theory and employ them in written assignments and class discussions. We will ground our analysis of these cultural artifacts in their respective sociopolitical contexts. Another important aspect of this course is to facilitate students’ transition to college life. As a result, we will meet every other week in group conference to discuss topics related to this transition. The other weeks, students will meet individually with the professor to work on their conference projects. This course will be taught entirely in English.

Within the last two decades, there has been an exponential increase in mainstream discussions of LGBTQ issues. For many within the LGBTQ community, however, these mainstream images bring with them the sense that to be gay is to be white. Although a few exceptions exist, minorities are still left asking: Where are all the black, brown, and yellow faces? This course addresses this question, alongside another equally important one: How do black, brown, and yellow gays and lesbians experience their sexualities in and apart from these mainstream images? Focusing on 21st-century texts (read broadly to include, but not limited to, literature, poetry, nonfiction, and film), we will work toward a deeper understanding of what it means to be queer and a racial minority. In so doing, we will work toward a better understanding of what it means to belong to this (queer) nation.

What can narratives of Blackness tell us about (1) who counts as Black and (2) the ideologies of the times in which these narratives are offered? Using this question as our guiding light, in this course we will interrogate films, fiction, and nonfiction to explore how Blackness has been attached to certain bodies at important moments in history and in order to promote specific ideologies. Beginning with Enlightenment-era Europe (17th and 18th century) and concluding in the 21st century, we analyze how Blackness has come to serve as both a label and an identity for particular groups of people and a means for establishing and reaffirming social boundaries—paying particular attention to issues of gender and sexuality. At every turn, we will work to understand how narratives of Blackness impact us all.

Marches, walkouts, and occupations roiled the campus of San Francisco State University in the fall of 1968. Among the organizers’ demands was the institution of the first Black studies department in the country. More than 50 years later, Black studies has both reshaped existing disciplines and formed departments in colleges across the nation. How might returning to this history reshape our understanding of Black studies, of student movements, of American universities, and of history more generally? This interdisciplinary course seeks to answer these and more questions by studying the archival documents on Black studies at Sarah Lawrence alongside history, literature, film, and theory. In this course, students will participate in a traditional seminar and will spend one session a week in the campus archives. The latter will both engage students in rigorous archival research and result in a conference project helping to narrate the understudied history of Black Studies at Sarah Lawrence. Authors and filmmakers may include W. E. B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, Zadie Smith, Spike Lee, Robin Kelley, and more.

James Baldwin is one of the most incisive and astute writers that the world has ever known. Black, queer, and fundamentally American, Baldwin wrote about the intersections and pressures of his various identities, his role as a writer, and his relationship to the nation with the force and energy of a man disappointed with the realities of what he saw but hopeful of the potential that he felt remained. This course explores Baldwin’s own impressive body of work (fictional and otherwise) alongside the lasting impact that he has had on the literary, social, and political world in his wake.

This course in no way attempts comprehensive coverage of African American literature after 1945. Rather, we will read select texts published between 1945 and the present to explore how African American worldviews have shifted and/or remained consistent since the end of World War II. Particular attention will be paid to how African Americans use specific components of fiction (e.g., character, narrative, and setting) with the express purpose of discovering what fiction offers African Americans longing to make sense of their place in the world. Ultimately, while we will approach each piece as a snapshot of the nation, our discussions will be rooted in a recognition of the present as a conversation with the past.

The Council on Foreign Relations has succinctly noted: “The future is African.” This course offers a comprehensive introduction to international politics from the perspective of African states and societies. We will consider how states on the continent are shifting global politics from economic relations and consumer trends to humanitarian interventions and international justice. We will begin our exploration by considering the dramatic changes that African societies have experienced from colonialism to decolonization and the present. We will engage key questions regarding postcolonial governance and popular demands for democracy. How have Africans engaged their governments to call for reform or revolution? Where has this led to effective democracies? Why have some states experienced civil wars? What role have external influences, from Western aid to the expansion of Chinese influence, played on the continent? We will consider the demands of protesters and the causes for rebellion and seek to understand both pressure for and resistance to reform. At the end of the fall semester, students will simulate the US President’s National Security Council to debate a US response to an imagined political crisis on the African continent. In the second semester, we will consider cases of humanitarian crises and conflict. What are the appropriate responses to widespread human-rights violations as they are occurring? Are there cases in which military intervention is warranted? If so, who should intervene? What else can be done? Once the violence has subsided, what actions should the international community take to support peace and justice? We will explore critical ethical, legal, and political questions by considering key cases of intervention and nonintervention, including Rwanda, Darfur, and Libya. Finally, we will evaluate different pathways in pursuing truth, justice, and reconciliation in the aftermath of gross violations of human rights. Cases include the domestic processes established by South Africa’s pioneering Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Rwanda’s Gacaca, as well as the ongoing work of the International Criminal Court. Toward the end of the second semester, students will conduct a UN Security Council simulation to debate possible actions in a simulated humanitarian crisis. Finally, we will end the academic year with an exploration of what an “African future” will mean not just for Africans but also for societies across the globe. During the year, students will engage ideas, readings, and debates in class conversations, in short posts to the class, and in papers. Students will also conduct research projects both on their own and with a partner.

There was a reason why Edmund Burke famously called the press “The Fourth Estate” of government during a debate in Parliament in 1787 and why it remains true. For all its self-proclaimed and often real independence, the press is as much a part of the power systems that run society, politics, and the economy as the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary; political and social organizations; the police; churches; and corporations. With that in mind, this course will examine the role of the press (now newspapers, radio, TV, and an endless array of digital outlets) in the creation and perpetuation of anti-Black racism in the United States. Even with the most well-meaning attempts to stay above the fray, the media is not merely a passive pipeline for events and data. They construct the news and, in doing so, are as much as part of the institutions of racism as any other group with power and privilege in a racist society. How do the media reflect the social, economic, and political currents of the day; and how, in turn, do the media influence them? This is not a practicum class in journalism, but we will study and ask questions about journalistic practices, institutions, and language structure to see how the language and agenda of racism were reflected in journalism. Do journalists, in turn, perpetuate that language and, in fact, foster it either wittingly or passively? Do the media help sustain overt and systemic racism, even as many cover, with obvious approval, things like the civil-rights movement of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter movement of today? Readings for this class will include large parts of two books: The History of White People, by Nell Irwin Painter, and White by Law, by Ian Haney Lopez—but will primarily be original news and opinion content from the late 19th century until today. Students should be prepared to consume media coverage every day—mainstream and otherwise and from left, center, and right—and bring examples to class on a weekly basis to discuss with the group. Class participation is vital in this class, along with an eagerness to read widely and to do research. There will be two short essays and, of course, the mandatory conference project.

We have time, energy, questions, and few responsibilities. We want to push the envelope, resist compromise, lead revolutions, and turn the world upside down. Because we do not yet know quite how to be, we have not settled and will not let the dust settle around us. —Karlin & Borofsky, 2003

Many traditional psychological theories of development posit a brief transition from adolescence to adulthood; however, many people moving into their 20s experience anything but a brief transition to “feeling like an adult,” pondering questions such as: How many SLC alums can live in a Brooklyn sublet? What will I do when I finish the Peace Corps next year? In this course, we will explore the psychological literature concerning emerging adulthood, the period from the late teens through the 20s. We will examine this period of life from a unified biopsychosocial and intersectional perspective.

In public discourse, we are bombarded with assertions of the newly “global” nature of the contemporary world. This assertion assumes that former stable categories of personhood, ideational systems, nation, identity, and space are now fragmented and transcended by intensified travel, digital technology, and cross-cultural contact. This seminar is based on the premise that people have traveled throughout history; current global moves are but the most recent manifestation of a phenomenon that has historically occurred in many forms and places. This long(er) view of mobility will allow us to rethink and reexamine not only our notions of travel but their shifting connotations and significance across time and space. We will explore how supposed stable categories—such as citizen, refugee, nation, and commodity—are constructed and consider several theoretical approaches that help us make sense of these categorizations, the processes accompanying their normalization and dissemination, and their underlying assumptions. Our questions will include: What are the political, navigational, and epistemological foundations that go into mapmaking and schemas of classification? How do nomads change into settled city dwellers or wageworkers? How does time become disciplined? How does travel change into tourism? How do commodities travel and acquire meaning? What is the relationship between legal and illicit moves? How do technologies of violence, such as weapons and drugs, circulate? What is the meaning of their circulation in different contexts? How do modern technologies enable time/space compression? What are the shifting logics of globalization? What is their relationship to our notions and constructions of authenticity, subjectivity, and identity? During the fall semester, we will begin by developing an analytical approach toward our topic (which we will continue to develop throughout the year). We will then consider the implications of classification, categorization, and mapping. For the remainder of the semester, we will follow the travel(s) of ideas, commodities, and people. In the process, we will begin to think about questions of time/space compression. In the spring, we will return to some of the themes of the fall semester but examine them in a different context and through a different lens. Among our concerns in the spring semester will be issues of fusion and hybridization in cultural practices regarding people and things (e.g., food, music, romance, families); shifting places (e.g., borders, travel, and tourism); time/space compression through new technologies of travel and communication; and drugs, terror, violence, and poverty. As our sources, we will rely primarily on interdisciplinary analytical writings but will also include travel narratives, literature, and films.

In the 1600s, political leaders in Salem, Massachusetts, infamously executed more than 25 members accused of witchcraft. Almost 400 years later, the “satanic panic” swept across America, as parents feared for the spiritual well-being of their children. More recently, protestors in the 2017 Women’s March brandished signs reading, “We are the daughters of the witches you could not burn.” What do these disparate examples have in common? This seminar will study the “witch” as a shared cultural symbol. We will explore why the witch emerges into the American cultural zeitgeist at particular moments in history and what their emergence (and public reception) tells us about the cultural and sociopolitical contexts of our time. We will draw upon the works of theorists like Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Emile Durkheim, Sylvia Federici, and Stanley Cohen to guide our discussions and explore the capitalist, hegemonic, and gendered meanings of the witch. In the latter half of the semester, students will explore contemporary literature within the sociology of culture, as well as the sociology of social movements, to understand how the witch has been simultaneously co-opted and used as a figurehead of collective resistance to these very same systems. Throughout these conversations, we will also discuss the ways in which the witch has been strategically racialized, consequently villainizing women of color and misrepresenting indigenous practices such as Voodoo or Santería. For conference, students may unpack a particular moment in history when magic or witchcraft emerged in the public discourse. Alternatively, students may explore how the witch—or another shared cultural archetype—has been used to express group identity during moments of resistance. Finally, students are encouraged to think about these topics in non-American contexts, if they so choose.

Toni Morrison once wrote, “If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.” She referred to the interior life of her ancestors as being a large (perhaps the largest?) charge that she, as an author, faced; the characters she created—in part from pictures, in part from the act of imagination—yielded “a kind of truth.” We are experiencing a new age of Black artists and activists, charging the world to heed their truths; as writers, we’ll delve into the fullness of their experiences. Nana Ama Adjei-Brenyah brings magical realism to the doorstep of our daily lives; Edward P. Jones establishes setting as character, garnering comparisons to James Joyce. Ta-Nehisi Coates posits large questions about writing and Black identity, while Jocelyn Nicole Johnson uses satire to address themes of class and culture; and both Danielle Evans and Jamel Brinkley write in a charged realist tradition that is RIEBY (my new acronym: right in everybody’s back yard!). Class readings will include essays on craft and technique, as well as short stories and memoir. This workshop will also have at its heart the discussion of student manuscripts and the development of constructive criticism. Talking about race, talking about craft, and talking about our own fiction should occur in an environment where everyone feels valued and supported. The road may be bumpy at times—but how else to get to that truth that Toni Morrison so prized?

This course is for students interested in the relationship between nonfiction and reality; that is, how nonfiction writers—that’s us—construct reality on the page rather than assume its coherence. Each week, in class, we will discuss nonfiction by writers like Ursula Le Guin and Samuel Delany, alongside a wide array of writers who trouble the distinction of what we consider possible. Our aim in reading as writers will be in metabolizing the formal strategies of language situated across “genres” in order to make something new through short exercises and longer workshops. Likely writers we will read include Jami Lin Nakamura, Saidiya Hartman, Tanya Tagaq, and Fernanda Melchor, among others. We will pay special attention to the relationship between difference and truth across a range of perspectives, making difficulty our focus and vantage point.

In addition to being the title of Michael Clune’s memoir or a theory in the hands of McKenzie Wark, video games have now invaded social space—and, therefore, our literary imaginations—in a way that would have been unthinkable 30 years ago. And yet, how do we write about games? About the experience both of playing these aesthetic objects and living in an arguably gamified world with the same intensity, curiosity, and rigor that we might otherwise bring to any centuries-old ekphrastic attempt? In this course, we will query the limits, techniques, and new forms of nonfiction writing made possible through video games, taking the anthology Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games as a springboard for our own experiments through short exercises and workshop. We will focus on the interplay between social position and form where, rather than an escape, video games pose new questions of difficulty in prose and in life. No experience playing video games will be required, though this will certainly not hurt; smaller indie games may be used as examples.

The Iowa Writers Workshop was founded by Wilbur Schramm in 1936. Schramm went on to a many-faceted career, which included writing a postwar manual for the Army, called The Nature of Psychological Warfare. He saw the writing workshop as a way to train “the kind of young persons who can become the kind of writers we need” in a future framed by the dominance of the United States. In much American poetry, the consequences of this project of domination are unseen. As is often not true elsewhere, the prison is seen (or unseen) from the point of view of the free. This course looks for the traces of this project of domination and asks what might happen for writers when the domination is seen from the point of view of the dominated and the free from the point of view of the prison. Why are censorship and incarceration such central facts of what it’s meant to be a poet elsewhere? Why hasn’t that been true in the United States? How does Archibald MacLeish’s “a poem should not mean but be” or T. S. Eliot’s “like a patient etherized upon a table” sound beside Adam Wazyk’s “how many times must one wake you up before you recognize your epoch?” or Suzanne Césaire’s surrealism as a tool to recover stolen power, “purified of colonial stupidities”? What is real freedom? What are its ways? What might the poetry be that comes from it? Our text will be an anthology and workbook, The Most Beautiful Sea: Poems & Pathways Toward Poems, including the work of Nas, Elizabeth Bishop, Refaat Alareer, Nazim Hikmet, Marie Howe, Joshua Bennett, Lucille Clifton, Nipsey Hussle, Mahmoud Darwish, Dionne Brand, and the greatest of all poets: Anonymous. You’ll be asked to do in-class writing exercises, write letters with a partner, and bring drafts to conference. Each term, you’ll be required to make an anthology and a chapbook. In the words of Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, we’ll look together for “The most beautiful sea” that “hasn’t been crossed yet”—aka “the most beautiful words I wanted to tell you/I haven’t said yet.”