Creative projects, including nonthesis research, that are supervised on an individual basis and which fall outside the scope of formal courses.

Creative projects, including nonthesis research, that are supervised on an individual basis and which fall outside the scope of formal courses.

This course examines the social, political, and economic history of African American women in the United States from slavery to the present. Using secondary and primary sources along with film and discussion, we will explore the varied lived experiences of African American women paying special attention to the themes of family, sexuality, labor, politics, and religion. We will examine how the simultaneity of racial and sexual oppression influence African American women’s actions. Additionally, we will consider dominant images of African American women in a historical context. While the course is primarily discussion in format, the professor will lecture when necessary. As the course is writing-intensive, papers of various lengths constitute the bulk of student assessment.

This course explains how narrow, “black and white,” ways of thinking limit our understanding of the diverse expressions of human sexuality. The course title’s double meaning also references the various ways that sexuality is socially constructed in relation to race. For example, we will explore how stereotypical beliefs about the sexuality of people of African descent persist in the United States and have been legitimized historically by various cultural discourses, social institutions, and academic fields. Course assignments will require us to rethink and challenge what we understand as “sexuality” and consider its many influences like race, gender, class that shape our emotions, needs, desires, relationships, representations, practices, and public policies. An aim of this course is to begin to make sense of the long, entangled, and inextricable relationship between race and sexuality in the United States.