ASRC 6770 - From Mammy to Michelle: African American Women and American Culture

(crosslisted) FGSS 6771

Spring. 3 credits.

Co-meets with ASRC 3770/FGSS 3771.

N. Rooks.

Black women’s studies is an interdisciplinary field encompassing philosophical, sociological, legal, religious, political, artistic, and historical writing and thinking by Black women. While a good deal of work in the field has centered on concerns that are often viewed as feminist in nature, as a whole, the field is not merely concerned with feminism but rather the ways that the inclusion of black women as writers, thinkers, and actors in various academic disciplines and cultural settings often forces a fundamental shift of underlying paradigms and sheds light on specific historical concerns.The work associated with Black women’s studies has prescribed solutions and strategies for negotiating American culture and has described the history and lives of African American men and women living in the United States. This class provides an overview of the field by contextualizing its development both chronologically and thematically. For each period, seminal work crucial to understanding the field of Black women’s studies is included and special attention is paid to the themes of enslavement, activism, historical revisionism, literary criticism, interiority, representation, and feminism and for each period we will look at the categories of politics, beauty, health, feminism and representation.