ASRC 1847 - FWS: Space/Place/Body: Remapping the Circum-Caribbean Inter-American Space

Fall. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

First-Year Writing Seminar.

M. Smith.

In the context of this course, we will “remap” the cartographical boundaries of the circum-Caribbean to include the U.S. Gulf South. Historically speaking, the Caribbean and the American South have been connected since the beginning of the Haitian Revolution. In fact, these Inter-American regions are what Caribbean philosopher Édouard Glissant calls the “spaces of the plantation” acting as a nexus point between the Black and French Atlantic. This course also seeks to remap bodies in this geographical configuration that have produced a “third genre” of African diasporic, non-normative bodies through métissage as well as “queer” bodies such as the masisi in Haiti and “Sissy Bounce” performance culture in New Orleans. Through an interdisciplinary analysis of the “textual” evidence that undergirds this reconfiguration of the Caribbean, students will learn how creolization has a lot in common with Queer theory where borders act more as a membrane than a wall, where bodies possess an openness to affect and be affected by others creating a “non-place” that eschews binaries and positionalities.