SHUM 4685 - Feeling Free: Radical Aesthetics and Political Affects

(crosslisted) AMST 4686, FGSS 4685
(ALC-AS, CA-AS)

Fall. 3 credits. Student option grading.

Co-meets with AMST 6686/FGSS 6685/GOVT 6985/SHUM 6685.

M. Shomali.

This course studies how radical movements mobilize both aesthetic and affect in their political organizing. Broadly, the study of aesthetics concerns how we experience beauty in the world. Affect studies considers how our experience of the world operates at the level of sensation and feeling. For cultural workers from minoritized communities, how one feels and how one creates are linked and influenced by structures of power. “Feeling Free” considers how affect and aesthetic construct one another, cross over into each other, and how both are used in political action and radical movements. It looks especially to theories of affect and aesthetic that prioritize intersectional analyses regarding race, class, gender, sexuality, and other categories of identity.