Continuation of AFST 492

Continuation of AFST 492

Continuation of AFST 492

Continuation of AFST 492

2016 TOPIC, BODIES AND POWER IN AFRICA: What does it mean to claim that Homosexuality is un-African ? This course explores the linked histories of race, nation, gender and sexuality in Africa that such an ideological claim invokes, yet effaces.The polemics that produce statements like this play out through the disciplinary tensions that exist between African and sexuality/queer studies. These tensions have as much to do with the role played by the relation between sexuality and race within cultures of European colonization, as they have with the role of gender and sexuality within postcolonial power relations in Africa. Such antagonisms are sustained through the marginalization of gender and sexuality perspectives within postcolonial scholarship on Africa, as well as the bracketing of African perspectives in queer and feminist studies. This course will deconstruct these impasses by exploring scholarship at the margins of each area of study. Students will be encouraged to ask questions about how issues of race, ethnicity, nation, gender and sexuality are produced as suppressed presences in a range of texts, films and other materials. CONT.


The course will include readings from postcolonial, gender, sexuality and African studies, anthropology, history, literary studies and Marxism, giving students a grounding in historical and contemporary perspectives at the intersection of African, queer and feminist studies.

James Baldwin, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, spoke to the issues of his times as well as to our own. This class will examine the intellectual legacy that Baldwin left to present day writers such as Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Thulani Davis, Caryl Phillips and others. We will spend time reading and discussing Baldwin s novels, short stories, plays and essays. In doing so, we will be considering the complex assumptions and negotiations that we make in our day-to-day lives around our identities and experiences built upon gender, sexual preference, the social-constructs called race, and more. James Baldwin s life and work will be the touchstone that grounds our discussions. We will read Go Tell It on the Mountain, Another Country, The Fire Next Time, and Giovanni s Room and see films ( The Price of the Ticket and The Murder of Emmett Till ). We ll also read commentary on his work. Students will research subjects of their own choosing about Baldwin s life and art. For example, they may focus on the shaping influences of Pentecostalism; segregation; racism; homophobia; exile in Paris; the Civil Rights Movement; Black Power, Baldwin s faith, or his return to America