ENGL 222 B1: Reading Race and Ethnicity

A. Spallacci

In this course, we engage with texts created by Black artists, scholars, historians, critics, and cultural producers, across various media; these texts identify and theorize the contemporary and ongoing legacies of slavery in the United States. Students will consider social topics such as education, justice, reproductive health, Covid-19, popular conceptions of beauty, queer identity, sexual assault, parenting, and activism within the historical context of institutional/systemic anti-black racism as well as through intersectional frameworks. In doing so, we discuss how social systems, ideologies, and discourses such as patriarchy, white supremacy, heteronormativity, capitalism, ableism, settler-colonialism and their material effects continue to inform identity today.