Jessica Marie Johnson posted a draft syllabus for a class on Black Womanhood. It made me think of what kind of class I’d design to accompany it.
She issued a call. This is a response.
Gender & Genre: Africa & Afro-Diaspora
How can we approach gender and genre across Africa & Afro-diaspora? What possibilities emerge at the seam of Africa & Afro-diaspora? What relations emerge with the frottage of Africa & Afro-diaspora?
Week One: Temporalities
Neo Musangi, “In Time and Space” I, II, III (YouTube)
Hortense Spillers, “Papa’s Baby, Mama’s Maybe”
Nnedi Okorafor, Binti
Week Two: Inventing Women 1
Oyeronke Oyewumi, Invention of Women
Janet Bujra, “Women ‘Entrepreneurs’ of Early Nairobi”
Rhoda Reddock, “Women and Slavery in the Caribbean”
Week Three: Inventing Women 2
Angelina Weld Grimké, Rachel
Harryette Mullen, Trimmings
Wambui Mwangi, “Silence is a Woman”
Week Four: Genres of the Human 1
Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Truth//Power/Freedom”
Pumla Gqola, Rape
M. NourbeSe Philip, She Tries Her Tongue
Week Five: Genres of the Human 2
Koleka Putuma, Collective Amnesia
Christina Sharpe, Monstrous Intimacies
Katherine McKittrick, “Mathematics Black Life”
Week Six: S/Place
M. NourbeSe Philip, “Dis Place: The Space Between”
Yvonne Vera, Without a Name
Ama Ata Aidoo, Our Sister Killjoy
Week Seven: S/Place
Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return
Bessie Head, Maru
Week Eight: Nation?
Yvonne Owuor, Dust
Maryse Condé, Heremakhonon
Week Nine: Difference
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider
Rebekah Njau, Sacred Seed
Week Ten: Pleasure
Nkiru Nzwegu, “Osunality”
Sylvia Tamale, “Eroticism, Sensuality and ‘Women’s Secrets’ among the Baganda”
Treva B. Lindsey and Jessica Marie Johnson, “Searching for Climax”
Janet Jackson, Velvet Rope
