Subject: English (Grad) (GENG)

CRN: 21713

Lecture

St Paul: John Roach Center 222

  David Lawrence

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, in Between the World and Me, that “In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.” To some this may be a shocking claim, but to the black subject, this is a most unavoidable truth. From Frederick Douglass, who enters the “blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery,” by witnessing the brutal beating of his aunt; to the young girl Frado, of Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig, whose body is slowly broken and destroyed by the vicious cruelty of her owners, the Bellmont family; to the thousands of black men whose bodies were destroyed in various awful ways in perverse lynching scenes; to the bloodied head of John Lewis; to Michael Brown’s lifeless body lying in a Ferguson street – the vulnerability of the black body has been a consistent reality of American History. In fact, the black body has been more than a symbol or site of oppression; it is a vital fetish, without which whiteness and American culture could not exist. This course will examine the black body as a manifestation of blackness, as a site of abjection, as a source of magic and power, and as a mystical technology. Primary authors may include Harriet Wilson, Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, Octavia Butler, and Walter Mosely. Theorists may include Sadiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, Alexander Weheliye, Franz Fanon, and others. This course satisfies the Multicultural Literature distribution requirement. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor

3 Credits