This course explores multi-layered depictions of “home” in black women’s narratives of the African Diaspora from mid to late 20th century. The narratives selected for this course compel us to think critically about the historical, cultural, and socio-political transformations in the African Diaspora across the Americas. Our explorations will lead us to pay attention to the diasporic black experience within the intersections of gender, race, class, sexuality and nation. Within this framework, students are invited to examine a representative range of narrative genres and strategies black women writers have used to talk about trauma, colonialism, survival, healing, resistance, selfhood, belonging, migration, memory, and community. The study of the selected works will interface with key theoretical and critical materials that have shaped major trends in diasporic black feminist criticism and African Diaspora cultural studies.
- Instructor: Flavia Santos De Araujo