Black & Postcolonial Feminist Thought, A Syllabus
Published in
4 min readJan 23, 2017
“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?” -Sojourner Truth, May 29, 1851, Akron, Ohio
Day 1
January 11, 2017: “Europe is literally a creation of the third world” (Frantz Fanon)
- Sojourner Truth (1851)
- M.I.A’s “Born Free” (2010)
January 13, 2017: “First we must study how colonization works to decriminalize the colonizer” (Aimé Césaire)
- Read: Chandra Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes” (1984)
- Screen: Downton Abbey (2014; Season 4, Episode 9)
Week 2: Gated Communities
January 18, 2017: “no one colonizes innocently” (Aimé Césaire)
- Read: Vorris Nunley’s “George Zimmerman Never Saw Trayvon Martin” (2013).
January 20, 2017: “The discovery of personal whiteness among the world’s peoples is a very modern thing.” -Du Bois
- Read: Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera. (1–40)
- Read: W.E.B. Du Bois’ “The Souls of White Folk” from Darkwater (1920)
- Screen: The Riches (Netflix; 2008; Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2)
- Read: Toni Morrison’s “Mourning For Whiteness”
Week 3: The Home
January 23, 2017
- Continue Reading: Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera. (1–40)
- W.E.B. Du Bois’ “The Souls of White Folk” from Darkwater
January 25, 2017
- Read: Angela Davis’ “Women, Race and Class: The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective” (1981)
- Watch: Stepford Wives (2004) and Stepford Wives (1975)
January 27, 2017
- Read: Katarzyna Marciniak’s “Foreign Women and Toilets” from Feminist Media Studies Vol. 8, №4, 2008
- Screen: Roseanne
Week 4: Motherhood
January 30, 2017
- Dorothy E. Roberts’ “Racism and Patriarchy in the Meaning of Motherhood” (1993)
- Dorothy E. Roberts’ “Fatal Invention: The New Biopolitics of Race” (lecture)
- Watch: The Blindside (2009)
February 1, 2017
- Patricia Hill Collins’ “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images” from Black Feminist Thought, pgs. 69–96
- Patricia Hill Collins’ “Black Women and Motherhood” from Black Feminist Thought, pgs 173–200
- Watch: Weeds (Episode 1, Season 1)
February 3, 2017
- bell hooks’ “Homeplace (A Site of Resistance)”
- Watch: Gilmore Girls (Episode 1, Season 1)
- Watch: Leave it to Beaver (Episode 31, Season 3)
Week 5: Patriarchal Violence
February 6, 2017
- bell hooks’ “Ending Violence” from Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, pgs. 61–66
- Watch: Gone with the wind (1939)
February 8, 2017
- Read: Kimberle Crenshaw’s “Mapping The Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” (1993)
- Watch: Gone with the wind (1939)
February 10, 2017
- Read: Kimberle Crenshaw’s “Mapping The Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” (1993)
- Watch: The Invisible War (2012)
Week 6: Body, Power, & Knowledge
February 13, 2017
- bell hooks’ “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance”
- Watch: Girls (2012; Season 1, Episode 1) and Tiny Furniture (2010; available on Hulu)
- Optional Reading: Selections from Michel Foucault’s Society Must Be Defended (1975–1976). pgs. 1–19, 239–263
February 15, 2017
- Gayatri Spivak “More on Power/Knowledge” from The Spivak Reader, pgs. 141–174.
- Optional Reading: Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
- Watch: Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977)
February 17, 2017: Holiday
Week 7: The Body & Private Property
February 20, 2017: Holiday
February 22, 2017
- Selections from Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (1982), pgs. 1–76
- Saba Mahmood’s “The Subject of Freedom” from Politics of Piety.
- Watch: Trainwreck (2015)
February 24, 2017
- Andrea Smith’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded”
- Watch: Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antionette (2006)
Week 8: Relationship to the State & Empire
February 27, 2017
- Nira Yuval-Davis’ “Nationalist Projects and Gender Relations”
- Angela Davis’ “Public Imprisonment and Private Violence: Reflections on the Hidden Punishment of Women” from Frontline Feminisms, pgs, 3–16.
- Watch: Orange is the New Black (Season 1)
March 1, 2017
- Angela Davis’ “How Gender Structures the Prison System” from Are Prisons Obsolete? pgs. 60–84
- Watch: Orange is the New Black (Season 1)
March 3, 2017
- Joane Nagel’s “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations” (2010)
- bell hooks’ “The Imperialism of Patriarchy” from Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, pgs. 87–118.
- Watch: Orange is the New Black (Season 1)
Week 9: From Sisterhood to Marriage
March 6, 2017
- Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s “Sisterhood, Coalition, and the Politics of Experience” from Feminism Without Borders, pgs. 106–123
- Watch: Broad City (available on Hulu)
- Watch: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002)
March 8, 2017
- bell hooks’ “Sisterhood: Political Solidarity Between Women”
- Watch: Bridesmaids (2011)
March 10, 2017
- Gayatri Spivak’s “Feminism and Critical Theory” from The Spivak Reader, pgs 53–74
- Watch: Bewitched (Episode 16, Season 1)
Week 10: Sexuality & the Body
March 13, 2017
- Frantz Fanon’s “The Woman of Color and the White Man,” Black Skin, White Masks (pgs 28–44)
- Watch: Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (1999)
March 15, 2017
- Frantz Fanon’s “The Man of Color and the White Woman,” Black Skin, White Masks (pgs. 45–60)
- Watch: Pretty Woman (1990)
