Cultural Studies of Gender and Sexuality: The Black Diaspora Experience
WGS 336H1F
Instructor: Rinaldo Walcott
Office: 252 Bloor St. West; 12fl. Rm. 214
Email: rwalcot@oise.utoronto.ca
Tel.: 416 978 0400
Cultural Studies of Gender and Sexuality: The Black Diaspora Experience
WGS 336H1F
Room: UC 256
Course Description:
This course engages with post-Stonewall and post-Civil Rights articulations of
gender and sexuality for people within the Black diaspora. Through a series of essays and
books the course seeks to make sense of how Black diasporic peoples have grappled
with, diagnosed and politicized the intersections of blackness, gender and sexuality.
Therefore the course takes at least three historical social categories as its starting point:
1.blackness, 2. gender, and 3. sexuality. Simultaneously the course takes at least two
different points of political analysis as integral to its assumptions: feminism and queer
politics. In our investigations and analyses we seek to make sense of how the
complications of historical social categories produce articulations of various political
positions and what those political positions might mean for knowledge production,
politics and the making of community.
Significantly, this course concerns itself with the ways in which scholars have
grappled with the intersections of blackness, gender and sexuality as moments of
community making and unmaking. In this regard the course is also interested in the
process of how subjects come into Being. Thus this course is centrally concerned with
how black diaspora peoples speak back to each other, speak in solidarity with each other
and speak in contradistinction to each other across geographic and temporal spaces and
places. Significantly, this course suggests that Black diasporic discourses shape all larger
human conditions.
Assignments and Expectations:
Please come to class having read the materials and prepared to discuss them, to ask
questions and aid in moving the class conversation forward.
Assignment 1: A critical reflection on any essay from the first two weeks of course
readings. This reflection will engage with the ideas in the chosen essay in an attempt to
demonstrate to the reader the main points that the author is attempting to convey to their
readers. It is not a retelling of the articles but rather a dissecting of the article to highlight
its insights. Length: Two (2) double-spaced pages. Due: October 10, 2007.
Assignment 2: This short essay will allow you to begin to develop ideas and analyses
that might be used in a much longer paper. At this point you can chose a theory, issue or
event discussed in the class. Making use of course materials write a short essay the
theory, event or issue. Length: Three (3) to four (5) double-spaced pages. Due:
November 7, 2007.
Assignment 3: This final assignment will allow you to either further develop Assignment
2 or to choose a new topic that interests you. The topic chosen must engage with course
materials but is not limited to them. This is a research-based essay and thus your final
paper should also demonstrate evidence of scholarship beyond that provided in course
materials. Length: Twelve (12) to fifteen (15) double-spaced pages.
Course Evaluation:
Assignment 1: 25%
Assignment 2: 35%
Assignment 3: 40%
Participation: 10%
Please familiarize yourself with the university’s policies on academic dishonesty and
plagiarism.
Course Books (Required Reading):
Hilton Als, The Women, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
Hill Collins, From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism,
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006.
E. Patrick Johnson and Mae Henderson (Ed.), Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology,
Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press,
1984.
Scott Poulson-Bryant, Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America,
New York: Doubleday, 2005.
(Books are available from Toronto Womens Bookstore at 73 Harbord St. at Harbord
and Spadina; tel. 416 922 8744.)
A Kit of Course Reading will also be available. Place to be announced for purchase.
Reading Schedule
September
10
Introduction to Course.
19
Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, Introduction and Chap. McBride, Walcott,
Johnson.
2
26
Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, Cohen, Harper, Ross.
October
3
From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism, Chap. 1-3.
10 Assignment 1 Due
From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism, Chap. 4-6.
17
Sister Outsider.
24
Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, Keeling and Gomez.
31
Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, Carbado and Nero; Walcott, “Homopoetics:
Queer Space and the Black Queer Diaspora” in Black Geographies and the Politics of
Place, Ed. K. McKittrick and C. Woods, Between the Lines Press, 2007.
November
7 Assignment 2 Due
McBride, “Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch” in Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch:
Essays on Race and Sexuality, New York University Press, 2005; Black Queer Studies: A
Critical Anthology, Ferguson; Thomas Glave, “Remembering Steen Fenrich: Not a
Candidate for Matthew Shepardhood” in Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent,
University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
14
Hilton Als, The Women; Robert Reid Pharr, “At Home in America” in Black Gay Man:
Essays.
21
Gloria Wekker, “Mati-ism and Black Lesbianism: Two Idealtypical Expressions of
Female Homosexuality in Black Communities of the Diaspora” in The Greatest Taboo:
Homosexuality in Black Communities, Ed. D. Constantine-Simms, Alyson Publications,
2000; Jewellle Gomez, “Black Lesbians: Passing, Stereotypes and Transformations” in
Dangerous Liaisons: Blacks, Gays, and the Struggle for Equality, Ed. E. Brandt, The
New Press, 1999; Mab Segrest, “Race and the Invisible Dyke” in Dangerous Liaisons:
Blacks, Gays, and the Struggle for Equality, Ed. E. Brandt, The New Press, 1999.
28
Scott Poulson-Bryant, Hung: A Meditation of the Measure of the Black Man in America.
December
5
Rinaldo Walcott, Somewhere Out There: the New Black Queer Theory in Blackness and
Sexualities, Ed. M. Wright and A. Schuhmann, Lit Verlag, 2007; Brian Harper, “Take Me
Home: Location, Identity, Transnational Exchange” in Private Affairs: Critical Ventures
in the Culture of Social Relations, New York University Press, 1999.
3