ENG 6939 Spring 2024 - Lathan

This is graduate seminar is designed with two objectives in mind: 1) to develop a working knowledge of Black Women’s intellectual history with an eye toward Rhetoric and Composition Studies, and 2) to develop critical reading, research and writing skills necessary for dislodging canons of Black intellectual history that marginalize gender, sexuality, and other vectors of difference. We will accomplish this by focusing on the numerous and fundamental contributions of Black women to social, political and critical thought—specific to Rhetoric and Composition studies. Throughout the course, we will ask the following questions: Who is included in the terms “Black,” “woman,” and “thinker?” What does a genealogy of Black Feminist radicalism look like? What methods did/do Black women use to form critical thought? Why, even at this late date, are Black women’s intellectual contributions still marginalized in mainstream curricula and in broader academia? Our text will include Royster’s Traces of a Stream; Carey’s Rhetorical Healing; Harris-Perry’s Sister Citizen among others. We will have weekly reflections and a midterm and final paper for this course.