AML5608-Fall 2025-Montgomery
From the chains of slavery, to the horrors of segregation, to ongoing systemic racism, violence has been an ever-present force that has shaped the black experience. Taking its intellectual cue from the work of Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, Toni Morrison, Kara Walker, and others, this course seeks to fathom contemporary black women’s aesthetic, narrative, and cultural production in relation to the imaginative archive of slavery and recurring instants of violence, rupture, and resistance marking the lives of black female subjects. A heuristic reading of a diasporic history in relation to atemporality and the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism will guide our scholarly work along with a consideration of the lingering consequences of slavery on the existential condition of blackness (and a gendered presence) in a New World setting.
The following primary works constitute the basis of our investigation: Toni Morrison, A Mercy; Nnedi Okorafor, Binti; Nalo Hopkinson, Browngirl in the Ring; Gayl Jones, Corregidora; Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones; Gloria Naylor, Linden Hills; Sherley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose; Edwidge Danticat, Claire of the Sea Light; and Octavia Butler, Fledgling.
Requirements: This course satisfies the requirement for the following Areas of Concentration: African-American Literary and Cultural Studies; Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Colonial, Postcolonial, and Transnational Literary and Cultural Studies; and a Literary Genre (Fiction). This course also meets the Alterity requirement.