What is critique? And how does the practice of critique open up the ways in which we understand culture, race, and identity? In what ways does the artist, writing, making and finding forms for the sensibilities of being human in the world, become critical? Engaging this precise question, James Baldwin, in one of his last interviews, and commenting on the work of Toni Morrison, says that Morrison is very "painful" to read precisely because you “recognize the truth” in her work, and the results are "lethal." In this class, we are going to think together about what might be "lethal" about the practice of the critique of race and culture. Through an engagement with a number of artists of color who think about the politics of culture in their work, we will sit with a series of questions: In what ways does the imagination function as political enunciation? What is the relation between aesthetic form, critique, and practices of liberation? How does thinking critically about race and culture help us to imagine new forms of relationality and social life? Foundations in Critical Studies introduces critical thinking skills essential to college-level work in the humanities and sciences. Students develop their critical capacities through close reading and active response to cultural texts and phenomena drawn from multiple disciplines and reflecting diverse perspectives on major themes or topics in contemporary life.

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