This course explores critical, black feminist thought. Using an intersectional approach, we will explore a breadth of work produced by and about black women who too often lose their rightful place as leaders of social struggle. We will study the practices and politics of black women whose assertions of humanity, community, family, and liberation not only criticized capitalism but also challenged it. What frameworks of analysis do we gain from these women? How can we use these frameworks to make sense of our contemporary moment? What limitations do we still face? Our course will examine historical figures like Harriet Tubman, Ella Baker, and Mamie Till, among others, who radicalized freedom struggles and who challenged conceptions of race, patriarchy, and what it means to be human. We will also explore the ways radical, black feminist frameworks have been depoliticized over time in specific contexts. As we explore such tensions and contradictions, we will analyze and theorize the dialectical entanglements of race, gender, and capitalism. We will end our course asking if there is indeed a radical black left feminist tradition, and what a radical black left feminist tradition means for collective liberation struggles and visions of freedom in our social world today.Critical Ethnic Studies 3000-level seminars deepen students’ knowledge of the fundamental theoretical and political questions regarding the social construction of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class from both domestic and global perspectives. The seminars utilize decolonial, transnational and intersectional approaches for producing knowledge about resistance, power, oppression, and systems of knowledge from the interdisciplinary fields of critical ethnic studies: Africana studies, African-American Studies, Asian American studies, Indigenous studies, Chicano/a /x and Latino /a/x studies, Women’ studies, border studies, cultural studies, and global racialized and global silenced communities. Courses can be in-person, hybrid, or online.

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