Khyree Davis
Assistant Professor of Black Studies
- Office
- Carr Hall 209
- Tel
- (802) 443-2600
- khyreed@middlebury.edu
- Office Hours
- Fall 2023: Tues & Thurs 1:30-2:30 pm in office or Wed 9:00-10:00 am on Zoom (link on Canvas)
Khyree Davis received his Ph.D. in African & African Diaspora Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. His teaching and research specializations include Black queer studies, Black trans studies, Black geographies, Black feminist thought, intimate geopolitics, and performance studies.
His work has been published in venues like Gender, Place, and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography and has been supported through fellowships with the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies (BBQ+) and the Summer Institute on Tenure and Professional Advancement (SITPA) with Duke University. At present, he is working on a book project which centers Black feminist thought and Black queer theory to examine the geographies of Black rural life.
Courses Taught
BLST 0101
Current
Introduction to Black Studies
Course Description
Introduction to Black Studies
This course considers the issues, epistemologies, and political investments central to Black Studies as a field. We will explore chronologically, thematically, and with an interdisciplinary lens the social forces and ideas that have shaped the individual and collective experiences of African-descended peoples throughout the African Diaspora. This course is a broad survey of the history of chattel slavery, colonial encounters, community life, and social institutions of black Americans. We will address issues of gender and class; the role of social movements in struggles for liberation; and various genres of black expressive cultures. Students will develop critical tools, frameworks, and vocabulary for further study in the field. Course materials may include Maulana Karenga’s Introduction to Black Studies, C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins, and Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
BLST 0201
Upcoming
Black Thought
Course Description
Black Thought: Black Studies Theory
In this course, we will explore some of the central themes and issues of Black Studies across the Black diaspora. We will ask: What is race and how has it functioned in the development of modernity, geopolitics, and selfhood? What constitutes blackness? How is it lived and expressed? What are the ideological and material legacies of slavery? What relationship does antiblackness have with capitalism, nation, and war? We will also investigate how (anti)blackness has shaped the lives and spaces of Black communities. We will read from texts such as W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, and Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought.
Terms Taught
Requirements
BLST 0212
Current
Race Racisms & the Visual
Course Description
Race, Racisms, and the Visual: Black American Visual Cultures
In this course we will study visual cultures, performance, and digital media in relation to (anti-)Blackness and Black communities in the United States. We will pay particular attention to gendered and sexualized understandings of race and racisms within visual planes. An interdisciplinary and multimedia approach to the subject matter asks students to develop critical reading and engaged listening skills, as well as foster the ability to deploy critical thought in written, creative, and oral forms. Students should leave the course able to apply core concepts of Black visual studies into their academic work as well as their lives outside of the classroom. 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
BLST 0232
A Black Sense of Place
Course Description
A Black Sense of Place: Black Geographies
Black feminist geographer, Katherine McKittrick, defines Black geographies as “subaltern or alternative geographic patterns that work alongside and beyond traditional geographies and a site or terrain of struggle” (2006, 7).
This Black studies approach structures analyses of geographies across the Black diaspora in this course. Students will explore the relationships between race, racisms, space, and place through an interdisciplinary examination of the intimate, the material, the political, the body, and the collective as “sites of struggle.” We will read from texts such as Clyde Woods’ Development Drowned and Reborn: The Blues and Bourbon Restorations in Post-Katrina New Orleans and Erica Lorraine Williams’ Sex Tourism in Bahia: Ambiguous Entanglements.
Terms Taught
Requirements
BLST 0301
Black Studies Methods
Course Description
Black Studies Methods
In this seminar, we will explore the historical formation, philosophical debates, and methodological basis of Black Studies. Students will gain a deeper understanding of both the central issues and the range of methodological strategies that have helped shape the field since its inception in the late 1960s. Particular attention will also be paid to community-engaged/informed work and activist-scholarship, as well as debates on the role, form, and function of such praxis-based methodological and epistemological stances. Recommended for juniors and seniors. Emphasis will be given to preparing students for independent inquiry in the field. (prerequisites: BLST 0201 or instructor approval) 3 hrs.sem.
Terms Taught
Requirements
BLST 0363
Upcoming
Black Queer Studies
Course Description
Black Queer Studies
What does sexuality have to do with race? Does racialization inform much of what we understand about gender? Black queer/trans life and thought speaks to much of these concerns. We’ll be challenged to think through ways that oppressions like anti-Black racism, misogyny, and homo/transphobia operate against (and even within) Black queer and Black trans communities, as well as the ways in which these communities respond and create their own theories/practices of life & joy through an examination of Black queer studies that looks across the African diaspora for theories and methodologies which span a range of social, political, and cultural geographies.(BLST 0101, or BLST 0201 or GSFS 0191 or GSFS 0289)
Terms Taught
Requirements
BLST 0414
Black, Listed
Course Description
Black, Listed: Surveillance, Race, and Gender
The fields of Black studies, feminist geographies, and surveillance studies are brought together in this course to examine transformations in geographic and social control in U.S. and transnational contexts. The ways in which racialized and gendered populations have experienced and continue to experience geopolitical domination and surveillance constitutes the central theme of the course. Students will develop collaborative and independent research skills. Topics of inquiry include: the trans-Atlantic slave trade; prisons and policing; education; (anti-)surveillance technologies; airports and borders. We may draw substantially from texts such as Simone Browne’s Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness and Toby Beauchamp’s Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices. (Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors) 3 hrs. sem. (FemSTHM)
Terms Taught
Requirements
BLST 1111
Upcoming
Race in the Digital
Course Description
Race in the Digital
How do we perceive race online? Have digital spaces opened paths for new or different circulations of racisms? Working from a Black Studies approach, we shall investigate how race and racisms have persisted, transformed, and become imbedded in the digital technologies and virtual spaces of our contemporary era. Topics of exploration might include: social media, data-tracking, digital blackface, algorithmic bias, and design justice in tech. As this course centrally deals with questions of digital space and place, we will regularly situate instruction, learning, and community-making through digital tools and technologies. We may read from texts such as Ruha Benjamin’s Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. (BLST 0101 or equivalent coursework is strongly recommended.)
Terms Taught
Requirements