Khyree Davis

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.

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. (Seniors with instructor approval.)

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.

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. (First year students may register with instructor approval only.)

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. (BLST 0101 and BLST 0201) (BLST majors and BLST minors or with instructor approval) 3 hrs.sem.

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)

Life of the Party: Queer of Color Nightlife
For many, nightlife spaces offer an alternative to the racial, gender, and sexual norms which we are socialized into and expected to follow in the light of day. From bars/clubs to pop-up parties to ballroom, nightlife scenes have been integral to exploration, discovery, and gratification in the lives of queer and trans Black people and other people of color. Through Black Studies approaches to race, gender, sexuality, and performance, we will examine how nightlife functions as pleasure, experimentation, artistry, and, crucially, work for many queers of color. We may read from texts such as Kemi Adeyemi’s Feels Right: Black Queer Women and the Politics of Partying in Chicago and Kareem Khubchandani’s Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife. (Any 2 of the following: BLST 0101, 0201, BLST 0363 or GSFS 0289 or instructor approval) 3 hrs. seminar

Blacklisted: 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) /This course is part of the Axinn Center for the Humanities’ Mellon Foundation Public Humanities Initiative./

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.)