Khyree Davis

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.

Theory and Methods in Black Studies
In this course, which is the required junior seminar for Black Studies, we will explore the historical, philosophical, and methodological basis of Black Studies. Reading seminal primary and secondary sources, students will gain a deeper understanding of both the central issues and the range of theoretical responses (e.g., intersectionality, critical race theory) that have helped shaped the field since its inception in the late 1960s. Emphasis will be given to preparing students for senior work in the major. 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)

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)