How have Black people’s experiences of embodiment changed over time? How have representations of Black people’s bodies changed over time? How have societies in the Americas treated Black people’s bodies over time? How have historians approached the study of Black people’s bodies? This upper-level seminar course will explore these questions and more. Through this course students will read a variety of scholarly approaches to the study of the Black body from the earliest days of slavery through the present. Topics include representations of Black bodies in art and literature, Black people’s embodied experiences of pleasure and pain. Black people’s experiences of health, reproduction, suffering, and healing, and the ways Black bodies have been controlled and how Black people resisted. The course readings are designed to aid students in developing their thinking about Black embodiment and representations of Black bodies to produce a reading of a primary document related to this history. This course is designed to introduce advanced undergraduate students to the history of the body, the history of race, and the history of Black life. They will think critically about debates in the field and methodological approaches to this history. They will apply this knowledge to their final paper primary document analyses. The primary document analysis will be a contribution to the literature on the history of the body and a publishable writing sample.
- Teacher: Elise Mitchell