Please note this is a self-study, 18-lecture, reparations-based course. This course is always free to Black and Indigenous folks. Tuition from white folks and non-Black folks of color who have the means is paid in the form of supporting Black student loan debt, and/or The Smith Caring Circle, which supports the labor of Black feminist scholar and writer, Barbara Smith. A generous sliding scale reparations/tuition payment is also available, when needed.
Week 1: Barbara Smith
Key Text:
"The Combahee River Collective Statement" (1977, co-written by Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, and Demita Frazier). You can read it here.
Supplementary Texts:
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective (2017)
Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1983, republished 2000)
Week 2: Barbara Smith
Key Text:
"Towards a Black Feminist Criticism" (1978, PDF included in the class)
Supplementary Text:
Yours in the Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism (1984, co-written by Barbara Smith, Elly Bulkin, and Minnie Bruce Pratt)
Week 3: Audre Lorde
Key Text:
Select essays from her book Zami, Sister Outsider, Undersong
Week 4: Octavia Butler
Key Text:
Kindred (1980 science fiction novel)
Week 5: Kimberlé Crenshaw
Key Text:
"Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color" (1989). You can read it here.
Supplementary Text:
The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor by Patricia Williams (1991)
Week 6: Saidiya Hartman
Key Text:
Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Trade (2007)
Supplementary Text:
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (2019)