01 MW6 CAC 12261 BROWN HH-B2
Black Avant-Gardism
In this course we will read formally experimental novels and poems by writers of the African diaspora. We will consider how black writers have turned toward highly stylized, strange, and abstract literature to interrogate the relationships between modernity, blackness, gender, and sexuality. We will explore these relationships by asking: What is at stake in representing blackness in print cultures? How do we interpret race in highly abstract and nonreferential art? What aesthetic concerns differentiate (or conflate) black avant-gardism with the historical Euro-American avant-gardes? And how have experimental texts provoked or reflected revolutionary social movements? Students interested in aesthetic theory, modernist and postmodernist literature, experimental art, black studies, and queer cultural production will have opportunities to explore these topics in their writing assignments