Black Aesthetics in the Wake of Slavery

One of the most powerful ways in which contemporary Black writers and visual artists have examined the afterlives of slavery has been to question the authority of official documents such as ships’ ledgers, legal manuscripts, newspaper photographs, and auction catalogues. While showing how dominant archives negate black personhood, cultural producers such as Saidiya Hartman, M. NourbeSe Philip, Dionne Brand, Arthur Jafa, Christina Sharpe, and Kara Walker have explored the possibilities of alternative archival sources such as music, dance, personal correspondences, oral histories, tattoos, diary entries, and cleaning manuals. Students will explore how such sources (and their exciting aesthetic and scholarly treatment) disrupt the racial violence perpetuated by dominant archives. (REC)/