This course will engage the socio-historical processes and technologies through which the gendered and racialized black body circulates in the public realm. Toggling between the present, past and future, students will engage with specific visual and material representations of black bodies and their attendant consumption, including “runaway slave” listings; the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings; RuPaul’s Drag Race; and Jim Crow-era memorabilia among others in order to consider the multitude of societal frameworks that render certain bodies as both spectacle and invisible.

This interdisciplinary course will utilize visual art; cultural criticism; performance studies; and anthropological texts and exhibits in order “… to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers” (James Baldwin). Curator and artist, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, will be in residency in May 2017, and will be a guest lecturer for two class meetings.