| Course Title: Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism |
| Start Date: 01/21/2020 End Date: 05/05/2020 |
| Term: Spring Semester 2020 |
| Description: "Race is the modality in which class is lived," wrote the late cultural theorist Stuart Hall. This course takes Hall's axiom as a starting point for considering the racial, gendered, and sexualized character of capitalist domination. Throughout the course students will explore both the political economy and the cultural imagery of racial capitalism. One question we will grapple with is the following: if capital itself is as imperceptible and objectively real as gravity, what are the common tropes we use to apprehend its circulation? Is it the stock market ticker tape, the shipping container, or the industrial wasteland? Drawing on writers and artists of color from around the world, we will consider ways they offer cognitive maps of the gendered and sexualized contours of racial capitalism. Authors may include Octavia Butler, Chang-rae Lee, Leslie Marmon Silko, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and Ruth Ozeki. Visual artists may include Xu Bing, Otobong Nkanga, Allan deSouza, Rodney McMillian, Mark Bradford, Takahiro Iwasaki, Anicka Yi, and Candace Lin. |
| Distribution(s): I - Humanities , MP - Multicultural Perspectives , SI - Speaking-Intensive |
| Academic Level Of Course: Undergraduate | Credits:4.00 |
| Faculty | Phone | Email address |
| Iyko Day | 413-538-3222 | iday@mtholyoke.edu |
| Meeting Dates | Method | Meeting days | Meeting times | Building name | Room | Frequency |
| 01/21/2020 - 05/05/2020 | Seminar | Thursday | 01:30PM - 04:20PM | SHTK - Shattuck Hall | 107 | Weekly |
| Requisite Courses | ||
| Prereq: 8 credits in English or CST-200/CRPE-205. | Take previously | Required |
| Comments |
| Additional Comments |
| Course Tags | ||
| CST0001 | CSTH: Critical Social Thought major | This course has been approved to count towards the Critical Social Thought major and minor. |
| CST0001 | CSTH: Critical Social Thought minor | This course has been approved to count towards the Critical Social Thought major and minor. |
| Cross-listed Sections |
| ENGL-338-01 Aesthet. of Racial Capitalism |
| CST-349AR-01 Aesthet. of Racial Capitalism |
| Course Availability | ||||
| Section status: Closed | Capacity: 18 | Enrollment: 19 | Available: 0 | Waitlist: 0 |
BOOK INFORMATION
| Book List | Required | Publisher Full Price |
| To be determined. |
| Additional Book Comments |
| This is NOT the complete book list for this class. |