������Ƶ

In a fundamentally decolonial spirit, this course cluster examines the ways colonialism has contained, collected, captured, and commodified Blackness, a practice that circulates objectified images of the peoples, cultures, and cultural objects of Africa and the African Diaspora. Furthermore, we explore how African cultural traditions such as dance and artwork become suppressed and manipulated by western institutions such as academia and the museum. This cluster aims to use liberatory strategies to reconstruct notions of Blackness beyond the strongholds of colonialism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and “the chattel principle.” To be specific, we will investigate the artistic expressions of African dance and African artwork through new liberatory post-colonial educational frameworks to consider how Black culture expression and Black cultural legacy across the African diaspora have been sustained and revived, despite systematic attempts to capture, condemn or contain these artistic expressions. Through reviving and futuring Black Radical traditions in collaboration with Queer and Afro Feminist theory and practice, we offer new context and new life for understanding, experiencing, and embodying Africanness and Blackness.

Taught over the course of the academic year 2022-2023, students will enroll in Dance and Education in the fall, and History of Art in the spring. Guest lectures, language practice, and local field trips will span the y