Graduate

Exploration of interdisciplinary research methodology—a broader set of scientific beliefs, approaches, inquiries, theories, and analytics—relevant to the study of Black communities. Students read, explore, and engage in particular methods—approaches to data collection and analyses—emphasizing various forms of ethnographic research. Course also examines other approaches to the study of Blackness, such as historical/archival, cultural studies and discursive analyses, and mixed methods.

Explores "subaltern" narratives of diaspora exile in order to interrogate the condition of exile and its interwoven, often contradictory relations to many diasporic formations that endure in the 20th and 21st centuries. Students explore the various origins of diaspora and forms of exile emergent from chattel slavery, colonialism, war, racism, xenophobia, political dissidence, and dispossession, informing an understanding of these broader global machinations, and the experiences of those exiled and in diaspora themselves.

Considers theories of race, place, gender, and climate through the overlapping burgeoning fields of ecopoetics and ecoaesthetics. Reflects on how the environment, climate crises, and various ecologies inform contemporary experimental poetry, film, music, dance, visual art, performance, and community activism of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Exploration of interdisciplinary research and theoretical frameworks relevant to the study of the global black communities. Examines multiple theoretical approaches to the study of Blackness, drawing from a wide array of ethnographic, historical/archival, cultural studies and discursive analyses. Designed to help students develop a research tool kit, one that is rigorous, flexible, practical, ethical, grounded, and self-reflexive.

Independent study and research under faculty supervision. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.