Course Description
01:595:312 Poetics of Black Diasporas: Literature and Performance
- Instructor: Omaris Z. Zamora, Ph.D.
- Description:
Fulfills Upper-Level Elective for LCS Major and Minor
Fullfills Upper-Level Elective for Africana Studies Major and MinorThis is an interdisciplinary course that explores the representation and discourse of blackness in Black diasporic cultural production. Specifically, the course will explore how black experiences are represented, embodied, performed, and theorized. Some authors/artists that we will analyze include: Cardi B, Solange Knowles, Elizabeth Acevedo, Warsan Shire, Arthur Jafa, Hanif Abdurraqif, among others. This course’s focuses on poetry, performance, and the visual to motivate students to think about the archive our bodies create, its narrations and movements. Hence, our classroom community will be an intimate space where students will share from their course journal, participate in a performance and creative writing workshop, as well as create and write from the archive their bodies create. This is a course that challenges students to question our understandings of blackness, epistemology, and the archive.
- Learning Goals:
Upon completion of the course, students will:
- Be able to build parallels between the understanding of personal archives, poetry, and performance
- Create poetry and performance that is conversation with course’s themes
- Theorize from their own flesh, experience by drawing from their own personal archives both in scholarly and creative fashion
- Required Reading:
Readings and course materials are in Canvas.
Consult Rutgers Barnes & Noble for current books for the course.
- Evaluation:
Online Discussion = 30%
In-Class Journal Reading = 10%
Journal Entries (5) = 15%
Creative Midterm Production = 20%
Final Paper = 25% - Credits: 3
- Disclaimer: The information in this course description is subject to change. For up-to-date course information, please refer to the syllabus on your course site (e.g. Canvas).
