HIS 399 Gender, Sexuality, and the African American Community
in Historical Perspective
Spring 2003
MW 4-5:20
Professor Martin Summers
Office: 323 McKenzie Hall
Phone: 346-6159; E-mail:
Office hours: MW 2-3, U 10-11, and by appointment
Course Description:
From the era of New World slavery to the age of AIDS, gender and sexuality have figured prominently in African American history. This course examines the intersections of these two categories of identity - as well as modes of power - in the shaping of the historical experiences of African Americans. Through readings and lecture, we will explore three broad and interconnecting themes: how cultural understandings of race have impacted cultural understandings of gender and sexuality (and vice versa); how dominant cultural notions of gender and sexuality have influenced relations of power between blacks and whites; and how gender and sexuality have shaped relationships within African American communities. While this course will devote much of its attention to how the interrelatedness of race, gender, and sexuality serves to produce and maintain power relationships between African Americans and the dominant culture, we will also spend much of the class exploring how black women and men of all class backgrounds and sexual orientations have resisted these power relationships and, in many cases, reproduced them in their own communities.
Assigned Readings:
The following books are available at the University Bookstore. There is a course reader. Articles within the reader are indicated in the syllabus by (CR). There are also readings on reserve at Knight Library that are indicated by (KL). All articles and book chapters are required reading.
Deborah Gray White,Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South. Revised edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.
Nella Larsen.Quicksand and Passing. 1928-9. Reprint, with an introduction by Deborah E. McDowell, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986.
Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo,Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Course Requirements:
This is a reading- and writing-intensive course. Although I will give occasional lectures to introduce key concepts and/or provide broader historical context for the readings, the questions we are seeking to answer require group discussion. Therefore, I expect students to attend class regularly and be prepared to discuss the assigned readings. Class participation is paramount. Students with more thanthreeunexcused absences will have their final grade lowered by a letter grade. Students with more thanfiveunexcused absences will fail the course.
The assignments for this class consist of weekly response essays, two short papers, and a cumulative final exam in an essay format. Weekly response essays (maximum of one page) will address the week's readings and are due in-class every Wednesdayexceptweeks 1, 4, and 7.Absolutely no late response essays will be accepted without a written excuse. The two short papers (3-5 typed, double-spaced pages with 1" margins and in 12 point font) will be a book review of White'sAr'n't I a Woman?and an analytical essay on Larsen'sQuicksand. Specific information on paper requirements, topics, etc. will be distributed several weeks before they are due. All due dates are listed in the course outline. All writing assignments should be submitted in hard copies. I will accept papers formatted in electronic text only in the case of emergencies and, even then, it is the student's responsibility to follow up on whether or not the file was successfully transmitted and opened.I reserve the right to lower the grades of late papers AND the right to refuse to grade papers that are handed in well past the deadline.
Course Evaluation:
Class participation (10%)
Weekly response essays (20%)
Two short papers (25% each for a total of 50%)
Final exam (20%)
NOTE: Outside of extraordinary (and I do mean extraordinary) circumstances, I do not believe in allowing students to do extra credit work. Instead, students should devote the time that they would spend doing extra credit work on the assigned work. Also, "incompletes" will only be given to students who have completed two of the assignments (not including the weekly response essays), have at least a "C" average, and have a sufficient reason to need an incomplete.
Course Outline:
Week 1
Mon 3/31 Course overview
Wed 4/2 Intersections of race, gender, and sexuality
Reading: Higginbotham, "African American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race"CR
Barkley Brown, "'What Has Happened Here': The Politics of Difference in Women's History and Feminist Politics"CR
Week 2
Mon 4/7 Gender, sexuality, and race in African-European contact
Reading: Morgan, "'Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder': Male Travelers, Female Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Ideology, 1500-1770"CR
Jordan,White Over Black, ch. 1, pp. 3-43KL
Wed 4/9 Gender, sexuality, and race in American slavery
Reading: White,Ar'n't I a Woman?, intro and ch. 1, pp. 1-61
Week 3
Mon 4/14- Gender, sexuality, and race in American slavery, cont.
Wed 4/16 Reading: White,Ar'n't I a Woman?,chs. 2-5, pp.62-160
Camp, "The Pleasures of Resistance: Enslaved Women and Body Politics in the Plantation South, 1830-1861"CR
Wyatt-Brown, "The Mask of Obedience: Male Slave Psychology in the Old South"CR
Lecture by Dr. Stephanie Camp, "Slavery, Space, and Gender in Peace and War," Tuesday, April 15th, 7:00pm, Knight Browsing Room
Week 4
Mon 4/21- Engendering freedom: The impact of emancipation on gender relations
Wed 4/23 Reading: White,Ar'n't I a Woman?,ch. 6, pp. 161-90
Berlin et. al., "Afro-American Families in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom"CR
Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to FreedomCR
**First writing assignment due on April 23d - No weekly response due**
Week 5
Mon 4/28- Sexual politics and racial violence in the American South, 1890-1955
Wed 4/30 Reading: Wells, "A Red Record"CR
Hall, "'The Mind That Burns in Each Body': Women, Rape, and Racial Violence"CR
Films: "Birth of a Nation" and "The Death of Emmett Till"
Week 6
Mon 5/5 Transgressive sexuality and the New Negro, part I
Reading: Larsen,Quicksand(entire)
Wed 5/7 Transgressive sexuality and the New Negro, part II
Reading: Carby, "It JusBe'sDat Way Sometimes: The Sexual Politics of Women's Blues"CR
Garber, "A Spectacle of Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem," in Dubermanet. al.,Hidden From History, 318-31KL
Week 7
Mon 5/12- Migration in the lives of African American women, 1900-1950
Wed 5/14 Reading: Lemke-Santangelo,Abiding Courage, intro and chs. 1-4, pp. 1-131
Hine, "Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West"CR
**Second writing assignment due on May 14th- No weekly response due**
Week 8
Mon 5/19 Migration in the lives of African American women, cont.
Reading: Lemke-Santangelo,Abiding Courage, chs. 5-6 and conclusion, pp. 133- 82
Wed 5/21 Gender and the Civil Rights movement
Reading: Estes, "'IAMA MAN!': Race, Masculinity, and the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike"CR
Lee, "Anger, Memory, and Personal Power: Fannie Lou Hamer and Civil Rights Leadership," in Collier-Thomas and Franklin,Sisters in Struggle, pp. 139-70KL
Week 9
Mon 5/26 MEMORIAL DAY - NO CLASS
Wed 5/28 Black Power and Black Feminism
Reading: Cleaver, "On Becoming," "Notes on a Native Son," and "The Primeval Mitosis"CR
Combahee River Collective, "A Black Feminist Statement"CR
Week 10
Mon 6/2- Black queer communities: Representations and resistance
Wed 6/4 Reading: Clarke, "The Failure to Transform: Homophobia in the Black Community"KL
Harper, "Eloquence and Epitaph: AIDS, Homophobia, and the Problematics of Black Masculinity" in Harper,Are We Not Men?, pp. 3-38KL
Film: "Paris is Burning" or "Tongues Untied"
Final exam is Wednesday, June 11that 3:15pm
(No early final exams will be given except in extraordinary cases - this does not include parents purchasing plane tickets for vacations, family reunions, etc. I suggest that you factor the final exam into any travel arrangements that you are planning)