2026 NYU course will teach 'traditions' of 'Black Marxism,' 'Queer/Trans Marxism'

New York University (NYU) is set to offer a course on Marxism that focuses on the perspectives and “traditions” of “Black Marxism, Postcolonial Marxism, and Queer/Trans Marxism.” 

Set to be offered next spring, Marxism Beyond Marx is described as focusing on the “intellectual traditions of people of color, people from colonized and formerly colonized places, feminists, and queer and trans people.” 

A course description adds that it will “use the adjective Marxist as a modifier for a noun denoting a political and intellectual tradition (as in Marxist Feminism).” 

[RELATED: Rhode Island College English course to teach students about ‘eco-Marxism’]

A goal of the class is to help students “familiarize” themselves with these “traditions.” It will also ask students, “do the historical formations of race, sex, and sexuality derive from political economy or do these historical formations constitute the substance of class itself?”

Students will also learn about how to read Marx from “perspectives often considered marginal to or derivative of economic class,” and will “trace the answers to this question through historical periods and contexts.” 

The full list of books that students should anticipate reading are: “Black Reconstruction in America,” “Women, Race, and Class, Provincializing Europe,” “Black, White, Yellow, and Left” and “Transgender Marxism.” 

[RELATED: Washington U hosting Marxist ‘Cannibal Capitalism’ lecture on resisting Trump]

The course will be taught by Emma Heaney, who is described on NYU’s website as being a “scholar of comparative literature, feminist studies, and trans studies.” NYU’s biography for the professor also states that her current research focuses on “a theory of the transformation of queer and trans identities from works of literature spanning the long twentieth century.”

Campus Reform has contacted New York University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.