UMass will teach 'rich tradition' of 'transnational Black feminist' and 'queer Marxist theorizing'
UMass Amherst is offering a course this fall called, 'Geographies of the ‘Imaginaire’: Blackness, Worldmakings & Intersectional Future.'
The course will 'explore spatiality of African descendant people in the United States and in the larger Black diaspora, rethinking power, society & culture, knowledge production, and social movement through Blackness.'
A course building on the “rich tradition” and “queer Marxist theorizing” of “transnational Black feminist and queer Marxist theorizing” is coming to the University of Massachusetts Amherst this fall.
The course, “Geographies of the ‘Imaginaire’: Blackness, Worldmakings & Intersectional Futures,” is offered by the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at the College of Humanities and Fine Arts.
“This course will explore the spatiality of African descendant people in the United States and in the larger Black diaspora, rethinking power, society & culture, knowledge production, and social movement through Blackness,” the course description says.
Among the thinkers that students will study in this class include Saidiya Hartman, a professor at Columbia University’s English Department. Hartman focuses on African American studies and contributed to the collection of essays, “On Whiteness.”
Another scholar who will be studied is Professor Fred Moten who specializes in “black study, poetics and critical theory,” per his New York University biography.
The listed faculty member for the course is Beaudelaine Pierre, an author and scholar who specializes in “decolonial thought” and “Feminist epistemology.” As of publication, Pierre appears to have a primary position at the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Department at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
[RELATED: University of Maine commences Black History Month with raising of BLM flag]
In February, the UMass College of Humanities and Fine Arts featured Pierre in its Black History Month celebration during an event entitled, “Black Feminisms Lecture Series: Beaudelaine Pierre, Tout Moun Se Moun, Experiments in Beings, and Ecologies of Waste.”
This is not the first time Campus Reform has reported about a university course adopting an explicitly racial lens. Various universities — such as the University of Pittsburgh and University of Connecticut — have required students to pass an “anti-racism” course in order to graduate.
Campus Reform also contacted UMass Amherst’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department and Pierre Beaudelaine for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
