Required Books: Course Reserves:

Transcription

1 ENG 6076-Section 1821/WST Section 0940 Issues in Theory: bell hooks Thursdays, 7:20-10:10 (with a fifteen-minute break) TUR 4112 Instructor: Dr. Tace Hedrick Office: 302 Ustler Hall Phone: (352) Required Books: Toni Cade Bambara The Salt Eaters bell hooks: Feminism is For Everybody: Passionate Politics Black Looks: Race and Representation Where We Stand: Class Matters Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations All About Love: New Visions Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery The Will to Change: Men and Masculinity Remembered Rapture: A Writer at Work Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope hooks, bell. Feminism as a Persistent Critique of History: What s Love Got to Do With It? The Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation. Edited By Alan Read. Seattle, WA: Bay Press, Fanon, Frantz. The Fact of Blackness. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann. New York, NY: Grove Press, Freire, Paulo. Chapter One. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. New York, NY: Continuum, 1989 (1970). Cone, James. The Human Being in Black Theology. A Black Theology of Liberation. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincourt, hooks, bell. Black Women Intellectuals. Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life. By bell hooks and Cornel West. Boston, MA : South End Press, Hillman, James. Snake is not a Symbol. Dream Animals. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet. Translated by Joan M. Burnham; foreword by Kent Nerburn. Novato, CA: New World Library, Thich, Nhat Hanh. Introduction and Restoring the Pure Land. Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. New York, NY: Riverhead Books, Fromm, Erich. The Practice of Loving. The Art of Loving. New York, NY: Harper, Neal, Mark Anthony. What the Hell is a Black Male Feminist? New Black Man. New York, NY: Routledge, Awkward, Michael. A Black Man s Place in Black Feminist Criticism. Negotiating Difference:

2 Race, Gender, and the Politics of Positionality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, Giroux, Henry. Black, Bruised, and Read All Over: Public Intellectuals and the Politics of Race. Class Issues : Pedagogy, Cultural Studies, and the Public Sphere. Edited by Amitava Kumar. New York: New York University Press, Hull, Gloria. What it is I Think She s Doing Anyhow: A Reading of Toni Cade Bambara s The Salt Eaters. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. Edited by Barbara Smith. New York, NY: Kitchen Sink Women of Color Press, Hall, Stuart. "Encoding, Decoding." The Cultural Studies Reader. Edited by Simon During. New York, NY: Routledge, Grossberg, Lawrence. History, Politics and Postmodernism: Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies. Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. Edited by David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen. New York, NY: Routledge, Requirements: 1 Presentation 1 Annotated Bibliography page final paper Course Description/Goals: In this class, we ll be reading the works of feminist, public intellectual, race theorist and cultural worker bell hooks. I envision this course as one which looks not only at the many concerns which hooks addresses (race, feminism, love, writing, teaching, cultural criticism) but also investigates certain ideas and roles: how a black intellectual career is shaped over time; how a reader balances, and/or values, the varied moments of an intellectual career; what we think the terms public or organic intellectual mean; the presumed split between the intellectual and the public ( mind and body ); the role of intellectual influence; what it means to be a public feminist black woman; what black cultural studies might be; and others. We will also be doing some of what I call reading around/with hooks : looking at other writers who have influenced her work in one way or another. Assignments will be as follows: class participation, one 15-minute class discussion, 3- page final paper prospectus with annotated 6-source bibliography, and one page (not including the bibliography, which is usually 2-4 pages) final paper. Class participation will be 10% of the grade; the presentation will be 20%; bibliography and prospectus 25%; the remaining 45% goes toward the final paper. An incomplete will automatically negate the possibility of an A for the course. Class participation: Part of what will be required of students is to learn the art of the good question: learning is often more about how to ask good questions than it is about knowing something. Thus, while I expect everyone to come to class having read the assignments for the day (there is a lot of reading here, which while not necessarily all difficult will require careful marshaling of one s time), I also expect everyone to come prepared for discussion not only with comments but with questions which will open up discussion amongst us. Thus, each student

3 should come with at least one section, quote, or paragraph about which they are prepared to enter into discussion with the rest of the group. Class Presentation: Hooks cites many writers as part of the intellectual context for her own writing and thought. One of our questions in our examination of hooks thinking should be, how do these other thinkers inform, transform, or are counter to her concerns? Toward that end, each student will choose one of hook s books on our list, plus whatever readings are connected to that particular text. Each student will present a focused but in-depth 15-minute presentation, which can be handled one of two ways: 1) Make a presentation that is briefly informative about hooks text and about the related readings; and discuss a theme or major idea shared across the texts (or in the case of just a hooks text, a major idea or theme in that book). 2) Or, you can look at contemporary reviews of the hooks texts you chose and make an in-depth, interpretive, and theoretically grounded discussion of her reception in alternative, scholarly, and mainstream presses. Each student should have copies of the following to hand out to the class the day of the presentation: 1) A bibliography. 2) A type-written, double-spaced copy of the presentation for each student. August Week One Th 27 Henry Giroux, Black, Bruised, and Read All Over: Public Intellectuals and the Politics of Race. hooks, Black Women Intellectuals September Week Two Th 3 Bambara, The Salt Eaters Hull, What It Is I Think She s Doing Anyway Week Three Th 10 Black Looks Feminism as a Persistent Critique of History Cone, The Human Being in Black Theology Fanon, The Fact of Blackness Week Four Th 17 Sisters of the Yam

4 Week Five Th 24 Outlaw Culture Stuart Hall, "Encoding, Decoding Grossberg, Lawrence. History, Politics and Postmodernism: Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies. Week Six Th 30 Reel to Real October Week Seven Th 8 Bone Black Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet James Hillman, Snake is not a Symbol Prospectus and Annotated Bibliography Due Week Eight Th 15 Remembered Rapture Week Nine Th 22 Feminism is For Everybody Week Ten Th 29 Where We Stand November Week Eleven Th 5 All About Love Erich Fromm, The Practice of Loving Thich Nhat Hanh Introduction Restoring the Pure Land Week Twelve Th 12 Teaching Community Freire, Chapter One Week Thirteen Th 19 Discussion TBA Week Fourteen Th 26 Thanksgiving

5 December Week Fifteen Th 4 The Will to Change Mark Anthony Neal, What the Hell is a Black Male Feminist? Michael Awkward, A Black Man s Place in Black Feminist Criticism. Week Sixteen Th 11 Final Paper Due (Mon 9 is the last day of classes) Annotated Bibliography: We will be discussing the annotated bibliography as the semester goes on. See How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography at: and Annotated Bibliographies at: Final Paper: We ll be discussing the paper as the semester goes on, but to start with you will be needing to think about your topic as soon as possible like right now. I encourage students who already think they have an idea about their thesis/dissertation topic to write a paper as closely related to that topic as possible; thus this class will help you toward your final goal as a graduate student. Final papers must follow MLA citation, footnote, and bibliography standards, unless your discipline requires a different way of citing things. They must be double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman, have standard margins, and a catchy title. The rule of thumb for a bibliography is at least one citation per page. Thus a 20-page paper should have around 20 references in its bibliography.