Blackness and Utopia offered at UMass Spring Semester

Great looking course which will touch on genealogies of black feminism, as well as science fiction, fantasy, and Afrofuturism!

AfroAm 690E: Blackness and Utopia
Spring 2013, Afro-American Studies, UMass
Tuesdays, 2:30-5:00
New Africa House 302

Instructor: Britt Rusert

This course explores the vibrant history of utopian thought in Black Studies and African American literature and culture. It considers how the black radical tradition poses particular challenges to Western utopian thought as well as how the question of utopia might contribute to, or help to re-configure, the future(s) of Black Studies. Topics of discussion will include Afrofuturism, black science and speculative fiction, utopia and the black radical tradition, and blackness and metaphysics.

We will read fiction by Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, Terry Bisson, W.E.B. Du Bois and Pauline Hopkins, as well as readings on utopia and utopianism in the black feminist and black radical tradition. We will also discuss the art and work of Adrian Piper, Kara Walker, Josephine Baker, Sun Ra, P-Funk, Grace Jones, and others.

If you are interested in registering for the course, please contact Britt Rusert at brusert@afroam.umass.edu

The W.E.B Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies Presents:

A Lecture by Dr. Gene Andrew Jarrett
English and African American Studies, Boston University

“No Name, No Banner”: Slave Agency beyond Literacy and Literature

Wednesday, October 31st
4:30PM
UMass Campus Center, Room 904

Gene Andrew Jarrett is Professor and Chair of the Department of
English and Professor of African American Studies at Boston
University. He is the author of Representing the Race: A New Political
History of African American Literature (2011) and Deans and Truants:
Race and Realism in African American Literature (2007). He is the
editor or co-editor of multiple volumes on African American literature
and literary criticism: A Companion to African American Literature
(2010); The Collected Novels of Paul Laurence Dunbar (2009); The New
Negro: Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture,
1892-1938 (2007); A Long Way from Home by Claude McKay (2007); The
Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar (2006); and African American
Literature Beyond Race: An Alternative Reader (2006). He is now
writing a book on the literature, life and times of Paul Laurence
Dunbar.

Event supported by the UMass Amherst Center for Teaching and Faculty
Development’s Mutual Mentoring Initiative, funded by The Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation. Additional support provided by the Department of
English.

Please contactbrusert@afroam.umass.edu with questions about the event
or for directions.

FIVE COLLEGE FEMINIST SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES INITIATIVE – October Events

Tues, Oct 2, 5.30 pm — FSTSI Writing Group
(Meet at Amherst Brewing Company, 10 University Drive, Amherst, MA 01002)
Bring 4-5 copies of any writing project you are currently working on.

Fri, Oct 5 – Day long Intersex symposium October 5, 2012 10am-4:45pm
(Mount Holyoke College, Chapin Auditorium)
Tues, Oct 16, 5.30 pm – FSTSI Reading Group, Amherst Brewing Company, Amherst
(Reading: Joan Scott, The Fantasy of Feminist History (Chapters 1 & 2)

Tuesday, Sept 25, 5.30-7 pm – FSTSI Speaker Series, Five College Inc.
Speaker: Khary Polk, Department of Black Studies, Amherst College

“Easy to Get: Race, American Militarism, and the Black Venereal Body Abroad”
Immunity, contagion, communicability, and containment are broad themes that mark the movement of African
American soldiers across time and space. In this talk, I will examine three instances in which these themes punctuate
the discourse of 20th century African American military service abroad: in 1898 during the Spanish-American-Cuban War and related Philippine
War of Independence, in France during the First World War, and in the
global theater of World War II. In each of these moments, the bodies of African American soldiers have been the raw
material fueling U.S. imperial goals toward a global technological
supremacy, enabled through successive regimes of medical experimentation. I show how the medical apparatus of the U.S. military—a

vital arbiter of the overlapping taxonomies of race, class, gender, and citizenship in America—played a central role in the sexual, biological,
and political regulation of African American soldiers abroad.

FIVE COLLEGE
FEMINIST SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES INITIATIVE

SPEAKER SERIES – FALL 2012

Tues, Sept 18 – Kiran Asher, , Associate Professor of International Development and Social Change, Clark University

Fri, Oct 5 – Day long Intersex symposium (at MHC, Room: TBA)

Tues, Oct 23- Khary Polk, Robert E. Keiter 1957 Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor, Black Studies, Amherst College

Tues, Nov 13 – Virginia Eubanks, Associate Professor, Women’s Studies, University of Albany

Tues, Dec 4 – Jacquelyne Luce, Visiting Faculty, WGSS, UMass Amherst

All talks are from 5.30- 7 pm at Five College Inc, 97 Spring Street, Amherst, https://www.fivecolleges.edu
The day long symposium on Oct 5 will be held at Mount Holyoke College. Details forthcoming