For centuries, the characterization of American Blackness has been reliant upon a problem of affect. Blackness has, at once, been constructed as the apex of feeling–violent, superfluous, and unbound by logic–and also as its complete absence. Since the inception of chattel slavery, Black Americans have oft been depicted as wildly and overwhelmingly effusive, having the largest laughs and the biggest screams. At the same time, Black folks have been accused of being totally devoid of the ability to feel pain, to feel love, to feel grief. These constructions have wide-reaching contemporary implications, no doubt serving as the foundation of the well known stereotype of the angry Black woman but also as the origin of contemporary medical biases which suggest that Black patients feel less pain than their white counterparts. Through readings in African American literature, affect theory, and Black studies, this course investigates the intersection of Blackness and affect, interrogating both the violence of these white supremacist constructions of Black feeling and the insurgent ways that Black folks feel against, alongside, and in spite of them. Ultimately in this seminar, we will be tasked with asking what literary depictions of Blackness have to do with the way that we conceive of feeling.

Texts may include work by: Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Frederick Douglass, Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, Saidiya Hartman, Fred Moten, Frank Wilderson, Barbara Christian, Claudia Tate, Lauren Berlant, Sianne Ngai, Sara Ahmed, Hortense Spillers, and Frantz Fanon.