BLST 017. Introduction to Black Queer Studies

Queerness disrupts normative arrangements of bodies, spaces, and institutions. Equally, ‘queerness’ is akin to ‘blackness’ as both positionalities are constantly in flux, mixing and remixing functioning as forms of resistance against anti-blackness/otherness and anti-queerness. We will develop our understanding of black and queer geographies and their intersections through a variety of ‘texts’ from the disciplinary fields of geography, sociology, and philosophy to literature, art history and visual culture. This transdisciplinary approach is necessary when we consider Edouard Glissant’s concept of nonhistory which gestures toward the submarine archive for African diasporic subjects in the Americas.
1 credit.
Eligible for GSST
Fall 2025. Smith.
Catalog chapter: Black Studies
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/black-studies-program

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