This very first unit is an introduction of sorts.  It asks you to read and look at the syllabus and corresponding website very closely.  It also sets up the framework for the ways that we will politicize gender, sexuality, race, Black feminisms, anti-Blackness, literacies, and pedagogies.  Since we are all working in higher education and meeting one another in this space, we will start by interrogating the western academy and university in its specific relationship to Black women and femmes. We will hug up to Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s work most closely here: first, in her essay, ”The Shape of My Impact” where we begin by situating the academy as a space that can be as hostile and predatory as any other.  Second, we will read Gumbs’s essay, “17th Floor: A pedagogical oracle from/with Audre Lorde” as a Black-Queer-Feminist-guided meditation on teaching/being in the academy.
 
We will close this early, short unit with an in-class activity that looks to Black girls’ literacies and languages as a fugitive space.  Welcome to the Jump Off!  In the words of Lil Kim, circa 2003, “we gon do this like Big Poppa Was Here.”  The buttons below will take you to the three parts of this unit.  You can also scroll at the left-hand bar.

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Part I
​(click here) 

Put Some Stank on It:
​Teaching Politics and Policies

Part II
​(click here) 

A Black-Queer-Feminist-guided Meditation on Teaching/Being in the Academy with Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Part III
​(click here) 

"Chile, A Fox Be Just a Fox":
​Intro to Black Girl Literacies and Languages

Part IV
​(click here) 

Theme I Project