The Inner Lives of Black Women

This course encourages students to use creative and rigorous historical methods to recover Black women's experiences. Drawing on letters, personal journals, music, literature, poetry, and film, the course explores Black women's everyday lives in America from the nineteenth century to the present. We will examine Black women's struggles to define their own lives and improve the social, economic, political, and cultural conditions of Black communities. Topics include Black women's enslavement and freedom; kinship and family relations; institution- and community-building; violence and trauma; labor and leisure; changing gender roles; consumer and beauty culture; mental health; social activism; and queer identities and the politics of sexuality.