AFRS 286 - Black Geographies

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

(Same as GEOG 286) Over the last two decades, Black geographies has developed as a vibrant field of study, one that considers the roles of racial capitalism, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism in the modern world’s making, historically and contemporarily. The subfield raises urgent questions about how racial violences-segregation, inequality, police brutality, dispossession, and organized abandonment-are produced, inscribed, naturalized, and contested through spatial relations. The course introduces key themes and debates in Black geographies, by utilizing a historical, transnational, interdisciplinary perspective. It also explores the shifting and dynamic configurations of race, racism, and power in relation to the interlocking historical geographies of Europe, Africa, and the Americas, especially North America and the Carribean. A Black geographic approach understands Black and other marginalized people as subjects who actively make places and produce geographical knowledge. Toward this end, the course examines the intellectual histories, geographies, and political cultures of the Black radical tradition, including practices of slave revolt and fugitivity, the activism of the Black Panther Party and Third World Women’s Alliance and contemporary global movements for prison abolition. Recent case studies include the Flint, Michigan water crisis; hurricanes Katrina and Maria; and London’s Grenfell Tower destruction. Maegan Miller.

Two 75-minute periods.