WMST 221 - Captive Genders and Methods of Survival

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

(Same as AFRS 221) From Celia the Slave (1855) to CeCe McDonald (2011) cis, queer, and trans women (particularly of color) have been deemed unruly, deviant, and criminalized for defending themselves against gendered violence. With no selves to defend in the face of the law, how do these subjects seek justice when their survival is routinely “rewarded” with both legal and extralegal forms of punishment? While critiques of the criminal justice system often center the mechanisms of the system itself, this course is concerned with the testaments of survivors, their protocols of survival, namely the feminist, trans, and queer-of-color ethics, activisms, and intellectual histories that resist gender violence, criminalization, and punishment. This course centers histories, testimony, poetry, art, music, and social theory including activists accounts from Harriet Jacobs, Ida B. Wells, Angela Davis, Sylvia Rivera, Dean Spade, Miss Major, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and others. Jasmine Syedullah.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS