Controversy: Race and Sexuality on the American Frontier (FRO 100.023) |
Controversy: Race and Sexuality on the American Frontier (FRO 100.023)
Goucher College, Baltimore, Maryland
Angelo Robinson, Associate Professor of English
“Am I Black or White? Am I Straight or Gay? CONTROVERSY?” Since its founding, and long before recording artist Prince penned these lyrics in the 1980s, America has been a space and a place demanding and mandating polarized definitions of race and sexuality. This course will examine the reasoning behind and ramifications of these dichotomies from the Colonial Period to the present in genres that include literature, film, and music. We will also explore how these binaries affect people who identify as biracial and bisexual.
This discussion-based course requires intensive reading, viewing, and listening and will foster your critical thinking and analytical writing. Topics of discussion will include the “one-drop rule,” the slavery debate, miscegenation, racial passing, segregation, integration, interracial desire, and sexual passing. Special attention will be given to individuals who and organizations that refuse to follow racial and sexual dictates. Authors will include Thomas Jefferson, Harriet Jacobs, Mark Twain, Nella Larsen, James Weldon Johnson, Ralph Ellison, June Jordan, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Adrienne Rich, E. Lynn Harris, and Barack Obama.
Tags: Adrienne Rich, Angelo Robinson, Audre Lorde, E. Lynn Harris, Goucher College, Harriet Jacobs, James Baldwin, James Weldon Johnson, June Jordan, Mark Twain, Nella Larsen, Prince, Ralph Ellison, Stevie Wonder, Thomas Jefferson