The University of Texas, San Antonio, is offering a class this semester related to Beyonce’s latest album — it’s safe to assume the course will fall politically “to the left, to the left.”
The course, “Black Women, Beyonce & Popular Culture,” is based on the superstar’s latest hit album, “Lemonade.” According to the class syllabus, students “explore the theoretical, historical, and literary frameworks of black feminism, which feature prominently in Lemonade.”
In addition to using the artist’s album as a springboard, other materials in the course include Toni Morrison’s Sula; Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day; Warsan Shire’s Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth; and Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Radicalism.
This course does come with a warning. On the syllabus, professor Kinitra Brooks says that this intensive course consists of required reading almost equivalent to a book each week. “Please make sure you are ready, willing, and able for this type of rigor,” she said. “Studying race, gender, class and pop culture theory is incredibly fun…and incredibly hard. Do an internal check for your maturity and ability to handle such a self-directed course. There is no shame in deciding you are not ready.”
“I simply ask that you are willing to be uncomfortable–to have your thoughts and ideas challenged–and then to work/read/write your way through that uncomfortability in order to become a stronger critical thinker,” she said.
Along with participation, reading quizzes, a final exam, and a final project, the course grade is also contingent on writing and submitting “crucial commentaries,” where students analyze what they read assigned that week, and include “new applications of knowledge to personal, social, cultural, or educational issues.”
This course won’t concentrate on most of the alarming pertinent issues African American women face, such as domestic violence. According to the Dallas Morning News, African American women are three times more likely to be killed by a romantic partner than members of other racial groups. Intimate partner homicide is a leading cause of death among black women between 15 and 35 years old. As of 2010, young black women consist of 36 percent of females in residential youth penitentiaries. Finally, they are more likely to die of breast cancer than any other racial group, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
