Courses

This course explores themes that have shaped Anthropology’s (often fraught) engagement with Black life. We will critically examine texts that reveal the ways that the discipline and its practitioners have sought to interface with people and populations of African descent—and have sought to define the constitution of Blackness itself—in the Americas. Plumbing the dynamic relationship between historical and ethnographic inquiry, we will ask pressing questions not only about conditions of Black life (and Black death), but also about the production of knowledge about the people who live under Blackness’ sign. Finally, we will turn our collective attention to key issues in the practice, ethics, and politics of ethnography, while also immersing ourselves in the archives produced through ethnographic and auto-ethnographic practice, including those found in various NYC collections.