lifeorgric:

Hello all,

Several classes in the Africana Studies program are in jeopardy of being cut because enrollment numbers are low. Because a majority of L.I.F.E. members are involved with the Africana Studies program as students and supporters, we understand the importance of strengthening the program.

We are asking that those who have not yet registered for class (and those who are in need of one or two) sign up for one or both of the classes and spread the word to other students. Two classes are on “Remembering and Forgetting Slavery” and the other is on “Feminisms Within White Supremacy.” All classes are currently being taught Dr. Sadhana Bery and descriptions can be found below:

AFRI 262: Remembering and Forgetting Slavery
It is in the crucible of Atlantic chattel slavery that white supremacy constructed Blacks as not fully human and Whites as the universal measure of human-ness. Today, in the ongoing afterlife of slavery, this is still the dominant structuring principle as evidenced by the urgent need to constantly declare that “Black Lives Matter”. This course explores how the social practices of forgetting and remembering Atlantic slavery frame the afterlife of slavery. Both forgetting and remembering are conscious social practices; neither is “natural”. Relations of power determine the content and form of what is forgotten and remembered. Some of the questions we explore in this course are: what kinds of struggles ensue over ownership of memories? Who has the right to tell the narrative of slavery? What does it mean to “perform” slavery in the present? How do institutions, such as schools, museums, commemorative organizations, media, and cultural productions, construct our memories and promote amnesias of slavery? How do differently racialized and spatialized groups choose what and how to remember and forget? How is memory making raced, gendered and classed? We will examine memories and amnesias of slavery in two sites implicated in Atlantic slavery, the U.S. and Ghana.

AFRI 350: Feminisms Within White Supremacy
In this course we study the different, and often opposed, feminisms that exist in the context of white supremacy. In particular, we look at the philosophies, visions and demands of, and relationships between, Black, Indigenous and White feminisms. At face value, feminisms have anti-patriarchy in common. However, historically formed differences of race, nationality, citizenship, class and sexuality cause vastly different feminisms, even in terms of relationships between men and women. A special focus of the course will be on the relationships between Black and Indigenous feminisms. Though they both oppose white supremacy, they understand it differently and struggle for different visions of the future. While centered in the U.S. the course also examines feminisms in other nations built on white supremacy, namely, Canada, Australia and U.K.

Please support Africana Studies. There’s no program without the classes.

Thank you,
L.I.F.E.