Professional Documents
Culture Documents
This interdisciplinary course uses black feminist theories to study representations of black
women in popular media outlets. It will provide students with a survey of historic and
contemporary depictions of “blackness” and “womanhood” in American visual culture. We will
examine race, class, gender, and sexuality in popular representations of black women and will
consider their mutually constitutive relationship to capital and nation building. Considering the
socially constructed nature of identity formation and belonging, we will consider the effects of
capitalism, advertising, and modernization projects (including slavery) on black women.
Demonstrating the critical value of black women to notions of progress, this course will use print
media as its “point of access” into modernity and will explore other popular media outlets, such
as music, television, and movies. Using colonization and imperialism as our starting point, we
will critically examine not only hegemonic depictions of black women, but will also study the
ways in which black women themselves have historically participated in this globalizing process:
the Diaspora of black womanhood.
Learning Outcomes:
In Representing Black Women in Popular Culture we will explore a wide variety of sociocultural
topics related to capitalism in our (post)modern world. These topics include: representation in
mass media, including consumerism, advertising, globalization, and the commodification of the
black body; black feminist theory; feminist theories of transnational movement and global
problems; racial uplift and black women as agents in their own representation.
• Students will be challenged to stretch and question their assumptions about race, gender,
sexuality, and popular culture to develop critical reading skills.
• Students will begin to understand the importance and impact of popular culture on the
Diaspora of black womanhood.
• Students will strengthen their oral and writing skills and demonstrate their ability to use
critical analysis through successfully completing a variety of written assignments and in
class presentations.
• Students will be introduced to a range of library sources available to Indiana University
students.
• Students will present research projects in a mini-conference format during the final week.
Assigned readings – All readings listed are to be read prior to class on the day listed in the
syllabus. The readings are largely comprised of articles and chapters from various books, which
are located in oncourse/resources/readings. It is your responsibility to print and read these
Absences – “Stuff happens,” so be sure to let me know when it does BEFORE CLASS if it will
affect any of your in-class assignments. More than three absences will result in a letter grade
reduction as a large portion of the class is graded on participation (including presentations, etc.)
Graded Work – In order to pass the class, you must complete all of the assignments. All grades
will count and no extensions or incompletes will be granted. Your grade on individual
assignments will be calculated by adding up the points and then dividing by the total possible
points to give you your percentage, while your course grade is weighted (see below).
Plagiarism - Remember to give credit where credit is due. Students who present another
writer’s words as their own or who neglect to cite proper bibliographical information when
referring to material published on-line, in reference books, or in a journal or book of any kind are
subject to disciplinary procedures as outlined by Indiana University’s Code of Student Rights,
Responsibilities and Conduct. If you have any questions regarding this policy, please consult
said publication at http://campuslife.indiana.edu/Code/.
I will be using oncourse to keep electronic files of your work this semester to ensure the
academic integrity of the essays written in this course. As such, you will be required to turn in
all formal writing via oncourse and in class (hard copy) on the day it is due.
Required Books:
Rooks, Noliwe M. Ladies' Pages: African American Women's Magazines and the Culture That
Made Them. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2004.
Anderson, Margaret L. and Collins, Patricia Hill. “Conceptualizing Race, Class, and Gender,” in
Margaret L. Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins (Eds.) Race, Class, and Gender: An
anthology, 5th Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thompson Learning, 2004, selections.
Bundles, A'Lelia. On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker. New York :
Scribner, 2001.
Cloud, Dana L. “Hegemony or Concordance? The Rhetoric of Tokenism in ‘Oprah’ Winfrey’s
Rags-to-Riches Biography, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 13, 1996, 115-137.
Collins, Patricia Hill. “The Past is Ever Present: Recognizing the New Racism,” in Patricia Hill
Collins. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New
York, NY: Routledge, 2004, p. 53-86.
Collins, Patricia Hill. ““Why Black Sexual Politics?,” in Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual
Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York, NY: Routledge,
2004, pp. 25-54.
Gross, Kali N. “Roughneck Women, Pale Representations, and Dark Crimes: Black Female
Criminals and Popular Culture,” in Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black
Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006,
pp. 101-126.
Week 1
Anderson, Margaret L. and Collins, Patricia Hill, 2004 (Section II), “Conceptualizing
Race, Class, and Gender,” 75-117 and from 1992 edition, Audre Lorde, “Age Race,
Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” pp. 495-503.
and
Springer, Kimberly. “Divas, Evil Black Bitches, and Bitter Black Women: African
American Women in Postfeminist and Post-Civil Rights Popular Culture,” pp 249-276, in
Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, (Eds). Yvonne
Tasker and Diane Negra. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
Week 4 Readings
West, Cornel. “Black Sexuality: The Taboo Subject,” from Anderson and Collins, 2004,
pp.455-461.
and
Harris, Laura Alexander. “Queer Black Feminism: The Pleasure Principle,” Feminist
Review, No. 54, Contesting Feminine Orthodoxies (Autumn, 1996), pp. 3-30; and
9/23 & 25 Lecture and Discussion of Key Concepts. GENERATIVE PAPER #1 (DUE 9/25)
White, Deborah Gray. “Chapter One, Jezebel and Mammy: The Mythology of Female
Slavery,” Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South Revised Edition.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999, pp. 27-61.
Week 6 Readings
Wallace-Sanders, Kimberly. “The ‘Mammyfication’ of the Nation: Mammy and the
American Imagination,” pp.1-12; and
Wallace-Sanders, Kimberly. “Bound in Black and White: Bloodlines, Milk Lines, and
Competition in the Plantation Nursery,” Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and
Southern Memory, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008, pp. 32-58; and
Gross, Kali N. “Roughneck Women, Pale Representations, and Dark Crimes: Black
Female Criminals and Popular Culture,” Chapter 4 (101-126).
Weeks 7-9 Black Womanhood, Racial Uplift, and the Politics of Beauty
Week 7 Readings Higginbotham, Elizabeth and Lynn Weber “Moving up with Kin and Community:
Upward Social Mobility for Black and White Women,” Gender and Society, Vol. 6, No.
3, This Issue Is Devoted to: Race, Class, and Gender (Sep., 1992), pp. 416-440; and
White, Deborah Gray. “The Cost of Club Work, the Price of Black Feminism,” in Nancy
Hewitt and Suzanne Lebsock, eds., Visible Women: New Essays on American Activism,
Urbana: University of Illinois, 1993, pp. 247-269.
10/13 & 16 Tues.: Lecture and Discussion of Key Concepts.
Week 11
Readings hooks, bell. “Spending Culture: Marketing the black underclass,” p 169-179 and “Seeing
and Making Culture,” 193-201, Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations,
New York: Routledge, 1994; and
Week 13 Class Cancelled This Week – work on your final projects, GENERATIVE PAPER#3
Week 14 (Music)
Readings
Morgan, Joan. “Fly-Girls, Bitches, and Hoes: Notes of a Hip-Hop Feminist.” Social
Text, No. 45 (Winter, 1995), pp. 151-157.
Springer, Kimberly. Third Wave Black Feminism? Signs, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Summer,
2002), pp. 1059-1082.
Selections from
Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. “Sex, Power and Punanny,” Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy, But
Somebody’s Got to Do It,” “I see the Same Ho: Video Vixens, Beauty Culture, and
Diasporic Sex Tourism,” and “Too Hot to Be Bothered: Black Women and Sexual
Abuse,” in Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women, New York:
New York University Press, 2007, pp. ix-84.
Kelley, Robin D.G. “Countering the Conspiracy to Ignore Black Girls,” in Anderson and
Collins (Eds.) Race, Class, and Gender: An anthology, 5th Edition. Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth/Thompson Learning, 2004, pp. 287-295.
12/9 & 11 Wrapping up the semester, lecture and discussion of Key Concepts.