First Year Seminar Prof. ShaDawn Battle, Ph.D.The Lives of Black Women and Girls. Anti-Black State-Sanctioned Violence in the U.S.

In the first course the students will be reading and writing about, analyzing, and getting to the heart of what it means and looks like when the State gives its blessing rather than condemns acts of violence committed by its many agents. Think of the State as this multi-faceted, big-headed monster with many tentacles, or agents that aid in the enactment of its power, such as the courts, the police, prosecutors, the church, the family as an institution, legislators, the military, etc. Two class projects are highlighted below. The first is an art project that illustrated the ramifications of structural racism--that is, its detrimental effects on Black families, modes of resitance and transcendence, and underhanded means of maintaining racially disparate structuers (such as colorblind tactics, personified, in one example, by a smiling and seemingly benevolent Ronald Reagan). Many of their projects were illustrations of redlining vis-a-vis the juxtapositon of predominantly white communities outlined in green, and Black communities, considered "hazardous," outlined in red. Some students wrote poems in efforts to shed light on the topic. The second is a Zine Assignment: an informative, collaged pamphlet, using the topic of racialized gender- and sexuality-specific forms of racialized police violence. Incredulous reactions to Meg Thee Stallion’s accusation that a Black man shot her are a part of an epistemic framework in which Black women and girls are perceived to be unworthy of protection, their bodies disposable, and their truths undermined or deemed inconsequential to a racist, patriarchal, misogynoiristic, homo / transphobic, and ableist U.S. regime. This course will employ a Black Feminist framework to make legible the interdependent forces that imperil the lives of Black women and girls, including Black trans women. To examine the material and ideological realities of Black women and girls in the U.S. such as, Sha’Carri Richardson, Breonna Taylor, Dajerria Becton, the enslaved Anarcha, and Laverne Cox, we will take up the following topics: Black Women and Girls in Sports; Black Women and Girls in the Medical Industrial Complex; and Black Women and Girls and the Policing Apparatus.