Reading List
The syllabus archive is an interactive list of articles, books, and video lectures categorized into particular areas of study, each of which coincides with the Sawyer Seminar’s larger theme of “Racial Disposability and Cultures of Resistance.” From the default view that lists all categories, we invite you to sort the texts and media into one or more of the larger organizing themes of the Black Intersections Project--such as “policing” and “resisting in/visibility”--by selecting the tags in the dropdown menu. Alongside the scholarly texts and lectures, we’ve included in each category a sampling of more popular media works, such as music videos, short think pieces, and digital exhibits, as suggested viewing and listening that gesture toward alternative modes of engagement.
This syllabus is intended as a resource for scholars, students, teachers, activists, and members of the public to dig further into the intersectional fields of study related to the mechanisms that have rendered black lives disposable, and the multiple ways people of African descent have creatively, politically, and intellectually countered those renderings. For each entry we have included hyperlinks to the different texts and videos, either to full text/video, where available, or to other formats, such as Google Books preview or to the publisher’s site.
Rather than a comprehensive list, this syllabus is a selection of prominent and emergent texts in the various subcategories, a combination of foundational works and works reshaping these fields today meant to provide an overview of the various areas of study. We do, however, envision this syllabus as a growing, crowdsourced bibliography. Help us make this syllabus more inclusive by sending us your recommendations of recent and classic texts you feel are missing.