Interested in literature and/or the history of science? Want to read more Black literature without committing to a semester-long course?

An ECLT Mini Course is perfect for you!

In this three-week intensive online mini-course, originally offered as January@HarvardGriffinGSAS programming, we will consider representations of adultery in Black literature and visual culture alongside scientific writings about racial adulteration wherein Blackness constitutes a problem for biological thought and bioethics. Together, we will critically consider how adultery, what Tony Tanner describes as the “extra-contractual contract, or indeed an anti-contract,” can be thought beyond “marriage—procreation” vs. “marriage—adultery” dyads. Paying close attention to narratives and rhetorical tropes concerning sex, gender, marriage, social contracts, reproduction, etc., this course invites students to read Black literature with attentiveness to the adultery plot and themes of adulteration (impurity, hybridity, contamination, miscegenation, etc.).

Readings will primarily include the work of 20th-century U.S. North American authors like Toni Morrison and E. Lynn Harris and Caribbean and African authors such as Sylvia Wynter and Can Themba. Starting with the slave narrative, we will move through time to engage with historical sources, scientific journals, short stories, novels, films, and music as crucial media in which the racialized matter of adultery/adulteration is portrayed. Critical essays from writers such as Tony Tanner, Essex Hemphill, and Claudia Tate, will introduce students to contemporary scholarship in literary studies, Black studies, critical theory, and history of science. Lectures and discussions will contend with the historical influence of slavery, empire, decolonization, and nationalism as they play out in discourses of adultery and adulteration found in contemporary Black diasporic literature.

September 8, 9, 15, 16, 22, and 23

Syllabus preview available via email.

Sessions will be recorded for students to access during and after the course.

Discount available for January mini-course participants!