Below you'll find a record of the texts, speakers, and topics we have explored in the Black feminist theory collective's reading group. As a graduate student, I have facilitated multiple versions of this reading group over the last two years. The current iteration of the group is primarily populated by undergraduate women of color at Duke University. The reading group provides information about the history of Black feminist thought, as well as issues that affect contemporary women and femmes. The education provided in the reading group acts as a complement to the workshops and readings that take place in our poetry lab.
Weeks 1 and 2
Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography
Weeks 3 and 4
Combahee River Collective, Statement
Barbara Smith, Boston Murders diary entries, Life Notes anthology
Pamphlet, “Six Black Women: Why Did They Die?”
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective
Weeks 5 and 6
Amanda Bennett, “Lay Your Head On My Pillow”
Week 7 (1/15/21)
Toni Morrison, "Recitatif"
Audre Lorde, "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action"
Amanda Bennett, critical introduction to "Recitatif" and Playing in the Dark
Guest Speaker: Anastasia Karklina
Anastasia's bio: My name is Anastasia, and I am a cultural critic and researcher, currently completing my PhD at Duke. I specialize in Black Studies and Feminist Theory, and my research lies at the intersection of abolitionist thinking and black radical imagination. I’ve been active in movements for prison and police abolition, labor organizing, and gender justice for about ten years. Born and raised in a multiethnic Russian-speaking family in Latvia, I came to the US when I had just turned eighteen. For years, after leaving what I knew, then, as ‘home,’ which was violent and abusive in more ways than one, I kept mindlessly recreating abusive patterns in my life until I was exposed to new ways of being, with myself and other people, that challenged and profoundly transformed how I understand intimacy, healing, and accountability. In particular, my experience of being in deep friendships with older women, who were of a different race, age, and geographic origin, modeled, for me, ethics of love and care across differences. And, so I’m particularly invested in thinking about things like healing in the context of both individual and group dynamics and, more specifically, about how our ability to nurture genuine interracial and intergenerational feminist alliances depends on our imaginative capacity to conjure up new ways of relating, to ourselves and each other. I certainly look forward to meeting everyone and being in conversation with each other!
Week 8 (1/22/21)
Guest Speaker: Iyman Ahmed
Week 9 (1/29/21)
Guest Speaker: Brittany Groves
Brittany's bio: Brittany “Bee” Groves is a Black femme poet/writer born and raised in Georgia. She earned her BA from the University of Alabama in German and History and her MA from UA’s Gender and Race Department where she taught Intro to African American Studies and Intro to Women’s Studies. She is interested in Black German studies, Black feminist theory, and the literature and lived experiences of the African diaspora. She was a proud part of the founding editorial collective for the graduate journal Murder, Arson, and The Things We Won’t Talk About. Her work has been longlisted for the 2020 Frontier Award for New Poets.
Currently, they’re an editorial intern hoping to land one of those elusive spots in children’s publishing. They believe in friendship, myth, wake work, and the South.
Week 10 (2/4/21)
All About Love by bell hooks. We focused on the chapters "Romance: Sweet Love" and "Healing: Redemptive Love"
Week 11 (2/12/21)
Allison Weir, "Collective Love as Public Freedom: Dancing Resistance. Ehrenreich, Arendt, Kristeva, and Idle No More"
Erin Manning, Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty (Introduction and Chapter 1)
Guest Speaker: Jenn Joines
Jenn's bio: I'm a PhD student in Political Science, currently based in LA. Trained in political theory, my research revolves around questions of racial justice, democratic life, and political imagination. Before moving west, I spent most of my life in the suburbs of Houston, TX, and received her BA from Centre College in Danville, KY and two Master's from the University of Alabama. There wasn't much outside of my PhD work the first years in LA, until my friend invited me to her first burlesque performance and took me with her to a class. In January 2020, I began taking burlesque classes with Fannie Sinclair's Booty Etiquette and Charm School and Miss Marquez' Empowerment in Heels, merging my intellectual interest in movement and aesthetics with embodied practice of self-love. I made my virtual debut with Fannie Sinclair's Student Showcase in October 2020, drawing upon Loie Fuller's Serpentine Dance, the ancient myth of Medusa, and Oyinda's
Serpentine video to craft narrative and choreo. I've no performances scheduled yet, but regularly post videos from class on IG. I've included a recording of the act along with two theory pieces that think about dance, sensation, and community. I will offer some thoughts about dance as a mode of forgiveness, a means for reckoning with trauma and relating differently to the body and the world.
Week 12 (2/18/21)
Carmen Maria Machado, "The Husband Stitch," from Her Body and Other Parties
Week 13 (2/26/21)
Carmen Maria Machado, "The Husband Stitch" and "Difficult at Parties" from Her Body and Other Parties. We will also attend the Duke performance of Me Too Monologues.
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