RELST 3422

Gospel and The Blues: A Black Women’s History II, 1973-2023

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2024-2025.

In her pathbreaking text Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval Saidiya Hartman writes that "young Black women were radical thinkers who tirelessly imagined other ways to live and never failed to consider how the world might be otherwise." This two-semester course endeavors to travel through those worlds using the cultural and musical forms of gospel and the blues as our compass. The second semester is guided by the work of scholars and writers like Maureen Mahon, Marla Frederick, Lynée Denise, and Deesha Philyaw and artists like the Clark Sisters, Aretha Franklin, Toni Braxton, and Beyoncé. Together we will interrogate the spectrum of lived experiences making for a kaleidoscopic sonic history of joy, pleasure, sorrow, resistance, and everything in between.

View Enrollment Information