“When I saw all of the politicians in an uproar about mine and Cardi’s ‘WAP’, I was just really taken back. Why would anyone be mad about my ‘WAP’? It belongs to me.”--Megan Thee Stallion

As Megan Thee Stallion’s tongue-in-cheek question suggests, creative expressions of Black sexuality—especially Black women’s declarations of erotic autonomy—are always already marked as deviant, at once too much and not enough. Too many African Ameri- can teens have babies and too many Jamaicans are homophobic, not enough Black women get married and not enough Caribbean men are monogamous: rooted in the fic- tions of chattel slavery, these sexual scripts continually confront African American and Caribbean folks’ attempts to use our bodies as if (in Megan’s words) they “belong to” us.

Course description: This course explores how creative Black sexual expressions pressure, explode, and re- configure dominant formulations of gender and sexuality throughout the African Ameri- cas. We engage texts that explore historical and contemporary sexualities in the Carib- bean, South America, and North America, and represent (inter)disciplines including an- thropology, literature, history, feminist studies, queer studies, and cultural studies. Through these engagements, we explore how Black sexualities form in relation to acts of domination and/or resistance, injury and/or creativity, subjugation and/or pleasure.

See syllabus here: /sites/default/files/sitefiles/BLST%20206%20Syllabus.pdf

** This is a GRADUATE course for graduate students, however undergraduate enrollment may be considered for Black Studies Seniors whose projects are on a related topic, especially those who are applying to graduate school and want to see what a graduate seminar is like. Please contact Professor Tinsley, omiseeketinsley@blackstudies.ucsb.edu