Pre-recorded lecture by Prof. Benedicty. It is from last year, and I just relistened to it. It still applies well, so I reuse it. If I mention dates, follow the dates based in the syllabus and here. See here for video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6wgpqvc0x6odyas/DF%233%20recording.mp4?dl=0
Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter (1980), which you read last week;
Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me (2015): read pages 1-17, which corresponds to part I.
Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro (2016) available on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and also Youtube. It is 1h35 minutes.
Dr. Dre’s “A powerful Beats” (2021) by Dr. Dre **ad campaign hit social platforms on Thursday and it featured three-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka. The powerful two-minute video digs deeply into common stereotypes and hypocrisies surrounding Black culture all while celebrating it.” Starring Naomi Osaka, Lil Baby, Bubba Wallace, and Janaya Khan, Narrated by Tobe Nwigwe, Directed by Melina Matsoukas, Written by Lena Waithe (3 minutes). You need to open to this page and then click on the video.
https://www.tennis.com/baseline/articles/osaka-appears-in-powerful-beats-by-dr-dre-ad
Watch and read the above. These will take you a while so get started now.
Answer two of the following 4 questions:
NOTA BENE:
For each answer, you must include direct citations from readings or screened texts as assigned above, and as appropriate.
Each question should be answered in 300 words, (so you are writing a total of 600 words this week).
Be sure to consult the Powerpoint, which is in Dropbox about how to sandwich quotes, as per Alessandra’s video or here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/eoeuxvo89ublu2m/1-Writing%20techniques%20and%20sensitivies%20VIDEO.mp4?dl=0
1. Who is the intended reader of Bâ’s and Coates’s writing? That is, how does their writing speak to you? Or not? How do you feel that you belong to the conversation each writer is enjoining its reader to? How do you feel outside of it? How might you think about your own situatedness (i.e. your own background, lived experiences) as related to how you answer this question. You may think here about questions of compassion, lived experience, cultural appropriation, “double consciousness” (as per WEB Dubois).
2. Select two quotes: the first, from Bâ; the second, from Coates, and explain why you have selected these two quotes.
3. How do Coates’s letter to his son, Baldwin’s words in Peck’s documentary, and James Baldwin’s letter to his nephew enjoin their audiences to caring? Again, Baldwin’s essay is here: https://progressive.org/magazine/letter-nephew/
4. Pick two texts from the above, which deal with gender (i.e. feminism; masculinity; transgender identiy/ies; Trans Studies; genders that do not fit into any of these classifications) and explain how they relate the “I” of the writer (i.e. Baldwin, Bâ, Coates, or Dr. Dré) and the “you” interpellated in the given text.
