“ENG 771: Seminar in Pacific Literatures
Native Pacific and Black Feminisms: Literature, Theory, Practice
W 3:15-5:45 (Online)
Course Description
From the ancient, cosmogonic blackness of Pō to the contemporary, political resonances of Black Lives Matter, figurative and physical blackness have constantly circulated throughout the Pacific as tools of cultural survival and political resistance. Yet, the rich epistemology of blackness in the Pacific has, until the last decade or so, been largely overlooked by scholarship in both Pacific Studies and Black Studies, with one significant exception: Native Pacific women’s literary, theoretical, and cultural productions. This course examines Native Pacific women’s representations of physical and figurative blackness as expressions of specifically Indigenous feminisms, even as they simultaneously draw on global expressions of black feminisms. We will pay particular attention to how Pacific women recuperate and reinvigorate the marginal and liminal elements of womanhood and blackness as productive sites for texts whose structure and content uphold and contest literary, corporeal, and national form(s).
Course Questions
What are Native Pacific feminisms? Should we even use the word “feminism” to describe the work of Native Pacific women? How have Indigenous women mobilized blackness to address specifically gendered concerns? How does the body function in theories such as Mana Wahine and Mana Tama’ita’i? What are the relationships between these theories and other bodily- and experiential-based theories like Womanism and Black Feminist Thought? How have settler/colonial discourses of blackness been deployed in gender and sexuality formation processes across the Pacific? How might indigenous constructions of epistemological, ontological, religious, and/or philosophical blackness engage, reject, or expand constructions of racial blackness? What is gained by examining the literary expressions of Native Pacific and Black women’s shared and specific concerns?
Student Learning Outcomes
After this class, students should possess:
- Advanced knowledge of blackness as a tool to identify, understand, and theorize
Indigenous Pacific literature and criticism.
- Advanced knowledge of the historical, cultural, and regional developments of Native
Pacific and Black women’s feminisms.
- Foundational knowledge of Indigenous Pacific forms and theories of literary and artistic
criticism.
- An appreciation of the liminal, marginal, and intersectional as productive sites for literary
inquiry.
- Professional development through enhanced research, presentation, and writing skills,
with an eye towards subsequent conference participation and article submission.
- Ability to situate their own work within larger critical conversations.
Course Requirements
- Response papers (2 pages)
- Oral presentation on a text, theme, or theory (15-20 minutes)
- Prospectus and annotated bibliography
- Seminar paper (15-20 pages)
Possible Texts
Theory:
Leonie Pihama, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Naomi Simmonds, Joeliee Seed-Pihama and Kirsten Gabel, eds. Mana Wahine Reader, vol.1 and 2 (selections)
Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Talkin’Up to the White Woman: Aboriginal Women and Feminism (selections)
Haunani-Kay Trask, “Fighting the Battle of Double Colonization: The View of a Hawaiian
Feminist”
Audre Lorde, “The Politics of Radical Black Subjectivity”
Patricia Hill Collins, “Defining Black Feminist Thought”
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (selections)
Combahee River Collective, “The Combahee River Statement”
Teresia Teaiwa, ed. “Forum: Black and Blue in the Pacific: Afro-Diasporic Women Artists on History and Blackness”
Novel:
Patricia Grace, Potiki
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Film:
Ojeya Cruz Banks (dir), Tånó/ Land
Tracey Moffat (dir), Nice Coloured Girls
Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust
Rachel Perkins (dir), Black Panther Woman
Visual Texts:
Robyn Kahukiwa and Patricia Grace, Wahine Toa: Women of Maori Myth
Lisa Bellear, Black GST Photos