RFSS202

This course proceeds from the premise that coming of age while Black is fraught with the dangers created by a system of anti-black surveillance. Students examine "coming-of-age" memoirs and films that began during the era of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950s. Typically, the films and memoirs in this sub-genre feature a young Black protagonist, often a teen, navigating, sometimes successfully but not always, a world defined by intersecting oppressions created by race, class, gender, sexuality, and/or colonial identity.