ES 347 - Black Sexualities

Units: 3 ; Breadth Area: GE-UD-D; Diversity
An introduction to a broad range of sexual diversities within Black communities including LGBTQ identities to BDSM and polyamory. The course is specifically centered around an investigation of the theoretical and activist implications of Audre Lorde’s notion of the erotic, Adrienne Maree Brown’s pleasure activism, and recent scholarship that suggests that reclaiming pleasure, decolonizing our bodies from white supremacist discourse, centering self-love and harm reduction can help individual and collective healing from centuries of oppression and serve as a foundation for political organizing. The course highlights the many ways that people of color, sex workers, disabled people and queer, trans and nonbinary people have been reclaimed joy and sexual pleasure and why we must center pleasure as an organizing principle.

Strongly Recommended Preparation: Upper division status (greater than 60 earned semester units) and completion of lower division Area D1-3 requirements.
Prerequisites: Completion of GE Areas A1, A2, A3 and B4 with grade C- (CR) or better.
Possible Instructional Methods: On-ground, or Hybrid, or Online-Asynchronous.
Grading: A-F or CR/NC (student choice).
Breadth Area(s) Satisfied: GE-UD-D - Upper Division Social Sciences, Overlay - Diversity
Course Typically Offered: Variable Intermittently

Student Learning Outcomes - Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:

Students will be able to explain discipline-specific theoretical frameworks including Black feminisms, Black and queer of color theory, and intersectionality (SLO #2)
Students will be able to recognize the complexity and heterogeneity within Black sexual communities and the influence of and resistance to white male heterosexual patriarchal norms (SLO#3)
Students will be able to research and write effectively, in individual or collaborative contexts, on issues, ideas, perspectives, and values that affect Black Sexual communities and diversity within Black Sexual communities(SLO #4)

UD-D. Upper-division Social Sciences Learning Outcomes

analyze how power and social identity affect social outcomes for different cultural and economic groups using methods of social science inquiry and vocabulary appropriate to those methods;
demonstrate an understanding of and ability to apply accurately disciplinary concepts of the social or behavioral sciences; and
demonstrate an understanding of and ability to effectively plan or conduct research using an appropriate method of the social or behavioral sciences.

Diversity Overlay Learning Outcomes

describe the histories and/or experiences of one or more U. S. cultural groups and the resilience and agency of group members;
identify structures of oppression and the diverse efforts and strategies used by groups to combat the effects of oppressive structures;
analyze the intersection of the categories of race and gender as they affect cultural group members’ lived realities and/or as they are embodied in personal and collective identities;
recognize the way that multiple differences (including, for example, gender, class, sexuality, religion, disability, immigration status, gender expression, color/phenotype, racial mixture, linguistic expression, and/or age) within cultural groups complicate individual and group identities.