“Black Life Beyond the Human”
What does it mean to be human?
Animals. Spirits. Landscapes. Machines. Alien Worlds. Futures.
Long before scholars coined the term posthumanism, Black writers were exploring the unstable boundaries between the human, the animal, the spiritual, and the ecological.
Venture Smith and Frederick Douglass invoke the figure of the “Black Dog.” Solomon Northup depicts haunted Southern landscapes saturated with violence and beauty. Harriet Jacobs illuminates worlds shaped by evangelical religion, death, and hopes of the afterlife.
From slave narratives to Afrofuturism, this seminar examines how Black literature reimagines the relationship between people, animals, ecology, religion, technology, and the cosmos.
Topics include:
- Black Ecologies
- Animal Studies
- Slavery and Dehumanization
- Religion and the Afterlife
- Environmental Humanities
- Hauntology and Spectrality
- Afrofuturism
- Space and Extraterrestrial Life
- Race and Posthuman Theory
From the Black Dog to the Stars.
Dr. Alonzo Smith
Thursdays, 2–5 pm
Sanford Hall 424
Graduate seminar
Flyer for ENG 5549, Blackness and Posthumanism: Black Life Beyond the Human, a graduate seminar. A Black woman's profile merges with tree roots and a starry sky above a black dog, a swamp and a church.
