This week, we explore the intersection of gender and race. Our study takes note of the risk of additive analysis which follows the attempt to categorize individuals according to single demographic frames. We study the nineteenth century rhetoric of Sojourner Truth who challenged simple distinctions between the public conception of "woman" and "black" when she asked, "ain't I a woman?" Doing so, we interrogate traditional patriarchal arguments about the place of women in public life and study her corporeal, transgressive, and unifying responses to this placement. We then turn to bell hooks who invites her readers to ponder the complications which follow her blurring of seemingly sacrosanct divisions of gender, class, and race. Here, we consider her response to hegemony before identifying three responses she proposes: naming counter-hegemonic space, telling personal stories, and speaking directly. Throughout this discussion, we consider the tactical spaces formed by individuals and groups who fail to keep to their socially constructed places on the margins.

Reading: Truth's "Ain't I a woman?" and hooks' "Keeping close to home"

Note: Groups select topics for final project March 7