Photo: Mask by Wangechi Mutu

This course explores the themes of love, sex, and madness in fiction and films by and/or about women of African descent. From the Caribbean to West Africa, from Europe to the US, these three themes function as the lenses through which women have challenged traditional ideas of citizenship, family, gender roles and political power. What, for example, is the connection between the Duvalier regime in Haiti and women's sexual desire? How does the figure of "the mad Creole woman" challenge the exportation of Victorian values to the Caribbean? How might an African woman's body be read as a site of anticolonial resistance?  We will examine these questions through literature, film and visual art.