One hour of lecture per week per unit. Topics will vary from term to term depending on student demand and faculty availability.

“…study is what you do with other people. It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice.” Stefano Harney and Fred Moten This experimental course invites students to develop their own individual research projects and imagine new ways of being in the academy alongside the Black Studies Collaboratory's Abolition Democracy Fellows Program. The Black Studies Collaboratory, a collaborative initiative to address racial inequality through bold and unique humanities-based research projects, housed in the Department of African American Studies, asks: What is the role of Black studies in building more just futures? What lessons from Black feminist, Black radical and Black intellectual traditions can we apply to this moment in history? And how do we solidify our commitment to Black studies as a public good? Students will attend weekly public events organized by the Abolition Democracy Fellows, a group of activists, artists and academics from a range of disciplines at various stages in their careers who are spending the year at UC Berkeley in critical engagement and collaborative imagining. Immediately following presentations, the class will gather with the course instructors for seminar discussion. Students will also read literature (and other materials) relevant to the presentations, produce short think pieces which may take a variety of forms, and present and submit a final project that encourages collaboration and experimentation.

Students outside of African American Studies PhD admitted with instructor approval.

Repeat Rules