As Franz Fanon argued, black people are driven more by emotion than by reason because the rationality (usually based on controlling ideas and ideologies) of the spaces they occupy are often what suppress them. In the United States in particular, African Americans must create their own unique agencies via their emotional reactions toward the contexts in which they live because these emotional (or non-reasoned) responses act in opposition to the codes and rules of the external world which actively persecute and suppress them. Since it is the dominant “white rationality” that controls and subjugates black people, only through noncognitive feelings such as anger, fear, pain, hope, willfulness, anxiety, and shame can black people exercise some modicum of agency. Fanon concluded that “emotion is completely Negro as reason is to Greek,” meaning that black culture, experience, and heritage are informed through feeling and one possible way for black people to form their independent subjectivities is through emotions. This seminar aims to apply Affect theory to 20th century African American literature and film. The seminar will thoroughly introduce Affect theory and how it can be read in African American literature and film. The course will delve into the formation and functions of specific emotions (such as fear, anxiety, shame, hope, and happiness) and then relate them to three African American novels (Richard Wright’s Native Son, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys) and three African American films (Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, Jordan Peele’s Get Out, and Dee Rees’s Mudbound).

This seminar aims to apply Affect theory to 20th century African American literature and film. The seminar will thoroughly introduce Affect theory and how it can be read in African American literature and film. The course will delve into the formation and functions of specific emotions (such as fear, anxiety, shame, hope, and happiness) and then relate them to three African American novels (Richard Wright’s Native Son, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys) and three African American films (Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, Jordan Peele’s Get Out, and Aleshea Harris’s Is God Is).

Wright, Richard. Native Son. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Vintage, 2016.
Whitehead, Colson. The Nickel Boys. Fleet, 2019.
Do the Right Thing. Directed by Spike Lee, Universal Pictures,1989.
Get Out. Directed by Jordan Peele, Universal Pictures, 2017.
Is God Is. Directed by Aleshea Harris, Orion Pictures, 2026.

The Affect Theory Reader, edited by Melissa Gregg and Gregory J Seigworth, Duke UP, 2010.
The Affect Theory Reader 2, edited by Melissa Gregg and Carolyn Pedwell, Duke UP, 2023.
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Routledge, 2004.
—. The Promise of Happiness Duke UP, 2010.
—. Willful Subjects. Duke UP, 2014.
Bell, Bernard W. The Contemporary African American Novel: Its Folk Roots and Modern Literary Branches. U of Massachusetts P, 2004.
Berlant, Laura. Cruel Optimism. Duke UP, 2011.
Corrigan, Lisa M. Black Feelings: Race and Affect in the Long Sixties. UP of Mississippi, 2020.
Crossroads, Directions, and a New Critical Race Theory, edited by Francisco Valdes, Jerome McCristal Culp, and Angela P. Harris. Temple UP, 2002.
Eyerman, Ron. Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American
Identity. Cambridge UP, 2008.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skins White Masks. Pluto P, 1986.
Gates Jr, Henry Louis. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial” Self. Oxford UP, 1989.
—. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. Oxford UP, 1988.
Hogue, W. Lawrence. Postmodernism, Traditional Cultural Forms, and African American Narratives, State U of New York P, 2013.
hooks, bell. Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice. Routledge, 2013.
Leys, Ruth. The Ascent of Affect: Genealogy and Critique. The U of Chicago P, 2017.
Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.Vintage,1993. —. The Origin of Others. Harvard UP, 2017.
Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings. Harvard UP, 2005.
Omni, Michael, and Howard Winant. Raci