Beautiful Experiments: The Influence of Saidiya Hartman

Saidiya Hartman’s multi-award-winning work spans the fields of African American literature and cultural history, slavery studies, law and literature, gender studies, and performance studies. In addition to reading selections from Hartman’s three books (Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self- Making in Nineteenth Century America [1997]; Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route [2007]; Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval [2019]), the class will discuss the influence of this work on multiple disciplines with faculty guests from English; History; Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies; Theatre History and Performance Studies; Human Centered Design & Engineering; Jewish Studies; and Classics.