Black Home Spaces in the US

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

What does it mean to be at home? How do home and nation intersect? What are some of the ways African Americans have cultivated home spaces, and within what societal conditions? Using these questions and drawing from literature, geography, black feminism, and film, we will explore home space as a force and factor in shaping black identities in the U.S. As microcosms of cities and the nation, home spaces are structured by the social, economic, political, and historical landscape of a society. As places of individual and communal living and dwelling, home spaces shape and are shaped by people. To study home is necessarily to study nation, family and affective ties, gender, and built space. In the United States, slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, restrictive covenants, and gentrification have targeted and disproportionately affected black lives, communities, and home spaces. In the face of this dehumanization, devaluation, and discrimination, black people have found ways to claim, make, and obtain spaces and senses of home, whether fleeting or permanent, conceptual or concrete. Modes of homemaking serve as a lens through which to ascertain the challenges, triumphs, and banalities of black life in the U.S. throughout history.