Lies, Mess, Gossip

Undergraduate / Graduate

What happens when we take seriously stories that can't be verified? In this course, we'll explore how bodies and the stories told about them are often assumed to track truth. Rooted in Black Studies and Trans and Queer Studies, we'll examine how bodies-through rumor, gossip, and even lies-become sites where power and identity are made and unmade. Rather than dismissing these untidy truths, we'll learn to read them as responsive disruptions to the historical moments in which they took place, as approaches to reconsider belonging, power, and knowledge. Drawing on the work of scholars like Stephen Best, we'll explore how rumor and gossip function as strategies of self-making, challenging dominant narratives and revealing the messy realities that shape the world around us. We will engage with the works of scholars such as C. Riley Snorton, Jayna Brown, Zakkiyah Iman Jackson, Édouard Glissant as well as the autobiographical writings of Harriet Jacobs. This course encourages a collaborative approach, where students will be invited to bring in their own "messy" objects of study that reflect their engagement with specific conscriptions of race, gender, sexuality, and body politics. Central to our study will be genealogies of refusal-how Black feminist thought, queer critique, and minoritarian theory not only confront but actively reimagine dominant structures of power.