A Syllabus for the Present Predicament

February 14, 2023

A Syllabus for the Present Predicament

Adam Bledsoe¹, Jasmine Butler², LaToya Eaves³, Alex A. Moulton³

¹University of Minnesota; ²Writer and Cultural Worker; ³University of Tennessee, Knoxville 

A SYLLABUS FOR THE  PRESENT PREDICAMENT
February 13, 2023 Edition

This reading list provides resources for situating the simultaneous manifestations of antiblackness and assault on Black life in the present. We are specifically motivated by the murder of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, by police officers; the attack on the AP African American Studies course in Florida; and what might be interpreted as the capitulation of the College Board to the demands of Florida’s Republican Governor. These convergent events serve as poignant reminders of the pervasiveness of anti-blackness, the everyday reality of gratuitous police violence, and the regressive nature of a politics of compromise that demurs to white supremacy, historical amnesia, and the sanitizing of Black social and political movements.

This bibliography is divided into four sections. The first provides a primer on the long struggle for Black life in Memphis. The second contextualizes the function of the police, to show how what happened to Mr. Nichols is possible even when the officers committing the violence are Black. The  section shows why abolition is an imperative of the struggle for Black life. The third section deals with the ethics and care guiding Black mourning and hope amidst the death dealing of antiblack violence. The fourth and final section is concerned with the indispensability of Black Studies to American Studies, national memory, and the radically transformative potential of critical study. 

In addition to this syllabus, we encourage readers to consult the American Association of Geographers statements “On the Structural and Spatial Forces that Contribute to Police Brutality” and on “the targeting of diversity education and critical inquiry by U.S. States”.

Memphis Black History and Geographies

• “I am a man!: Race, masculinity, and the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike.” Steve Estes
• An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee. Aram Goudsouzian and Charles McKinney (Eds.)
• At the River I Stand. David Appleby, Allison Graham and Steven Ross (Directors). 
• Beale Street Dynasty: Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis— Preston Lauterbach
• This Ain’t Chicago : Race, Class, and Regional Identity in the Post-Soul South. Zandria F. Robinson.
• Crusade for Justice : The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, Second Edition. Ida B. Wells.
• Chocolate Cities The Black Map of American Life Marcus Anthony Hunter, Zandria F. Robinson
• Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta – Clyde Woods
• The South is Everywhere
• Environmental justice activist leads fight against lead exposure in Black and brown communities – MLK50
• ‘A victory for us’: Southwest Memphis residents elated as developers drop Byhalia Pipeline project – MLK50: Justice Through Journalism
• Kellogg workers on why they went on strike for two months – Scalawag

Police, State Violence, and The Imperative of Abolition

• “Cautionary Notes on Black Policing”. Adam Bledsoe
• Policing the planet: Why the policing crisis led to Black Lives Matter.  Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton (Eds.) 
• Who do you serve, who do you protect?: Police violence and resistance in the United States. Alicia Garza
• “Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference: Notes on Racism and Geography”. Ruth Wilson Gilmore.
• “Abolition Geography and the Problem of Innocence” in Futures of Black Radicalism. Ruth Wilson Gilmore.
• Abolition geography: Essays towards liberation. Ruth Wilson Gilmore.
• We still here: Pandemic, policing, protest, & possibility. Marc Lamont Hill (Frank Barat, Ed.)
• Race, media, and the crisis of civil society: From Watts to Rodney King. Ronald Jacobs. 
• “On plantations, prisons, and a black sense of place”. Katherine McKittrick.
• “Black police officers aren’t colorblind.” Rashad Shabazz
• From #BlackLivesMatter to black liberation. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
• “Neoliberalisation of security, austerity and the ‘end of public policy’” Simone Tulumello.
• Police: A field guide. David Correia and Tyler Wall
• “Life after Death.”  Clyde A. Woods. 
• “No humans involved”. Sylvia Wynter
• Becoming Abolitionist: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom Derecka Purnell
• Some cities treat gun violence as a public health crisis. Should Memphis? – MLK50
• Editorial: Resistance lives in the South
• Where do the police come from?
• The Struggle Continues: A report by Andrea J. Ritchie and Interrupting Criminalization

Black Mourning, Care, and Hope

• Freedom is a constant struggle. Angela Y. Davis
• “We Wear the Mask.” LaToya E. Eaves
• Black Life Matter: Blackness, Religion, and the Subject. Biko Mandela Gray 
• There is no healing in an antiblack world Da’Shaun Harrison
• All about love: new visions. bell hooks
• “Persevering almost killed one of Memphis’ most prominent artists: She doesn’t want you to make the same mistake – MLK50: Justice Through Journalism” Victoria Jones and  Jacob Steimer
• Sister Outsider. Audre Lorde
• “The ‘Radical’ Welcome Table: Faith, Social Justice, and the Spiritual Geography of Mother Emanuel in Charleston, South Carolina.” Priscilla McCutcheon.  
• “A tribute to Orange Mound, where Blackness is celebrated every day – MLK50” Andrea Morales and Zaire Love
• Beloved. Toni Morrison
• “Black monument matters: Place‐based commemoration and abolitionist memory work” Alex Moulton
• In the wake: On blackness and being. Christina Sharpe.
• How we get free: Black feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Ed.) 
• On Witness and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed by Pandemic Jesmyn Ward
• Memorial for Alton Sterling, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 2016. Willie Jamaal Wright. 
• “What we do when we don’t want to remember – MLK50: Justice Through Journalism” Nubia Yasin
• “Worn Out” Katherine McKittrick

The Radical Promise of Black Studies beyond the AP African American Studies

• “Everybody’s Protest Novel.” In Notes of a Native Son. James Baldwin.
• Black Reconstruction in America: Toward a history of the part which black folk played in the attempt to reconstruct democracy in America, 1860-1880. W.E.B. Du Bois
• “Meet the Southern librarians fighting for racial justice and truth-telling” Jason Christian
• All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave. Akasha (Gloria T.) Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith. (Eds.)
• We do this’ til we free us: Abolitionist organizing and transforming justice. Mariame Kaba.
• Freedom dreams: The black radical imagination. Robin D.G. Kelley.
• Vision and justice. A civic curriculum. Sarah Lewis.
• Blackstudies. In The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. Audre Lorde
• South to America: A journey below the Mason-Dixon to understand the soul of a nation. Imani Perry.
• “The Meaning of African American Studies” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
• The warmth of other suns: the epic story of America’s great migration. Isabel Wilkerson.
• “W.E.B. Du Bois, Black History Month and the importance of African American studies” Chad Williams
• “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?: Katrina, Trap Economics, and the Rebirth of the Blues.” Clyde Woods
• “On how we mistook the map for the territory, and reimprisoned ourselves in our unbearable wrongness of being, of desêtre: Black studies toward the human project.” Sylvia Wynter
• “But What Does Wonder Do? Meanings, Canons, too? On literary Texts, Cultural Contexts, and What it’s Like to be One/Not One of Us.” Sylvia Wynter.

Download the Syllabus

Eaves Named AAG 2023 Fellow

January 14, 2023

Eaves Named AAG 2023 Fellow

LaToya Eaves, assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Sustainability, was named a 2023 Fellow of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). Eaves is one of 16 geographers in a variety of practice areas recognized for their contributions to geographic research, advancement of practice, and careers devoted to strengthening the field of geography, including teaching and mentoring. The honorary title of AAG Fellow is conferred for life.

Her research interest is at the intersections of race, gender, diaspora, critical geography and queer studies. Eaves explores the geographic imaginaries of Blackness, gender, and queerness by bringing critical approaches to the social transformation of places, the nuances of region, and lived experiences under rights-based progress narratives. 

Her research has been published in Geoforum, Dialogues in Human Geography, Gender, Place & Culture, The Professional Geographer, and Journal of Geography in Higher Education, among other journals and edited volumes. 

She has received numerous accolades within geography, including but not limited to the UT Department of Geography’s Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award, Academic Advancement Award by the Tennessee LGBT+ College Conference, the Ronald F. Abler Distinguished Service Honors by the AAG, and the Enhancing Diversity Award by the AAG.

AAG Fellows serve the AAG as an august body to address, contribute to, and at times create initiatives to advance the discipline. Fellows also advise AAG on strategic directions and challenges, and mentor early- and mid-career faculty. The Fellows will be formally recognized in March at the AAG 2023 annual meeting.

Contributions to the Field of Geography

Eaves has established a record of transformative research, dynamic teaching, and dedicated mentoring in the field of geography. Her contributions to the fields of Black Geographies, Black feminism, queer geographies, and the US South are particularly noteworthy. Eaves’s rigorous and accessible scholarship pushes geography as a discipline to engage with the importance of Black geographic thought and practices in the production of space and place. Her scholarship provides accessible entry points for students to engage with Black Geographies, and she has contributed foundational texts for scholars doing work within Black Geographies literature.

One of the founders of the Black Geographies Specialty Group, Eaves’s organization and caring mentorship has transformed the discipline of geography and provided a space and academic home for Black scholars and scholars of Black Geographies. She is a generous and caring mentor as well. Her reputation within the geography community broadly and within the Black Geographies community specifically speaks to her generous mentorship of students and junior scholars, much of which is invisible, uncompensated, and unrecognized work in institutional settings. She has been committed to recognizing and honoring senior Black scholars, organizing panels, special issues of journals, and award applications to assure that these senior scholars are recognized for their foundational contributions.  

Beyond the subfield of Black Geographies, Eaves has served the AAG in the roles of national councilor, treasurer and chair of the Finance Committee. She also contributed to the AAG Harassment Free Task Force and the AAG Task Force on Diversifying the Curriculum in Geography, and she co-chaired the AAG New Orleans Featured Theme Committee. She has served as an editor for Dialogues in Human Geography and on numerous editorial boards.

Background information republished from the AAG website.

Geographic Mobility as a Civil Right

September 23, 2022

Geographic Mobility as a Civil Right

Summer teaching institute explores geographic mobility as it relates to the African American freedom struggle

In July of 2022, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, hosted a residential summer institute for K-12 educators from across the US, funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant (NEH). Participants explored the history of the Civil Rights movement through geographic mobility. The institute highlighted the central role of migration, transportation, and travel and tourism in structural racism and the fight for African American freedom and self-determination.

Participants attended lectures and lab exercises; participated in discussions; and learned methodologies and classroom activities from curriculum and content specialists. They also took field trips around Knoxville, Nashville, and Memphis as part of the institute’s commitment to place-based education.

“Through the institute, we offered a model of critical thought, instruction, and pedagogical application that supports ongoing calls for greater numbers of social studies educators to address power and inequity,” said Derek Alderman, professor of geography.

Alderman and colleague Joshua Kenna, associate professor of social science education in the UT College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences, received nearly $200,000 in funding to host the institute from the National Endowment for the Humanities “A More Perfect Union” initiative, which aims to promote a deeper understanding of American history and culture.

“In addition to having a well-rounded curriculum that utilizes several experts from the field and provides experiential learning opportunities, we’re also proud of our strong emphasis on building and fostering relationships with teachers,” Kenna said. “The goal is not achieved when they acquire the content, it is only achieved when we help them grapple with and overcome pedagogical and logistical hurdles so that they can teach this content in their classrooms.”

Workshops featured guest lectures and hands-on lessons from experts on geographic mobility, race and racism, oral history, digital mapping and the humanities, and pedagogy. The institute culminated with participating teachers developing and presenting curriculum projects and ideas for teaching about the role of migration, transportation, travel and tourism within the Black civil rights experience.

“Our hosting of this summer institute in Knoxville received high marks from participating teachers and NEH program directors. It further cements the University of Tennessee’s reputation as a national leader in teacher training and creating important synergies between the teaching of history, geography, and social justice,” Alderman said. “The university welcomed a brilliant group of K-12 teachers, many of whom are educators of color. They significantly advanced discussions of diversity and inclusion on our campus and taught many of the institute’s staff important lessons about the struggles currently facing the nation’s teachers.”  

Read more about the UT initiative, Geographic Mobility in the African American Freedom Struggle, and the NEH grant award that supported this important work in the Department of Geography and Sustainability and the Department of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education at UT.