*Yale professor Daphne Brooks will launch a new course next semester titled “Beyoncé Makes History: Black Radical Tradition History, Culture, Theory & Politics through Music.”
According to Yale News Daily, the class will explore Beyoncé’s work from 2013 to 2024 to study themes in Black history, intellectualism, and performance. This course builds on Brooks’ previous Princeton class on Black women in popular music, which also included a focus on Beyoncé. Brooks aims to highlight the superstar’s impact on social and political events in America and globally.
Per Yale Daily News:
Students will participate in discussions surrounding readings from scholars such as Hortense Spillers, the Combahee River Collective, Cedric Robinson and Karl Hagstrom Miller. In terms of projects, students will participate in screenings of her visual albums, work with archives in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and engage with public humanities projects designed to study Beyoncé’s physical impact on the Black community. Students will also be encouraged to create playlists connecting Beyoncé’s music to those of her influences.
“[This class] seemed good to teach because [Beyoncé] is just so ripe for teaching at this moment in time,” Brooks said.
“The number of breakthroughs and innovations she’s executed and the way she’s interwoven history and politics and really granular engagements with Black cultural life into her performance aesthetics and her utilization of her voice as a portal to think about history and politics — there’s just no one like her,” Brooks added.
“2013 was really such a watershed moment in which she articulated her beliefs in Black feminism. [In Flawless], it was the first time a pop artist had used sound bites from a Black feminist like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It became more about ‘We are going to produce club bangers that are also galvanizing our ability to think radically about the state of liberation,” she explained.
“Other artists have not [embraced] intersectional political and historical work like Beyoncé has,” Brooks said. “And that’s not to pit them against each other; it’s just to make a point about what institutions choose to value and what they often disregard, and it’s often people of color and especially women of color’s artistic achievements. So that’s why this class needed to happen right now.”
READ MORE FROM EURWEB.COM: Beyonce Leads List of 2025 Grammy Nominations
The post Yale Professor to Launch New Course About Beyoncé’s Political and Social Impact appeared first on EURweb.
