This course will examine the novels and essays of James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, focusing on a range of topics: blackness, gender, sexuality, the relationship between race, religion, and nation, and the relationship between anguish and hope. While considering the differences between these authors, we will explore how Baldwin and Morrison converge on a set of ethical and existential themes and concerns. In particular, the course will focus on a shared 'ethics of haunting,' a sense that a better future relies on our capacity to remember, mourn, and be unsettled by forms of racial and gendered violence that mark the past and present.
