ENGL 4011 Faulkner to Beyonce: New South Aesthetics

Beyonce Knowles' 2016 audiovisual project, Lemonade, conjures a black Southern experience from multiple places and modes--from memories and sounds of New Orleans pre- and post Hurricane Katrina, to the ancestral wisdom of grandmothers passed down through the generations. The course explores how Lemonade flips familiar cultural markers of southern identity into a meditation and manifesto about what it means to be black and Southern now. We will ground our readings and discussions with question such as these: What type of South is Lemonade trying to get us to see and hear? What are the feminist frameworks, from Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God to filmmaker Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust, that animate Lemonade's vision? And what exactly does it mean to " get in formation"?