This course provides in-depth study, reading, analysis, and application of key of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and related systemic racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia that impact social institutions, histories and cultural practices for diverse groups of Black people across the gender, color, age, and ability spectrums, with attention to intersecting modes of being that frame our understanding of Black culture, history, and societies and their implications for inequality and equity. Importantly the course examine the importance of social identities, oppression and privilege, social spaces and how differences and similarities historically, psychologically, and culturally construct symbolic and political Blackness that matters, to whom, for whom, and to what end, by exposing students to culturally-specific forms of internal and external oppression and suppression of voices and the responses of underrepresented, oppressed, and/or exploited groups to recover narratives of empowerment and effect change within their diverse communities and societies. Students will engage in diverse disciplinary methods for studying historical, cultural, and sociological phenomena in Black studies such as double-consciousness and internalized racism, and critique existing models and develop new ways of thinking about, engaging, and critically challenging socially constructed and reconstructed notions of Black gendered monolithic otherness. Graded on A-F basis only. Recommended: BL_STU 1000.