Despite? Well not despite what I will say to you is that if you go to a research school or a university, even like an MIT or Georgia Tech, there is generally what's called a Gen Ed core that organizes the college or university experience that exposes students to the methodologies used across the disciplines. So humanities uses qualitative measure of analysis. quantitative measures are social sciences and natural sciences. And so, in that exposure, most college students are required to take an honors composition course. And so and then, you know, is an English course, and that is one of the humanities. So qualitative metrics of analysis, a humanities course would be English, philosophy, history, or religion. Sometimes in some schools, history is considered a social science like the University of Chicago. And that also makes sense. But you know, how they verify their truth claims, is qualitative. When you use reason alone. It's quantitative, like in sociology for those people who want to do criminal justice at Spelman, the closest thing you get to that would be sociology. They have some criminal criminology classes. There are interviews there are there's data, there's a data science and statistics component that helps to assess truth. And so that's what makes that a social science, sociology, anthropology, economics, International Studies is generally in that vein. So what I'm going to be presenting to you is as linked to an emphasis in my composition courses, and that would be if I'm teaching an honors course, or not, the principles that will undergird what I'm going to say, are at the foundation of my teaching in general. So what is very important, particularly in coming to an HBCU is in terms of thinking about this with you in mind, is that for most of you, you have been in a context where the substance of how you engage to blackness was done in such a way that it was antagonistic. Either you could imagine yourself arguing against the claims of what you read, or you are arguing against the instructors. So what becomes different when you come to an HBCU is that for for many of you, it will be the first time that you've actually shared similar philosophical, spiritual, and social ways of engaging with blackness.

What I'm working on now with students, is what I call the textures, the textures, t x, t, u, r, e s, textures of thought. So what you want to work on is working on trying to get beyond thinking, that imagines that serious intellectual work only involves talking about what is wrong with a thing. Right. Now the work involves, what it is that you might also love about a thing. So Rena Belsky is a critical lip scholar. And she has a book called The limits of critique. And she says this, why, even as we extol multiplicity difference, hybridity, is the effect of range of criticism so limited, why are we so hyper articulate about our adversaries, and so excruciatingly Tongue Tied about our loves? And that becomes very important, right to me, especially in talking about blackness. Because, in addition to there being this deficit model of blackness that operates in the culture, what becomes important to recognize when you really understand white supremacy, is that it functions as a meta language. So what that means is that every aspect of your thinking about race It's sort of infused with what it means to sort of to live in a white supremacist context. Do boys, web boys writes in Souls of Black Folk, that there is in this culture, in a white supremacist culture, and all pervading desire to inculcate disdain for everything black from to salt to the devil. So the work then, right of loving blackness, becomes really important for how we articulate resistance. Because what that is going to mean is that the culture is going to be bereft and deprived of a way of talking about blackness in terms of fullness that is going to have another locus. the urgency of this particular historical moment, is what happens when the central space of black education shifts to a virtual world. And our grandmother's walls no longer become spaces that educate us about who we are. So what I want to talk to you about first then, is an example that bell hooks offers of how that has gone so tragically wrong. So when a book that black feminist scholar bell hooks, writes called Black looks, she offers this scenario. Now I did spell her name correctly. Bell Hooks is a pseudonym for Gloria Watkins. And a bell hooks was Gloria Watkins grandmother's name. And because bell hooks, Gloria Watkins spoke in such a fiery way. Someone in her community said you must be Bell Hooks his granddaughter with that kind of tone. So she uses her grandmother's name for all of her publications. And so that is why it is all lowercase. So in a book that bell hooks wrote called Black looks race and representation. She has a brilliant chapter called loving blackness as political resistance. And you know, so this particular chapter is really apropos. Because the passing by Rebecca Hall, the director of film starring Ruth negga, as Claire and Tessa Thompson, as Irene, premiered a few weeks ago at Sundance, and will be and was just purchased by Netflix. So in this chapter, Bell Hooks describes a course that she taught, I'm imagining that this might have been maybe at Yale. When she graduated from Stanford, she eventually goes,

and she's at Yale that she was she spent some time in the CUNY system. So she is describing her course right, and she writes this, the course I teach on black women writers is a consistent favorite among students. The last semester that I taught this course, we had the usual passionate discussion of Larson's passing. When I suggested to the class that Claire, the black woman who has passed for white all her adult life and married a wealthy white businessman with whom she has a child, is the only character in the novel who truly desires blackness, what's it right, and that it is this desire that leads to her murder, no one responded, Claire boldly declares that she would rather live for the rest of her life as a poor black woman in Harlem, that as a rich white matron downtown, I asked the class to consider the possibility that to love blackness, is dangerous in a white supremacist culture. So threatening, so serious a breach in the fabric of the social order that death is the punishment, it became painfully obvious by the lack of response that this group of diverse students, many of them black, were more interested in discussing the desire of black folks to be white. Indeed, were fixated on this issue. So much so that they could not even take seriously a critical discussion about loving blackness. A part of what that means then, is that these students had been overwhelmed in their own thinking, by white supremacy, about how to talk about blackness. And they had seen themselves solely through the terms of the culture, right, because the culture to the boys is point insists on this all pervading desire to inculcate disdain for blackness. This is why it becomes dangerous to have a desire for it, because there is nothing in this culture that should make you want it. So where did you get that idea from? That's a part of Why it's dangerous. So if these children could not say why they love blackness, that becomes problematic for someone with an oppositional consciousness, because what it means is that you have accepted the terms of the culture. If you've accepted the terms of this culture, then the question becomes, how is liberation possible for you? How then do I think about you as someone who is in a community with me, and I can trust you, because you are on the side of freedom, right, and dismantling oppression, if you can only speak, blackness that is spoken in the culture.

Well, in the novel, The woman who could speak a different language about blackness, dies. So Bell Hooks continues, they wanted to talk about black self hatred, to hear one another confess, especially students of color, and eloquent narratives about the myriad ways they had tried to attain whiteness, if only symbolically, they gave graphic details about the ways they attempted to appear white, by talking a certain way, wearing certain clothing, and even choosing specific groups of white friends. Black and white students, seize the opportunity to testify that they had never realized racism had this impact upon the psyches of people of color, until they started hanging out with black friends. You know, and so again, and so blackness really just becomes you discussing the pain of blackness, or reading The Bluest Eye And better yet, they never realized there was such a thing as white privilege, a term that I absolutely despise. I like Dubois is better. He describes the public and psychological wages of whiteness, as opposed to the violence that whiteness does being considered a privilege. It is no privilege to blow up a church in 1963 on September 15th, and kill four girls in May 5. It is no privilege to kill a black boy on August 28 1955, and not be held to account. It is not a privilege to kill a man by kneeling on his neck. Those are not privileges. So billhook says I left this class of more than 40 students, most of whom see themselves as radical and progressive feeling as though I had witnessed a ritualistic demonstration of the impact white supremacy has on our collective psyches, shaping the nature of everyday life, how we talk, walk, eat, dream, and look at one another. The most frightening aspect of this ritual was the extent to which their fascination with the topic of black self hatred was so intense, that it silenced any constructive discussion about loving blackness. Most folks in this society do not want to openly admit that blackness as sign primarily evokes in the public imagination of white hatred and fear. In a white supremacist context, loving blackness is rarely a political stance that is reflected in everyday life, when present is deemed suspect, dangerous and threatening. And again, it is dangerous, suspect and threatening, because there is no where in this culture that you should have gotten this idea that they have not set out to destroy, socially, politically and economically. So what becomes important then, in the work that we do as professors in the classroom at Spelman, and in our guidance to students beyond the classroom, is that we develop students who can speak articulately, at length, about what it means to love blackness, that is the soul project. So as I share with my students, if you can, at the end of this course, or at the end of your four years, articulate loving blackness as political resistance, then we will have done our jobs in preparing students to make a choice to change the world. Right? It requires that you have developed and adapted a way of seeing that goes against the very slave accuracy that made us black people in the United States. What you want to do is figure out how to learn to look to those black people who the culture said was bereft of anything valuable, and sources of wisdom. So that's a part of what I want to help us do today because one of the frustrating things is like Bell Hooks says, is to have students who can only ever pair it the culture. So how do you speak? How do you think, like free people? So the challenge, then, is to change your training. So that you begin to think about how, what it means to be an educated person isn't just to say this is what is wrong with a thing. But to learn how to say, here's what could be right about it. Right? As I said, you know, there are people who are going to be teaching you at Spelman, who you are going to agree with, you're going to they are going to accept black humanity. So what is that going to mean? About how you relate to them in the world of ideas. So here, I want to practice that. So this is a poem by

Pulitzer Prize winning poet Natasha Treadway, she was our nation's Poet Laureate a couple years under Obama. And she was at Emory and now she's at Northwestern. She won a Pulitzer Prize for a collection called native guard. And she's a brilliant poet. This particular poem is taken from her first collection of poems, which was selected for publication by a woman whose name right now is escaping me. I'll come back to it. And but the important thing is that right RITA DOVE, Frida dove selected Natasha Trump away, and she was also a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. And she selected domestic work, which is rooted in the Tasha trust the ways grandmother's experiences. Trust the ways the daughter of a white man and a black woman and her father was a distinguished poet as well. He died a few years ago, her mother was the victim of domestic violence. And she was killed, in fact, by her second husband, when Natasha was a student at UGA, her freshman or sophomore year. And her latest memoir is about her mother's murder. So one of the things that I want you to think about regarding this particular poem, is what I sort of shared, like all that I've been talking to you about is loving blackness, and the challenge of learning how to say the thing that say black love, right? So I want us to do a few things. With this, I want to read it, then I want you. Ultimately what I want you to do, is I want you to tell me about an interpretation, I want you to offer an interpretation of this work that is rooted in a vocabulary of love. It's a challenge, right? Because of the sort of ways in which white supremacy can form and shape the ways that we that we think about black woman, women, and a black woman is the subject of this poem. And a black man, but you know, let's begin we want to focus on her specifically. So his hands, his hands will never be large enough not for the woman who sees in his face. The father she can't remember, or her first husband, the soldier with two wives, all the men who would only take not large enough to deflect the sharp edges of her words. Still, he tries to prove himself in work. His calloused hands heaving crates all day on the docks is paid twice spent. He brings home what he can buckets of crabs from his morning traps. A few green bananas. His supper waits in the warming oven, the kitchen dark, the screens hooked, he thinks make the hands gentle as he wraps lightly at the back door. He has never had a key. putting her hands to his. She pulls him in, sets him by the stove. Slowly she rubs oil into his crack palms, drawing out soreness from the swells removing splinters, taking whatever His hands will give. So what I would like for you to do is to tell me how this poem is a representation of the best kind of Spelman woman. I'm going to put it back up. It you know, technology. I thought I had it together. Okay, here we go. There we go. Now let me pull it back up.

Okay. Now, so I like for you to raise your hands. And I think someone one day, okay, someone can get to you. And tell me and answer this question. How is this? How is the woman in the poem? a representation of the best kind of Spelman woman? Looks like? Kimberly raised her hand. Okay. All right. I'll I'll let Kimberly you can go ahead and talk.

Okay, she you're on mute.

Ah, Kimberly, can you hear us get it? Take your microphone off mute to answer.

Emily, are you out there?

Okay.

best kind of Spelman woman represented in this poem. How? Okay, so Maya just raised her hand, Maya, you can go ahead and talk and speak.

Hi.

I was thinking of connecting it to resilience, pushing forward even though like she didn't receive love from the Father. She can't remember or the first husband the show soldier with two wives like she's still pushed through and receiving love and she was gentle with him patient like treating him. So in that type of way resilience, okay, so, very nice. Thank you. So a part of what makes her you know, like our image of who Spelman women are, you know, many of you know Spelman women. Stacey Abrams is the Spelman woman. She's been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, right? So, you know, and you know, individuals, film and women and so what Maya says is a part of what you know, this woman that makes her sort of a quintessential Spelman woman, is that she is resilient. She's someone who knew pain, but ultimately, she is someone who is is trying to be gentle, and kind and caring. Okay, what else? The next, I believe, Ariana woods and what had Ariana Woods Okay, I think Ariana is on zoom is not compatible. Mm hmm. My apologies Ariana, you can put your tap your response into the chat. So the next is

FB Brown.

Like to respond.

Hello, hi. Hi. I'm so my My name is Madison. I kind of interpreted the woman in the poem as selfless.

her

partner may not have had so much to offer her but despite that, she still took what he was able to give her and in return, she still

was there for him and was

I guess reliable and didn't hear much about herself but how she could support him. Okay,

well, certainly, I will say that that that her your your ability to sort of pick up on her support of him is important. Because generally like students read this poem, and they have a hard time seeing her as desirable and resent the idea that she should be connected to spell And women, because they don't read that last line in the way that you did, you know, right through this lens of compassion and a vocabulary of loves. Now, what I'm sort of thinking about though, is what you just said in conversation with the previous idea about resilience. And, you know, her acknowledgement, like, how do you reconcile the fact that her response to him is very much shaped by what happened to her? So if she were selfless? Could she pay attention to herself?

You understand what I mean?

I think she had to put her back on mute. Okay. You see, because you can't be you can't be selfless. And pay attention to yourself and attentive, because one of the things that we know about her is that she learns, right? I mean, his hands will never be large enough. Now for the woman who sees in his face. The Father, she can't remember her first husband, right? I mean, so like, there were these things that happened. And those things that happened, they guide who she became. So, you know, I mean, she is very much aware of her own personal history that she's bringing into her president. So, you know, she definitely pays attention to herself. But yes, but she's also very, sort of, you know, giving to him. Okay, what else? Why, what makes her a Spelman woman? It's particularly one who's committed to social change. How do you see that? How do you see how can you make that point in this poem? So I will look like Zoe Hart. Next Hannah's up, like to comment.

Oh, hi. Hi. So I like to agree with like the other two. Before and Miss height. How like being how it relates to being a Spelman woman is being generous. And she was able to take her pain of not having a father and her first husband, husband, and giving love and kindness to her husband who works all day because he's

feeling so he's probably

feeling a little bit of self doubt from working all day. Mm hmm. Okay, now, well, now, that's interesting. How do you Why do you say he's her husband? Oh,

because the way she cares for him,

normally wouldn't be like someone,

like, who just met? Mm hmm. Well, but there's a certainly there is a range between, you know, like someone you are dating or engaged to and married, right? I mean, because what we know about this man is that he's never had a key. So it would be unlikely that he would be the husband. But certainly, I mean, you know, right. Generous, kind. resilience. Okay, very good. All right, what else? What else can you say about this woman in terms of, you know, making a choice to change the world? Thank you, Zoe. What else? So I'll call on Sasha. Jason. Sasha, would you like to comment? Hi, can

you hear me?

Yes. Okay.

So I was just gonna say that like to be a Spelman woman. And she went through her adversities. So I read her to care for this man, even though it's almost seems like she didn't have any of that care left, you know, because of all the things that she went through. Even though that this stuff did happen, though. She still cared for this man. Like, he was like your husband or he was her father and she still had that love Even though she's been through that stuff.

Okay, so she's, she's a part of what you're suggesting about her is that she's someone who doesn't hold grudges, right? Like she's a she has a generosity of spirit. She has a generosity of spirit, which means that she isn't necessarily spiteful, even though we know that she's got a sharp tongue, you know, because he's got to deflect the the sharp edges of her words, but she's got a generosity of spirit. Okay. Now, if you're generous, kind, resilient, and have generosity of spirit. Does that lead to you changing the world? How is this woman How do we know that this is a woman who is has made a choice to change the world. Caitlin Bowman, would you like to respond to that question?

Yes, I can try the best that I can. So for that one, I was going to say that she is supportive person because as a man who tries to prove himself to the world at home, he feels cherished for what he has given from their previous experiences, so that she can change the world by accepting anyone for who they are, no matter their background, or their previous experiences. You can cherish anyone for who they are. Okay. All right. Thank

you for that.

So, let me ask you then, okay, so so so far, so now what we have we've got, if you're generous, kind, resilient, of generosity of spirit, you cherish people around you, and you are receptive of who they are, you've suggested that those are the ingredients for social transformation. I'm curious to know if if people agree that those are the things that you need to change the world. And if there's something fundamental, that's also offered in this poem that we're missing, because I'm sure we can name people in our lives who reflect these very things. What is so unique about this woman that leads to I'm suggesting a kind of social transformation that requires an understanding of what what black people need to assert, in this world, in order to change it, so that we can live out loud, these qualities that you see in this woman? Right. So like, what, what, what might be missing from this list? Or do you think that this list generous kind of resilient, offering generosity of spirit, accepting people for who they are cherishing our loved ones, that that is enough to change the world? That's gonna do it?

There was a quick question, Dr. Hyde? Yes. In your q&a? How does this idea of loving blackness being a radical idea extend into modern day when black culture is often appropriate and pop popular culture? Well, this poem is I mean, you know, we don't it is possible that this is modern day, if you will. And it has always been the case that, you know, blackness has been appropriated. And so I mean, there's nothing new about that. What is what might be said to be new would be the the techniques, the speed at which these images sort of travel the globe, but, but it's always been the case that there's been cultural appropriation. So, you know, that's, that's not new. Um, yeah, I don't know if that, you know, gets at what the question polls are really wanted really to discuss. But yeah, cultural appropriation isn't isn't new.

You know. So people in the chat, say, she nurtures potential giving him the ability to work another day. Yep. She does that she has the ability to support life. Yep, she does that are essential for changing the world, but things aren't going to change if you don't have passion behind it. Okay, well, we know that the woman has, you know, some passion, I mean, certainly in the way that she is hurling her words, because he's got to deflect them. We also know that, that she's vigilant, about about things. I don't want to sort of say too much about her vigilance because I would like for you to say something about her vigilance. You know, I mean, what what is it about this woman like, you know, if you are coming to Spelman, a part of the model of coming to Spelman is about committing to a scholarly posture that intersects at all times with social justice. So yeah, I mean, you know, right, like your passion helps. Absolutely. What else? What else might you need? And that is obvious, you know, that is being offered in this poem. Not maybe not obvious, but sorry. offered. So there's a parallel between our first husband taking from her and her taking from this other man, she's learning to assert herself. And okay, how, you know, like, how is she asserting herself? In what way? What model does she offer? to you that is connected to freedom? This poem tells a story about freedom. That is very important. Right? What is it? And I mean, you know, and like, whoever was asking about cultural appropriation, I think that your interest is certainly rooted, and what model this woman offers to all of us. Right?

Um,

being successful is subjective Success to me, I don't know what that success is response. I don't know. I mean, um, you know, this, you know, I think sometimes we go too far with this relativist stuff, right. I mean, so if we're thinking about blackness historically, which, you know, I've been thinking about blackness historically, and you should, too. Especially, you know, when we've been talking about that, you know, in talking about white supremacy and talking about it systemically, then I'm also talking about that as spanning historical moment, you're you've got to start, you've got to recognize that if that is the context, then if you're talking about success in terms of freedom, there isn't much very, there's no, you know, much subjectivity about that, you know, so like, in a slave accuracy, we knew if you escaped or not, right. I mean, we knew what the objective was, in terms of freedom struggle, if you were successful. There were aspects of the civil rights movement that were absolutely successful. Did it need to continue? Absolutely. Especially because we are talking about processes, right, and not freedom as a state. But you know, the, the the effort for securing freedom is ongoing. So in that way, what does this woman offer us? That is a quintessential for our understanding of what liberation is going to require. She makes him feel as though he needs to be softer and quieter, something that black people often struggle with in a white supremacy in a white supremacist culture?

Well,

certainly, I mean, in making him feel as though he needs to be softer and quieter. What does that suggest about her, though, right? How does she make him How do what what do we know about her? Because he does that. That's what's important. That is a very important thing. How, what is that? What is what kinds of assertion is being made by him about her? Does he do that? Because he's intimidated of her. And he's frightened of her words. Now generous, kind, resilient cherished. That's not a vocabulary that suggests that she's a terrorist. So what do we know about her? Because he raps softly and quietly. What do we know about her? She builds him up is almost maternal to me. Okay. She is sacrificing in her work as a nurturer. Her love is strong, but she is gentle. Okay, so she is cautious. Can somebody can can Maya Connor, can she be unmuted? She is cautious. I'm hearing No. Maya Connor, I'm gonna unmute you.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yeah, I want you to tell me about this. What is that? What are you talking about?

Okay, so I viewed her as cautious sash wise. I said that the woman has clearly been hurt before but she allows this new man into her life. However, you can tell that she is cautious of being hurt again, because he doesn't have a cuter house and he also like he knocks he rapped softly on the door. The first two men can represent the world and how the world is not the kindest and safest place for a woman especially a black woman. And then I said that spam a woman are aware of the world's flaws, but they still give back to the world because they have hope that the world can be a better place.

She does not give him a key right You said that she has never had a key. So what she is showing us, right is that she has created a boundary. Right, she has created a boundary between herself and him. One of the differences, one of the major differences between 1865 and 1864. So between being postbellum, after the Civil War, and before the Civil War, is that if you are an enslaved black woman, you could not assert a boundary that anyone was bound to respect. And enslaved person could not assert a boundary. And anyone was bound to respect. Excuse me, your property. What happens after 1865 is that black women could assert a boundary. So a part of how black women Mark freedom is in their ability to assert a boundary. So after 1865, what black women could do is say no, right? And ostensibly, there were supposed to be laws to protect black women. We know that the law failed. But the point remains, that a part of what we are to understand is a part of what it means to be free, is that you can assert a boundary. And what happens when she asserts the boundary? Does he stopped loving her? No. He comports himself accordingly. Right. She says you can only get in here. Right? If you are the kind of man who deserves to be allowed in my space. Now what kind of man can get in one who is a softly wrapping on her door? Right, not banging on her door, that's not gonna gain him access. So he addressed his behavior, he corrected his behavior. Her denial, did not stop him from trying to prove himself to her. You see. So her being able to understand the world that she lived in. And a part of what she understood was that she was good enough. Without it. She didn't he didn't have easy access to her. She was just fine. Now, she wanted him to come, how do we know she wanted him to come? Well, she loved food for him, that she kept warm. Right? she expected him to come, she prepared for him to come. And when he came, she treated him with kindness. Right. But certainly, she had standards. And they are standards that don't require money. They don't require a good breeding. They don't require legislation.

They required her to spend time thinking about herself, thinking about her past and the mistakes that she had made. And what she shows every day, is that that time well spent, will produce a world made safe for you. Right, and that, that her small private world becomes a model of what might make the world better, right? The world beyond her, perhaps if we used her as a model, which is what I'm saying about earlier about the importance. You see of once you embrace critical consciousness, and you've pushed back against this all pervading desire to inculcate disdain for everything black. What happens is that the possibility for blackness to serve as a model for you, expands, blackness, can teach you something about how to have peace, how to have quiet, how to have meaningful relationships. And interestingly enough, that is not about having a free for all. That's about having a boundary. It's about having a boundary. So a part of you know, one of the most important lessons that we get from her is if you want to be free You have to have limits are what you'll allow other people to do for you. Oh, so the standards and boundaries of this character that are used in order to guard her spirit can also be interpreted as social change and social justice, because they model level of change from what was normal at the time. Listen, this is true now. And it was true in 1860, between 1864 and 1865. In 1864, what it meant to be an enslaved person was that you could not assert boundaries, what the enslaved used as a model, what they teach us, is that in 1865, after the Civil War, black people could assert a boundary, you could say, No, that was a mark of your freedom, the ability to have boundaries was how freedom gets articulated when you look at Black experience. So from that larger context, from the larger history of black experience, you see, from the larger history of black experience, the model for your private life, to take on that same structure, that in her private life, she had used that same model, I can say, No, I can lock my door and love him and like him, spend time with him, got the oil for his ham, I'm gonna warm up his food. But in order to get in here, he will need to knock. She changed his behavior. Right, she changed a man's behavior towards her. And what his suggests is that if that person is not willing to change their behavior, then they should not have access to you. Hmm. You see, so that kind of lesson, you know, it is important for our larger social justice efforts. And they're important for our every day lives. You see, you can have love on your terms. That's the only love there is. You know, that's the only love there is. But she was willing to let him go because she valued what she understood. From her past, those men had taught her something.

Right, they taught her something. Someone asks about the class. You know, I teach this no matter what I'm doing at Spelman, this is my primary job to teach these children how to love blackness as political resistance to teach young black people how to be dangerous. Because what we don't want is we do not want you parroting this all pervading desire. So that what you think it means to talk about blackness is to talk about pain. We want you to understand that you should turn to blackness for a model of insight. Right? We want you to turn to blackness for how to be free. We want you to turn to blackness, for how to get to be loved to show love. Right on your terms. We want you to understand that blackness is full and not deficit. So I do that all the time.

Okay.

Now, any like, I've got some folk out there who've been looking at the chat. Any any questions that you want me to engage? Any hands raised? You know, there was some things that I didn't talk about last time. We've got a few minutes. What are your questions, comments, critiques? criticisms? I'm open. After Hi. I will let Allie bridges in. She has a question. Okay.

Ellie, you can go ahead.

Oh, yes. Hello, sorry. Um, hear me?

Yes, I can. Okay, um,

so what is this specific class called?

Well, I mean, it could be at right now. I'm teaching a class called when sorrows come death and mourning and black life. And it begins with loving blackness, right? Yes. And I teach a course on image to it's called image to the cultural afterlife of an American boy. It begins with loving blackness. My, when I teach honors composition, which I haven't in a while, for a while. It was called Black endurance. It begins With loving blackness, the education for me my job, I think, the way I understand it, and the way many of my colleagues understand it, is that a Spellman education shouldn't repair you in a discourse of loving blackness. That that is what this world needs, you see, right. And it used to be that that is what civil rights the civil rights movement SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference, that's how it understood itself. Its tagline was to redeem the soul of America. Right? I mean, those black people understood themselves as having something, a moral vision to offer the world. And so a part of the work that we do at Spelman is introducing you to that rich sense of what blackness has to offer. So that's every class it happens at every turn. Oh,

no, no, go ahead.

All right, alley Go right ahead.

Oh, it's okay.

I said that. I really liked the class, because I just want to know, because I was just saying that, Oh, my God, it's so cool. Like, I would like to do this, because we don't really have a lot of classes that discuss when going into high school stuff about Emmett Till, like they really talk about it. And historical moments about like,

I don't know, like the beauty of our people. And yes, yes. Yes, I'm glad you do. And see, this is also what I was saying to you about the exploring intellectual community, because to me, this doesn't have to be something that you only talk about when there is a class. It should be at every turn, when you're looking for intellectual enrichment. And this is what I'm looking for. You see, when I'm reading these essays, I'm looking for students who are interested in at all times expanding for the sake of their liberation and for the liberation of those who come around them through the world of ideas and through the life of the mind. So that's the benefit of, you know, the advising the close community in the Honors Program, is that, that we have the occasion for this, you know, in a few on February 28. Dr. Ilya Davis and I, he is my colleague at Morehouse, we're going to be in conversation. We had a conversation last year, it was on blackness and beauty. And we had over 100 students attend. And so it'll be a public talk. So you know, look, look at specimens webpage will have a zoom link for it. Or I gave you my email, you can send me an email around the 28th or the program coordinator, Miss cook. You can send her an email and you can get a flyer for that zoom link so that you can attend and be a part of the conversation. Well, can I? Yeah, so February 28. I think that's a Sunday. And we talked about 4pm 4pm and it's gonna be on loving blackness. And you can email Cynthia cook, I think Miss I put it on that first slide. It might be cc cook at Spelman. edu for the flyer. All of you, you're welcome to attend. All right, anything like another question? Doctor? Hi. Oh, sure. Okay. Okay, so we've Next up on my list is Caitlin Bowman. Go ahead and ask her a question.

Hi, I just wanted to express how, just this moment, which is very eye opening and mind blowing, and it feels like I just belong here. And I'm just so glad that I attended this session. It wasn't really a question, but pretty much just a statement.

Well, I'm glad you offered it. You use. I'm glad we use this poetry because you know, the word belonging is so important at Spelman. And so if I did create that space for you here, then I've done my job today. Because we like to say that Spelman is not a place just where black women are, but it's where they belong. Right? It's where they belong. And so if I have done something to make you feel that way, then good job for me. And so I guess that's it for me, right? It's 457. That's it. All right. Well, this was it was wonderful. being engaged with you. I appreciate the fact that you were willing to make the best of the situation and the virtual world and that we had some time together. I look forward to reading your, your work. And I look forward to engaging with you. at Spelman.

Thank right. Thank

you. Thank you. Thank you so much Dr. Hyde. That was awesome. I can tell y'all we're in the chat, eating it up. So I am so happy that we were able to get this looks like we need to implement some more mock mock classes and things like that. And I went to Spelman, and that was a very authentic version of what classes look like. And amazingly somehow it always ties into what you are learning. So I think that that's pretty awesome as well.