May be Cowboy Carter week, but his silver disco ball strobe lights Renaissance — his first act Beyoncéthe currently unfolding trilogy — keep lighting up the world. On Monday (March 26), the Human Rights Campaign debuted Renaissance: A Queer Syllabusan extensive collection of scholarly articles, essays, films, and other pieces of media rooted in black queer and feminist studies and directly inspired by every track on Queen Bey's Billboard 200 dance album.
Curated by Justin Calhoun, Leslie Hall, and Chauna Lawson of the HRC HBCU Program, the syllabus will serve as an educational resource designed to honor, analyze, and celebrate the joy, resilience, innovation, and heritage of the Black queer community . The curriculum will be shared with nearly 30 historically Black colleges and universities, including Howard University, North Carolina A&T University, Prairie View A&M University and Shaw University.
Released Summer 2022, Renaissance it was and continues to be a bona fide cultural phenomenon. A loving ode to dance music's black queer roots filtered through her intense personal relationship with her late uncle Johnny, the album captivated fans worldwide and shed a much-needed light on the unseen movers and shakers of black queer art and culture. The album won four Grammys — including a historic win for Best Dance/Electronic album — and hosted a pair of Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hits in “Break My Soul” (No. 1) and “Cuff It” (No. 6 ) and resulted in a record-breaking stadium tour and accompanying box office-topping concert documentary.
From economic impact of Beyoncé's silver fashion aesthetic to career advancements given to Black queer icons such as Kevin Aviance, Ts Madison and Honey Dijon, Renaissance turned out to be much more than a typical LP. HRC realized there was an opportunity to make a real impact in education and activism through the lens of the record.
“There are ways we can incorporate the impact of her lyrics into real life. It was crazy to have that happen,” said Hall, director of HRC's HBCU Program. “All anti-PPC [diversity, equity and inclusion] laws were introduced in the same states in which he performed. So, how about putting together articles, books and movies on all the songs on her album?'
On May 15, 2023 — just three shows into the Renaissance world tour — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill banning PPC initiatives in public colleges. A month later (June 14, 2023), the governor of Beyoncé's home state of Texas, Greg Abbott, signed a bill banning PPC offices and hiring PPC staff in public higher education institutions.
The juxtaposition of growing anti-queer sentiment and Beyoncé Renaissance The season anchors the layout of the syllabus. The syllabus begins with a brief statement summarizing and reiterating HRC's June 2023 LGBTQ+ State of Emergency declaration, which they declared “for the first time following an unprecedented and dangerous surge in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative attacks sweeping statehouses ». The final pages of the syllabus also contain a reprint of Beyoncé's statement in memory of O'Shea Sibley – a young black queer man who was murdered in Brooklyn in July 2023 for simply saying Renaissance — and an additional statement from HRC denouncing hate crimes.
“I think when you preface something [with] in an emergency, you can get the lay of the land and how important [the] the curriculum is,” said Calhoun, HBCU program director at HRC. “It brings a sense of urgency and reality to what's actually happening with queer youth, especially black queer youth.”
Calhoun—along with Hall and Lawson—began work on the syllabus in October 2023, dividing the album's 16-song tracklist into different themes and creating hubs of additional secondary resources expounding on those themes. Despite Calhoun's initial concerns that breaking up the tracklist would “lose the flow” of the album — Renaissance deliberately mixed and tuned to mimic a seamless DJ set — he ultimately agreed that the approach helped the syllabus feel more like a lesson plan.
Six themes anchor the syllabus, ranging from 'intersectionality and inclusivity' to 'social justice and activism'. Fan favorites like “Alien Superstar” and “Thique” rope from the beginning of the body positivity moment and iconic speeches from Barbara Ann Teer (including the one featured on “Superstar”) under the umbrella of “empowerment and self-acceptance”. “Energy,” the song behind the infamous “silent challenge,” gets new readings with interweaving essays by Bell Hooks and Patricia Hill Collins. Even lesser-known tracks like “Move” (featuring Grace Jones & Tems)—which is paired with fascinating readings about the effects of colonialism on pre-colonial Africa and African perspectives on trans identity—get in on the scholarly fun.
Of course, “Heated”, a song that had a strong, immediate impact Renaissance listeners with deep ties to the ballroom scene, served as the focus of the syllabus, according to Calhoun. “It was a child's model of what a section of the syllabus should look like,” she explains. “There was so much to unpack in 'Heated.' You have Beyoncé's uncle Johnny, a black gay man [living] during the AIDS epidemic — which drives us [compiling different resources] about how we lost a generation of black gay men who were visionaries and people who opened the culture.'
The syllabus is a thorough resource, continuing HRC's connection to Beyoncé Renaissance time. On August 27, 2023, HRC, with support from Beyoncé's BeyGOOD Foundation, hosted the Equality Ball in Las Vegas, NV – an event that doubled as an actual ball with a “Bring It Like Beyoncé” category and an educational resource that pushes voter registration and sexual health awareness.
Although Parkwood Entertainment, Beyoncé's production company, did not authorize or “directly sign off” on the schedule (Advertising sign contacted representatives at Parkwood for comment), creating the resource was “a seamless process,” according to Calhoun. “We knew from the team which writers and which people to go to for certain things, I don't think any of us did a lot of Google searches,” Hall said. “We knew where to go to connect the right [resources] in one of her songs [and] create a path from it. It really is a testament to well-read, well-educated people. I feel compelled to say this because we don't talk about ourselves like that. We are smart. It would take people with Howard degrees to put something like that together.”
From Pauli Murray and C. Riley Snorton to Audre Lorde and Sonya Renee Taylor, HRC's new curriculum continues Renaissance'Her mission is to highlight, amplify and refocus black and queer voices. Of course, this syllabus is far from the first piece of Beyoncé-inspired higher education coursework. Following the release of the Grammy winner's culture-changing album Lemonade in 2016, a series of Beyoncé-themed courses debuted at institutions of higher learning—including the University of Copenhagen, Rutgers University, Arizona State University, and the University of Texas at San Antonio.
For Hall, the rise of courses that address social constructions through the lens of pop culture can only be a good thing. “We're in a powder keg right now, and it's going to explode come election time,” he says. “We need to get information to the people of the younger generations. We need them to connect with what's really happening and one way to do that is through music and culture.”
However, Hall and his colleagues are not unaware of this Renaissance it exists in an inherently capitalist context. “[It’s] something I struggle with so much,” notes Calhoun. “I had a teacher who once said that capitalism is the current structure and we have to live under it. That's how life works. What is Beyoncé going to do to stop a capitalist structure? I just don't feel like we're at a point in the movement where we know what we want [people like her] to do.”
While there may be no current plans for a Cowboy Carter syllabus — “being from the Mississippi Delta, that would be dope, but it's up to Beyoncé,” Calhoun said — of HRC Renaissance the syllabus is the ultimate proof that the Renaissance is, in fact, not over.
“We've built a course that adds scholarship on black queer futures specifically dance history and uplifting history that's not as popular in academia,” says Calhoun. “It really adds to the academic canon of Black queer scholarship in a way that we haven't seen before.”
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/culture/pride/hrc-beyonce-renaissance-syllabus-hbcu-1235640435/
