By Ariyana Griffin 
Special to the AFRO 

Beyoncé’s 2022 house music themed album, “Renaissance,” will be the topic of discussion at Prairie View A&M University this year. The Texas-based historically Black institution has partnered with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) to provide coursework that highlights queer history and theory, feminism and diversity.

The HRC has been dedicated to meeting people where they are when it comes to advocating for equal rights and ending discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community for decades. 

Since 1980, the organization has put forth the work to expand their programming across the country, to fight for equal rights. Part of that expansion was the creation of an HBCU initiative, which provides students with education, ambassador opportunities and resources. “Renaissance-A Queer Syllabus,” was birthed from this program specifically to educate HBCU students. 

“This syllabus aims to amplify diverse voices, empower communities pushed to the margins, and promote inclusivity and a sense of belonging within education,” the organization states in the syllabus. 

“Renaissance” has tight ties to house music, a genre of music originated by the queer Black and Brown community in the early 1980s in Chicago. The electric beats and feel good rhythms allowed people to move their bodies freely and shed the day off of discrimination, hatred and worries on the dance floor. This era of music is highly connected to the AIDs epidemic, which greatly impacted the queer community. 

Beyonce dedicated the album to her uncle Johnny, who passed away from AIDS. She credits him for exposing her to music that helped make the album. 

“A big thank you to my Uncle Jonny. He was my godmother and the first person to expose me to a lot of the music and culture that serve as inspiration for this album,” she wrote on her website. “Thank you to all of the pioneers who originate culture, to all of the fallen angels whose contributions have gone unrecognized for far too long. This is a celebration for you.”

Justin Calhoun is a 2020 Howard University graduate. During his matriculation, he focused on LGBTQ inclusion and continued his work and activism at HRC. Calhoun also serves as HRC’s HBCU program manager. 

Calhoun explained that the syllabus was created to dig deeper, and provide a way of students to be met where they are and be inclusive. He spoke about the attack on legislation when it comes to queer rights and how it is also integrating with bans in the classroom.

“The Renaissance syllabus is a way that teachers and students can expand their education,” he said. “It’s Black, it’s queer– its really touching on topics that they might not get the chance to do because of some of these like legislative restrictions,” said Calhoun

The syllabus breaks down the album into six lessons: empowerment and self-acceptance; intersectionality and inclusivity; social justice and activism; resilience and overcoming adversity; artistic expression and storytelling and legacy and history. The curriculum is supported by several books, articles, essays and films, including but not limited to bell hooks and Audre Lorde.

Calhoun shared that harm to the LGBTQ community was a big reason he decided to help people gain knowledge of the community and its history.

O’Shae Sibley, specifically, is recognized in the syllabus. Sibley was a man who was murdered at the age of 28 years old queer for “voguing” – which is a highly stylized dance influenced by the 1960s Harlem ballroom scene.

“Simply for dancing somebody took his life and for dancing in our art form that is so Black, so queer. Somebody took his life because they didn’t see that, they didn’t value that. And so in the syllabus, towards the end, we do a tribute to O’Shae Sibley,” Calhoun told the AFRO. 

The course is open to multiple HBCUs in the HRC network, and has kicked off with Prairie View A&M University incorporating the course first. 

Jeanelle Hope, Ph.D., is the director and an associate professor of African American Studies at PVAMU. She has extensive knowledge in Black feminism, Black queer theory and Black art and cultural production. 

“They’ve geared it towards being able to bolster HBCUs teaching of concepts related to gender, sexuality, race and many of the other sort of themes that emerge out of the album,” said Hope, including “self-love, identity, Black LGBTQ rights and issues, intersectionality, social responsibility and social activism.” 

“It’s really exciting to see a major human rights organization invest not only in HBCUs, but also thinking about critical academic work that would be useful for students certainly at the higher-ed level,” Hope shared with the AFRO.

Hope teaches the “Race, Class and Gender in America” course at PVAMU and looks forward to incorporating elements from the syllabus into her course. She expressed that breaking down the history and terms related to the album and syllabus would be beneficial for students because they will be able to combine what they are already familiar with on a deeper level. 

“Sit with a song like ‘Alien Superstar’ for instance. Leaning into this notion that ‘Yes, I’m different, no, I don’t go within the binary or what may be the norm of Blackness, but I’m cozy within my skin. I’m cool with being an alien superstar and all that’s okay,’” Hope told the AFRO. 

She shared that students have already been emailing her to inquire about the course. 

“Many of our students are from Houston because Prairie View is just right outside of Houston. This is someone who is homegrown talent as well, so it holds a little bit more significance for them,” Hope told the AFRO. “I think it’s an opportunity again for us to be able to meet our students where they’re at, to be able to lean into popular culture and get them to have really robust discussions.”

HRC looks forward to hosting virtual courses in the future as well as having in person activities related to the syllabus in the fall at Howard University. 

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