A US university, Valdosta State University, is offering students the chance to earn university credits by exploring the black female experience through Beyoncé’s powerful 2016 visual album, Lemonade.
A statement issued on the university’s website says the course (AFAM 3600 E: Black Women in Modern America) introduces the album “as a jumping off point to explore such issues through the eyes of numerous other writers, artists, poets, and scholars.”
The issues referred to include “black identity, feminism, marital infidelity, sisterhood, and faith“. The aim is to study how black women are portrayed in mainstream culture.
Lemonade was Beyonce’s sixth studio album and her second visual one. It is inspired by Beyoncé’s grandmother Agnéz Deréon, as well as her husband Jay-Z’s grandmother, Hattie White. At the end of the song Freedom, an audio recording of Hattie White heard speaking to a crowd at her ninetieth birthday party in December 2015 is played. During the speech, Hattie says: “I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up. I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.”
