Welcome to this sacred space. A place to melt, to relax, to open up, to receive, to give, to think deeply, to become undone, to ask questions, to leave space for silence, to cry, to laugh, to brainstorm new things, or to do absolutely n’athan. Inspired by my teachers and my homegirls, who taught me (and are still teaching me) what it means to live a life guided by joy, by ecstasy, by saying “yes” to whatever it is that my soul most desires, this syllabus, this sketch, this communal learning space, is a space where theory and praxis intersects with pleasure and beauty. Centered around this question of whether my living has to be one of resistance, and questions about Black feminism as an academic project and the possibilities of teaching, learning, and being together in ways that decenter the academy and academic study as the primary place for knowledge production, Walk/Ways: A Black Feminist Pleasure Syllabus emerges. I am a first-year PhD student currently studying at a university facing unrelenting intellectual violence against gender and ethnic studies departments. And while I honor the past and current labor to save those departments (as they are attached to centuries of research, people’s jobs and student’s futures in the fields of Black and Brown studies, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, it begs another question about what this moment might offer us in developing spaces outside of the institution for maroonage / stealing away / brush harbor classrooms where our ideas can live and multiply outside of the gaze of white institutions. I am also a Southern girl with Atlanta roots, a performance artist, writer, and cultural organizer who is trying to understand what it might mean to claim “artist-scholar” as a marker for my identity in the academy—a place that is not only hostile to Black women like me, but also to performance as a legitimate field of study. If no place is safe for Black women, what strategies can we use (and have used) to move inside and outside those spaces? How can pleasure and beauty be tools that help us navigate inside the belly of beast(s) and imagine the worlds we want to see (Nash)? What happens when pleasure and beauty are made public, when violence is expected? Mostly, my grad school experience is starting off a bit lonely. I moved to a new city, experienced shifts in some really important relationship, and as my institution is attacking AFAM and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies programs, I feel a bit siloed. There is so much horror happening in the world, and to be honest, this feels like the worst time to be committing to study. My heart and spirit is overwhelmed and heavy. But, what I do know is that I need community. Need people. Need folks who wouldn’t mind reading with me, thinking with me, holding space together. I am having some trouble finding scholars and folks who might be good thought partners with me in this moment. I wonder if you might think with me? If you might dive into the sticky with me.