Introduction to Black Studies

Catalog description

This course introduces students to Black Studies as an interdisciplinary field of academic inquiry, a mode of analysis, and a political project born of insurgent struggle. Through canonical and more recent works in history, political theory, and cultural analysis, students will study the Black Radical Tradition and how its architects have developed tools and insights for analyzing systems of power, domination, and culture, tools from which all students—regardless of race, gender, or sexuality—can learn and benefit from. Beginning with the institutionalization of Black Studies as an academic field, the course will examine key concepts, such as racial capitalism, Reconstruction and emancipation, race-based chattel slavery in the Americas and its afterlives, Black political organizing, and feminist thought. Students will engage foundational thinkers who have shaped the field, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Cedric Robinson, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Audre Lorde, among others.