Black Internationalism in U.S.

Catalog description

Throughout the twentieth century, African American cultural producers used international travel to see beyond the limits of racial discrimination in the U.S. Traveling abroad allowed these authors to imagine new configurations of race, gender, and class back at home. This course will trace the vibrant, ongoing tradition of black internationalism, focusing on its often utopian undercurrents—in particular, its frequent crossing of racial and sexual hierarchies. In so doing, this course will address the relationship between internationalism as a unifying movement of resistance and nationally enforced oppressions; between a solidarity of what Richard Wright termed “scattered but kindred spirits” and enfranchisementat home. Our course will investigate black internationalism as a diverse appropriation of socialist thought as developed by key theorists and activists of the African Diaspora.