Tommie Shelby (Department of Philosophy)
First-Year Seminar 32R | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:45 PM – 2:45 PM
This seminar introduces the main traditions of African American political thought and the history of the black fight for justice through the genre of autobiography. Students will read some classic autobiographies by African Americans (for example, those by Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Malcolm X), along with some lesser-known works (for instance, autobiographies by Ida B. Wells, Shirley Chisholm, and Amiri Baraka). They will discover how an influential set of black individuals, both men and women, came to political consciousness and participated in the collective struggle for justice in America. Students will reflect on these figures personal struggles to find meaning and solace under unjust conditions and to forge dignified modes of resistance. The seminar provides an opportunity to see how these personalities interpreted key events and periods in U.S. historyslavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, the two World Wars, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, and the post-industrial urban crisisas social actors who participated and lived through them. Close attention will be paid to their engagement with and contributions to the political traditions of liberalism, conservatism, socialism, black nationalism, and feminism. And students will critically examine how these influential thinkers and activists understood ideals like freedom, equality, democracy, fairness, and tolerance.