Black Intellectuals Seminar

4 points · University catalogue

AFAM Major/Concentrator required course This undergraduate seminar examines a diverse group of black intellectuals' formulations of ideologies and theories relative to racial, economic and gender oppression within the context of dominant intellectual trends. The intellectuals featured in the course each contributed to the evolution of black political thought, and posited social criticisms designed to undermine racial and gender oppression, and labor exploitation around the world. This group of black intellectuals' work will be analyzed, paying close attention to the way that each intellectual inverts dominant intellectual trends, and/or uses emerging social scientific disciplines to counter racism, sexism, and classism. This seminar is designed to facilitate an understanding of the black intellectual tradition that has emerged as a result of African-American thinkers' attempts to develop a unified response to an understanding of the black condition. This course explores of a wide range of primary and secondary sources from several different periods, offering students opportunity to explore the lives and works of some of the most important black intellectuals. We will also consider the way that period-specific intellectual phenomenon-such as Modernism, Marxism, Pan-Africanism, and Feminism-combined with a host of social realities.