Knowing Community

4 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This advanced seminar is a hybrid course integrating social science theory and research methods through a deep examination of three foundational thinkers – W. E. B. DuBois, Anna Julia Cooper, and Walter Rodney. The course will focus on both what these thinkers argued and how they came to shape those arguments. Each week, we will analyze the methodological tools these scholars used to study communities under stress: ethnographic observation, archival research, statistical analysis, historical materialism, and what Rodney called “groundings”. Students will then apply these methodological lessons to design their own research projects on a social issue of their choice. The course moves student understanding from how knowledge is produced to becoming producers of knowledge themselves.