AFRC2163 - Creating Race and Nation: African American Thought and Culture since Emancipation
Status
A
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Creating Race and Nation: African American Thought and Culture since Emancipation
Term
2025C
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
401
Section ID
AFRC2163401
Course number integer
2163
Meeting times
W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM
Level
undergraduate
Description
As jazz composer Duke Ellington once said, African Americans are “something apart” from
mainstream American society, but still “an integral part” of the nation’s identity and history. This course takes up Ellington’s provocation to consider how Black Americans have advanced important ideas about race, citizenship, activism, and culture that offer vital insight into African American and American history alike. Taking a broad view of intellectual history, the course will pair secondary literature with relevant primary
sources from politics, literature, education, and the visual and performing arts. We will explore how, denied full access to political representation, education, and mobility in public space, African Americans have developed innovative and insurgent modes of making their ideas about the world known to a multiracial public. Each week, we will ask: what does it mean to be an intellectual? How are ideas and actions interconnected? What forms can ideas take, and how do they circulate beyond texts? How do these examples help us understand discourse, culture, and activism in our current moment? Across class discussion and written assignments, students will come to appreciate the breadth, multiplicity, and dynamism of African American thought and culture. Together, we will examine the complex ambitions, morals, struggles, and triumphs of African American people to unlock a more profound understanding of past and present.
mainstream American society, but still “an integral part” of the nation’s identity and history. This course takes up Ellington’s provocation to consider how Black Americans have advanced important ideas about race, citizenship, activism, and culture that offer vital insight into African American and American history alike. Taking a broad view of intellectual history, the course will pair secondary literature with relevant primary
sources from politics, literature, education, and the visual and performing arts. We will explore how, denied full access to political representation, education, and mobility in public space, African Americans have developed innovative and insurgent modes of making their ideas about the world known to a multiracial public. Each week, we will ask: what does it mean to be an intellectual? How are ideas and actions interconnected? What forms can ideas take, and how do they circulate beyond texts? How do these examples help us understand discourse, culture, and activism in our current moment? Across class discussion and written assignments, students will come to appreciate the breadth, multiplicity, and dynamism of African American thought and culture. Together, we will examine the complex ambitions, morals, struggles, and triumphs of African American people to unlock a more profound understanding of past and present.
Course number only
2163
Cross listings
HIST2163401
Use local description
No