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The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line,” scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois famously decreed in his masterpiece The Souls of Black Folk (1903). While this course is inspired by this pronouncement, it will also put pressure on the cultural delineation of racial groupings by interweaving Du Bois’s “color-line” with the contending lines and barriers of gender. Our historical focus is on the post-reconstruction period all the way until the end of the Progressive Era and the Harlem Renaissance. The readings mostly address Black-White relations in the shadow of the Jim Crow system as well as internal debates within African American reform movements. Text selections stretch across multiple genres (autobiography, scholarly texts, activist writings, fiction) and include works by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Madison Grant, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Angela Davis, and Saidiya Hartman. We will also work with visual media, including silent film and photography. Throughout the course, students will hone their analytical skills, develop strategies to approach research topics in American Cultural Studies, and practice the composition of scholarly prose. |
