Fugitive Perspectives on Education and Civil Society
AFAM 358
Spring 2025
| Section:
01
|
| Crosslisting:
EDST 358 |
In 1946, the African American novelist Ann Petry imagined what a white schoolteacher might think about working with black students in Harlem, New York: "Working in this school was like being in a jungle. It was filled with the smell of the jungle, she thought: tainted food, rank, unwashed bodies." Petry had herself worked in Harlem schools. She also held credentials from well-heeled white schools in Connecticut. Despite her own academic success, she questioned the inherent value of schools that regarded black children as if they were untamed savages. Challenging prevailing narratives of excellence and achievement, this course examines fugitive perspectives of black, Indigenous, LBGTQ, and poor folks who resisted compulsory schooling and avoided conscription into so-called civilized society. If, as historian Michael B. Katz has argued, US schools "are imperial institutions designed to civilize the natives; they exist to do something to poor children, especially, now, children who are black or brown," then why should any self-respecting black or brown child endure such schooling? What might so-called truants, illiterates, failures, burnouts, dropouts, and delinquents teach us about education and civil society? The history of education, however, has largely been interpreted from a biased perspective--namely, those who have been successfully schooled. We will therefore search for contrary voices in fragments of oral culture, ranging from slave narratives to folktales and recorded music. Contemporary scholarship will inform our analysis. Interdisciplinary scholars such as James Scott, Eric Hobsbawm, Tera Hunter, Saidiya Hartman, Lisa Brooks, and Audra Simpson will illustrate how to read against the grain and unearth hidden transcripts from classic authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Anna Julia Cooper, and Gertrude Simmons Bonin. |
|
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA AFAM |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
|
Fulfills a Requirement for: (AFAM-MN)(AFAM)(EDST-MN)(EDST) |
|
Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
:
Riyad A. Shahjahan, ¿Being `Lazy¿ and Slowing Down: Toward Decolonizing Time, Our Body, and Pedagogy,¿ Educational Philosophy and Theory (2015): 488-501.
Alison Kafer, ¿Time for Disability Studies and a Future for Crips,¿ in Feminist, Queer, Crip (2013)
Saidiya Hartman, ¿Venus in Two Acts,¿ Small Axe (June 2008): 1-14.
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, ¿The Three Faces of Sans Souci: Glory and Silences in the Haitian Revolution,¿ Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1997), 33-69.
Keywords for African American Studies, eds. Erica R. Edwards, et al. (New York: NYU Press, 2018)
Going to the Sources: A Guide to Historical Research and Writing (New York: Wiley, 2017)
Research Methods for History, eds. Simon Gunn and Lucy Faire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011)
|
Examinations and Assignments:
:
Bibliography
Keyword Definition / Historiographical Essay
Project Prospectus
Final Project |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
: |
| Instructor(s): Johnson,Khalil Anthony Times: .M..... 01:20PM-04:10PM; Location: FISK101; |
Permission of Instructor Required
Enrollment capacity: 15 | Permission of instructor will be granted during the drop/add period. Students must submit either a ranked or unranked drop/add request for this course. |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 11 | 1st Ranked: 8 | 2nd Ranked: 1 | 3rd Ranked: 2 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
|
|