Social Science, Black Life: Wells-Barnett, Du Bois, and Hurston's Empirical Experiments
FGSS 354
Spring 2024
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
SOC 318, AFAM 354 |
| Course Cluster and Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate |
This class has two interrelated areas of focus: first, the racist habits of imag(in)ing blackness's presumed racial-sexual difference that preoccupied social science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and second, the formative role that social scientific research and methods played in black people's quests for institutional inclusion during this same period. In their early years, canonical sociology and anthropology consistently proved unable to capture the beauty and complexity in black life, instead lending empirical authority to cultural ways of seeing blackness as inherently pathological. A counter-discourse of black expression took shape, attempting to overcome the negative impact that dominant empirical thought might have on black peoples' struggle for normative citizenship. Focusing particularly on the careers of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Zora Neale Hurston, we will explore the contradictory relationship that subsequently emerged between blackness and institutional power--discernible in empiricism's primacy during the long era of postbellum black inclusion. Rather than seeking evidence of black intellectuals' departure from empiricism and its attendant violences, we will explore the messiness of their efforts to experiment with and imagine beyond their misrepresentation and erasure in dominant empirical discourses. Indeed, black artists and intellectuals sometimes recapitulated the violence of empiricist paradigms and their enabling truth claims despite their sound political intentions. In considering the nexus of social science and black life in this period, then, we will also consider the intramural politics of racialized gender, the myriad costs of institutional incorporation, and the stubborn durability of epistemological authority. Secondary texts include works by Hazel Carby, Roderick Ferguson, Kevin Gaines, Julian Go, Avery Gordon, Saidiya Hartman, Katherine McKittrick, Reiland Rabaka, Michel-Rolph Truillot, Autumn Womack, Alexander Weheliye, Sylvia Wynter, and others. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS FGSS |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (CSCT) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 90% or above |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
PRIMARY: THE RED RECORD, THE PHILADELPHIA NEGRO, AND MULES AND MEN
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Examinations and Assignments:
Reading Responses, Final Paper |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
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| Instructor(s): Washington, Jr.,Henry Times: ...W... 07:10PM-10:00PM; Location: ALLB304; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 16 | | SR major: 4 | JR major: 4 | | |
| Seats Available: 9 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 4 | JR non-major: 4 | SO: X | FR: X |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 1 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 1 |
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