Listed in: Black Studies, as BLST-135 | Philosophy, as PHIL-366
John E. Drabinski (Section 01)
(Offered as BLST 135 [US] and PHIL 366) What is distinctive about the African-American experience? How does that distinctiveness bear on the theory and practice of philosophy and philosophical thinking? And how does the African-American philosophical tradition alter European and Anglo-American philosophical accounts of subjectivity, knowledge, time, language, history, embodiment, memory, and justice? In this course, we will read a range of African-American thinkers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to develop an appreciation of the unique, critical philosophical voice in the Black intellectual tradition. Our readings of works by David Walker, Martin Delany, Maria Stewart, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida Wells, Alain Locke, James Baldwin, Angela Davis, Cornel West and others will open up crucial issues that transform philosophy's most central problems: knowing, being, and acting. As well, we will consider the cluster of thinkers with whom those works are critically concerned, including key texts from nineteenth-century German philosophy, American pragmatism, and contemporary existentialism and postmodernism. What emerges from these texts and critical encounters is a sense of philosophy and philosophical practice as embedded in the historical experience - in all of its complexity - of African-Americans in the twentieth century.
Spring semester. Professor Drabinski.
Section 01
M 02:00 PM - 03:20 PM COOP 101
W 02:00 PM - 03:20 PM COOP 101
| ISBN | Title | Publisher | Author(s) | Comment | Book Store | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Fire Next Time | Vintage, 1993 | Baldwin, James | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| Voice from the South | Oxford University Press, 1988 | Cooper, Anna Julia | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass | Dover Publications, 1995 | Douglass, Frederick | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| Souls of Black Folk | Dover Publications, 1994 | DuBois, W.E.B. | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| Darkwater | Dover Publications, 1999 | DuBois, W.E.B. | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| Maria W. Stewart, America's first Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches | Indiana, 1987 | Stewart, Maria | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| Up from Slavery | Dover Publications, 1995 | Washington, Booker T. | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| On Lynchings | Dover Publications, 2014 | Wells, Ida B. | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| Keeping Faith | Routledge, 1993 | West, Cornel | Amherst Books | TBD |
These books are available locally at Amherst Books.