Course Description
An examination of representative works of such nineteenth- and twentieth-century social, cultural, and political thinkers as Frederick Douglass, Cornel West, Anna J. Cooper, and Angela Davis, among other outstanding women and men who have contributed significantly to the intellectual life of the African American community.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students read additional works on each of the subjects under study and write more substantial papers requiring more analysis, synthesis, and evaluation than that required of undergraduate students.
Athena Title
African American Thought
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in HIST 4055H
Undergraduate Pre or Corequisite
Any HIST or AFAM or PHIL or HONS course
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
- By the end of this course, students will be able to arrive at conclusions about the history of African American thought by gathering and weighing evidence, logical argument, and listening to counter argument.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to write stylistically appropriate papers and essays. Students will be able to analyze ideas and evidence, organize their thoughts, and revise and edit their finished essays.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to identify how the history of African American thought shaped diverse social and cultural attitudes toward race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and morality and rights, encouraging them to understand diverse worldviews and experiences.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to apply appropriate methodological approaches to their analysis of primary sources and to organize their evidence to show historical continuities and discontinuities.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to generate their own research question or topic, locate suitable primary and secondary sources, and synthesize their ideas in novel ways.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to initiate, manage, complete, and evaluate their independent research projects in stages and to give and receive constructive feedback through the peer review process.
Topical Outline
- Utilizing lectures, assigned readings, and class discussions, students will examine representative works of selected nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American social, cultural, and political thinkers.
- The course addresses the articulated thought of African American women as well as men.
- Lectures present the broader historical contexts in which these thinkers functioned and consider the impact of individualism, gender, and change over time on the subjects of the course.
- The course adopts a chronological approach and focuses on approximately ten African American intellectual exponents, selected from such representatives as Maria Stewart, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida Wells Barnett, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Angela Davis, bell hooks, and Cornel West.
