POL4345
Seminar: Black Liberation from Haiti to Black Lives Matter

Examines Black liberation in theory and practice from modernity through contemporary times, emphasizing efforts by Black actors and thinkers to reconstruct culture, politics, and economics. Key concepts include racial formation, racial capitalism, violence, necropolitics, revolution, decolonization, freedom, justice, radical imagination, emotion, and the undercommons. Cases may include transatlantic slavery, the Haitian Revolution, Black Marxism, Black Power, the Movement for Black Lives, prison abolition, and historical and contemporary coalitions between Black freedom struggles and the struggles of indigenous peoples and other racialized minorities. Authors may include Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin, George Jackson, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, Claudia Rankine, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and Glen Coulthard.

Units: 1

Max Enrollment: 15

Prerequisites: One course in political theory or appropriate background from a related field (e.g., Africana Studies, American Studies, Sociology, WGST, etc.)

Instructor: Grattan

Distribution Requirements: REP - Religion, Ethics, and Moral Philosophy

Typical Periods Offered: Every other year

Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring

Notes: