Special Topics: African American Political Thought

This course explores the intellectual history of African-American political thought through an examination of responses to classic questions of political theory such as the role of the state, human nature and its (im-)perfectibility, positive law, and normative thought. These questions are posited within a framework that Michael Dawson calls “black political ideologies.” These ideologies take shape in confrontation and negotiation with the question of black identity around the location of race, class, gender, and sexuality. It also examines the relationship of African-Americans to the conception of citizenship within American political thought, and how the liberal and republican traditions coexist with ascriptive hierarchies that unveil questions of oppression and hierarchy within the nature of American society. Readings traverse the ideologies of liberalism, feminism, nationalism, Black Power, and Marxism. This course is structured both thematically and historically.

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