Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. How do we know what we know? Why do we think what we think? Where does our knowledge of self come from? Introductory set of theoretical tools to begin to answer such questions of consciousness, especially as they concern status of Black people in contemporary racial-economic context of U.S. and elsewhere in African diaspora. Drawing on interdisciplinary Black studies scholarship of range of writers that may include Ida B. Wells, Carter G. Woodson, Claudia Jones, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Steve Biko, Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, George Jackson, Angela Davis, Jacob H. Carruthers, Stuart Hall, and Sylvia Wynter, to understand function of representation, language, and ideology in creation of social meaning and role of literature, media, education, and popular culture in organization of Black consciousness and exercise of power. P/NP or letter grading.
