BLST 263 Du Boisian Social Theory and Analysis
W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois, was a prolific scholar, writer, and social/political analyst and organizer. Over the course of his lifetime, Du Bois wrote over 2000 bibliographical entries, across a range of genres, including: research monographs, plays, pamphlets, autobiography and biography, history, novels, poems, and popular press articles. At the same time, Du Bois utilized multiple methods, forms of data and evidence, and literary styles within and across texts. Nevertheless, in the domain of social science, and sociology more specifically, his work was intentionally marginalized. Yet while Du Bois was made a minor figure in American social science, he was a primary progenitor of the transdisciplinary field of Black, African American, or Africana studies and thus played a foundational role in circumventing the racial-colonial order of knowledge by attending to Black life and sociality. In this course, we will study the social theory of Du Bois by reading texts from across his vast corpus—from his more formally social scientific writing and data visualizations to his creative projects like poetry and short stories. For the final project of the course, students will deploy a Du Boisian approach to social theory and analysis using more expressive forms (such as illustration, painting, film and video, poetry, music, photography, data visualization, short stories, or lyrical essays).
Cross Listed Courses
SOC 263