Biography and Social Movements

Biography and Social Movements is a Social Science class taught by Amy Jordan.

Course Description
Since the citizenship of African Americans is a shifting and contested terrain, African American biographies and autobiographies offer us engaging and powerful ways to map African American efforts to formulate collective identities. Biographical narratives also give us intimate insights into larger social transformations and historical developments, such as the Civil rights Movement, Internationalism, African Independence Movements and the Popular Front. In this course, students will explore critical African American biographies such as W.E.B. Dubois, James Baldwin, Paul Robeson and Ella Baker. The selected biographical narratives engage a number of recurring questions about how we conceptualize citizenship, oppositional cultures and identities as well as the role of artists and intellectuals in creating social change. The assignments will require students to think creatively about how biographies are constructed and how personal lives, social networks, and private reflections can illuminate our understanding of broader historical transformations. We will have several in-class writing exercises. These exercises are to spur your thinking on the primary sources, particularly letters and personal recollections. The readings on James Baldwin will be linked with Kara Lynch?s Black Studies tutorial on Baldwin by incorporating common outside speakers and merging specific class discussions.

Learning Goals

 * Multi-Cultural
 * Presenting
 * Reading
 * Writing