Black Studies 235 - Black Panther, Blk Power

[US]  The iconic, militant images of the Black Power and Black Panther movements are familiar, embodying so many of the cultural and political shifts in African-American life after the civil rights movement. But what sort of concepts of liberation, identity, and revolution generated such iconic images? Why did armed struggle and other forms of militancy emerge as centerpieces of political thinking and mobilization? This course reads key players in the Black Power and Black Panther movements as vernacular intellectuals, revolutionary theorists, and transformative figures in African-American culture, from the early blending of the civil rights struggle with armed resistance in the writings of Robert F. Williams to charismatic and influential figures like Stokely Carmichael and Huey Newton to key feminist interventions by Elaine Brown and Angela Davis. We also read the revolutionary sources of both movements, with particular focus on W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, and Mao Tse-Tung, in order to engage fully with their sense of Black militancy and a revolutionary global south. Lastly, the course will draw out key differences in the cultural and political visions of the Black Power and Black Panther movements, including conceptions of race, gender, class, internationalism, and sexuality.

Fall semester.  Professor Drabinski