W.E.B Du Bois (1868-1963) was undoubtedly one of the greatest American minds. His long and prolific intellectual life spanned almost a century and his writings are a great library in themselves. In his early academic and literary works he married his determination to fight racism to his fascination with and inspiration from the ancient world to produce some of the world's greatest literature.
The aim of the course is to consider Du Bois' early career, influences and writings about education and racial justice in the wider intellectual and social context of 19th century and early 20th century discourses about race and education in America and colonial Africa. Whereas the role of Classics is prominent when we look at Du Bois' African contemporaries, very little attention has been paid to the significance of Classics for Du Bois and his American contemporaries. Yet, in America, as much as in the colonial African context, the Classics plays an important role in the way Black and White identities have been and continue to be constructed in a dynamic of racial antagonism. The under-valuing of the Classics in America's history of race is largely due to the way Greco-Roman antiquity and Classics as a discipline have been successfully recruited to serve White supremacist agendas, especially in education, since the Founding Fathers. So, interrogating this connection has always been made difficult by rhetorics that claim "Classics is for Whites only", whether they come from Classics scholars who have long pretended the study of Greco-Roman antiquity has nothing to do with Africa or with modern issues of racial justice or African American studies scholars who eschew any engagement with Classics as assimilationist.
In this course we will investigate how Du Bois’ long life's devotion to anti-racism was inextricably bound to his deep learning and abiding interest in the ancient world and the place of Africa and Africans in it. This course will also situate Du Bois' efforts to make Blackness in antiquity visible in his writings as a countervailing voice against the mainstream academic discourse that constructed antiquity in the image of the modern world's white supremacist imagination. We will focus primarily on his early works: Souls of Black Folks, The Quest for the Silver Fleece,The Negro and others which we will put in their historical and intellectual context. We will also use Du Bois' autobiography, Dusk of Dawn (1940) to get a sense of how he saw his early life and career as a teacher and activist.
We will begin the course with an overview of the history of Anti-Black / Anti-African Racism and the state of 19th and early 20th century white supremacist theories of race, US history, with special focus on the history of racism in education. We will work with an understanding of race that is transhistorical and that will make the distinction between anti-blackness and race clear so that there will be no confusion when we discuss depictions of Africa and Africans in the ancient sources. We will deconstruct the White supremacist and pro-slavery constructions of antiquity that have been the prevailing academic discourse since Du Bois was growing up, studying and teaching until our present moment. We will follow with ancient depictions of Africans and how they have been appropriated to serve the White supremacist agendas as well as African claims to the ancient world for heritage and identity. We will then spend the rest of the course reading Du Bois’ writings in their intellectual context and using him to think about how to disentangle the ancient world from white supremacy and racism more generally.
From time to time we will have visiting scholars join our class to discuss their work. Students are required to prepare any readings they assign and actively participate in discussion. These sessions will be recorded for your reference and should be consulted for assignments. The second half of the course coincides with the Penn State - University of Kentucky virtual conference on W.E.B. Du Bois and the Ancient Mediterranean. Students will be required to attend lectures (at least one must be attended synchronously) by experts on Du Bois from around the world who will be discussing his importance to the study of the ancient world and the importance of the study of the ancient world to him. These conversations will help to frame our close readings of Du Bois’ own works.
About Us
Dr. Jackie Murray Associate Professor of Classics in Modern and Classical Languages Literatures and Cultures University of Kentucky
Dr. Anja Bettenworth Professor of Classical Philology University of Cologne