We explore how the growth of mass production, advertising, department stores, shopping malls, modern technologies, and imperialism have shaped the nation’s desire for goods and pleasure. This culture has flourished, in part, because consumer capitalism has continuously transformed everyday wants into needs. This course examines the rise of consumer culture in twentieth century America. Topics include the development of the black beauty industry black urban film culture Negro League Baseball Motown and the protest music of the 1960s and 1970s the underground economy and federal legislation affecting black entrepreneurship. We explore black business activity and consumer activism as historical processes of community formation and economic resistance, paying particular attention to black capitalism, consumer boycotts, and the economy of black culture in the age of segregation. This seminar examines the duality of black businesses as economic and social institutions alongside black consumers’ ideas of economic freedom to offer new perspectives on social and political movements in the twentieth-century. Course readings will be supplemented with music and film.īlack Business and Social Movements in the Twentieth-Centuryįrom movies to music, bleaching cream to baseball, black entrepreneurs and consumers have historically negotiated the profits and pleasures of a “black economy” to achieve economic independence as a meaning of freedom. The course format, therefore, will consist of close reading and interpretation of selected texts, both the assigned readings and Moodles distributed in class. This course is designed to encourage and develop skills in the interpretation of primary sources, such as letters, memoirs, and similar documents. Major issues and themes we will engage include: Reconstruction and the meaning of freedom, military participation and ideas of citizenship, racial segregation, migration, labor, cultural politics, and black resistance and protest movements. This course examines some of the key issues in African American history from the end of the Civil War to the present by explicating selected primary and secondary sources. This course is designed to encourage and develop skills in the interpretation of primary and secondary sources.Īfrican American History from 1865 – Present This course examines key developments and regional differences in the making of race and slavery in North America, resistance movements among slaves and free blacks (such as slave revolts and the abolitionist movement) as they struggled for freedom and citizenship, and the multiples ways race and gender affected the meanings of slavery and freedom. The experiences of race and slavery dominate this history and it is the complexities and nuances of slavery that give this course its focus. Slavery and freedom define much of the historical development of the nation. This course provides an introduction to African American history from the Atlantic slave trade through the Civil War. By engaging the ideologies, politics, and culture of the Black Power Movement, we gain a deeper understanding of how people claim their rights and personhood against seemingly insurmountable odds. Major sites of inquiry include education, arts and media, police brutality, welfare rights, electoral politics, and economic empowerment. In addition to studying black radicalism in the early twentieth century, the course explores the philosophies and tactics of civil rights activism questions of feminism and masculinity radicalism and conservatism violence, nonviolence, and self-defense and community control, nationalism, and internationalism. This course examines the Black Power Movement as a burgeoning social movement in the post World War II period, while also placing it in the long traditions of black political thought and radicalism within American democracy.
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