AFR 410
CAPSTONE: Black Epistemologies Spring 2025
Division II

How do we know what we know? This course examines approaches to this question of epistemology in Black studies in comparative perspective. We read Black epistemologies in relation to other disciplines’ and thinkers’ approaches. The course examines overlap and departure across lines of difference. The work of intellectual giant W.E.B. Du Bois is an anchor for the course, given his wide-ranging career over many decades. We read his statistical work in relation to that of his European contemporaries on statistics. We also think about his relationship to sociology and relatedly ethnography, the autobiographical character of critical race theory, and the historiography of the Black radical tradition in which scholars like Cedric Robinson have situated Du Bois. We look at contemporary engagement with his work to think on trajectories of Black epistemologies from the early twentieth century until today.