Critical Readings in Black Studies
The following interdisciplinary reading list is a representative heuristic, a general guide to significant works that are central to the mission of the Department of Black Studies. They are works which the faculty consistently turn to in their research, pedagogy, and sense of community engagement and service. This is not a required reading list that one can simply read to attain a mastery of Black Studies. Selections are organised in chronological order, where you will find works of various and intersecting ideological, methodological, and linguistic origins or influences representing the expansiveness of the study of the African diaspora. These texts will help you in your current course of study, to prepare for graduate school, and in your overall journey of higher learning.
|
Text (May Include Films or Other Works) |
Author/Director |
Year |
|
The Mis-Education of the Negro |
Carter Woodson |
1933 |
|
Black Reconstruction |
WEB DuBois |
1935 |
|
The Black Jacobins |
CLR James |
1938 |
|
"Black Folk: Then and Now" |
WEB DuBois |
1939 |
|
"Everybody's Protest Novel" |
James Baldwin |
1949 |
|
Wretched of the Earth |
Frantz Fanon |
1961 |
|
The Fire Next Time |
James Baldwin |
1963 |
|
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa |
Walter Rodney |
1972 |
|
Open Veins of Latin America |
Eduardo Galeano |
1972 |
|
"After Word: High Life for Caliban" |
Sylvia Wynter |
1973 |
|
"Ethno or Socio Poetics" |
Sylvia Wynter |
1976 |
|
All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: But Some of Us Are Brave |
Gloria Hull and Barbara Smith |
1982 |
|
This Bridge Called My Back |
Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa |
1981 |
|
Black Marxism |
Cedric Robinson |
1983 |
|
"New Ethnicities" |
Stuart Hall |
1989 |
|
"Whose Story is it Anyway?: Feminist and Antiracist Appropriations of Anita Hill" |
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw |
1992 |
|
"The Occult of True Black Womanhood: Critical Demeanor and Black Feminist Studies" |
Ann duCille |
1994 |
|
"No Humans Involved" |
Sylvia Wynter |
1994 |
|
The Racial Contract |
Charles Mills |
1997 |
|
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness |
George Lipsitz |
1998 |
|
Methodology of the Oppressed |
Chela Sandoval |
2000 |
|
Babylon Girls |
Jayna Brown |
2001 |