The University and its Others

In this course we will examine the history of Black Studies by asking fundamental questions about the modern university: what it is, who it is for, and what it might yet become. After surveying its entanglements with slavery, settler colonialism, and capitalism, we will examine how Black students and faculty fought, in the 1960s, to overhaul the institution’s social structure and ways of knowing. We will examine the challenges – from partisan backlash to political containment and professional self-interest – that arise from the institutionalization of these efforts in research and teaching programs like our own at Middlebury. Finally, we will examine how Black Studies has braved the turn to indebtedness and privatization animating higher education today. (BLST 0101 or BLST 0201 or BLST 0301 or instructor approval)