Race, Radicalism and Socialism

This short seven-week, open-level undergraduate seminar course aims to foster critical discussions about race, radicalism, and socialism in the United States from the nation’s founding to the present. With this is in mind, we will examine primary documents, art and film, and Vaughn Rasberry’s Race and the Totalitarian Century, to consider these topics and their origins, meanings, intersections, and tensions. Two central questions frame this course:

1. What debates, issues, tensions, and goals shape the boundaries of radical thought, and what is the relationship between radical theories and liberal democracy?

2. Why have many Blacks in the US and abroad often embraced socialism, despite the political and social advancements that appear to accompany the advance of modern capitalism?