Black Folk Then and Now: An Essay in the History of the Sociology of Negro Race. W. E. Burghardt Du Bois

1940 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 388-389
Author(s):  
Frank J. Klingberg
Keyword(s):  
Black Folk ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
History Of ◽  
Negro Race

The Children of Double Consciousness: From The Souls of Black Folk to the Brownies' Book

PMLA ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 128 (3) ◽  
pp. 590-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle H. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Black Children ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
Black Folk ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Black Subjectivity ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Souls Of Black Folk

In The Souls of Black Folk (1903) W. E. B. Du Bois suggests that the history of double consciousness lies in childhood as the crisis that brings an end to the “days of rollicking boyhood.” Yet in his children's literature, written in the teens and twenties, Du Bois returns to the scene of double consciousness in an effort to transform this experience. In the children's numbers of the Crisis and in the Brownies' Book, Du Bois confronts a new problem for the twentieth century: how to raise black children in the face of disillusionment and despair. Collectively, Du Bois's works for children respond to this problem by crossing the line that separates youth and age. The systematic dualities of innocence and violence in these writings represent a revised effort to guide the black child's entry into double consciousness and to repurpose double consciousness as a model for a resilient black subjectivity beginning in childhood.

Why is classical theory classical? Theorizing the canon and canonizing Du Bois

2021 ◽  
pp. 1468795X2110369
Author(s):  
Michael Burawoy
Keyword(s):  
Classical Theory ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
History Of Sociology ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

One of the most contentious debates coursing through sociology is what to do with the canon of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim: abandon the canon, start afresh with a new canon, or reconstruct the existing canon? In this paper I examine the claims of Connell, the foremost advocate of abandoning the cannon. She claims the canon is an arbitrary imposition that bears no relation to the actual history of sociology and we would be better off examining how the canon came to be. She does not consider the intrinsic value of the canon and instead advances the idea of Southern theory. It is not clear what is Southern about Southern theory nor what holds together the array of theorists she proposes. As an alternative I propose reconstructing the canon with the life and work of W.E.B. Du Bois who was propelled by precisely the issues that concern Connell. The canon is relational so that Du Bois is not simply added but brought into conversation with Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, leading to a rereading of each theorist. The canon has always been subject to revision when it atrophies, when it moves out of sync with questions raised by the world and by sociology. I agree with others that contemporary questions push Du Bois to the forefront—however, not at the expense of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim but in dialogue with them. I outline a possible direction of such dialogues from which all would benefit. Just as the inclusion of Marx had dramatic consequences for the recalibration of Weber and Durkheim, so the same will happen with the inclusion of Du Bois with regard to Weber, Durkheim, and Marx, and, at the same time, stiffening and advancing a Du Boisian sociology. Incorporating Du Bois into the existing canon may appear to be a reformist move but if attention is paid to the whole gamut of Du Bois’s oeuvre, then the consequences could be revolutionary, even to the point of sidelining one or more of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim.

Missionary Cultures

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira Dworkin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
American Culture ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Black Folk ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Fisk University ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Souls Of Black Folk

This chapter examines the work of APCM missionary Edmiston, a Fisk University graduate and skilled linguist, who in the first decades of the twentieth century controversially wrote the first dictionary and grammar of the Bushong (Bakuba) language. Shortly after her fellow Fisk alumni Du Bois used African American spirituals as signposts for his groundbreaking tour through U.S. history and culture in The Souls of Black Folk, she also contributed to the APCM’s effort to translate religious hymns into Tshiluba by adding African American spirituals such as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” to the Presbyterian hymnal. The translations by Edmiston and her colleagues insured that Tshiluba developed not only as the language of the colonial state, but also as a language that was shaped by the sacred texts of postbellum African American culture.

Du Bois and James at Harvard: The Challenges of Fraternal Pairings and Racial Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 352-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saladin Ambar
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
William James ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article seeks to illuminate the relationship between two of the most important figures in American political thought: the pragmatist philosopher William James, and the pioneering civil rights leader and intellectual, W.E.B. Du Bois. As Harvard's first African American PhD, Du Bois was a critical figure in theorizing about race and identity. His innovative take on double consciousness has often been attributed to his contact with James who was one of Du Bois's most critical graduate professors at Harvard. But beyond the view of the two thinkers as intellectual collaborators, is the fraught history of liberal racial fraternal pairing and its role in shaping national identity. This article examines Du Bois and James's relationship in the context of that history, one marked by troubled associations between friendship and race.

The Conditioned Reflex and Some Psychological Analogues

1930 ◽  
Vol 76 (315) ◽  
pp. 764-771
Author(s):  
A. Wohlgemuth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Era ◽  
Anatomy And Physiology ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Wilhelm Wundt ◽  
Modern Psychology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hunting Ground

Psychology was for centuries a part of philosophy, the happy, undisputed hunting-ground of the speculative metaphysician. With the beginning of the nineteenth century a new era dawned gradually for psychology. Anatomists, physiologists and physicists began to invade this reserve of the metaphysician. These early attempts of Gall and Spurzheim, Johannes Müller, E. H. Weber, Du Bois Reymond, Helmholtz, Lotze, Fechner, Thomas Young and many others are too well known to detain us. They lead up to the work of Wilhelm Wundt and the establishment of psychology as one of the natural sciences, from speculation without facts to speculation allied with experiment. However, as usually happens, the swing of the pendulum goes from one extreme to the other. For whilst the metaphysical psychologist would ignore physiology and neurology, maintaining that what is not itself a phase of consciousness cannot be used to explain consciousness, some of the physiological psychologists would overshoot the mark and attempt a psychology without consciousness. Thus we find the behaviourists (Watson) and the objective psychologists (Bechterew). Pavlov appears to belong to the latter school. But as Prof. Brett, in his History of Psychology, rightly says: “Modern psychology lies between two points: it emerges from anatomy and physiology, and terminates in a region where those sciences cease to guide.”

W. E. B. Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folk

2014 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 286-287
Author(s):  
A. R. Schafer
Keyword(s):  
Black Folk ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Souls Of Black Folk
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