MEDIA CONTACT: Wendy Leopold at (847) 491-4890 or w-leopold@northwestern.edu

Conference Celebrates Du Bois’ Influential Book

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Scholars from across the country will gather at Northwestern University Oct. 24 and 25 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of one of the most influential and widely read books in African American and American letters, W.E. B. Du Bois’ “The Souls of Black Folks.” Free and open to the public, the centenary conference will take place in Room 108 of Harris Hall, 1881 Sheridan Road, on the Evanston campus.

In “The Souls of Black Folk,” Du Bois – one of the greatest African American intellectuals -- described the magnitude of American racism and demanded an end to it. Just three years into the 1900s, he wrote: “The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line.” A decade later, “The Souls of Black Folks” was heralded as the “political Bible of the Negro race.” A century later, it is celebrated as a founding text of multiculturalism.

The capstone of Du Bois’ book was “double consciousness,” a condition of the black psyche he described as follows: “One ever feels this twoness -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

Sponsored by Northwestern’s Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities and African American studies department, the “100 Years of The Souls of Black Folks” conference will include sessions on “Du Bois and the Discourse of Race,” “Du Bois and the Legacy of Black Respectability,” “Du Bois and Music,” Du Bois, Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism,” and “Du Bois’ Political Thought and Political Fictions.”

Cheryl Wall, professor of English at Rutgers University and author of “Women of the Harlem Renaissance,” will deliver the keynote lecture at 10:30 a.m. Friday (Oct. 24) after introductions at 10 a.m. by Robert Gooding-Williams, Kaplan Humanities Center and professor of philosophy and African American studies; Dwight McBride, chair and professor of the department of African American studies; and Daniel Linzer, dean of Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

Among the distinguished scholars taking part in the celebration are Darlene Clark Hine, a pioneer of African American women’s history who recently was named Northwestern University Board of Trustees Professor of African American Studies; Harvard University sociology and Afro-American studies Professor Lawrence Bobo, co-author of “Racial Attitudes in America;” and Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, Hamilton College Professor of African Studies and author of “Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears and Primitive Narratives.”

For a complete schedule or further information, call (847) 491-5122 or (847) 491-7946, or visit the conference Web site at http://www.afam.northwestern.edu/sbf.