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. |