Aaron Douglas. “Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction.” Oil on canvas, 1934. The New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division.

Welcome

Please join African American Studies as we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Discipline. Through the theme The Legacy of Storytelling: Celebrating 50 Years of African American Studies, the department will continue to recognize that it is a part of an intellectual tradition, whereby students, faculty and community members around the globe continue to engage in the rigorous study of the African Diaspora. During the 2018-2019 academic year, African American Studies will launch curricula and programming initiatives for the 50th Anniversary. One initiative includes a unified reading project. With support from the City Tech Library, the department has designed this OpenLab site, which gives AFR students and faculty easy access to W.E.B. DuBois’ book The Souls of Black Folk and Audre Lorde’s essay “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” In all of our African American Studies courses, students will consider how the topics and themes explored by DuBois and Lorde still resonate with readers in the twenty-first century. We encourage the entire City Tech community to celebrate with us by accessing the unified texts.

This project contains two unified texts: W.E. B. DuBois’ “Introduction to The Souls of Black Folk” and Audre Lorde’s “The Transformation of Silence into Action.”