SO4C6      Half Unit
Reading Black Thought

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

This course offers a collective close reading of selected African and (politically) Black thinkers and texts in the context of ongoing conversations of decolonisation and decoloniality.

Peoples of African descent have historically been subjected to sustained mass human rights violations:  violences, dehumanisations, captivity, destruction of life environment, forced labour and imposed poverty. Deconstructive critical, decolonial approaches have revealed the extent to which existing hegemonic Human Rights regimes, set out to combat these injustices, instead more often than not sustain colonial status quo in the present.

The course is organised around 5 themes (1) Epistemologies, 2) Political Decolonisation and Self-determination, 3) Ecology and Political Economy of Global Racial Capitalism, 4) Gender, Race and the (im)possibility of the Human, 5) Conviviality and Transversal Solidarities) to engage the ethos of human rights constructively; it turns to epistemic Blackness to expand our sociological imagination of the good life, it thus engages with epistemic Blackness for decolonial rather than identarian purposes. Through a close reading of historical and contemporary Black Thought we seek to unearth forgotten aspects, new perspectives, alternative priorities of human rights as well as address questions of possibilities and impossibilities of human rights for all.

20 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

This course is usually delivered through seminars. There will be two hours or more of teaching each week in WT.

The weekly seminars are centred around students’ understandings of the required reading materials. 

max. 500 words reading summary of chosen text from pre-set reading list + portfolio ideas (bullet points) in the WT.

Students are provided in text comments and verbal feedback during office hours (optional).

1. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2018) Epistemic Freedom in Africa
2. Nyamnjoh, Francis. (2020). Decolonising the Academy: A Case for Convivial Scholarship
3. Azoulay, Ariella. (2019). Potential History. Unlearning Imperialism
4. Grovogui, Siba N. (1996). Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns and Africans. Race and Selfdetermination in International Law
5. Walcott, Rinaldo. (2021). The Long Emancipation: Moving Towards Black Freedom
6. Boggs, James and Grace (2011). Pages from a Black Radical’s Notebook: A James Boggs Reader. (ed. Ward, S.)
7. Yussof, Kathryn, (2018). A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None
8. McKittrick, Katherine. (2015). Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis
9. Oyewumi, Oyeronke. (1997) The Invention of Women
10. Shilliam, R. (2015). The Black Pacific: Anti-Colonial Struggles and Oceanic Connections
11. Soumahoro, Maboula, (2021). Black is the Journey. Africana the Name

Course participation (10%)

Portfolio (90%) in May

The course is assessed via:

• 10% class participation assessed via in-class engagement and weekly reading summary template upload
• 90% portfolio consisting of 1000 word reading summary + 2000 word critical case study

Attendance at all seminars and completion of set readings is required.