Jazz and the City
3.0
creditsAverage Course Rating
Blues and jazz are rarely understood as mediums for political thought and action. Popular culture has always been an avenue for Black Americans to express their interests and influence American politics broadly, and yet few political scientists take interest in the political salience of the blues. This course will examine how the blues and its extension into jazz critique and explain conditions of racial domination in the plantation South and new relations of domination in the urban sphere. Students will explore these ideas using archival objects, African American literature, blues and jazz listening, and the works of artists and analysts such as Langston Hughes, W. E. B Du Bois, Bessie Smith, Eubie Blake, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Muddy Waters, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Harold Cruse, Amiri Baraka, Clyde Woods, Richard Iton, Daphne Duval Harrison, and Angela Y. Davis.
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