For Du Bois, Reconstruction was a kind of second American revolution, an attempt to democratize the South to its very foundations, from the ballot box to the farm and the factory. And far from being the passive playthings of carpetbagging Northerners (as traditional historians had it), Black people were active agents of their emancipation, both before, during, and after the Civil War. ...

What is “the problem with work”? What has feminism been, and what might it become? Why is abolition of the family, historically speaking, “the infamous proposal of the feminists”? In this course, we will explore these questions (and more) by focusing on the writings of one of the major radical philosophers of our times, Kathi Weeks. ...

What can memory salvage from a ruptured history? Can art compensate us for our losses and our thwarted desires? How should we situate In Search of Lost Time among the complex currents of 19th- and early-20th-century modernism? What does it mean to read Proust now? And, as ever, what does it mean to read Proust in time? ...

In this course, we will explore how Marx developed this “ruthless criticism” over the course of his life as a scholar, journalist, and activist. Over four extended sessions, students will be introduced to key texts in Marx’s philosophical, economic, historical, and political works. We will pay special attention to the various moments in these texts that later became influential in both Marxian and other theoretical and social movements, from feminists to anti-colonialists, romantics to futurists, critical theorists to ecosocialists. ...

From Michelangelo’s revolutionary frescos in Rome to Montaigne’s innovative literary explorations of personal emotion and experience, a new spirit of inquiry and expression upended the scholastic pedantry of medieval theology. What resulted was an efflorescence in the study and practice of what we know today as the “humanities.” ...