Overview

"Literary scholars and historians have long considered W. E. B. Du Bois (1868--1963) an extremely influential writer and a powerful cultural critic. The author of more than one hundred books, hundreds of published articles, and founding editor of the NAACP journal The Crisis, Du Bois has been widely studied for his profound insights on the politics of race and class in America. An activist as well as a scholar, Du Bois proclaimed, ""I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy."" In A Political Companion to W. E. B. Du Bois, Nick Bromell assembles essays from both new and established scholars from a variety of disciplines to explore Du Bois's contributions to American political thought. The contributors establish a conceptual context within which to read the author, revealing how richly and variously he engaged with the aesthetic and theological modalities of political thinking and action. This volume further reveals how Du Bois's work challenges and revises contemporary political theory, providing commentary on the author's strengths and limitations as a theorist for the twenty-first century. In doing so, it helps readers gain an understanding of how Du Bois's work and life continue to stimulate lively and constructive debate about the theory and practice of democracy in America."

Full Product Details

9780813174907

Table of Contents

Reviews

This collection of essays offers an impressive study of Du Bois's work, showing real appreciation for the scope of Du Bois's scholarship. -- Michael Benjamin, Journal of Southern History

This important new collection offers readers a glimpse of the richness and complexity still to be found in W.E.B. Du Bois's writings.... The resulting picture of Du Bois attends not only to his incredible complexity as a thinker, but also to his legacy as a deeply literary author whose prose tends toward excess -- stylistic, emotional, and rhetorical -- and who refused to let the borders of his prose be, as Bromell says, 'policed.' -- American Literary History Review This collection of essays offers an impressive study of Du Bois's work, showing real appreciation for the scope of Du Bois's scholarship. -- Michael Benjamin, Journal of Southern History

Author Information

Nick Bromell is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of several books, including The Time Is Always Now: Black Thought and the Transformation of US Democracy.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available