BLST 201 Black Protest Rhetorics

This course focuses on the rhetoric of Black protest and social movements as we examine Black rhetorics as modes of resistance to racist, colonialist, patriarchal, and other forms of oppressive discourse and action. We will consider a range of rhetorical forms including abolitionist rhetoric and the Black Jeremiad in American culture; Civil Rights era rhetorics and the Black Panther Movement; anti-imperialist Black proletariat rhetorics of protest in the West Indies and Caribbean societies; and rhetorics of resistance in the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement. This course will provide a rhetorical understanding of the approaches and strategies emerging from and responding to systems of cultural and social oppression, and thus will offer a counterpoint to Eurocentric rhetorical traditions.