History of Philosophy: India, Africana, China

Ralph Ellison provides a new metaphor for the experience of racism in his Invisible Man and tackles topics of art and identity in his essays.

Famous for his incendiary novel Native Son, Richard Wright responds in his multifaceted writings to sociology, communism, colonialism, and existentialism.

Interview guest Carole Boyce Davies joins us to talk about the radical ideas of Claudia Jones.

Claudia Jones argues that Communism provides the remedy for racism and imperialism.

Two Trinidadian political thinkers: sociologist Oliver Cox analyzes the nature of racial prejudice, and historian Eric Williams connects capitalism to slavery.

The Trinidadian historian and cultural critic C.L.R. James applies Marxist analysis to the Haitian Revolution, American cinema, and Shakespeare.

Sociologist E. Franklin Frazier critiques the Harlem Renaissance and the “black bourgeoisie” for failing to embrace values that will empower black Americans.

Negritude thinkers Aimé and Suzanne Césaire embrace surrealism and reflect on the relationships between poetry, knowledge, and identity.

Leopold Senghor compares different ways of knowing while developing his theory of Negritude and combining the roles of poet and politician.

Our first look at the emergence of the Negritude movement in Paris in the 1930s, with a focus on the early leadership of the Nardal sisters and Leon Damas.

Guest Liam Kofi Bright discusses Du Bois' ideal of value-free science and the place of science within his wider thought.

Du Bois moves to the left, and revisits and refines older positions during the latter half of his very long life.

The career of the multi-talented activist and performer Paul Robeson, and the place of the Negro spiritual in the Harlem Renaissance.

Zora Neale Hurston’s interest in Africana folklore feeds into her great novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Pioneering historian Carter G. Woodson argues for a new approach to education and economic uplift.

From the latter half of the nineteenth century to the 1970s, African Americans only rarely obtain jobs as philosophy professors but bring distinctive perspectives to the profession.

Leonard Harris explains how Locke's value theory was the basis for his aesthetics and theories of democracy and race.

The aesthetics of Alain Locke and its basis in his theory of value judgments.

The artistic flowering of the 1920s known as the Harlem Renaissance raises important questions about identity and the purpose of art.

An interview with Michael Dawson, who explains Marcus Garvey's black nationalism and how this and other political ideologies, like socialism and liberalism, have fared from the time of Garvey down to the present day.

Marcus Garvey’s two wives, Amy Ashwood Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey, establish themselves as activists in their own right and bring feminism into the Pan-African movement.

Marcus Garvey leads a powerful movement, inspires racial pride, and feuds with other thinkers like Du Bois.

Vanessa Wills speaks to us about Marx and his Africana legacy, with a special focus on black women Marxists.

Around the time of World War One, Hubert Harrison, A. Philip Randolph, and other black socialists argue that racial oppression is caused by capitalism.

West African intellectuals like J.E. Casely-Hayford and Mojola Agbebi build upon Edward Blyden’s ideas at the dawn of the twentieth century.

We chat with Tommy Curry about African-American thought between the turn of the century and the Harlem Renaissance.

The ANA unites leading African American scholars of the early 20th century, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, William Ferris, Archibald Grimké, and Kelly Miller.

By exploring the work and activities of W.E.B. Du Bois around the turn of the twentieth century, we introduce some of the themes of our coverage of that century.

Co-host Chike joins Peter to look back at series 2 and ahead to series 3.

W.E.B. Du Bois emerges as a historian, sociologist, and innovative philosophical thinker in the 1890s, and introduces his famous idea of "double consciousness."

Was Booker T. Washington’s “accomodationist” approach to race relations a failure to stand up to injustice or a cunning strategy for incremental change?

A late 19th-century churchman tries to explain how slavery fit into God’s plan, and decide whether the future for African-Americans lies in Africa or America.

Brittney Cooper on activists connected to the National Association of Colored Women, including Fannie Barrier Williams, Mary Church Terrell, and Ida B. Wells.

Ida B. Wells, her tireless crusade against lynching, and her analysis of the underlying purpose of racial violence.

Anna Julia Cooper’s "A Voice from the South", an unprecedented contribution to black feminist theory.

Abolitionists Luiz Gama and Joaquim Nabuco, and the great novelist Machado de Assis, react to the injustices of slaveholding in Brazil.

John Jacob Thomas argues for self-government in the English colonies of the Caribbean but his fellow Trinidadian Frederick Alexander Durham recommends repatriation to Africa instead.

Haitian anthropologist Anténor Firmin debunks racist pseudo-science and argues that inequalities among humans are caused by social, not biological, factors.

T. Thomas Fortune uses newspaper editorials to put forth a theory of civil rights and set out a plan of political action for protecting them.

Edward Blyden gains appreciation for Islam in West Africa and gradually moves from political nationalism to cultural nationalism.

Africanus Horton looks toward a future of self-government for West Africa beyond slavery and colonialism.

Wilson Moses speaks to us about his research into early black notionalism, as represented by Crummell, Douglass, and others.

Alexander Crummell moves from pan-Africanism to reform of African American culture, identifying progressive “civilization” as a means of liberation.

Mary Ann Shadd and Samuel Ringgold Ward reflect on what Canada can offer African Americans, differing on the problem of racism.

The moral crusades of Sojourner Truth and Frances Harper, activists against racial and gender oppression.

He is called a “father of black nationalism,” but Martin Delany also promoted integration in American society. Can the apparent tension be resolved?

Henry Highland Garnet encourages, or actually demands, that enslaved Americans throw off their chains and debates Douglass over how best to resist slavery.

In two speeches marking holidays, Frederick Douglass champions the idea of world citizenship, the power of appeals to conscience to bring change, and the role of violence.

Frederick Douglass' journey from slave to leading figure of 19th century American thought.

Melvin Rogers joins us to discuss Hosea Walker, Maria Stewart, and Hosea Easton.