Renewing Black Intellectual History ─ The Ideological and Material Foundations of African American Thought

The underlying presumption of the volume is that African American studies and its subject matter are nested within and partly constitute broader currents of American history and thought, rather than the diasporic framework that privileges racial commonality. Scholars of African American studies within history, political science, and other disciplines explore the thought that has been generated within African American studies, mostly in university settings. Their topics include progressive rhetoric and the problem of constituency in Frederick Douglass' Life and Times; industrialization, popular culture, and the transformation of black working-class leisure in the Jim Crow south; the Chicago School of Human Ecology and the ideology of black civic elites; and The Souls of Black Folks and the changing context of black American politics. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)