RELI 282 - Howard Thurman, Blackness, and Vassar College

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

(Same as AFRS 282) This Intensive explores the relationship between the Reverend Howard Thurman, one of the most important and neglected Black theologians of the 20^th century, and Vassar College. During the time when his works, such as Jesus and the Disinherited and The Creative Encounter, contributed to the architecture of the Civil Rights Movement, Thurman repeatedly lectured at Vassar. In fact, between 1928 and 1957, Thurman delivered about a dozen lectures at Vassar, and his daughter Olive ‘48 was one of the College’s first openly Black graduates. Our work together focuses on recovering Reverend Thurman’s speeches, as well as researching the occasions of his visits. More broadly, Thurman’s visits offer a compelling lens through which to think through and with Blackness and African American experiences at Vassar. This Intensive emerges, in part, in response to the college’s announced Vassar Inclusive History initiative, and our class seeks ways to contribute to a more critical account of Vassar’s institutional history while honoring and illuminating the Black experience at the college. Jonathon Kahn.

Two 2-hour periods.

Course Format: INT