HIST-LIT 90GW: Black Soldiers: Race, National Identity, and the U.S. Military

Instructor: Anna Duensing
Meeting time: Tuesday, 3:00-5:00 pm

What has the figure of the Black soldier symbolized in U.S. politics and culture over time? And how have the actual experiences of Black soldiers and war workers enforced, complicated, or dismantled that symbol? Black soldiers have served in every military conflict across the entire history of the United States, even as the U.S. denied their basic rights as citizens, if not their outright humanity, for the majority of that history. As such, histories of the U.S. armed forces and Black Americans in uniform become especially charged sites for exploring the costs and contradictions of the U.S. commitment to color lines, just as they are important—and often literal—battlegrounds of the Black freedom struggle. Throughout the semester, we will engage with readings in social, military, labor, international, and cultural history and the tensions these texts reveal between race, gender, citizenship, national identity, and national belonging. Themes of nationalism, white supremacy, militarism, and U.S. empire will also be essential to our learning. Course materials include primary sources such as propaganda, correspondence and diaries, civil and labor rights literature, protest music, activist ephemera, oral histories, and memoirs, as well as secondary literature spanning major nineteenth and twentieth-century military conflicts.