W. E. B. Du Bois, Scholar, Activist and Passeur between America, Europe and Africa

Trained in Classical languages (Latin and Greek), Philosophy, Sociology and History, both in the US and Europe, W. E. B. Du Bois’s intellectual inquiry into the nature of Blackness covers a wide range of disciplines, from History to Political Philosophy, from Sociology to Literature and Poetry, from Art Criticism to Musicology. The colloquium will embrace this multiplicity of approaches which characterizes Du Bois’s work and, at the same time, capture the profound unity of his thought which can be found in the analysis of the “concept of race.” Special attention will also be given to the determinant role played by W. E. B. Du Bois in the transatlantic circulation of knowledge and intellectual commerce between the US, Europe and Africa. Each of the seven sessions of the colloquium will be dedicated to the study of one dimension of the “concept of race” in Du Bois’s prolific and protean body of work: Session 1 W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for Justice: Anticolonialism - Pan-Africanism – Civil Rights Session 2 “The Color Line” and Visual Arts Session 3 “The Concept of Race” in Philosophy and Literature Session 4 Sociology and the Questioning of Race Session 5 Anthropology, Philosophy and the Questioning of Race Session 6 Black History/ Histories Session 7 Jazz and “Double Consciousness” Session 8 W. E. B. Du Bois in the 21st Century (Panel discussion 1: Blacks in France and the US: A Comparative Perspective; Panel discussion 2: In and Out: Music between Worlds)