W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Richard Wright: Toward an Ecocriticism of Color

W. E. B. Du Bois: Interpreting Religion and the Problem of the Negro Church

W. E. B. Du Bois’s contribution to the study of the Negro Church was his historical argument about the viability and influence of African culture. Du Bois asserted the partial autonomy and creativity of black culture. This was a crucial achievement in his day when normative theories of African cultural “backwardness” prevailed. Du Bois’s detailed analyses of particular local black communities a...

W. E. B. Du Bois and the Idea of Double Consciousness

A Simple Characterization of Du Bois Singularities

We prove the following theorem characterizing Du Bois singularities. Suppose that Y is smooth and that X is a reduced closed subscheme. Let π : e Y → Y be a log resolution of X in Y that is an isomorphism outside of X. If E is the reduced pre-image of X in e Y , then X has Du Bois singularities if and only if the natural map ØX → Rπ∗ØE is a quasi-isomorphism. We also deduce Kollár’s conjecture ...

The Feminine Representation of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois in Langston Hughes' Not Without Laughter

The Canonical Sheaf of Du Bois Singularities

We prove that a Cohen-Macaulay normal variety X has Du Bois singularities if and only if π∗ωX′(G) ≃ ωX for a log resolution π : X ′ → X , where G is the reduced exceptional divisor of π. Many basic theorems about Du Bois singularities become transparent using this characterization (including the fact that Cohen-Macaulay log canonical singularities are Du Bois). We also give a straightforward an...