The Black Digital Syllabus Movement: The Fusion of Academia, Activism and Arts

Abstract

As Black America experienced some of the most profound shifts in politics and entertainment in recent history, from the Charleston church shooting to the release of Beyoncé’s Lemonade, Black academics found ways to help Black people and the nation understand and contextualize these major events and connect them to history. Using social media, Black scholars curated lists of texts, films, and music that related to the Black American experience of the present and past and shared them on social networks giving birth to the Black digital syllabus movement. The Black digital syllabus movement taps into the amplifying power of Black Twitter and Black digital culture to bridge the gap between pop culture, politics, and scholarly work and spread contextualized, curated lists of important Black works. The syllabi analyzed in this study, are the Charleston Syllabus and Lemonade Syllabus. This study uses the historical method in qualitative research to examine the syllabi and the context in which they were created.

Keywords:

• Black digital syllabus
• Black Twitter
• social media