Wednesday, January 13, 2016

"Everything I Learned as a Sociology PhD Student at the University of Chicago Is Wrong"

"The implications are far-reaching. If the Chicago school is not the originator of sociology, then why spend so much time reading, thinking about, or debating it? If Morris is right, graduate students should instead focus upon the real innovators and founders: Du Bois and his 'Atlanta School' of sociology. It only struck me after reading this book that Du Bois had barely if ever appeared on any my graduate school syllabi. Yet, this is not a question of adding more thinkers to the sociology canon. If Morris is right, there is an argument to made that Du Bois and the Atlanta School should replace the Chicago School, not just be added alongside it. For, with The Scholar Denied, Du Bois can no longer be seen as the 'first black sociologist', the originator of 'African-American sociology,' or the one who pioneered the study of African-American communities. He must instead be seen as the first scientific sociologist who is the rightful progenitor of American sociology itself."

Julian Go in the Berkeley Review of Sociology reviews Aldon Morris's The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of American Sociology.

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