From Higher Learning to Charlottesville

This book interrogates John Singleton’s 1995 Black cult classic film Higher Learning as a harbinger of the successful 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump, the 2017 Unite the Right Rally, reenergized Black protests calling for the removal of public monuments to the Confederacy, and the emergence of the #MeToo and the Black Lives Matter movements. Bringing together scholars from across humanities and social science, this book uses Higher Learning as a fulcrum to explore how racial antagonisms, socio-economic disparities, sexual violence, and polarized interpersonal relationships in America have both changed and remained the same since the 1990s. From debates over free speech, affirmative action, and the right to vote, to protests over commemorative statues, this book provides a compelling investigation on why college campuses continue to be sites of physical, visual, and epistemological conflicts over the meaning of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in American democracy and on how Americans might come together to address today’s most divisive issues. Tyson D. King-Meadows is Retired Full Professor from the Department of Political Science at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and is Former Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Former Full Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Shahara’Tova V. Dente is Associate Professor of English & Women’s Studies and Graduate Director of Women’s Leadership in the Department of Languages, Literature and Philosophy at the Mississippi University for Women.