🐯 Princeton African American Studies unofficial reading list 2026

Sophomore level

African American Studies & the Philosophy of Race AAS 201 (fa26)

The Future of Whiteness by Linda Martín Alcoff
✔️ The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (my highlights)
The Case for Rage: Why Anger Is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle by Myisha Cherry
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
✔️ Beloved by Toni Morrison (my highlights)
More Beautiful & More Terrible: The Embrace & Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the US by Imani Perry
Race: A Philosophical Introduction by Paul C. Taylor
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Methods in African American Studies AAS 202 (fa26)

Intro. to Law & Public Policy in African American History AAS 230 (fa26)

Reconsidering Reparations: Why Climate Justice & Constructive Politics Are Needed in the Wake of Slavery & Colonialism by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Fields & Fields
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in 20th-Century America by Ira Katznelson
America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

The Souls of Black Folk - Reading W.E.B. Du Bois AAS 231 (fa26)

The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois
Writings: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade / The Souls of Black Folk / Dusk of Dawn / Essays & Articles by W.E.B. Du Bois
✔️ Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W.E.B. Du Bois (my highlights)
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 by W.E.B. Du Bois
The World & Africa by W.E.B. Du Bois

Intro. to African American History to 1863 AAS 267 (fa26)

Intro. to African American History Since Emancipation AAS 268 (fa26)

Let Nobody Turn Us Around: An African American Anthology by Marable & Mullings
I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror & Survival in the War against Reconstruction by Kidada E. Williams
Home to Harlem by Claude McKay
Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s Through the 1980s by Hampton & Fayer
From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

The Modern Black Freedom Movement: From Civil Rights to Black Power AAS 270 (fa26)

The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom & the Forgotten History of Civil Rights by William P. Jones
Want to Start a Revolution?: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle by Gore et al.
Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights & Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt by Hasan Kwame Jeffries

Black Mirror: Race, Technology & Justice AAS 339 (sp26)

Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World & What We Can Do to Fix It by Mike Monteiro
Data Feminism by D’Ignazio & Klein
Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need by Sasha Costanza-Chock
Empire of AI: Dreams & Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao

Art, Apartheid & South Africa AAS 411 (fa26)

World After Empire AAS 416 (fa26)

✔️ The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise & Fall of Self-Determination by Adom Getachew
Return to the Source: Selected Texts of Amilcar Cabral
Gandhi: ‘Hind Swaraj’ and Other Writings
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire
The Colonizer and the Colonized by Albert Memmi
✔️ Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W.E.B. Du Bois (my highlights)

Memory, History & the Archive AAS 426 (fa26)

Silencing the Past: Power & the Production of History by Michel-Rolph Trouillot
A More Beautiful & Terrible History: The Uses & Misuses of Civil Rights History by Jeanne Theoharis
Scattered & Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives & Remade History by Laura Helton
When Home Is a Photograph: Blackness & Belonging in the World by Leigh Raiford
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women & Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman