The Githii Honors Program takes seriously the importance of the undergraduate experience as a chance to engage what political theorist Hannah Arendt referred to as “the life of the mind.” Arendt, often considered a political philosopher, wrote about the nature of power, authority and democracy.
At Spelman College, we speak often of the importance of critical questioning and intellectual engagement as the path to agency, another word for power. We connect our program reading history to Phillis Wheatley on to Frederick Douglass then to W.E.B. DuBois and Anna Julia Cooper, to one of our most literate American presidents, Mr. Barack Obama, and to the possibility of equal democracy.
What We’re Reading
Imani Perry Henry Louis Gates Alondra Nelson Bryan Stevenson is the self-effacing author of this terrific book about the legal war he has waged against cruel, unjust sentencing practices in this country for over three decades now. His history of founding and working for the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, is told through real case histories of real people who were […]
May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem
The Black Church: This is Our Story, This is Our Song
The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations and Reconciliation after the Genome
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson