#BlackLivesMatter, a mantra that affirms Black folks' contributions to society and their resilience in the face of deadly oppression, will be more than just a Twitter hashtag for many students at Dartmouth College this spring.
The Ivy League university's geography and African and African-American studies program developed "10 Weeks, 10 Professors: #BlackLivesMatter, a course "dedicated to considering race, structural inequality and violence in both a historical and modern context," according to The Dartmouth, the college's student newspaper.
The lessons in the pilot course will be taught by 15 professors from 10 different academic departments.
"We just thought that it might be interesting and innovative and exciting to have a course that's dedicated to this, whereas lots of other people are incorporating it into other courses," Dr. Abigail Neely, an assistant professor of geography, told The Dartmouth.
The course was inspired by a Dartmouth-sponsored workshop which urged faculty to "incorporate the 2014 events in Ferguson, where the fatal shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown by Police Officer Darren Wilson -- who was not indicted in the killing -- sparked nationwide protests and the social media phrase #BlackLivesMatter, Fox News reported.
"We hope students will be able to understand that Ferguson is not just an event in 2014, but something that's tethered in time to a long history and still-emerging ideas about race in the U.S. and how policing works in an age of social media and distributed surveillance," English professor Aimee Bahng, told The Dartmouth paper.
Kevin Gillespie, fourth-year student and president of Dartmouth's NAACP chapter, said he is hopeful the course will facilitate better understanding of racial oppression.
"Courses like these are extremely important, and they get us all out of our comfort zones, whether you're taking the course or not, because people will be talking about it," Gillespie told The Dartmouth.
