It is a unique opportunity as a university student to study history as it is happening.
Greatly moved by the campaign and subsequent election of United States President Barack Obama, Joshua Schuster felt compelled to add one to the history books.
Schuster, a professor in the Department of English, is searching through the spines that once graced Obama’s bookshelf to gain insight into the dynamic president. He is teaching a special topics course this semester, entitled “The Poetics of Barack Obama.”
He describes the election of the first black U.S. president as “emotional” and “memorable.” Schuster decided to dig into Obama’s past to better understand the new leader.
Unlike many courses dedicated to U.S. presidents, this one does not explore Obama’s political policies or speeches, rather looks at his literary influences. Students explore representations of race and leadership through the words of authors such as Abraham Lincoln, W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass and Ralph Ellison, among others.
Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, is also on the course reading list.
“It was well-known, first, that he is a great speaker, and second, he likes to read. It was pretty easy to find out what he’d read,” says Schuster.
Obama’s election has been cited as a turning point in America. Schuster is challenging his students to explore the literary history of race, politics and psychology in American literature.
“When he was running for president, what was race to him? If it was too visible, it was a handicap. But, if it was invisible completely, it was also a handicap.
“This very careful playing of visible and invisible has been part of the racial picture for so long and he definitely knows the history of this and now the students can find this in the literature as well,” he explains.
The course integrates music with the reading assignments to allow students to reflect on different aspects of African-American culture.
“In the books we are reading, we see different ways of approaching leadership that might have informed him at that level,” notes Schuster.
As a political science student, Allison Piché is more likely to study Obama’s policies and political history, rather than the pages bookmarked on his nightstand. This course has allowed her to combine her two disciplines, English and Political Science, and examine a politician from a literary perspective.
“Prior to the course I was unfamiliar with the diversity in Obama’s personal history. Reading his biography has provided me with new insight into how his history has influenced his present,” she says. “I hope to gain a better understanding of Obama as a person and the literary figures that have influenced his life philosophy and led him into such a prestigious life path.”
Books and literary influences help readers understand ideas that have laid the groundwork for a person’s identity, she notes.
“Many of the books we are reading for this course are books Obama himself read and these authors would have influenced his understanding and perspective on social society, whether he agreed or disagreed with their views.”
From the reading list
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
Norton Anthology of African- American Literature, Second Edition, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay
Passing by Nella Larsen
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Flight to Canada by Ishmael Reed