This seminar will explore the theoretical lens of “Abolition Democracy” originally coined by W.E.B. Du Bois and later interpreted by Angela Davis, as a way to think critically about the different struggles for abolition, both historically and in their current context. Robert Gooding Williams, Kendall Thomas, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Ivan Calaff, moderated by Bernard E. Harcourt, will read and discuss W.E.B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 and Angela Davis's Abolition Democracy. The session will open with a reading by Christopher Wolfe of his short story “The most beautifullest thing in this world.”