Video is now available from our January 16, 2026, New Book Salon, which featured Robert Gooding-Williams in conversation with Adrienne Brown, Adom Getachew, and Jennifer Pitts about his recent publication, Democracy and Beauty: The Political Aesthetics of W. E. B. Du Bois (Columbia University Press, 2025).
What is beauty, and what is its political function? In what ways might it help undermine white supremacy and cultivate a more democratic political culture? Democracy and Beauty shines a light on W. E. B. Du Bois’s attempts to answer these questions during the decade surrounding the First World War and, in so doing, offers a groundbreaking account of the philosopher’s aesthetics.
