The Transformative Pedagogy behind Langston Hughes's Dispatches from the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

ABSTRACT:In July 1937, and after having been lauded as one of the key figures of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes traveled to Spain as a war correspondent to report on the Spanish Civil War. In an exercise of observation, commentary, and interpretation, Hughes's dispatches provided a detailed depiction of a plight against fascism that transcended the country's geographical borders and encouraged African American readers to become protagonists of their own struggle against racism. Employing a progressive and transformative pedagogy, Hughes masterfully guided his readership through the Spanish conflict by linking the concepts of race, class, and internationalism. An emancipative, ideological objective underlies his war dispatches, which clearly employed two thematic strands: on the one hand, sketches of everyday life in Spain through the transposition of the civil conflict to the struggle in the US and, on the other, the exploration of the concepts of race and its perception from the Spanish optic.