Object Lessons: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Sturm und Drang of Race Childhood

While originally referring to the use of material objects to convey abstract ideas, "object lesson" took on a second meaning at the turn of the twentieth century. This particular connotation—denoting a person and leader as moral exemplar—reveals fault lines between the thinking of W. E. B. Du Bois and G. Stanley Hall on young people. Through his own adoption of the German ideals of sturm und drang and bildungsroman, as well as a process of "aftershadowing"—a recalibration of ideas concerning his own family genealogy, childhood, and intellectual lineages—Du Bois made ideological claims that were a counter-narrative to Hall's recapitulation theory.