  In her essays on Darkwater, Dusk of Dawn, and other writings, for example, Balfour subtly brings Du Bois’s political thought into conversation with the work of contemporary political theorists. To reorient democratic theory in dark times, Balfour argues, we would do well to think politically with Du Bois. To that end, she examines the political-theoretical ramifications of Du Bois’s literary choices; his use of history to highlight the implication of America’s slave past in its post-Civil Rights present; his depiction of African American lives as exemplary representatives of democratic possibility; and his globally expansive political imagination, which, Balfour argues, reveals the racial politics of recent defenses of cosmopolitanism and civic nationalism (Balfour, 2010,  2011).[39]