Africana Studies Courses
The course listings and descriptions can be downloaded below in word format for easy printing and browsing. The most up-to-date course information can always be found on Banner.
Fall 2009 Courses:
Click Here to download PDF
Spring 2010 Courses:
Click Here to download PDF
Spring 2009 Courses:
Click Here to download PDF
Fall 2008 Courses:
Click Here to download PDF
Spring 2010 Course List:
AFRI0160 Sec 01 - Twentieth-Century Africa
An introduction to recent African history, the course combines chronological and topical approaches. It is organized around the major epochs of colonialism, decolonization and post-colonial independence, but within those periods, we will concentrate on themes such as health, environment, development, the state and artistic expression. Readings draw heavily on primary sources. Three exams and two projects, including group work.
Professor Jacobs
Back to Top
AFRI0220 Sec 01 - Introduction to African American History from Emancipation to the Present
This course explores African American History through the lens of black freedom struggles. The struggles take all forms, between black and white from local to national levels, within and between black communities, and between men and women. This course assumes some familiarity with basic U.S. History and will utilize a variety of primary sources from autobiographical material to visual art and music as well as the usual monographs and articles. Aside from reading, students will be required to do some research, and write historical prose. Priority to freshmen and sophomores in Africana Studies and History. 3 papers; 2 exams.
Professor Hamlin
Back to Top
An interdisciplinary approach to the study of plays that address the identities and issues of black gay men and lesbians and offers various perspectives from within and without the black gay and lesbian artistic communities. Focuses on analysis of unpublished titles. Also includes published works by Baraka, Bullins, Corbitt, Gibson, Holmes, West, and Pomo Afro Homos. Some evening screenings of videotapes. Enrollment limited to 20. Written permission required.
Professor Terry-Morgan
Back to Top
AFRI1050 - Seminars in Africana Studies
AFRI1050A Sec 01 - Advanced RPM Playwriting
Interested students should register for AFRI1050A, Sec. 01.
Professor Terry-Morgan
Back to Top
AFRI1050D Sec 01 - Intermediate RPM Playwriting
Interested students should register for AFRI1050D, Sec. 01.
Professor Terry-Morgan
Back to Top
AFRI1050E Sec 01 - RPM Playwriting
Playwriting is a creative process of interpreting research on a topic or issue into the form of a play or performance work. This course is designed for students committed to the long-term meticulous process of research, inquiry, experimentation, and re-writing.
Professor Terry-Morgan
Back to Top
AFRI1060 - Seminars in Africana Studies
AFRI1050M Sec 01 – Roots of African American Fiction: Oral Narrative through Richard Wright
This course will employ a variety of narrative forms -- oral folktales, WPA narratives, slave narratives, short stories by European and American writers -- will also investigate the multiple traditions of African American fiction.
Professor Wideman
Back to Top
AFRI1050P Sec 01 – Art and Civic Engagement: Creativity/Reality
The primary objective of this course is to learn about and reflect upon public art and communities - locally and nationally. This course will use selected public art and artists' ideologies as a framework for exploring culture, creativity, politics and practices. The course will focus on the ways in which these public art works and artists' responses to varied forms of internal and external operators and stimuli successfully and unsuccessfully give voice to aspects of the environment, history, culture, social justice, health, politics and the imagination. Throughout the course existing public art and arts projects will be used to illustrate and explore topics, ideas, unique issues and concerns. Guest speakers will share their experiences, knowledge and ideas. Students will focus on practical application for approaching public art projects. This course will also pay attention to arts organizations, government agencies, history, power relations, human resources as well as leadership and the political that continues to impact and influence these public modes of artistic production. Finally the course will examine dynamics that inform approaches to public art - purpose, performance, space, time, and function.
Professor TBA
Back to Top
AFRI1150 Sec 01 - Afro-Caribbean Philosophy
An introduction to the field of Afro-Caribbean philosophy. The first half focuses on the history of the field, identifying its African background and surveying some of its major schools, such as the Afro-Christians, the poeticists, the historicists, and existentialists. The second half consists of a more intensive comparative focus on the ontologies and epistemologies of two of these schools.
Professor Henry
Back to Top
AFRI1260 Sec 01 - The Organizing Tradition of the Southern Civil Rights Movement
This seminar aims to fill in some of the gaps of the official canon by emphasizing that the modern (1954-1966) southern civil rights movement was not as it is mainly portrayed, a movement of mass protest in public spaces led by charismatic leaders; but rather, a movement of grassroots community organizing - quiet day-to-day work.
Professor Cobb
Back to Top
AFRI1360 Sec 01 - Africana Studies: Knowledge, Texts and Methodology
This course will explore the issues of Africana Studies as a discipline by engaging in a series of critical readings of the central texts, which laid the protocols of the discipline. The course will also raise issues of knowledge production and methodologies. This course is a senior capstone seminar.
Professor Rose
Back to Top
AFRI1710A Sec 01 – Political Visions and Community Formations
This course aims to consider the depths of connection between forms of racialized, gender, class and sexual oppression vis-à-vis the creation and maintenance of community and intimate social bonds among the oppressed. We will read sociologists, historians and others who have worked at this intersection and musicians and writers such as: Morrison, Bambara, Baldwin, Hill-Collins, Hansberry, soul and neo-soul artists.
Professor Rose
Back to Top
SCSO1550D - Biomedicalization: the Body as a Social Problem
Why are more and more aspects of daily life seen as biomedical problems? What are the social processes and political effects that motivate people to view the body this way? This course explores how contemporary healthand behavior conditions are being defined and treated by analyzing biomedical research, health, and bodily knowledge in its various institutional formations: governmental knowledge, health policy, capital markets, and popular culture. Prerequisites for the course are either one course in medical sociology or anthropology (e.g. Culture and Health) or one in science studies (e.g. Introduction to Science and Society).
Professor Bliss
Back to Top
AFRI1970 Sec 01 - Independent Reading and Research
Students should contact professor directly regarding independent reading and research
Staff
Back to Top
Courses of Interest to Concentrators in Africana Studies - Crosslisted Courses
The following courses may be taken for concentration credit. Please see the sponsoring department for the time and location of each course.
Anthropology
ANTH1110 – African Issues in Anthropological Perspectives ANTH2110 (Primarily for graduates) – Anthropological Theories in Africa
English
ENGL1760T – Literary Africa
ENGL2760U (Primarily for graduates) – Reading the Black Masses in Literature and Critical Practice
History
HIST1971X – African Americans in the Twentieth Century
Modern Culture and Media
MCM1200D – African Cinema