Information For:

Courses for Spring 2019

  • African American Health Activism from Emancipation to AIDS

    This historical survey course examines African American activism and social movements from Emancipation to the contemporary period through the lens of African American access to health resources. By paying close attention to how social and cultural aspects of medicine impact access and quality of care by race, gender, and sexuality, the course examines how segregation, poverty, incarceration, and policing shaped activism and healthcare. The course develops a sense of how African American activists crafted responses to different historical crises including Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, and the War on Drugs by the demands they made for specific resources.
    AFRI 0550 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Ramos

  • Black Student Protest from Jim Crow to the Present

    This is a history-driven class about black student protest. It puts this history in direct dialogue with other kinds of student protests over the long twentieth century. The point of the class is to ground conversations about contemporary protest culture in an historical context that extends well beyond Brown, that moves into the deep history of higher education and education more generally, and that reveals the intersection of protest with other global, national, and local plotlines. It is, as well, meant to think about how all of these histories have been represented popularly and politically in the very recent past.
    AFRI 0610 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Guterl

  • Hip Hop Music and Cultures

    This course will explore both the history of the emergence of Hip Hop and the heated debates that surround it: aesthetics, censorship, sexism, violence, musical theft, originality, authenticity, the politics of cross-racial exchanges, urban black nihilism, and corporate influences on culture. These debates will be framed by our consideration of urban black life, African-American cultural formations, gender, representation, technology, commodification, pleasure and politics. Enrollment limited to 200.
    AFRI 0880 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Rose
    AFRI 0880 C01
    Primary Instructor
    Rose
    Schedule Code
    C: Conference
    AFRI 0880 C02
    Primary Instructor
    Rose
    Schedule Code
    C: Conference
    AFRI 0880 C03
    Primary Instructor
    Rose
    Schedule Code
    C: Conference
    AFRI 0880 C05
    Primary Instructor
    Rose
    Schedule Code
    C: Conference
    AFRI 0880 C06
    Primary Instructor
    Rose
    Schedule Code
    C: Conference
    AFRI 0880 C07
    Primary Instructor
    Rose
    Schedule Code
    C: Conference

  • Black Lavender: Black Gay/Lesbian Plays/Dramatic Constructions in the American Theatre

    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 40.
    AFRI 0990 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Terry-Morgan

  • The Afro-Luso-Brazilian Triangle

    Examines three historical components of the South Atlantic in terms of history, culture, and contemporary political and economic consequences. European colonialism in Africa and Brazil constitutes the baseline for this exploration, but the long and tardy nature of Portuguese colonialism in Africa in comparison with other European colonial powers, especially in its post-World War II manifestations, is our starting point. Enrollment limited to 40.
    AFRI 1020C S01
    Primary Instructor
    Dzidzienyo

  • Contesting the Carceral State

    This course introduces students to the study of crime and justice through Black, feminist, queer and prison abolitionist frameworks, with a particular focus on narratives by people of African descent in the U.S. since 1965.
    AFRI 1030 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Biggs

  • Advanced RPM Playwriting

    Third level of RPM Playwriting; for students that have successfully completed RPM Playwriting and Intermediate RPM Playwriting (workshop). Instructor permission.
    AFRI 1050A S01
    Primary Instructor
    Terry-Morgan

  • Intermediate RPM Playwriting

    Second level of RPM Playwriting; for students that want to continue developing their RPM plays or want to begin a new project (workshop).
    AFRI 1050D S01
    Primary Instructor
    Terry-Morgan

  • RPM Playwriting

    Research-to-Performance Method (RPM) Playwriting guides students through the process of developing new plays that are informed by scholarly research (workshop).
    AFRI 1050E S01
    Primary Instructor
    Terry-Morgan

  • West African Writers and Political Kingdom

    Do West African writers have a role to play in the changing political landscape of their countries? An examination of the ways and means through which a select group of West African writers have dealt with issues that relate to the role of the state in the management of individual and group relations, the politics of gender, civil and military relations, and the construction of new forms of civil society. Enrollment limited to 20.
    AFRI 1060E S01
    Primary Instructor
    Dzidzienyo

  • Black Freedom Struggle Since 1945

    Lecture course that examines the extended history of the mass civil rights movement in the U.S. Starting at World War II, we consider the roles of the courts, the federal and state governments, organizations, local communities, individuals and various activist strategies in the ongoing struggle for African American equality, focusing on African American agency, particularly in the South, but also in Boston, Mass. Sources include photographs, documentaries, movies, letters, speeches, autobiographies, and secondary readings. Requirements: Weekly readings, documentary viewings, 4 short papers, 2 exams.
    AFRI 1090 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Hamlin

  • The Caribbean: Cultures, Politics, Histories and Literature

    The Caribbean archipelago has brought forth a new awareness of the region not as a fixed entity of islands as previously viewed; rather, it is a diverse group of islands that are not only geographically linked but share a common history of slavery and colonialism. This course aims to present students with an opportunity to delve into substantive multidisciplinary (social science and literary) texts that seek to analyze, expose and deconstruct forces that continue to shape the Caribbean.
    AFRI 1100B S01
    Primary Instructor
    Sylvain

  • 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.
    AFRI 1150 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Henry

  • 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. Open to all senior Africana Studies concentrators; others by instructor permission only. Enrollment limited to 25.
    AFRI 1360 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Meeks

  • Independent Reading and Research

    Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
    AFRI 1970 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Bogues
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 1970 S04
    Primary Instructor
    Braun
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 1970 S05
    Primary Instructor
    Perry
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 1970 S06
    Primary Instructor
    Meeks
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 1970 S07
    Primary Instructor
    Dzidzienyo
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 1970 S08
    Primary Instructor
    George
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 1970 S09
    Primary Instructor
    Henry
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 1970 S10
    Primary Instructor
    Guterl
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 1970 S11
    Primary Instructor
    Hamlin
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 1970 S12
    Primary Instructor
    Biggs
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 1970 S13
    Primary Instructor
    Terry-Morgan
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 1970 S15
    Primary Instructor
    Ayobade
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 1970 S16
    Primary Instructor
    Ramos
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research

  • Theories of Africana Thought: Literary and Expressive Cultures

    A preoccupation of Africana Studies involves the central, highly contested role of the notion of what constitutes black culture in the modern world. To what degree can we claim aesthetic and other distinctions between black cultures in the Diaspora and other western cultural practices and expressive forms? What role did enslavement, forced migration and segregation play in shaping Africana culture in the modern west? These cultural debates play a central role in literary, musical, philosophical, aesthetic, historical and sociological analyses of the culture of people of African descent frame this graduate course.
    AFRI 2002 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Biggs

  • Theorizing the Black Diaspora

    This seminar will focus on the theorization of the black diaspora as a way to explore the various articulations of colonialism, gendered racism and resistance against that racism throughout African-descendant communities. Course readings will highlight the scholarship of black women who have contributed to the internationalization of radical black vis-a-vis theories of diaspora, transnationalism, transformative politics, identity formation, and community. This course is open to upper level concentrators in Africana Studies by permission of instructor. Enrollment limited to 20.
    AFRI 2104 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Perry

  • Preliminary Examination Preparation

    For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the registration fee to continue active enrollment while preparing for a preliminary examination.
    AFRI 2970 S01
    Schedule Code
    E: Grad Enrollment Fee/Dist Prep

  • Graduate Level Independent Reading and Research

    A program of intensive reading and research. Section numbers may vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
    AFRI 2980 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Bogues
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 2980 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Braun
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 2980 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Dzidzienyo
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 2980 S04
    Primary Instructor
    Guterl
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 2980 S05
    Primary Instructor
    Hamlin
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 2980 S06
    Primary Instructor
    Henry
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 2980 S07
    Primary Instructor
    Perry
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 2980 S08
    Primary Instructor
    Terry-Morgan
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 2980 S09
    Primary Instructor
    Rose
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    AFRI 2980 S10
    Primary Instructor
    Meeks
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research

  • Thesis Preparation

    For graduate students who have met the residency requirement and are continuing research on a full time basis.
    AFRI 2990 S01
    Schedule Code
    E: Grad Enrollment Fee/Dist Prep