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Africana Studies Courses
afrsty 100 Introduction to African-American Literature +
Description:
This survey course examines the writings of African-Americans who have made unique contributions to the African-American literary tradition. The course explores these writings in terms of their sociohistorical context, making use of analyses of character, plot, and symbolism. It gives particular attention to the writers' roles as social critics. Among the writers whose work may be considered are Frederick Douglass, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Leroi Jones, Ernest Gaines, George Jackson, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 101 Introduction to Africana Studies +
Description:
This course presents an overview of the major theories in the field of Africana studies. It seeks to explore the Africana experience in a way that is orderly, systematic, and structurally integrated; and to convey an understanding of the cultural, historical, and political roots of this experience. The course focuses chronologically on major historical episodes through a study of ancient African civilizations, slavery, colonialism, and African liberation movements. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 108 African-American Social Movements +
Description:
Concepts of social movements as well as the appearance of social movements among African-Americans in the nineteenth century. Examination of twentieth century African-American social movements, especially Marcus Garvey's movement, the Nation of Islam, the Civil Rights movement, and the Black Power movement. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 110 African-American History I +
Description:
An intensive study of the social, economic, and political history of African-Americans from the slavery period through the Civil War, with particular emphasis on the social and cultural antecedents of African-Americans, Abolitionism and the Civil War. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 111 African-American History II +
Description:
An intensive study of the social, economic, and political history of African-Americans from the era of Reconstruction to the present. Topics include the African-American during Reconstruction, racism in America, and a critical examination of the variegated patterns of African-American response to American social conditions in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 113 Islam and the African World +
Description:
This course presents an overview of Islam as a religious construct in the African world. Specifically, the course will explore the nature of the relationship between Islam and Africa from the birth of the religion to the present. As a comparative and historical survey of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa, the course explores facets of Islam in African history, culture and society. In addition, it explores the rise and diversification of Islam in the African diaspora, particularly in the Americas. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 115G Black Consciousness +
Description:
This course examines the social, economic, cultural and political implications of the development of Black consciousness in twentieth-century United States. It considers the role played in these developments by Ida B Wells, WEB DuBois, Marcus Garvey, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights/Black Power movement, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Arts Movement. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 116 African Civilizations: Historical Perspectives +
Description:
This course provides a broad survey of the historical processes that have shaped African societies from the earliest traces of human culture to the abolitions of slavery.. Specific attention will be paid to such precolonial African societies as Ancient Egypt, Nubia, Mali, Ghana, and Great Zimbabwe among others. The changing nature of the relationship between Africa and the Western world will also be analyzed, and in this respect the trans-Atlantic slave trade will receive close attention. We will also critically reflect on the ways in which knowledge on African history has been constructed and how it may influence our image of the African continent. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 122 Black Cinema: American Myth, Racial Ideology, and Hollywood +
Description:
What is ''Black Cinema''? How did ''Black Cinema'' originate? What gives ''Black Cinema'' a distinct voice of its own? Must ''Black Cinema'' only be directed by African Americans, feature an all Black cast , or only address a Black audience and ''Black issues'' in order to qualify as ''Black Cinema''? Should we differentiate between ''Black Cinema'' and ''Cinema''? What are the ethical, social and political implications central to making these distinctions? This course examines those questions while chronicling the history and present state of ''Black Cinema'' (from the early 20th century filmmaking of Oscar Micheaux; Blaxploitation films of Gordon Parks and Melvin Van Peebles; fiction films by Charles Burnett, Spike Lee, Lee Daniels, Steve McQueen and Dee Rees; documentaries by Marion Riggs, Stanley Nelson and June Cross; as well as animation films made for TV and media streamed online). More Info
Offered in:afrsty 141 Haitian Creole I for Beginners +
Description:
This course is designed for those who do not speak and understand Haitian Creole and are interested in learning its grammatical structure, its lexicon and its syntax is order to develop meaningful conversational and writing skills along with reading and listening comprehension. This course aims at helping learners develop understanding of academic Haitian Creole language and substantial capacities to participate in basic social and cultural conversations. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 142 Cape Verdean Language I for Beginners +
Description:
The beginner's Cape Verdean Language course will introduce participants to spoken and written forms of the Cape Verdean Language. The main objective of the course is to teach students to understand and to speak Cape Verdean language as a means of communication through solid instruction of syntax and lexical features of the language within a cultural context. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 150 African Images in Literature +
Description:
This course examines the different ways in which African writers have represented the continent of Africa by focusing on their struggle to develop authentic forms and images. Through the reading of selected folk tales, novels, and poems from different African societies, participants consider such issues as the influence of colonialism on creative writing; the politics of African culture; race and class; the images and status of women. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 200 Living While Black: Contemporary Issues in the African Diaspora +
Description:
A writing- and research-intensive critical examination of contemporary and long unfolding social, political, cultural, historical, public health, and economic issues within and across the Black Diaspora, including the trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific spaces of Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean, Latin and South America, Europe, and the Pacific Islands. This course will engage the burgeoning scholarly and theoretical fields of Black Studies, enabling a full and rigorous commitment to a trans-national and trans-disciplinary approach to the problems of black social life within colonial modernity and racial capitalism. This course will closely examine the complex of issues that affect African and African-descended individuals, their families, and their communities within the context and in the aftermath of European colonization. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 204 Afro-Latin America +
Description:
Students will develop an in-depth understanding of the particular experiences of African and African descended peoples in Hispanophone, Lusophone, and to a lesser extent the Francophone territories of Latin America and the Caribbean. This course seeks to help students explore the particularities of slavery in the Americas, the Haitian Revolution and its impact on articulations of race and nation in the region, debates on ''racial democracy,'' the relationship between gender race, and empire, and recent attempts to write Afro-Latin American histories from ''transnational'' and ''diaspora'' perspectives. Students will explore the scholarship by historians, anthropologists, and sociologists and examine the links between scholarship and struggle and between social analysis and social transformation. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 210 The Making of the African Diaspora +
Description:
This seminar explores global and transnational experiences; social, political, cultural and economic issues confronting people of African descent in North America, South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa from the seventeenth century on. Topics include theory, methods, and historiography of African Diaspora. In addition, this course will introduce student to racial theories or formations such as mestizaje-notions of racial mixing in Brazil and Blanqueamiento-the process of 'whitening' in Spanish speaking nations in South America in efforts to erase the ''black'' population or presence. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 225 The Origins of Caribbean Civilizations +
Description:
This course explores Caribbean society from the Columbian era to the period of emancipation. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it focuses on the foundations of Caribbean civilizations in the English-, French-, and Spanish-speaking areas of the region. Special emphasis is given to the rise of African communities in the New World. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 230 African-American Women's History +
Description:
This course introduces students to the major issues in the history of African-American women. Topics include the role of women in pre-colonial Africa, the slave trade, the female experience in slavery, free women, African-American women and religion, and the role of African-American women in the early twentieth century. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 241 Haitian Creole II for Intermediate Learners +
Description:
This course is designed for those who speak and understand some Haitian Creole with limited fluency and are seeking ways of improving their language skills, overcoming grammatical snags, increasing their vocabulary, and understand the idiomatic use of the language along with the proverbs - [every day language as well as texts that have proverbs.]. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 250 The Civil Rights Movement +
Description:
This course examines the American Civil Rights movement as it developed during the period from 1954 to 1965, and as it changed during the period from 1966 to 1986. The course assesses the roles played by individuals, movements, governments, and political leaders in the process of social change. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 251L African-American Art +
Description:
This course surveys the history of art by artists of African descent in the United States since the 18th century. The primary focus will be the analysis and contextualization of works of art made between the late 1800s and the present by Black U.S.-based artists. This course examines how and why Black artists have employed assorted forms of artistic expression in all media to assert and question personal, racial, and national identity. We will consider the relationship between African-American art, art in the U.S., and art in the wider Black Diaspora as well as interrogate the usefulness of the racialized category of ''African-American art.'' Via critical analysis of work in all media, students will explore the continuities and disruptions of major traditions in art and analyze concepts of race and racism, from the times of colonialism through to our contemporary moment. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 260L African-American Folklore +
Description:
This course examines the development and the significance of African-American folklore through study of its various genres: music, tales, legends, shorter verbal forms, material culture, folk belief, and folk humor. Emphasis is given to both African survivals and Indo-European influences in these genres.AFRSTY 260L and AMST 260L are the same course. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 270 The Black Image on Stage and Screen +
Description:
This course explores the history and development of how Africans and African Americans are depicted on stage, on the movie screen, and in television. Starting in the days of Shakespeare (Othello, Aaron in Titus Andronicus) the course will take a path that includes the days of minstrel shows, Race movies, Magic Negroes, Blacksploitation, The Black Arts Movement, the ''post-racial'' age, and on into the images of tomorrow. By the end of the course, students will not only have the knowledge of how racial identities develop through media such as television and motion pictures, but will also be able to view future depictions of blacks and other persons of color on stage with a critical eye to certain stereotypes. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 280 Special Topics in Africana Studies +
Description:
Various specialized topics are offered once or twice under this heading. Topics change from year to year and are announced before the beginning of each semester. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 292G African Caribbean Literature +
Description:
This course examines the development and significance of Afro-Caribbean literature in the 20th century. Texts are examined both individually and in relation to each other. Emphasis is given to the development of post-colonial themes and techniques in Caribbean sociocultural contexts, asking what ''post-colonial'' means to writers of different Caribbean nations. This course may count toward the major or minor in Africana studies. Capabilities addressed: Critical reading, critical thinking, clear writing, academic self assessment, collaborative learning, information technology, oral presentation. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 300L Women in African Cultures +
Description:
This course challenges stereotypical constructions of Africa and African woman in mainstream media by considering internal and external historical relationships that have shaped and redefined the cultures, ideas, institutions, politics, and social relations of several specific groups of African women. Through a multi-disciplinary approach, the course addresses issues and challenges of contemporary Africa, and explores many of the themes and concerns that have run throughout Africa's gendered, complex, and changing history. Popular culture sources, as well as scholarly studies and activist writing, will be employed to help illuminate the lived experiences and perspectives of contemporary women living in various African societies. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 301 African-American Intellectual Thought +
Description:
A survey course of the significant writings of African-Americans from the period of Emancipation to the present, with special reference to issues concerning the educational, political, sociological, and psychological status of African-Americans in the United States. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 308 Africana Feminisms in the Black Diaspora +
Description:
This course examines the lives, struggles and accomplishments of African Diasporic women along the axes of gender, race, class, sexuality, and nation. Critical to understanding Africana women's lived experiences is an appreciation of for the ways that these women integrate political action and consciousness into their daily, familial and communal lives utilizing ethnographic and (auto)biographic readings to allow women of the African Diaspora to speak for and about themselves. This course examines the multiple ways African Diasporic women shape histories in the Americas and Africa, connecting the politics of Africana Feminisms and Black/Women's Liberation. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 310 Modern Caribbean Society +
Description:
This course undertakes a phenomenological and interpretive analysis of the organization and social structure of modern Caribbean societies. After a brief examination of the colonization and slavery period, it concentrates on the contemporary era with a special focus on key factors that have shaped the cultural parameters and the internal dynamics of the social systems of these Creolophone, Francophone, Anglophone Hispanophone and Dutch-speaking Caribbean societies. Special attention is therefore given to the salient racial, ethnic, social, political, economic and cultural issues that have significantly influenced and contributed to present day Caribbean societies. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 320 Problems in Urban Education +
Description:
This course looks at the relationship between young people growing up in the cities and the efforts to reform urban schooling. The course examines the cultural, social, economic, and political dimensions of formal ''education'' in the city. Questions posed include: What is education? Why educate? Who is educated in the city? What impact does urban education have upon its recipients and their families, culture, community? What is the relationship between urban education and the American social order? More Info
Offered in:afrsty 326L Multiracial Experiences +
Description:
This course explores the experiences of multiracial individuals from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. We will explore historical and current meanings of race and racialization, including the personal, community, and political implications of racial categorizations, racial purity, and newer ideas of multiraciality and changing boundaries. We will consider racial identities and the negotiation of multiple, complex and contradicting meanings of race and racialization. We will also explore the diverse meanings and experiences of multiracial individuals in specific relation to various racial groups, including White European Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos. Finally, we will consider issues related to community organizing for, by and in relation to multiracial peoples. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 341 Haitian Creole III for Advanced Learners +
Description:
This course is designed for those who speak and understand Haitian Creole with some fluency but seeking ways of perfecting their language skills, overcoming grammatical snags, increasing their vocabulary, and mastering the idiomatic use of the language along with the proverbs - [every day language as well as texts that have proverbs]. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 343L African Diaspora Archaeology: Uncovering Roots, Routes, and Resistance +
Description:
This course is an introduction to African Diaspora archaeology, a burgeoning area of study within the sub-discipline of historical archaeology. Students will explore the concept of diaspora as a means to critically understand the factors underlying the forced dispersal of African people. Participants will consider how archaeological studies of the African diaspora have yielded alternative interpretations of the black past. Throughout the semester, students will examine how archaeologists have investigated the physical and culture landscape, foodways, ritual and religion and objects from everyday life to reveal the ways the black people have resisted and responded to enslavement and other forms of racial oppression. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 350L Race, Class, and Gender: Issues in US Diversity +
Description:
This course deals with the interrelationship of race, class and gender, exploring how they have shaped the experiences of all people in the United States. Focusing on race, class and gender as distinct but interlocking relationships within society, the course examines both the commonalities and the differences that different historical experiences have generated. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 352L Harlem Renaissance +
Description:
This course focuses on major texts of the Harlem Renaissance within contexts of modernism, history, and the development of an African American literary tradition. The course will examine how literature creates and represents real and ''imagined'' communities and will explore the diverse and often contradictory roles that literature plays in shaping, resisting, and reinforcing cultural discourses. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 355L Black Popular Culture +
Description:
This course requires students to engage with Black/African diasporic cultural products intended for a mass audience. The macro-contents of American and global consumer capitalism and the micro- categories of ethnicity, gender, and sexualities are used as a framework for the critical analysis of production, consumption, and reception of African American popular culture in the US and abroad. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 406 Race, Class, and Environmental Justice +
Description:
This course provides students with a comprehensive overview of the beginnings of the environmental justice movement with a particular focus upon African and African diasporic communities. The course provides an integrated overview of ethical principles and dilemmas that arise from environmental justice; elements of toxicology and epidemiology related to communities of color; environmental health disparities, including gene and environmental interaction; and the economics and social impacts of environmental racism. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
afrsty 440 Post-Colonial Literature: Africa and the Caribbean +
Description:
This course examines contemporary African and Caribbean literature in its historical, cultural, and intellectual context. Emphasis is on the ways different writers have attempted to develop new literary forms in order to create authentic images of their cultures and communities. The course also looks at the continuing influence of colonialism on the literary and social life of these communities. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 441 Techniques of Haitian Creole Translation +
Description:
This course is designed for those who speak and understand Haitian Creole with great fluency but seek ways of perfecting their language skills, overcoming grammatical snags, increasing their vocabulary, and mastering the idiomatic use of the language along with the proverbs for the purpose of translating Haitian Creole to English and vice versa and doing interpretation in courthouses, hospitals, and other venues. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 478 Independent Study +
Description:
Students may conduct independent research under the supervision and guidance of members of the faculty. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 479 Independent Study +
Description:
Students may conduct independent research under the supervision and guidance of members of the faculty. More Info
Offered in:afrsty 480 Topics in Africana Studies +
Description:
Intensive study of special topics varying each year according to instructor. More Info
Offered in:- TBA