| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| AFAM 40A | AFRICAN AMERICAN I | ROSALES, S. | An undergraduate survey course. Students will be introduced to the main contours of the African-American experience, from the importation of Africans into the Americas to the present. This course will focus on the unique expressions of African-American society and culture. Some of the required reading will include Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, W.E.B. DuBois Souls of Black Folks, the poems of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brookes, the speeches and writings of Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, black feminist manifestoes, and the novels of Toni Morrison. Students will also be required to take a midterm and a final examination. This course is the first in a three-part series for the Program in African-American Studies. |
| AFAM 110 | INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND AFRICA | WALDRON-MOORE, P. | The course provides an orientation to the study of international politics with special focus on Africa. It examines various objectives of African foreign policy and patterns of interaction between African nations and state and non-state actors in the contemporary world. The course utilizes the tools of political science to evaluate the nature and sources of Africa's problems (e.g., civil war, interstate conflict, underdevelopment, human rights violations). In essence, we will use international political theory to explain why Africa faces as many obstacles as it does. |
| AFAM 111A | AFAM ART: 1650-1900 | WILSON, J.A. | A survey of visual production by North Americans of African descent, from colonial times through the late 19th century. Includes African-American activity in such fields as architecture, crafts, decorative arts, painting, sculpture, and photography. Examines processes of cultural adjustment, exchange, and resistance; problems of patronage and aesthetic evaluation, as well as the effects of gender, class, color, and regional differences among African-Americans. |
| AFAM 130 | BLACK SOUTH AFR LIT | MASILELA, N. | The course is designated "modern" because it concerns itself with only written forms of literary representation. These expressive forms largely emerged out of an encounter between Europe and Africa: the domination of African history by European history. The other consequence of this domination is that this literature is written in English rather than in the many indigenous African languages of South Africa: Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, etc. Each of these languages has a very rich written literature, which as yet has not been translated into the English language. The course will not analyze oral forms of expression, which each of these languages has in abundance. This oral literature has a relatively long history, traceable from the fourteenth century. The written literature only represents the modernist experience in South Africa. Consequently one of the central themes of the course is the examination of modernity through literary forms. This does not mean that literature will not be looked at in and of itself as an artistic form. Given that Africans in South Africa until very recently experienced modernity as oppression, racism, domination, the course attempts to see to what an extent this literature was a discourse on history. Given also that most of the writers writing this literature were premier intellectuals, the course attempts to trace a particular intellectual history of South Africa. Since African modernity in South Africa is inconceivable without African American modernity, the course will also preoccupy itself with transAtlantic ('black Atlantic') relations. The course confines itself to African ('black') writers, because this literature is not well known as it should be. |
| AFAM 130 | AFRICAN LIT | NGUGI, W.T. | The course examines themes in African Writing in English: drama, poetry and fiction. It is both introductory and an in depth look at the issues animating the African imagination. The relationship between aesthetics and literature is a connecting theme. The course also looks at post-apartheid fiction and the politics of language. |
| AFAM 131 | RACE&VISUAL REP | WILSON, J.A. | This is a course about the ways that vision structures “race” as a system of social classification and race, in turn, structures many aspects of visual culture. Thus, we will explore theories of representation and histories of art, advertising, cartoons, film, photography and digital media in order to consider how visual codes shape social relations and political policy in today’s world. |
| AFAM 150 | RACE & ETHNICITY I | GONZALEZ, A. | Race and Ethnicity in America I is part of the Reaffirming Ethnic Awareness and Community Harmony Program. It is part one of a three - quarter course designed to critically examine the role of diversity and multiculturalism in higher education. The course will examine text focusing on discourse on race, power, and privilege. There will also be historical references that focus on the “building” of the United States as a nation as well as higher education literature that deal with class, ethnicity, and culture.
The Class will be divided into 4 parts: (1) Theories on Race and Ethnicity; (2) Power, Privilege, and Culture (3) Presentation, Facilitation, and Public Speaking Skills (4) Multiculturalism and Higher Education.
In this course, students will engage in intellectual and practical learning of leadership skills and concepts through class discussion, readings, community speakers, lectures, films, exercises, group projects, and community field studies. Through these activities, students will improve upon leadership skills and develop a critical analysis of privilege as it relates to the dimensions of culture and diversity. |