| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| AFAM 40A | AFRICAN AMERICAN I | COOKS CUMBO, B. | 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 116 | BLACK SOUTH AFR LIT | MASILELA, N. | This course attempts to understand the grave and great consequences of European modernity's forceful entrance into African history. This resulted in the historic conflict between European modernities and African traditions. This contradiction between European history and African history forced and compelled the newly forged Christanized African intellectuals to construct their own particular African modernities and perspectives in opposition to European modernities. This simultaneous process of appropriating and rejecting of European expressive literary forms and European intellectual traditions by African writers, intellectual and artists is an expression of the paradoxes and complexities that constitute Africa. The classic example of this paradox is the appropriation of the generic form of the novel which is an 'invention' of European history by African writers in an attempt to articulate and project African history against the imperatives of European history. This complicated process of re-invention was the consequence of European history having 'defeated' African history during the era of colonial and imperial domination. |
| AFAM 118 | HOME&AWAY CLT/LIT | RADHAKRISHNAN, R. | Is home a literal place, a territory, a state of mind? What does it mean to be “at home,” and how does such a feeling of security relate to “being at home in the world?” How do Home and the World replicate each other; or, do they? Is home a sovereign and normative space, or is it a space of non-discriminating, ever inclusive belonging? Can some one’s home become some other’s exile? Can home be the function of a regime such as Nationalism? What is the relationship between having a home and enjoying the privileges of citizenship? How do race, gender, immigration, ethnicity, and sexuality determine what is home and what is exile? What happens when one leaves one’s home and lives elsewhere? Can there be divided homes characterized by “double consciousness?” During these times of intensive diasporas, movements of peoples-goods-and ideas across boundaries and borders, how does home become a mere location, and location acquire the significance of home? Is a home more natural than a mere location? Are homes natural or are they imagined constructs? With these questions in mind, we will be analyzing a number of texts, some fictional and some theoretical, as they traverse home and away in an infinite series of arrivals and departures.
Format: A combination of lectures, discussions, and class presentations. 1 take home examination, 1 short paper, and 1 long paper. |
| AFAM 122 | AFAM MASCULINITES | SEXTON, J. | This course examines the historical construction of black masculinities in various regions and periods in and beyond the United States. It examines the ways that gender and sexuality have shaped the modern history of black males and females in the Americas from the institution of racial slavery to the formation of post-emancipation societies. It examines the social, political, and economic conditions of black life in the contemporary period as well and interrogates especially representations of black men and boys in U.S. culture and society in relation to the broader politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the post-civil rights era. Students will be expected to critically engage an array of works in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, including films focused on themes of black masculinity. |
| AFAM 143 | FIRE MUSIC BLK JAZZ | ROBINSON, J. | This course will explore the crossroads of jazz and the Black Arts movement (BAM) of the 1960s. The interaction between African-American jazz musicians and BAM writers demonstrates varied strategies of racial representation through musical expression. In search of new forms of artistic expression, many writers looked to music as a site of authentic "blackness." The search for a "Black Aesthetic" prompted varied responses from musicians, most of which challenged straight-forward, monological understandings of the relationship between race and artistic expression. Moreover, standard histories of jazz in the 1960s often fail to identify the larger cultural, political, and social formations that informed the rise of the jazz avant-garde.
This course will begin with an overview of the jazz avant-garde, situating its key figures in the historical continuum of the jazz tradition. In order to develop a contextual understanding of the views of Black Arts Movement writers on music, we will look at ways important earlier Harlem Renaissance theorists viewed jazz and Black classical music. Influential community formations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and St. Louis that centered on African-American musical expression will be studied. Key tenets of the Black Arts Movement and collaborations between writers and the jazz avant-garde will be a central focus throughout the quarter. Special attention will be given to the iconoclastic music writings of Amiri Baraka (Blues People and the more recent anthology of his music criticism Black Music), as well as other Black Arts Movement writers such as Larry Neal, Addison Gayle, Jr., Hoyt Fuller, Ishmael Reed, James Stewart, and others.
Core readings for the course will consist of important music writings of the Black Arts Movement, standard and marginalized histories of jazz and the avant-garde of the 1960s, biographies of musicians, interviews with musicians, and mainstream critical responses to the music (specifically in Downbeat and Metronome). |
| AFAM 144 | AFRO-FUTURISM I | JENKINS JR., U. | This course will explore various African-American artistic engagements with cultural and philosophical traditions that have evolved into the development of an Afro-futurist aesthetic. An examination of how linkage to ancient African belief systems and science and technology has emerged into an artistic expression of freedom. The course will examine a variety of disciplines in the arts: literature, music and the visual arts; with an emphasis based upon the social implications African-American Woman. |
| AFAM 154 | BLK CULTURE HIPHOP | WRIGHT, K. | This course will examine various ways in which hip hop culture continues the legacy of black protest and resistance in black art forms and culture. The course will look at the following particularly: Hip Hop elements and expressions as protest; Hip Hop Entrepeneurialism; Hip Hop Media, Hip Hop Political Organizations; and Hip Hop Education. |
| AFAM 158 | BLK COMMUNITY ISSUE | WRIGHT, K. | This course examines social issues affecting the African American community (related to economics, education, prison industry/unequal justice, healthcare, media images, disenfranchisement etc.). We will focus on social science research that analyzes systemic inequities in social institutions and their effects on the African American community. |
| AFAM 158 | RACE AND CLASS | SEXTON, J. | This course will examine the intersections of race and class for explaining the social, political, and economic position of blacks in the United States, past and present. We will analyze the sources of continued residential segregation and the growing racial wealth gap between blacks and whites in the post-civil rights era. We will also reframe popular notions like "the black middle class" and "the black underclass" from a critical perspective. A broad historical sketch frames the course material, but discussions will focus on contemporary issues including: the rise of mass imprisonment since the 1970s, the dismantling of welfare since the 1980s, the repeal of affirmative action since the 1990s, the continuing devastation of Hurricane Katrina since 2005, and the ongoing subprime mortgage crisis. |