| 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 to the Americas to the mid-twentieth century. This course will discuss the unique history of African American people with a particular focus on strategies of resistance and survival. This course is the first in a three-part series for the Program in African American Studies. |
| AFAM 112B | AFR DIASPORA POETRY | O'CONNOR | |
| AFAM 113 | FILM&RACIAL CONFLCT | WILDERSON, F. | Same as Flm&Mda 130. "Film and Racial Conflict" examines how U.S cinema, as an institution within a matrix of other institutions (i.e. families, schools, churches, prisons), positions Whites, Indians, and Blacks. To this end, we will be concerned primarily with the institutional and ideological positionality (how and where subjects are placed by discourse, i.e. film) of the three above races this country has produced through settlerism, genocide, and slavery; and concerned, secondarily, with the culturally affirming, and often identity aggrandizing, "voices" of our three focus groups. Settlerism, genocide, and slavery are the three structural necessities which underwrite U.S. society. Our guiding question is this: In what ways do the formal and narrative properties of 20th and 21st century fiction film disavow and/or acknowledge these structural necessities? Put another way, we will explore how late 20th and early 21st century cinema is suggestive of America’s foundational, triangulated, and unresolved antagonisms: The White demand for mastery and expansion; the Red demand for return of the both the land and a genocided population; and the Black demand for repair and return of, literally, everything (subjectivity in the present and the memory of subjectivity from the past). A basic assumption of course is that the fiction film, even a love story, stands in relation to these unresolved antagonisms; and furthermore, the narrative (the script) of most films tries not to reflect upon this relation. |
| AFAM 125 | AFAM WOMEN IN ART | COOKS CUMBO, B. | This course provides an examination of the historical depictions of and by African American women in American art and popular culture. Students will explore the history of visual art created by African American women from the nineteenth century through contemporary art in a variety of media. The course focuses on African American women’s experiences, perspectives, and strategies for self-representation in the visual arts. |
| AFAM 128 | FANON & FEMINISM | WILLOUGHBY-HER, T. | Some feminist critics have raised serious concerns with the writings of Frantz Fanon primarily on charges of ill-consideration of the impacts of nationalism on the lives and survival of women. Indeed, the question of nationalism and its links to misogyny and control over female reproduction has been also raised. Other feminist critics namely Third World and Black feminist critics have insisted on holding on to Fanon in part because his attention to culture, neo-colonialism, spirituality, detention and incarceration, and violence create greater visibility for the role of women as political actors, political agents, and revolutionaries. The Fanon that has been touted, rejected, reproduced, and engaged by feminists of all stripes is a complicated voice among many in the black protest tradition. This course will examine several key works by Frantz Fanon and his reception and deployment by radical black feminism, Arab-American feminism, Algerian feminism, African feminisms, African Gender Studies, and Third World feminism. |
| AFAM 143 | BLACK POPULAR MUSIC | MUTERE, M. | Black Popular Music tells the story of how African-American cultural agency has captivated and cultivated popular imagination world-wide through effective applications of oral communication and traditions. This course will examine genres such as R&B, rock, soul, funk, and hip-hop as manifestations of this dynamic cultural legacy. The performativity, delivery mechanisms and style of specific artists within these genres will be considered, as well as the philosophical tensions that exist between an art-for-life’s-sake oral-aesthetic mission and its interface with an acquisitive industry that manages the communication gateways into the marketplace. Students will reflect on the historical and social significance of African-American culture and of its human agency through a culturally-centered appreciation of Black Popular Music. |
| AFAM 154 | HIP HOP CULTURE | DAULATZAI, S. | With Nas’s landmark 1994 album Illmatic as our guide, this course will utilize film, video, documentary and music to explore the ways in which hip-hop culture has become a powerful tool to probe the larger American landscape. In doing so, we will use Illmatic as a lens to better understand hip-hop and not only the history that made it, but also the history that it made. So that while this course is about exploring hip-hop through Illmatic, it’s also about exploring America through Illmatic, offering us the possibility to explore the fertile ground and volatile minefield that surround it: the post-Civil Rights and Black Power era, the shifting sands of race and the emergence of the global economy, the guerilla artistry around media so central to hip-hop, the changing marketplace and hypercommodification of the culture, questions around gender and sexuality, art and aesthetics, and also hip-hop’s enduring ability to speak truth to power. Contact Prof. Daulatzai at sdaulatz@uci.edu for an authorization code for this course. |
| AFAM 158 | RACE AND CLASS | SEXTON, J. | Cancelled. |
| AFAM 158 | RACE AND THE LAW | BAILEY, J | Same as Crm/Law C100. This course provides an historical survey of the role of race in the American legal system from colonial times to the present. We will examine the multiple, and often contradictory ways, judicial courts have defined the race and ethnicity of individuals and what those constructions tell us about racial and ethnic identity in America. The class will investigate controversial topics such as reparations, affirmative action, hate speech, and the role of race and the media in prominent cases such as O.J. Simpson and Trayvon Martin. |