| 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 117 | ASAM & AFAM RELATNS | FUJITA-RONY, D. | Same as ASAM 167, HISTORY 152. This course will explore the comparative and often connected history of Asian Americans and African Americans in the United States, with particular emphasis on the contemporary era. Themes will include labor, community formation, political mobilization, and cultural expression. Requirements will be a 5-page paper, midterm, final exam, and engaged class participation. |
| AFAM 128 | WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? GENDER, POWER, AND SEXUALITY | KEIZER, A | Same as English 105. Since the era of American slavery, African American writers have grappled with the difficulties of representing love and sexuality in the context of coercion and the negative stereotypes that have dominated representations of black people in the Americas. In the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, African American fiction emphasized black morality, respectability, and "uplift" in order to counter widespread denigration. While critical for US race politics, such a stance became a constraint as nineteenth-century literary cultures gave way to Modernism and subsequent experimental movements.
In the wake of the Civil Rights, Black Power, and feminist movements, new possibilities for representing gender and sexuality became available to African American writers. This course will examine fiction, poetry, drama, and film by twentieth- and twenty-first-century African American writers, with particular attention to the influence of nineteenth-century concerns upon more recent works. Writers and filmmakers represented include Amiri Baraka, Chester Himes, Suzan-Lori Parks, Spike Lee, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, Wendell Harris, Isaac Julien, and Kara Walker.
Through our close analyses, we will trace thematic and stylistic developments and consider the socio-economic and political factors that established the parameters of African American gender relations and creative expression, including the legacies of slavery, stereotypes of black men and women, sexual violence (including lynching), and movements for social, political, and sexual liberation. We will use critical essays to enhance our analyses of primary texts. Requirements: one short essay/presentation, a mid-term and a take-home final. |
| AFAM 138 | CMPRTV SLAVE REBELN | MILLWARD, J. | Same as History 150. This class focuses on classic texts in American history from the period of enslavement to the 2008 election of the first African American President, Barack Obama. While this class follows a mostly chronological path, it is not an exhaustive overview of African American history. Rather we will be particularly focused on the theme of “freedom,” and its manifestations in African American history over time. Course readings include: the W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk, Autobiography of Malcolm X, Angela Davis: An Autobiography, and The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama.
This course is designed for History majors and students with an interest in African American Studies and/or Ethnic studies. The class will be run as a combination of lecture and seminar style format. Assignments include a combination of short essays; take home exams and an annotated bibliography assignment. |
| AFAM 143 | BLACK POPULAR MUSIC | STAFF | |
| AFAM 154 | AFRICAN AMERICANS IN US FOREIGN POLICY | WILLOUGHBY-HER, T. | Same as Pol Sci 149; Intl St 189; History 150. This course is concerned with these primary questions: What black political attitudes, philosophies, organizations, and ideologies about internationalism have shaped discourse in American foreign policy? How have the legacy of pan-Africanism and diasporic thinking influenced Black political ideologies about the nation-state, citizenship, migration, and identity? What role have black political scientists played in shaping the debates on racial democracy and comparative racial politics? What role has race and culture played in the making of the international system and what constitutes foreign affairs, globalization, and international relations?
Covers race and American Empire, race and black consciousness from WWI years to decolonization period in the following: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Congo, decolonization and the Civil Rights Movement, influence of decolonization and civil rights and black power movements on African Diaspora--mostly Cuba and Brazil). |
| AFAM 156 | S AFRCN SOCIAL IDS | WILLOUGHBY-HER, T. | Same as WS 184, PS 149. Political thought in post-apartheid South Africa must reconcile with the legacy of racism. But, reconciling with the legacy of racism has become increasingly challenging when cultural theorists insist that there is no truth with a capital T to be found in grand narratives about the past. How do we talk about accountability, ethics, reparations, or social justice at a period in which many people believe that we are in a "post-racial period"? How do we talk about social justice in a period of ever expanding global apartheid and deepening criminalization of and genocide against the poor? One answer was provided in the late1990s when a group of scholars began to research and talk about the new politics of identity construction in South Africa in the post-apartheid era. They were concerned with discussing the legacy of racism and "new" identity formations and transnational identities. This course will look at the collected materials that emerged from these scholars. This is a Comparative Political Thought course that will pay close attention to concepts such as: intersectionality, LGBT politics, the South African Gender Commission, history and memory, economic justice, youth culture, demilitarization, affirmative action, the new "black middle class," African Renaissance, The Rainbow Nation, the legacies of displacement, and the so-called Colored and Indian communities, HIV/ AIDS. |