| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| AFAM 40C | AFRICAN AMERICN III | WILLOUGHBY-HER, T. | Introduction to theories of racial blackness in the modern world, with emphasis on developments in British colonies and U.S. Traces emergence of blackness as term of collective identity, social organization, and political mobilization. |
| AFAM 111B | AFAM ART:1930-PRES | COOKS CUMBO, B. | In this course students will study artworks created by African Americans beginning chronologically with government sponsored art programs in the 1930s and ending with contemporary art of the twenty-first century. |
| AFAM 117 | ASAM & AFAM RELATNS | FUJITA-RONY, D. | Same as ASAM 167, History 152B. 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. NOTE: Same as AFAM 138 ASAM & AFAM RELATNS from Spring 2010, so cannot be taken again for credit. |
| AFAM 118 | ANCIENT AFRICA | KENNEDY-QUIGLE, S. | This course will examine the indigenous art of Africa from the earliest appearance of visual culture in the prehistoric age until the influx of Islam, beginning in the 7th century C.E. The course will proceed both chronologically and geographically, providing students with an appreciation for the richly diverse art forms produced by the early cultures of the African continent, as well as the challenges and limitations inherent to African archaeology. In conjunction with the religious, political, and/or historical circumstances in which art was produced, the course will investigate the probable function(s) of early works of art. In this way, students will attain both an understanding of the early cultures of Africa and the ability to distinguish varied artistic styles according to culture and/or historical period. Course requirements include participation in class discussions relative to required readings, a research paper, and midterm and final examinations. |
| AFAM 123 | AFAM QUEER THEORY | FELDMAN, S | This course will explore how the construction of the hierarchical oppositions between blackness/whiteness and homosexuality/heterosexuality are interimplicated by examining relationship amongst and intersection of racial, sexual, and gender identity categories and discourses in the United States. We will look at the various historical factors that have contributed to the erasure or invisibility of African American queer subjects, and then explore how past and present intellectual, artistic, and political work by black queer subjects challenges dominant views of race, gender, and sexuality and engenders new ways of thinking about identity and community. While this course requires no prior knowledge of queer theory, students should be aware that many of the readings will be quite challenging. Along with theoretical works by black queer scholars like Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, Kobena Mercer, Cathy Cohen, Angela Davis, Roderick Ferguson, Robert Reid-Pharr, M. Jacqui Alexander, and Dwight McBride, we will be reading poetry by Essex Hemphill, fiction by James Baldwin, and viewing Cheryl Dunye’s Watermelon Woman and Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied.
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| AFAM 128 | WOMEN OF COLOR | KIM, K. | |
| AFAM 128 | QUEER LIVES&KNOWLDG | SCHEPER, J. | Same as WomnSt 157B. In this course, students explore the elaboration of non-normative sexual and gender identities, practices, and communities from the 19th century to the present. How does the queer past inform and shape the queer present and future? In the nineteenth century, categories for non-normative sexualities emerged from changing legal-medical discourses and popular culture representations that linked discourses of sexual pathologization to scientific racism and colonial spectacles of the body. How have these ways of knowing and seeing shaped twenty-first century debates, characterized by recent provocative headlines such as “Gay is the New Black.” Focusing on scholarship by queer theorists of color (Black Queer Studies Reader; Jose Munoz’s Disidentifications), this course foregrounds thinking about sexuality and gender in relation to histories of colonialism, slavery, Jim Crow, diaspora, and nationalism. This course examines the uses of history by queer subjects to produce queer responses that perform across differences of race, class, nation, and gender, and produce ways of knowing that resist pathologizing practices in order to imagine queer futures. How do ideas of “ephemera” and “disappearance”; “publics” and “counter-publics” interact with impulses to “archive” and “perform” racialized queer experience? Exploring the concept of queer cultural recycling, this course foregrounds visual and cultural production and the interplay of queer theory and practice across various cultural, political, and artistic mediums and contexts. |
| AFAM 128 | HIB/AIDS | KIM, K. | same as WOMN ST 165B |
| AFAM 137 | AFRICAN DIASPORA | JAMES,W. | Examines the causes and consequences of the multiple diasporas of African peoples since the sixteenth century in the Atlantic world, especially the Americas and Europe. Same as History 134E. |
| AFAM 151 | COMP MINORITY POLIT | AHMED, Z | This course examines the political experiences of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans in the United States from roughly 1950 to the present. We focus on how each group has pursued political empowerment via both conventional channels and social movements. |
| AFAM 152 | AFRICAN AMER POLTCS | TATE, K. | In this course, students examine the politics and strategic vision of African Americans in order to gain a broader perspective of the American political process. Topics can vary, and include a review of the major developments in African American politics, including the civil rights movement and Black presidential bids, the continuing problem of racism, American public policy, as well as the responsiveness of key governing institutions, such as the courts and the U.S. Congress, to Black political interests. |
| 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 hyper-commodification of the culture, questions around gender and sexuality, art and aesthetics, and also hip-hop’s enduring ability to speak truth to power. This course has a non-refundable lab fee. |
| AFAM 162W | BLACK PROTEST TRADN | WILDERSON, F. | An upper-division undergraduate course. This course will introduce students to the discourse of the Black protest tradition, from 19th century slave uprisings to the Los Angeles uprising of 1992. This is not a history of the Black Protest Tradition but rather a course which traces the emergence of resistance against slavery and anti-Black racism by examining key rhetorical moments in the complex elaboration of Black political thought. Writing assignments will consist of three short papers (3,000 words each) as well as a midterm. This class will serve as the upper division writing requirement for the major in African-American Studies. |