| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| AFAM 10 | GOSPEL CHOIR | MCCOOL, M. | A performance group that works with the music and culture of the gospel tradition. This is a two-unit class that requires attendance and participation as well as one short music review. Same as Music 7. |
| AFAM 40B | AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES II | MOTEN, F. | The class will investigate the interplay of blackness and criminality in order to see how this conjunction is foundational in the development of American racial ideology. We\'ll look at the (roughly) simultaneous emergence of racial categorization and the \"science\" of criminology in order to see how these discourses buttress one another in the work of justifying a given social order. We\'ll also think about the relationship between blackness, black performance and a kind of being-against-the-law that is inseparable from the acting out of a desire for political and aesthetic freedom. Grades will be based on a final exam and two papers. |
| AFAM 130 | AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVE NARRATIVES | BARRETT, L.W. | This course will examine primarily the \"classic\" U.S. Slave Narrative (1836 - 1965) and consider issues of authorial control of the narrative, as well as the strategies by which the texts challenge the regulatory mechanisms of race, gender, and sexuality. Texts which include: \"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass\", \"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl\", \" The Fugitive Blacksmith\" and others. Course work will include a mid-term, final and one paper. Same as English 105, Lec. A. |
| AFAM 130 | NGUGI NOVELS & WORKS | MASILELA, N. | Ngugi wa Thiong\'o, presently Professor of English and Comparative Literature here at UC Irvine, is one the intellectual giants to come out of Africa in the twentieth-century. Though he is first and foremost regarded as a major
novelist, he has also transformed African theatre by writing a play that was an extraordinary discourse on African history. He belongs to the generation of African writers, including among others Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe,
that in the late 1950s and in the early 1960s simultaneously reflected and articulated Africa\'s \"New Awakening\" to a new historical experience: his novels are a critique of both colonial modernity and the postcolonial African crisis. His critical writings have posited the contentious issue that African Literature can ONLY be constituted through the African Languages. This contention has transformed the nature of discourse on African literary history. Though his earliest novels were written in the English language, for the last twenty-five years he has forsaken this imperial language (to many postcolonials) by writing all his recent novels in Gikuyu (his mother tongue in Kenya). The course will engage itself with the profound implications of Ngugi\'s combination of literary practice and historical theory: in other words, how well has Ngugi integrated Joseph Conrad and Frantz Fanon! Same as Comp Lit 104, Sec. C. |
| AFAM 130 | MUSIC & LITERATURE IN THE AFRICAN DIASPOR | MOTEN, F. | This course will be part examination of and part immersion in the work and the spirit of the great Nigerian revolutionary Fela Anikalapu-Kuti. Fela\'s work moves at the intersection of tradition and modernity, origin and diaspora, aesthetics and politics, blowing up the terms of these and every other opposition used to characterize his impact. We\'ll examine some of the specific social and aesthetic forces that influenced Fela\'s work-placing that work within the Nigerian musical and literary traditions, consider his impact on Afro-diasporic expressive cultures, and speculate on what his life and work have to offer to the ongoing project of human social development. Same as Comp Lit 104, Sec. D. |
| AFAM 131 | RACE & VISUAL REPRESENTATION | WILSON, J. | Why is it good to be “color blind” about race? How do race and vision intersect in our increasingly visual culture? These are some of the questions to be explored via theories of representation and histories of art, fashion, film, and photography. Principal topics include: race as an ideological construct and its visual codes; colonialism, nationalism, and the history of modern Western aesthetics; visuality and difference; the role of race in the formation and development of modern Western art; the role of race in contemporary popular (visual) culture. Same as Art History 198, Sec. B. |
| AFAM 160 | ISSUES IN HYBRIDITY | O\'GRADY, L. | Against a background of slavery and globalization, we consider the effects on expressive culture when large groups come into contact and/or conflict, examining the processes by which new cultural and artistic forms emerge. Our study of adapted and syncretic forms focuses on visual art in the contemporary United States, but other arts and locations are touched on as well. Same as Studio Art 100, Sec. B. |
| AFAM 160 | GLOBAL BOB MARLEY | ROBINSON, J. | Since the 1970’s, Jamaican popular music has been a dominant musical voice in the Caribbean and beyond. The 1972 partnership of Island Records, the British-based record label, and reggae icon Bob Marley, signaled a new and important presence in the international pop music world and a rising voice of Third World consciousness, The commercial viability of reggae led to the globalization of a music and culture with a complex semiotics and particularity to Jamaican society. Musically and sociologically, the influence of ska, reggae, Jamaican DJ culture, and Rastafariansim has been a significant factor in multiple continents, creating a web of relationships between communities in Jamaica, the United States, Great Britain and many countries in Africa.
This course will utilize the music and life of Bob Marley to generate a number of questions about the role of popular music in the globalization of culture. Throughout this process, we will explore the roots and development of Jamaican popular music, its leading figures and styles, and its enduring influence throughout the world. Attention will be given to the African and Jamaican diasporas, Jamaican immigrant communities in the United States and Great Britain, pan-African/pan-West Indian identity, the intersection of culture and politics, the complex matrix of race and class, the transnational popular music industry, and in its most general sense, the role of music in identity. This course seeks to view music as a social formation that speaks to many dominant issues of the post/neo-colonial world. |
| AFAM 160 | POPULAR CULTURE HIP HOP | WRIGHT, K. | This course will highlight and analyze major milestones in hip-hop\'s25-year history. We will examine hip-hop\'s roots in de-industrialized urban America, its transformation into the political voice for post civil-rights African-American youth, and its embrace by youth worldwide transcending class, race and ethnicity. We will also investigate its
co-option by mainstream media and corporate America into the commodity it is today, investigating the course a subculture takes to become mainstreamed, popular culture. With this, we will discuss possible repercussions of appropriation in terms of black representations in media.
In addition, we will examine popular culture as an important site where dominant ideology is negotiated and contested. This course will draw on a number of theoretical orientations that try to understand popular culture\'s role in society. Finally, we will explore the concept of \"authenticity\" in culture by asking the following questions: Can a black cultural form become popular culture without compromising itself and its \"authenticity\"? Can hip-hop culture remain oppositional at its roots (if it ever was), while hip-hop the commodity becomes mainstream? Can a revolution be televised? Same as Sociology 159. |
| AFAM 160 | ISSUES AFRO FUTURISM | JENKINS, U. | This course will explore various African-American artistic engagement with cultural and philosophical traditions that have evolved into the development of an Afrofuturist aesthetic. An examination of how linkage to ancient African belief systems and science and technology have emerged into an artistic expression of freedom. The course will examine a variety disciplines in the arts: literature, music and the visual arts; with major consideration based upon the social implications of \"outer space\" as a trope for black existential freedom and intergalactic travel. Same as Studio Art 160. |
| AFAM 170 | GENDER AND RACISM | ESSED, P. | All students, as upcoming professionals in a multicultural society and in a globalizing world, can benefit from learning about gender and racism in everyday life. The course will teach students how to identify subtle manifestations of discrimination, how to prevent and how to overcome its damaging effects. Through international readings, including the US, Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America, students will be challenged to discuss the impact of race and everyday racism on gender and identity formation. Theoretical, ethnographic, and autobiographical essays will help participants taking this course to identify and analyze how race, ethnicity, gender and racism impact their own lives and the experiences of family, friends, and colleagues. This course also offers a rich overview of contemporary (young) women and men in national and international struggles for racial justice. Same as Women’s Studies 139W, Anthro 139, and Poli Sci 129. |