| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| AFAM 40B | AFRICAN AMERICAN II | SEXTON, J. | This course offers a critical introduction to the history of modern racial thinking in Western society, with particular emphasis on developments of the British North American colonies and the United States. |
| AFAM 115 | RACE&MATRIX TRILOGY | CHANDLER, N. | This course examines the problem of how to understand the time of our own lives historically - conceived as a critical archaeology of the future. The Matrix Trilogy and related anime, will be our main text. Following the general question of the possibility of a common futural historicity for humankind over the coming centuries, in which the historicity of the African Diaspora over the past half-millennium, and perhaps over the next half-millennium, is exposed as a major strand of the trilogy, fundamental questions are raised: such as the meaning of sentience and intelligence, human (re)engineering, and hierarchy among forms of being (human, machine, and otherwise) – and the pivotal place of the idea of race therein. Classic and contemporary readings are from: Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Arnold Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzshce, W. E. B. Du Bois, Kitaro Nishida; as well as, Jean Baudrillard, Raymond Kurzweil, Roger Penrose, Octavia Butler, Stuart Kauffman, William Gibson, Hortense Spillers, Fredric Jameson, Edwin Black, Kevin Kelly, Dorothy Roberts, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Fred Moten, and Frank Wilderson III, among others. |
| AFAM 115 | RACE&REPRESENTATION | DAULATZAI, S. | This course will explore issues of race and its manifestations within visual culture, including mainstream Hollywood film, independent cinema and documentary. In doing so, we will examine issues of power and its relationships to representation across different historical periods and within specific contexts, as well as the ways in which race intersects with gender, class, sexuality and nationhood. |
| AFAM 118 | AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE | BORUCKI, A. | This course is an introduction of the history of pre-colonial Africa through the lens of the transatlantic slave trade from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. This traffic was one of the main crossroads of the history of Africa’s long and troubled relationship with both Europe and the Americas. The course’s primary goal, however, lies not in investigating the slave trade but in studying the political, economic, social, and cultural histories of a number of African societies that participated in the trade. Given the large number and vast diversity of African societies, the course cannot possibly present a comprehensive survey. Instead, it zooms in from broad questions such as the impact of this traffic on African depopulation and ‘underdevelopment’, the role of Africans in making this commerce, and the interrelated political and cultural landscapes to the specifics of regionally grounded histories. |
| AFAM 134A | CARIB HISTORY I | JAMES, W. | Exploration of the history of the archipelago from pre-Columbian times to the end of slavery; examining the impact of European colonization, decimation of the indigenous populations, African slavery, resistance and emancipation; the unity and diversity of experience in region.
Pre-1800 course |
| AFAM 138 | CMPRTV SLAVE REBELN | MILLWARD, J. | Same as AfAm 138. This course investigates slave resistance, agency, and revolution during key “slave rebellions” in the Atlantic World. The main course objective is to provide students with an overview of classic and more recent scholarship on topics presented in the course. Of particular importance is the relationship between individual vs. community resistance, and forms of resistance available to slaves based upon their locale, gender and status in the enslaved community. Students will work to isolate criteria as to what makes a "successful" slave rebellion. We will approach slave resistance and rebellion from a Diasporic perspective.
Students will develop critical and analytical skills by doing oral and written assignments, some of which will be comparative in nature. The reading assignments promise to provide students with a theoretical overview of classic debates in African American history/studies such as class conflict, gendered experiences and collective action. This class is designed for students who have taken other African American Studies or History courses as well as those who have a general interest in the course material.
(Pre-1800 US Course) |
| AFAM 138 | INTELLECTUAL HIS I | CHANDLER, N. | This two quarter course will introduce students to the African American intellectual construction of the American experience, focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries – highlighting its early emergence, intensity and breadth. A guiding question of the winter term is the relation of slavery to the American Revolution and ideas of democracy. Phillis Wheatley, Oluadah Equiano, Thomas Jefferson and Frederick Douglass will provide key texts for discussion. For the winter term, abolitionism in all phases, emancipation in the American Civil War, and the aftermath of a failed Reconstruction will be examined – taking key texts from, among others, Harriet Jacobs, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Pauline Hopkins. Major oral texts such as orations and public addresses, sermons, and songs, especially spirituals, will also be engaged throughout the course. |
| AFAM 143 | BLACK POP MUSIC II | MUTERE, M. | Hip-hop is caught in the contested space that lies at the intersection of cultural and commercial interests and forces. In their study of hip-hop history, students in this course will be challenged to think innovatively about the hip-hop model as evidence of African oral traditions as they brought new life to America's abandoned inner-city, and to investigate how corporate interests then redefined these cultural roles and principles.
While evaluating the extend to which hip-hop's cultural custodians bear responsibility for the current prevalence of messages such as those promoting misogyny and violence, students will also be expected to ascertain how commercial assumptions of "ownership" may have co-opted the African-American voice through mainstream marketing strategies. Black Popular Music I (F12) is NOT a prerequisite for this course. |
| AFAM 153 | AF AM PSYCHOLOGY | PARHAM, T | The course will begin with a historical overview of the development of the discipline of African psychology and the African American frame of reference. Lecture, readings, videos, and class discussions will begin with a concept called "building for eternity" and continue with topic areas including, but not limited to: spirituality, identity development, coping with the dynamics of oppression, psychological assessment, issues in education, Black family and male/female relationships, African American mental health and mental health illness, criminal justice and juvenile offenders, and the role of the Black psychologist in their community. |
| 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. |
| AFAM 163 | LIT AND NATIONALISM | RADHAKRISHNAN, R | Same as English 105. In this course, we will explore and question the thematic, ideological, and aesthetic connections between literature and nationalism. Why and how did nationalism become the normative threshold of collectivity and of populism? What are the mechanisms that create the subjectivity of cultural and literary nationalism? What are the links between modernity and the formation of national sensibility? Is nationalism Eurocentric and western in its modularity? What happens when nationalism travels to Asia and Africa? If nationalism is anchored in the cultural and literary politics of colonial modernity, how do we differentiate non-western nationalisms from western nationalisms? What role does “the state” play in determining who the people are and how they should organize themselves ideologically? How does “national literature” deal with issues such as, gender, class, sexuality, self and other, insiders and outsiders, sovereign citizens and immigrants, war and peace, reason and madness? These are some of the questions that we will be pursuing as we make our way through the following novels that embody symptomatically the many contradictory claims and valences of nationalism: Virginia Woolf’s MRS. DALLOWAY, E.M. Forster’s A PASSAGE TO INDIA, Kazuo Ishiguro’s REMAINS OF THE DAY, Amitav Ghosh’s THE SHADOW LINES, Ngugi wa ThiongO’s A GRAIN OF WHEAT, and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s NERVOUS CONDITIONS. |