| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| AFAM 40B | AFRICAN AMERICAN II | SEXTON, J. | Introduction to the history of modern racial thinking in Western society and its relationship to the material contexts of racial oppression, with emphasis on its development in British colonies and U.S. |
| AFAM 115 | PHIL&MATRIX TRILOGY | CHANDLER, N. | 1. This course examines the problem of how to understand the time of our own lives historically - conceived as a critical archaeology of the future.
2. Its core focus is the blockbuster film project, The Matrix Trilogy (The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions), directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski from 1999 to 2004, including the special project that was also part of it, a collection of short films presented under the title Animatrix, involving several Japanese and Korean, and Chinese American, artists and directors working in manga and anime.
3. While the signature of the course is an engagement of the rich diversity of the religious, philosophical, and ethical traditions that have bearing for thinking a collective human future, as well as key global level historical turning points -- all of which are densely interwoven in The Matrix Trilogy -- its critical guide is the way in which the historicity of the African Diaspora, African Americans in the United States in particular, expose the most profound questions about the sense of a common futural historicity for humankind in general over the coming centuries.
4.The student who completes this course will understand both the need and some of the ways to go beyond traditional forms of history which remain so tied to traditional forms of identification in order to engage fully the diverse ways of life -- real and imagined -- that make up today’s globalized senses of world.
5. In addition to the Ultimate Matrix Collection from 2004, core documents for the course will include selections: from the contemporary writers and intellectuals Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Ernst Mayer, Raymond Kurzweil, Roger Penrose, Stuart A. Kauffman, Stephen Jay Gould, Shirley Tilghman, Ralph Ellison, Octavia Butler, Fredric Jameson, William Gibson, Hortense Spillers, Cornel West, Kevin Kelly, Edwin Black, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Fred Moten, and Frank Wilderson III; from several films of the 1990s, Microsomos (Claude Nuridsany, Marie Pérennou, Jacques Perrin, 1996), A Bug’s Life (Pixar Studios, 1998), Ghost Dog (Jim Jarmusch, Forest Whitaker, 1999), Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii and Masmune Shirow, 1996), and, perhaps its sequel, Innocence [Ghost in the Shell 2](Mamoru Oshii and Masmune Shirow, 2004); from several classic texts in philosophy, natural science, literature, and cinema including work by Plato, Rene* Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Arnold Schopenhauer, Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley, Lewis Carroll, Friedrich Nietzsche, Herbert Spencer, Gregor Mendel, Sigmund Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Albert Einstein, Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Akira Kurosawa; and from several major texts in religion and philosophy, not only the Abrahamic religious traditions (Judaic, Christian, and Islamic), but the Upanishads of the Indian sub-continent, and Buddhist thought in the texts of Nagarjuna, Santaraksita, Dōgen, as well as twentieth century Japanese and Buddhist philosophy in the work of Nishida, Kitarō.
6. This course is part of the STAR initiative -- Science, Technology, and Race -- established within the Program in African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine.
Same as COM LIT 130 and ANTHRO 169. |
| AFAM 118 | FUTURE MIND & WORLD | CHANDLER, N. | The Future of the Mind and the Senses of World: Or, On “Double-Consciouness”
We now know that we can no longer even imagine that we live only in a world; rather, there are only worlds, always at least plural – natural as well as social. With special reference to the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, especially his idea of “double-consciousness”, this seminar course explores the complex questions of self (identity, intention, consciousness, mind), home (and its opposing avatars of exile, migration, fugitivity), and world (simulacrum, universe, multi-verse, cosmos). It engages philosophy, religion, physics, historiography, literature, and social thought. Therein, paradoxically, questions of hierarchy, power, and enslavement, or freedom, and sovereignty, seem to always remain at issue. An exemplary and useful selection of brief readings will be chosen from among: the Vedas, Plato, Nargajuna, Santaraksita, Dōgen, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Tagore, Freud, Du Bois, Soseki, Boas, Nishida, Einstein, Artaud, Schrödinger, Gödel, Ellison, Fanon, DeCerteau, Derrida, Jameson, Kauffman, Gould, Spillers, Penrose, Spivak, Nancy, Kaku. The aim of the course is to reflect critically on our tools of thought and reflection for addressing future senses of world -- of possible coming senses of consciousness, home, mind, and identity.
This course is part of the STAR initiative -- Science, Technology, and Race -- established within the Program in African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine.
Same as ANTHRO 139 and COM LIT 120. |
| AFAM 118 | MUSLIM CINEMA | DAULATZAI, S. | Using film and documentary, theory and criticism, this course will explore the complex world of Muslim diasporas forged through the overarching nexus of colonialism, slavery and empire. In exploring the captivating diversity of Muslims lives, this course will situate a range of experiences within the rubrics of race, class, gender, sexuality and nationhood. With cinema and visual culture as our guide, our exploration of Muslim diasporas will provide a platform with which to interrogate a broad range of issues and debates, including the formation of national identities, race and the colonial encounter, gender and imperialism, aesthetics and power, and resistance and immigration.
Same as FLM&MDA 190. |
| AFAM 118 | AFRICA 1500-1900 | BORUCKI, A. | This course is an introduction of the history of Africa through the lens of the transatlantic slave trade from the sixteenth to the 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 connections of Africans with Europeans, the role of Africans in making this traffic, and the interrelated political and cultural landscapes to the specifics of regionally grounded histories. The course will familiarize students with various genres and formats of historical writing such as introductory books of African history, edited volumes filled with primary sources, textbooks, monographs, an annotated diary (of an African slave trader), scholarly articles, and a graphic history.
Same as HISTORY 134C and INTL ST 179. |
| AFAM 134B | CARIB HISTORY II | JAMES, W. | Same as HISTORY 164B. |
| AFAM 143 | BLACK POP MUSIC II | MUTERE, M. | Black Popular Music tells the story of how African-American cultural agency has captivated and cultivated the popular imagination worldwide 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 humanizing agency through a culturally-centered appreciation of Black Popular Music.
Same as Music 146. |
| AFAM 162W | BLACK PROTEST TRADN | WILDERSON, F. | History and discourses of the black protest tradition. Traces emergence of black protest against racial slavery and white supremacy from the early colonial period to present and the complex elaboration of identity politics within black communities in the twentieth century.
Prerequisite: Satisfactory completion of the Lower-Division Writing requirement.
Restriction: Upper-division students only. |