W.E.B. DU BOIS DEPARTMENT OF AFRO-AMERICAN STUDIES UNDERGRADUATE & GRADUATE COURSE DESCRIPTIONS UNDERGRADUATE

Transcription

1 W.E.B. DU BOIS DEPARTMENT OF AFRO-AMERICAN STUDIES UNDERGRADUATE & GRADUATE COURSE DESCRIPTIONS UNDERGRADUATE AFROAM 101. Introduction to Black Studies Interdisciplinary introduction to the basic concepts and literature in the disciplines covered by Black Studies. Includes history, the social sciences, and humanities as well as conceptual frameworks for investigation and analysis of Black history and culture. AFROAM 111. Survey African Art Major traditions in African art from prehistoric times to present. Allied disciplines of history and archaeology used to recover the early history of certain art cultures. The aesthetics in African art and the contributions they have made to the development of world art in modern times. (Gen.Ed. AT, G) AFROAM 113. African Diaspora Arts Visual expression in the Black Diaspora (United States, Caribbean, and Latin America) from the early slave era to the present. AFROAM 117. Survey of Afro-American Literature (4 credits) The major figures and themes in Afro-American literature, analyzing specific works in detail and surveying the early history of Afro-American literature. What the slave narratives, poetry, short stories, novels, drama, and folklore of the period reveal about the social, economic, psychological, and artistic lives of the writers and their characters, both male and female. Explores the conventions of each of these genres in the period under discussion to better understand the relation of the material to the dominant traditions of the time and the writers' particular contributions to their own art. (Gen.Ed. AL, U) (Planned for Fall) AFROAM 118. Survey of Afro-American Literature II (4 credits) Introductory level survey of Afro-American literature from the Harlem Renaissance to the present, including DuBois, Hughes, Hurston, Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, Walker, Morrison, Baraka and Lorde. (Gen. Ed. AL, U) (Planned for Spring) AFROAM 132. African-American History (4 credits) The main aim of this course is to make you familiar with some of the most important developments and issues in African American history until the Civil War. We will focus on the black experience under slavery and the struggle for emancipation. Topics include the Atlantic slave trade, evolution of African American communities and culture, the free black community, the distinct experience of black women, and the black protest tradition. The format of the course is lecture supplemented by class discussions. (Gen.Ed. HS, U) (Planned for Fall) AFROAM 133. African-American History Civil War-1954 Major issues and actions from the beginning of the Civil War to the 1954 Supreme Court decision. Focus on political and social history: transition from slavery to emancipation and Reconstruction; the Age of Booker T. Washington; urban migrations, rise of the ghettoes; the ideologies and movements from integrationism to black nationalism. (Gen.Ed. HS, U) (Planned for Spring) AFROAM 151. Literature & Culture (4 credits) This course focuses on African American cultural expressions contributing to the shape and character of contemporary African American (and U.S.) culture and how these forms have influenced and been represented by African American writers. The course uses African American literature and culture of the 1960s and 1970s 1

2 in their many manifestations, especially poetry, criticism, theater, music, and the visual arts as an entry into the concerns listed above. A particular focus of the course will be the ways in which domestic and international political movements, such as Civil Rights, Black Power, anti-colonial, and non-aligned intersected with black cultural efforts, deeply influencing the formal and thematic choices of African American artists. (Gen.Ed AL,U) AFROAM 155. Revolutionary Concepts in Afro-American Music I Introduction to history of Black music from its African origins to the end of the 19th century. (Gen.Ed. AT, U) (Planned for Fall) AFROAM 156. Revolutionary Concepts in Afro-American Music II This course will examine the development of Afro-American music during the twentieth century with an especial focus on links to the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement. In particular, the class will survey the variegated styles and productions of artists, including Bessie Smith, Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson, Ma Rainey, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Memphis Minnie, Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, Lightnin Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Mary Lou Williams, Charlie Bird Parker, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Smith, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, Randy Weston, Nina Simone, Charles Mingus, Archie Shepp, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, Booker T. & the MGs, Nikki Giovanni, Sun Ra, the Chicago Art Ensemble, Sonia Sanchez, Albert Ayler, Leon Thomas, Jayne Cortez, The Watts Prophets, The Last Poets, and Gil Scott-Heron. (Gen.Ed. AT, U) (Planned for Spring) AFROAM 161. Introduction to Afro-American Political Science Survey of the politics of the Black community in the U.S. The history of Black political development, major theories which explain Black political life, social, economic, psychological and institutional environment from which Black politics flows. Attention paid to 1988 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson and its relevance to the 2008 election of Barack Obama. (Gen.Ed. SB, U) AFROAM The Grassroots Experience in American Life and Culture I and II This course combines instruction in research techniques in a variety of Humanistic and Social Science disciplines, and hands-on experience with those techniques, with substantive materials focusing on the long struggle of minority populations for full participation in American cultural and public life. As students go through the year-long course, they will be encouraged to attempt their own research investigations, and in the second semester will be required to undertake a substantial piece of individual research, under the guidance of their mentor. (Gen. Ed. I, U) AFROAM 190G. Racism: the American Experience Some present-day examples of racism in the workplace and criminal justice system. The roots of racism in North America. Examination of the various uses and purposes of racism as they developed over the course of the nation's history. The World War II incarceration of Japanese-Americans and the FBI's suborning of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The investigation and analysis of contemporary racism as expressed in, and revealed by, the print media of today. AFROAM 191A. African American Short Stories (256) Students in this course will receive an introduction to the African American short story and to the major themes, issues, concepts, as well as the literary techniques and forms prevalent in African American literature. AFROAM 222. Black Church in America Survey of West African religions. The development of the Black Christian Church in its visible and "invisible" institutional forms during the colonial period, and the merging of these two branches, free and slave, following 2

3 the Civil War. Also the emergence of Holiness and Pentecostal sects, the impact of urban migrations on black spiritual expression, the Black Church and civil rights, gender issues, and the recent challenge of Islam. AFROAM 232. History of Black Nationalism Black nationalism in the United States, beginning with voluntary associations developed by free blacks in the late 19th century up to the Afrocentric "hip-hop" expressions of the 1990s. The interrelationships between the economic, political, and cultural forms of African American nationalism analyzed along with its secular and religious expressions. The intimate connections between nationalist and assimilationist tendencies in African American life. AFROAM 234. The Harlem Renaissance (4 credits) Exploration of the cultural explosion also termed the New Negro movement, from W.E.B. Du Bois through the early work of Richard Wright. Essays, poetry, and fiction, and the blues, jazz, and folklore of the time examined in terms of how Harlem Renaissance artists explored their spiritual and cultural roots, dealt with gender issues, sought artistic aesthetic and style adequate to reflect such concerns. Readings supplemented by contemporary recordings, visual art, and videos. (Gen.Ed. AL, U) AFROAM 235. Black Sociological Thought Assessment of current sociological views of the African-American experience. (Gen.Ed. SB, U) AFROAM 236. History of the Civil Rights Movement (4 credits) Examination of the Civil Rights Movement from the Brown v. Topeka decision to the rise of Black power. All the major organizations of the period, e.g., SCLC, SNCC, CORE, NAACP, and the Urban League. The impact on white students and the anti-war movement. (Gen.Ed. HS, U) AFROAM 238. Arts and Cultural Identity Explores the arts as they are used to express cultural identity. It will examine various genres of art by artists of color and their application of cultural and social issues to their work. Using the exhibits and performances presented in the Augusta Savage Art Gallery, the curator will draw on those presentations for discussions and critiques of the arts as reflective of culture and as historical record. The course will include readings by and about artists, video viewings, the creation of arts projects, and discussions about the relationship of creativity to cultural expression. AFROAM 243 Afro-American Folklore A close look at the origins, variety, nature, and functions of Afro-American folklore, including contexts for collecting and understanding it and its manifestations in literature and popular music. AFROAM 244. Afro-Am Poetry: Beginning to 1900 An intensive look at African American poetry before the Harlem Renaissance. It will encompass orature and literature, including folk and popular music as well as the literary output of such African American writers as Phillis Wheatley, George Moses Horton, James Whitfield, Frances E. W. Harper, Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, and Fenton Johnson. It will also take up the relation of African American poetry to broad political and cultural movements, such U.S. republicanism, abolitionism, romanticism, transcendentalism, local color, and modernism. (Gen.Ed. AL, U) AFROAM 245. The Slave Narrative An examination of the African American genre of slave narratives, from the shortest paragraph-long examinations to book-length manifestations that captured the imaginations of 19 th century America and the world. The course will encompass issues of race, gender, sexuality, and historical and literacy contexts of 3

4 important narratives, which may include those of Olaudah Equiano, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and Harriet Jacobs, as well as modern and contemporary narratives influenced by the genre. AFROAM 252. Afro-American Image In American Writing Examination of a representative sampling of poetry, prose and/or drama by American writers -- black and white, male and female -- depicting African-American characters and issues related directly to the lives of African Americans. Texts chosen from the works of such authors as Jefferson, Poe, Stowe, Melville, Douglass, Delany, Dunbar, Eliot, Faulkner, Hurston, Wright, Baldwin, Styron, Baraka, and Morrison. We will analyze and interpret material in light of issues of race, gender, class, politics, historical time frame, and artistic aesthetic, in order to characterize the depictions of African-Americans in the works, and to understand what those depictions reflect about individual writers, about segments of American society, and about American society as a whole. AFROAM 253: Pre-Civil War Black Writing A survey of African American and Black Atlantic writings in the Age of Revolution, from the late eighteenth century to the beginning of the Civil War, with particular emphasis on how writers negotiated the promises and ideals of the revolutionary period. Course considers a variety of genres (autobiography, speeches, fiction, drama, poetry, etc.) and explores how different forms of writing were mobilized in the struggle for emancipation. Other topics may include the beginnings of the African American novel; the drama of slavery; relationship between written and expressive culture; speeches and Abolitionism; the rise of black periodical and pamphlet culture; black narratives in the Atlantic World, including slave narratives, travelogues, natural histories, and other fictional and non-fictional accounts. AFROAM 254. Introduction to African Studies (4 credits) Introduction to Africa from an interdisciplinary perspective. The chronological sequence from pre-history to contemporary times. Political development and processes, the arts, ethnography, social structures, and economies. (Gen.Ed. HS, U) AFROAM 257. Contemporary African-American Novel Survey of the Black novel from 1940 to the present; major Black novelists of the contemporary period. Emphasis on what these novelists have to say about the black experience in the latter half of the 20th-century. Themes include alienation and identity, revolution, and existentialism. Attention to the styles of various writers and their use of the language. AFROAM 262. Radical Traditions in American History The rise and fall of various radical movements in the United States from the American Revolution to the 1960s. The success and limitations of ideologies and strategies adopted by American radicals to address the problems of political inequality and social injustice. Topics include abolitionism, labor movements, populism, socialism, feminism, and the civil rights movement. AFROAM 264. Foundations of Black Education in the U.S. The education of blacks from Reconstruction to Includes public schools, colleges, and non-school education. The involvement of religious associations, philanthropic organizations, the Freedman s Bureau, the Black church, and the Federal Government will also be discussed. (Gen. Ed. HS, U) AFROAM 265. The Blues Came Down Like Dark Night Showers of Rain A comprehensive exploration of the African American musical genre known as the blues, including definitions; African and African American roots; social, psychological, and spiritual uses; common and uncommon themes and images; music and lyric structures; regional and chronological stylistic variations; and employment in African American literature. Includes live performances and a wide variety of recordings, films, and videos. No prior knowledge of the blues or reading knowledge of music required. (Gen.Ed. AT, U) 4

5 AFROAM 290G. Introduction to Black Global Studies This course uses the critical methodologies of the humanities and social sciences to consider some of the questions provoked by African and African diasporan experiences. Course materials will allow students to survey the lasting contributions of Africans and their descendants to the development of various world civilizations and examine historical relationships between the individual actors and larger social forces. The five major themes that we will use to comprehend the experiences of African-descended peoples are Beauty, Identity, Power, Visions of the Past, and Visions of the Future. AFROAM 291A. Student Activism in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements Throughout the era of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, young people were often in the vanguard impacting and affecting change, as leaders and as major participants in the struggles for social justice. Young people, including elementary, high school, college, and university students throughout the country, willingly put their lives and academic futures at risk for the purposes of a greater good. This course will cover student activism during the major turning points from the 1950s through the 70s. Topics to be covered will include: the 1954 Brown v. the Board of Education decision, the Montgomery Movement, the Little Rock Nine, the Freedom Rides, the Sit-In Movement, and the Black Studies Movement. The course will look at student activism of such Civil Rights and Black Power Movement groups as the NAACP, SCLC, NAG, SNCC, CORE, and the Black Panther Party. Attention also will be given to the groups formed by the Black Feminists during the 1970s. AFROAM 291E. The Black Seventies Through Film This course focuses on the cinematic representations of African Americans in the 1970s, a crucial transitional era marked by the demise of racial segregation and the fulfillment of formal political and civil rights for Black Americans on the one hand, and the decline of the quality of life in urban centers and unprecedented rates of incarceration on the other. How did 1970s filmmakers engage with and refute dominant cultural and Hollywood images of African Americans while crating a cinematic language specific to African American experiences? Discussion topics include: The Ghetto Aesthetic; Beyond Hollywood: African American Art Cinema; Interrogating Blaxploitation; Uses of Music; Gender Portrayals; The Black Hero. AFROAM 293N. Voices of New Africa House, Part I A mixed-voice choral music class celebrating two methods of teaching: by ear to perform a cappella and by sheet music containing arrangements for 4-part harmony with piano accompaniment. Learn to sing material from the African-American song-style canon. We will study and perform music created in the 17, 18 and 19th centuries beginning with creations by slaves in the United States through the 20 and 21st century?s contemporary sounds. Other genres we will explore come under the umbrella of blues, jazz, gospel, R&B, soul, funk and folk music. Additionally, we will explore compositions from many European masters. In other words, we will learn to perform songs from around the world. Expand your range and expression and become more confident in performance. Understand proper vocal delivery based on the genre in a number of tempos. Learn proper phrasing, riffing, shouting, scale patterns, rhythmic articulation and much more. Make your voice more powerful while diminutive upon demand. AFROAM 297A. Black Springfield African American urban studies is a vibrant area of intellectual inquiry. This course will acquaint you with a variety of disciplinary tools for studying African American life in the city of Springfield, Massachusetts, our urban neighbor just 25 miles away. We will start with a broad survey of the city's history that began when William Pynchon and a company of Puritan men from Roxbury, founded Springfield in 1636 at the confluence of three rivers. Pynchon established a trading and fur-collecting post and enslaved Africans became a vital part of its labor force. Springfield officially became a city in May of 1852, but by then slavery had ended and 5

6 the city had developed a reputation as a Underground Railroad depot thanks to antislavery freedom fighters like Thomas Thomas, Eli Baptist, and John Brown. Springfield's location at the crossroads of New England is the most significant reason for its economic progress as an industrial city. In 2010, Springfield was a city of 156,060, that was 22.3% Black or African American, and 4.7% from Two or More Races (1.5% White and Black or African American). Latin@s of any race made up 38.8% of the population (33.2% Puerto Rican). It is a multicultural community, and is the regional center for banking, finance, and courts. Field trips to important sites, interviews with Ms. LaJuana Hood, founder of Springfield's Pan African Historical Museum USA, as well as other important culture bearers, will be special facets of the course. Community engaged research will be emphasized. AFROAM 297D. The African American Image in Film This course focuses on the cinematic representations of African Americans in film from the 1890s to the present day. What were the dominant racial and gender images of African Americans that emerged during the slavery era? Why did such images achieve such popularity in film? How did black filmmakers engage with and refute dominant cultural and Hollywood images of African Americans while creating a cinematic language specific to African American experiences? What transformations have occurred in the images of African Americans in film since World War II, and especially since the 1960s? AFROAM 297F. Black Women in the Americas and the Caribbean This course will survey the historical, political, economic and socio-cultural realities that Black women in the Americas and the Caribbean have faced and continue to face. A variety of readings by and about Black women will highlight the ways in which race, class, and gender combine to operate in the lives of Black women. Special attention will be paid to Black women as laborers, Black women as political activists, and the various ways in which Black women in the Americas and the Caribbean experience race and gender. AFROAM 297G. Contemporary Issues in Afro-American Education This course will build upon a historical perspective in order to examine current issues affecting African- Americans in the US education system. Topics covered will include the causes and consequences of the blackwhite academic achievement gap, continued racial segregation across and within schools, and affirmative action among others. Designed as the second part of a two-part education sequence. (AFROAM 264 is the first part but is not required to take the course). AFROAM 326. Black Women in U.S. History The history of African American women from the experience of slavery to the present. Emphasis on the effect of racist institutions and practices on women. The ways in which women organized themselves to address the needs of African Americans in general and their own in particular. The achievements of such leaders as Mary Church Terrell, Harriet Tubman, Ella Baker, and Mary McLeod Bethune as well as lesser known women. (Gen.Ed. HS, U) AFROAM 331. Life and Writings of W.E.B. Du Bois Examination of the life and thought of perhaps America's greatest intellectual activist and one of Massachusetts' native sons. Microfilm research in the Du Bois archives in the Tower Library. (Gen.Ed. U) AFROAM 332. Blacks and Jews Our aim in this course is to share with students an understanding of the scope and diversity of the relations of African Americans and Jewish Americans in the U.S., during the past 300 years. One of our purposes is to minimize the tendency toward comparing degrees of suffering, or posing an Us versus Them framework that ignores the more complex interactions that have characterized Black-Jewish relations over time and in different geographical parts of the U.S. 6

7 AFROAM 344. Black Speculative Fiction Examination of the development of black speculative fiction in the nineteenth and twentieth century, including science fiction, fantasy, gothic literature, magical realism, the detective novel, and/or related genres. Topics of discussion may include slavery and colonialism; diaspora; science, technology, and the environment; race and the paraliterary; utopianism and dystopianism; blackness and metaphysics; Afrofuturism. AFROAM 345. Southern Literature Southern literature by African Americans, including slave narratives, autobiography, fiction and poetry. Concepts and issues of time, oppression and violence, culture and tradition, family and community, roots of social change as they impact factors of identity, race, class, and gender. (Gen.Ed. AL, U) AFROAM 350. African American Islam A history of Islamic influences among peoples of African descent in North America: Muslim beliefs of enslaved Africans, the spread of Ahmadi and Sunni Islam in the 20th-century, and the Nation of Islam and its offshoots. AFROAM 354. Contemporary African Novel AFROAM 361. Revolution in the Third World Changing nature of revolution in the Third World, from the "classical" revolutions in Cuba, China, Algeria and Vietnam to the popular insurgencies of Grenada, Iran, the Philippines and Haiti. Internal and external factors which have contributed to the fall from grace of many of these once popularly supported struggles. AFROAM 362. Writings of Frantz Fanon This course will examine the life and writings of Dr. Frantz Fanon, the Martiniquean psychiatrist who cast his lot with the FLN, the National Liberation Front of the Algerian Revolution. Fanon s analysis of colonialism and his theories of anti-colonial struggle in America. Thus Fanon s significance lies in his contribution to the evolution of revolutionary political thought from Marx s day to the present. Particular attention will be paid to Fanon s search for personal and political identity through writing and struggle, as well as his views on race, his class analysis of national liberation struggle, and his prescriptions for the creation of a new, more just, world social order. AFROAM 365. Composition: Style & Organization Expository writing focusing primarily on argumentative and narrative essays. Discussion and practice of logic inductive and deductive reasoning as it relates to the argumentative essay form. Topics as thesis on main idea, organization, style, unity, supporting evidence, avoiding logical fallacies, and basic writing mechanics, including constructing sentences, paragraphing, transitions, and correct grammar. AFROAM 390A. Jazz and Blues Literature (348) A representative sampling of poetry, novels, short stories, and plays by black and white, male and female writers who draw upon jazz and blues music and lyrics either formally, stylistically, thematically, or spiritually. (Gen.Ed. AL, U) AFROAM 390B. Life & Work of Richard Wright (349) An intensive look at the life and work of Richard Wright, encompassing his poetry and fiction. We will examine the development of Wright's work from the 1930s to the 1950s, paying attention to historical and cultural developments that contributed to his vision, with particular emphasis on reflections of Afro-American culture in his work. No prerequisites. 7

8 AFROAM 390C. Afro-Am Literature of 1930s An intensive look at the literature of African Americans between the Harlem Renaissance and the emergence of Richard Wright and his naturalistic vision. The historical context, the continuing influence of the Harlem Renaissance, other art of the period, the influence of the political climate on the poetry and prose of representative African American writers of the 1930s, and the directions for African American literature of the 1940s mapped out in the 1930s. (Gen.Ed. AL, U) AFROAM 390D. Langston Hughes An intensive look at the life and work of Langston Hughes, encompassing his poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and drama. We will examine the development of Hughes s work from the 1920s to the 1960s, paying attention to historical and cultural developments that contributed to his vision, with particular emphasis on Hughes s use of African American music in his works. This honors course will require additional participation and a group presentation beyond normal course requirements. (Gen.Ed. AL, U) AFROAM 390E. Race, Ethnicity & Gender in U.S. History Examination of situations which illuminate intersection of race, ethnicity, and gender in antebellum U.S.: contact and interaction between American Indians, African-Americans and European-Americans in colonial New England; relationship between white and black women, both slave and free, in the South; and the development of racist ideologies and behavior in the white working classes. (Gen.Ed. HS, U) AFROAM 390G. Uncle Tom s Cabin: The Novel (346) The course will focus on Harriet Beecher Stowe s influential novel Uncle Tom s Cabin, locating its roots in earlier publications such as slave narratives; discussing the novel in the context of the literary aesthetics of its era and its social and political impact in its times; and exploring how other writers, and Stowe herself, responded to the issues it raised and the criticism it provoked. AFROAM 390J. Cross-Disciplinary Contemporary Issues: War and Patriotism in African American Literature and History The course will provide students an introduction through the context of war and patriotism to the complex social and political literature and history of African Americans. This course also will afford students an opportunity to read and think critically about the various meanings and purposes of war and patriotism. By focusing on war and patriotism, we are able to condense over two hundred years of literature and history into specific flashpoints where definitions of nation, patriotism, war, and citizenship are questioned, defended and sometimes redefined by African Americans. (Gen. Ed. I, U) AFROAM 390K. The Life and Art of Sterling Brown (343) A discussion of the life and major poetry and prose works of Sterling A. Brown, placing his works in the context of American literature and culture (especially music and folklore) of his times. AFROAM 391A. Political Thought of Martin & Malcolm The contrasting philosophies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. on race and racism, non-violence and self-defense, integration and separatism, Christianity and Islam; their interaction and involvement with the Civil Rights Movement; the northern and southern political and social culture that shaped their thoughts and worldviews; and their changing conceptions of the appropriate tactics and strategy for the black freedom struggle in America. AFROAM 391B. Modern Afro-American Women Novelists Examine novels written by African American women from the Harlem Renaissance to the present. The course will engage a simple, but fundamental issue: is there such a thing as modern African American women s 8

9 literature? If so, how might we define it? Some of the ways that we come at this issue will be from the point of genre (e.g., the novel of manners, the slave narrative, the sentimental novel, the gothic romance, the historical novel, and so on.), audience reception, and the relation of the novels to popular culture. Historical contexts of the novels and the impact of various artistic, intellectual, and social movements (e.g., the Civil Rights, Black Power/Arts, First and Second Wave Feminism, and Gay Liberation) on the formal and thematic choices of the authors studied will also be considered. AFROAM 391C. Creative Writing-Fiction A writing workshop on the techniques, strategies, and craft of writing short fiction. Format includes class analysis of student's work, exercises in specific techniques such as narrative, description, dialogue, etc. AFROAM 391E. Afro-American Literature of the 1940s In this course we will examine African American literature and culture from the beginning of World War II through the onset of the Cold War. We will focus primarily on literature and film, but will also consider the visual arts, music, and theater. We will investigate the relation of black cultural production to the political and social events of the era as well as to such artistic movements and popular and high culture genres as modernism, social realism, naturalism, pulp fiction, and horror films. AFROAM 391F. Afro-American Literature of the 1950s This course will examine African American literature and culture from beginning of the Cold War until the black student movement of the early 1960s. It will take up a range of cultural forms, including the visual arts, music, theater, and film as well as literature. It will look at the political and social context out which these cultural forms grew. It will also consider such generic questions as the relation of black cultural production to such artistic movements as modernism, the new American poetry (e.g., the Beats), social realism, and naturalism and to popular and high culture representations of African Americans and African American culture. AFROAM 391G. Critique of the Concept of Racism Most investigations of racism tend to equate it to race theory, persistent prejudice, institutionalized discrimination and/or consign it to the realms of biology, psychology or sociology. This seminar will focus on racism in North America with particular attention to the Native American, African, and African-American experiences with a special focus on the role of racism as both economic and political capital in the development of American society. AFROAM 392C. Songbirds, Blueswomen and Soulwomen The focus for this course is the cultural, political, and social issues found in the music and history of African American women performers. The primary emphasis in the course will be on African American women in Jazz, Blues, and Soul/R&B, but students also will study African American women composers as well as Spiritual- Gospel and Opera performers. AFROAM 394A. African Art History Reliable chronology for African art history of placing of the art forms of some of the ethnic cultural groups, associations or countries in Africa in historical perspective. Allied disciplines of anthropology and archaeology used to recover early history of certain cultures. Related oral sources discussed. AFROAM 395A. The Writings of Chinua Achebe Review of Achebe's writings, concentrating on his five novels and his writings on culture, literature, and politics. Achebe's contribution to the literature of the modern world. Works read in the context of tradition of modern African literature, of which Achebe is a seminal figure. 9

10 AFROAM 397A. Abolition & Anti-Slavery The rise of the abolition movement and political antislavery in the United States in the three decades before the Civil War. How abolitionists managed to make slavery an issue in national politics; the spread of political antislavery in the north after the rise of the controversy over slavery expansion. Older debates over the nature of moral reform movements, and some of the recent material on the role of African Americans and women in the efforts to abolish slavery. Evaluation of the success and limitations of the abolition movement as a radical movement against slavery and racial discrimination. Contact instructor for suggested background readings. AFROAM 397B. Native Americans & African Americans I Explores numerous levels and terms of the encounter between Native Americans and Blacks, including native tribal identity, Black identity, famous people of mixed ancestry, contested identities, Native Americans in jazz and pop music. Native and Black cultural traditions in intermarriage, Native Americans as slaves, slavery and freedmen, "free colored" communities, decoding historical documents, tribal legacy assertions, "triracials," and the impact of mixed ancestry on both Black and native communities. AFROAM 397C. Black Globalization and Imperialism This introductory seminar explores the changing content, practice, and value of "imperialism" and "globalization" as world historical forces. By focusing attention to their impact on Africans and African-descended peoples in the U.S., Latin American, and the Caribbean, the course emphasizes notions of race in the development and critical evaluation of these forces. Issues of historical agency, identity, and human rights will also be considered, as we reassess black experiences of victimization, collaboration, and resistance to European and American globalizing practices. AFROAM 397D. The Sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois AFROAM 397F. Native Americans & African Americans II Explores numerous levels and terms of the encounter between Native Americans and Blacks, including native tribal identity, Black identity, famous people of mixed ancestry, contested identities, Native Americans in jazz and pop music. Native and Black cultural traditions in intermarriage, Native Americans as slaves, slavery and freedmen, "free colored" communities, decoding historical documents, tribal legacy assertions, "triracials," and the impact of mixed ancestry on both Black and native communities. AFROAM 491C. Cuba: Social History of Race, Class & Gender This course is an advance undergraduate reading seminar that explores the social relations and everyday experiences of Cubans under the various political states under which they have lived - Spanish colonialism, capitalist republicanism, and revolutionary socialism. As we consider issues of social identity, the quest for social justice, and national sovereignty, we will keep the concepts of race, class, and gender centered. Two questions frame the course. What were the social conditions in which the Cuban Revolution emerged, and how have these conditions been transformed since 1959? AFROAM 494DI. Du Bois Senior Seminar This course is an upper-division course that provides a structured context for students to reflect on their own learning in their General Education courses and the courses they have taken in the AFROAM major. In the course we will attempt to connect skills and knowledge from multiple sources and experiences and apply theory to practice in various real world settings; engaging diverse and even contradictory points of view; and, understanding issues and positions contextually as students prepare to write their senior thesis. This course satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for students in the AfroAm major. 10

11 GRADUATE AFROAM 591A. Gender in Pan-African Studies (Undergraduate/Graduate) This course reviews the historical literature related to the social construction of masculinity and femininity for African and African-descended peoples. The course compares the ways gendered notions of family, community, and nation have impacted local and international projects of black liberation. In addition to the U.S. and Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America will be important regions of consideration. AFROAM 591B. Black Radical Thought (Undergraduate/Graduate) This course will focus on contributions to Marxist intellectual and political traditions by African and Africandescended thinkers. We will read and discuss works by major figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Walter Rodney, Amilcar Cabral, Angela Davis, Aime Cesaire, Franz Fanon. We also hope to introduce you to a selection of perhaps lesser known figures such as Babu, Achille Mbembe, George Padmore, Claudia Jones, Harry Haywood, James Boggs, Muhammad Ahmad. The course will require extensive reading, informed participation in class discussion, and a final paper. AFROAM 597C. Black Politics in America: Haiti and Cuba AFROAM 597D. The Sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois (Undergraduate/Graduate) This course will focus on the contributions of W.E.B. Du Bois to the study of the sociology of African Americans and race relations in the U.S. We will be examining such works as The Philadelphia Negro, the Atlanta University Studies, reports for various government agencies and selected essays. The course also will address Du Bois' influence on the work of other sociologists such as E. Franklin Frazier, St. Clair Drake, Oliver Cox and William Julius Wilson. The course is open to both graduate and upper-level undergraduate students. AFROAM 601. Slavery This seminar will focus on the rise of slavery in the United States until its destruction during the Civil War. We shall study slavery as a political and economic institution as well as a day to day lived experience. Within this historical framework, the emphasis will be on broad themes and interpretations: for example, the construction of the concept of "race" and the debate over the origins of slavery, the nature of slave communities and culture, gender and slavery, slavery in a comparative perspective, the significance of slave resistance and the politics of slavery. The format of the course is discussion. AFROAM 604. Black Intellectual History & Ideology Most of the principle currents of black intellectual history and ideology from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. Themes of assimilation, nationalism, black feminism, civil and political rights, religion, and international perspectives explored in some depth. Particular focus on the structural and thematic patterns which emerge through study of various ideas of African Americans ranging over a century and a half. AFROAM 605. African Americans and the Movement to Abolish Slavery This seminar will trace the rise of the antislavery movement in the United States fro the American Revolution to the Civil War, with particular attention to the role of African Americans. We will look at the ideology of black abolitionism, its contributions to the antislavery movement as a whole, black emigrationism, individual African American abolitionists, and African American women activists among other topics. We will attempt to explore the nature and impact of black abolitionism on the broader movement. In short, what difference did black abolitionism make on the rise, growth and success of the antislavery movement? The format of the course is discussion. Recent historical literature on the above topics will comprise the readings for the course. 11

12 AFROAM 610. The Life and Thought of W.E.B. Du Bois A critical examination of the life and thought of W.E.B. Du Bois, paramount black scholar and activist whose massive body of scholarly work spans the period from late 19 th through the mid-20 th centuries. Course covers the major works of Du Bois: The Philadelphia Negro; The Souls of Black Folk; Black Reconstruction; and, Dusk of Dawn. The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois, The World and Africa, and The Education of Black People, as well as selected essays by Du Bois, are also addressed. Topics include Du Bois as a sociologist, historian, propagandist, and creative writer, taking into account his often shifting views on art and culture, politics, leadership, civil rights and the color line, trade unionism, Pan-Africanism, socialism, internationalism, and, of course, double consciousness, among other issues. AFROAM 652. Literature of the Harlem Renaissance An intensive study of the literature and orature associated with the Harlem Renaissance, from the philosophical underpinnings supplied by Du Bois, Johnson, Locke, Garvey, and Randolph to the varied poetic visions of Hughes, Spencer, Brown, Cullen, and McKay to the fictional explorations of Toomer, Hurston, Fisher, Larsen, Fauset, and Thurman to the inspiration supplied by blues, jazz, and folklore of the African American tradition. Journals connected with the movement and the contributions of interested patrons such as Van Vechten, Cunard, and the Spingarns, and the relations of the Harlem Renaissance to other contemporary American literary currents (realism, naturalism, and modernism.) AFROAM 667. Afro-American Presence in American Literature An intensive survey of the portrayals of Afro-Americans in American literature, examining how characters, themes, and ideas are portrayed when filtered through the race, gender, class, politics, historical time frame, and individual artistic aesthetic of a variety of writers. AFROAM 690B. The Civil War and Reconstruction This course examines the revolutionary significance of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era in United States history. While not ignoring military history, it will focus on the demise of slavery during the war and contests over the meaning of freedom, citizenship, and the powers of the state. It will also look at African American political mobilization, constitutional issues, and vigilante violence during Reconstruction. Other topics include the role of Lincoln, the Confederate experiment, gender and Reconstruction, the transition from slavery to free labor, and the fall and aftermath of Reconstruction. Recent historical literature will constitute the bulk of the reading. Students will have the option of writing a historiographical paper on a topic of their choice or a more substantial research paper based on primary sources. AFROAM 690E. Blackness and Utopia This seminar explores the vibrant history of utopian thought in Black Studies and African American literature and culture. It considers how the black radical tradition poses particular challenges to Western utopian thought as well as how the question of utopia might contribute to, or help to re-configure, the future(s) of Black Studies. Topics of discussion will include Afrofuturism, utopia and the black radical tradition, cultures of life and cultures of death in Black Atlantic, black science and speculative fiction, and blackness and metaphysics. AFROAM 690F. Writing Gender & Sexuality: Reconstructions, Post-Reconstructions This seminar will serve as an intensive introduction to African American literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, focusing on issues related to gender and sexuality during the period. In addition to reading major and some minor texts, including works by Julia Collins, Charles Chesnutt, Frances E.W. Harper, Pauline Hopkins, Jean Toomer, W.E.B. Du Bois, and others, we will survey recent critical turns in the field, including work on gender and sexuality in performance studies and queer studies. 12

13 AFROAM 690J. Passing This course will focus on different manifestations of passing from the 19 th to the 21 st centuries, examining motivations, methods, and outcomes in the context of race, class, gender, sexuality, and literary aesthetic. AFROAM 690K. Writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance (650) This course will treat major writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance of the 1930s-1950s, setting them in the context of the White Chicago Renaissance, the New Negro Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, and other arts in Chicago in the era, and treating various aesthetics, goals, themes, symbols and images that express the zeitgeist of the movement. AFROAM 690P. New Approaches to Early African American Literature This course serves as an intensive introduction to early (pre-1900) African American literary studies. In addition to surveying works and authors in the period (Wheatley, Walker, Douglass, Delany, Wilson, Wells Brown, Jacobs, Harper, Chesnutt, and others), the course will focus on recent methodological turns and emerging scholarship in the field, including the (re)turn to the archive; performance; gender, sexuality, and queer studies; race and science; the New Southern Studies; hemispheric and global approaches to early African American literature; the black print sphere and material culture. The course will also include an introduction to archival research on literary and cultural topics. AFROAM 691A. Black Religious Movements in America Some of the major religious movements and religious institutions of African Americans before and after the American Revolutionary War. African religions in the New World; conversion experiences wrought by the Great Awakenings; the development of the "invisible institution" on slave plantations; the formation of the free black church; the institutional developments in black Christianity following Emancipation; the emergence of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements; the impact of urbanization on black urban and rural religious institutions, including the birth of the "store-front" church; the impact of charismatic religious leadership during the Great Depression; the growing influence of Islam, beginning in the 1920s; the role of the church in the modern Civil Rights movement; and trends in African American religion in the post-1960s era. AFROAM 691B. Black Workers in the U.S. Since Emancipation This seminar will attempt to accomplish two goals; to examine some of the significant issues in the history of African American workers since Emancipation and to introduce you to some of the most recent scholarship addressing those issues. We will begin with general studies of the history of capitalism in the U.S. and Black workers then proceed to a study of 1) The role of Black labor in several industries, 2) Black woman as workers, 3)Black labor and the Black power movement and 4) Herbert Hill s critiques of organized labor and the labor history establishment. AFROAM 691C. Historiographical Methods in Afro-American Studies This course will introduce you to some of the basics of what it means to read, think, and write as an historian. We will explore what historians do and why as well as the "objectivity question," the development of African American history as an academic discipline, and one or two current controversies. We also will learn how to locate and use the resources of the Du Bois Library such as microforms, government documents, the papers of W.E.B. Du Bois, on-line indices and collections, as well as those of such important national repositories such as the Library of Congress, the Moorland-Spingarn Collection at Howard University and the Schomburg Center of the N.Y. Public Library. AFROAM 691E. Modern African American Women Novelists This course will consider novels written by African American women since World War II. The principal issue the course will examine is the conception and representation of identity in these works. In other words, we will look at how these novelists pose (and sometimes answer) the basic question: is there such a thing as African 13

14 American women's literature? Among the issues the we will take up in approaching this question are the manipulation of generic conventions (e.g., those of science fiction, gothic romance, historiography, and the slave narrative); the question of audience (both actual and implied); the relation of "high" culture and "popular" culture; and the impact of various political and intellectual movements (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power/Black Arts, Second Wave Feminism, and Gay Liberation) on the formal and thematic choices of these authors. We will also use these novels to engage debates between major critical/theoretical positions (e.g., social realism, new criticism, Black aesthetic, structuralism, deconstructionism, feminism, and cultural studies) within African American literary studies since AFROAM 691F. Black Political Struggle and the American Political System An historical examination of the black political struggle for equality and citizenship in America the obstacles placed in the path of that struggle by the American political system in general and by the American state in particular and the countless ways in which racial politics have shaped the system that is called American Democracy. AFROAM 691G. African-American Poetry An intensive survey of African American poetry from Lucy Terry to the present, focusing on how language, form, and content reflect the ways in which African Americans have perceived their positions in American society and their roles as reflectors and/or shapers of African American culture. Includes various works of African, American, and British literature as well as works of African American folklore, and secondary critical works dealing with African American poetic tradition. AFROAM 691H. Race & Public Policy An historical examination of the role of public policy in both advancing and obstructing the black struggle for civic equality in America, beginning with the first specifically institutional effort to aid black freedmen and women, the Freedmen's Bureau. The development of public policy occasioned by the Great Depression, the emergence of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty in the Sixties, and the contemporary racialization of social policy that has denigrated Liberalism, fragmented the Democratic Party's traditional constituency, and elevated the conservative economic and political agenda to mainstream legitimacy. Specific issues include: welfare, affirmative action, jobs, poverty, and the criminal justice system. AFROAM 691K. The Politics of Slavery and the Coming of the Civil War This seminar will explore the significance of slavery in the growth of sectional politics in antebellum America. It will cover the rise of a distinctive slave society in the south and of antislavery in the north. We will look at early sectional differences over slavery such as the Missouri crisis and the nullification controversy. Finally, we will discuss the role of the slavery expansion issue and the breakdown of the second party system in causing the Civil War and the origins of secession. Recent historical literature will comprise the bulk of the readings for the course. AFROAM 691L. The Black Arts Movement This course will examine the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s in its many manifestations, including literature, theater, music, and the visual arts. A particular focus of the course will be the ways in which domestic and international political movements (e.g., Civil Rights, Black Power, and anti-colonial) intersected with Black Arts, deeply influencing the formal and thematic choices of African American artists. Much attention will be paid to the distinctive regional variations of the movement as well as to the ways in which Black Arts fundamentally changed how art is produced and received in the United States. 14

15 AFROAM 691M. The Life and Thought of C.L.R. James This seminar will entail the reading of several of James major works as well as a substantial selection from his political writings and correspondence. The purpose is to acquaint you with James own words on a variety of the political, social and cultural issues that he attempted to address during his lifetime. We also will do some reading in the secondary literature that attempts, with varying success, to situate James in various contexts. AFROAM 691N. Critical Race Theories (620) An interdisciplinary look at the critique of legal theory and practice mounted in recent years by a number of legal scholars of color. Readings from history, the social sciences, and law. Weekly papers, class presentations, and a final essay. AFROAM 691P. Critique of the Concept of Racism Most investigations of racism tend to equate it to race theory, persistent prejudice, institutionalized discrimination and/or consign it to the realms of biology, psychology or sociology. This seminar will focus on racism as an historical system in the settlement of the North American continent and the organization and development of the American nation state. For comparative purposes a brief survey will also be made of apartheid in South Africa and anti-semitism in the Third Reich. AFROAM 691Q. Black Images in Antebellum Literature The Southern Plantation, so largely dependent on peculiar institution of slavery for its existence, and so large a part of American history, is also largely the source of some of the most abiding literary characterizations (or images) of America Blacks. These literary characterizations and their validity or invalidity will be the main foci of the readings, class discussions and writings for this course. AFROAM 691R. Topics in the Modern Civil Rights Movement This seminar will explore the distinction between movements, organizations, and the activities of single individuals that has been obscured in recent discussions of the "long civil rights movement. We will be examining the histories of organizations that were formed prior to the post-brown Era and which have survived to this day. We will be exploring those groups and organizations that came into being post Brown and were defunct by the mid- 1970's. We will pay some brief attention to those groups and organizations that arose in the aftermath of the Civil Rights and Black liberation movements, i.e. since the mid- 1970's. The readings will include a selection from the latest scholarly monographs, as well as from memoirs and other primary sources available in print, microform and digital formats. A lengthy (18-20 pages) reading paper analyzing the goals, activities, successes and failures of a group, organization or individual will be required. Regular class attendance and participation in discussions is assumed. AFROAM 691S. Contemporary Afro-American Literature Themes of love, war, assimilation, feminism, lesbianism, homosexuality, and more can be found in contemporary Afro-American Literature. The objective of this class will be to identify and analyze some of these themes (the focus changing from semester to semester) in the works of such writers as Baldwin, Ellison, Morrison, Wright, Williams, and Hines. AFROAM 691T. Great Migrations: Migration, Urbanization and Modernity in the African American Novel Since 1900 This course considers the representation of migration, urbanization, and modernity (or post-modernity) in a range of African American novels published between 1900 and the present by such authors as Lloyd Brown, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, Toni Morrison, Ann Petry, Jean Toomer, John Edgar Wideman, and Richard Wright. Our focus is tracing the development of the city as a literary landscape for foundational African American narratives of freedom, empowerment, imprisonment, decay, and deracination. Particular attention will be paid to how gender and sexuality inflect 15

16 these narratives. We will also examine how narratives and rhetoric of the academy (particularly the fields of history and sociology), politics, and popular culture (especially music, film, and journalism) interact formally and thematically with the literary narratives we uncover. AFROAM 691U. Reimagining America The conventional meta-narrative of American history has been the story of freedom. Yet that narrative has been contested by many historical voices and by the contrary experiences of many peoples of color. This seminar will seek to relate the histories of Blacks, Asians, Latinos and Native Americans to the hegemonic narrative to try and conceptualize a more multi-cultural perspective of American history. It will also look at the resistance of some elements of the academy and society to these alternative viewpoints. AFROAM 691V. Black Brazil: Race, Politics and Culture AFROAM 691W. 21 st Century African American Literature AFROAM 691X. Comparative Slavery in the Americas This graduate seminar explores the centrality of slavery to the formation of the various societies of the Americas since the 1492, by considering the political, economic, and social outcomes of forced African labor in the region. The modern notion of race and the on-going self-liberation efforts of African-descendent women and men are some of these important outcomes. AFROAM 692A. Literary Theory This course will take up literary theory since 1965 and how it has influenced the study of African American literature and culture. The idea here is not to be comprehensive, but rather, to use the term popular a few years back, to stage a series of interventions into the sometimes troubled relationship between high theory and its successors and African American Studies. Our task will not simply be to examine different schools of critical theory, but to consider how theory has informed and challenged African American literary studies and vice versa. We will also seek to historicize various critical moments or movements rather than simply view them as pieces of an intellectual toolbox. AFROAM 692B. The Black Power Movement The purpose of this course is to offer an appraisal of the Black Power movement which has not been generally available to students of 1960s upheavals in American life. In far too many academic and popular accounts today, Black Power is portrayed as the evil twin of the modern Civil Rights movement, as an intransigent force that brought the black freedom movement of the 1960s era to wrack and ruin. Our aim is neither to defend no pillory the excesses of Black Power, but rather to demonstrate how this movement arose from the massive resistance of white Americans to extending those basic rights (which they themselves enjoyed) to the black population of this country; and to the inability of established Civil Rights organizations to overcome the obstacles stemming from this massive resistance. In the end, it is our contention that the collapse and failure of the Black Power phase of the Afro-American freedom struggle represented the collapse and failure of the Civil Rights movement itself. AFROAM 692C. Race and Ethnicity in American Life The purpose of this course is to examine issues of race and ethnicity in American life from the colonial period to the present, with a particular focus on changes wrought to both by the transformation of U.S. immigration laws in We shall be concerned as much with the ways in which American identity has been defined by partisans of one particular view or another, as by the actual ways in which this identity has manifested itself. How have the social constructs of ethnicity and race been variously defined, and their interrelationship conceived? Once American racial identities were rigidly fixed, how did successive immigrant groups adapt their existing ethnic identities to socially and politically imposed racial categories? In what ways have concepts of 16

17 ethnicity and race tended to promote/undermine the existence of working-class consciousness? What have been the gender manifestations of these concepts? In what ways have generational differences internal to ethnic or racial groups led to transformations of their group identities? What have been the mechanisms of solidarity/strife between "peoples of color" in their struggles against the dominant racism? And just how close are we to fulfilling (Rodney?) King's dream, anyway? AFROAM 692D. The Life and Work of Chinua Achebe AFROAM 692E. Du Bois and Booker T. Re-examined There is perhaps no more contentious issue in black history than the debate over the respective visions of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Partisans wrangle over their ideologies and associations, their social and political philosophies, their chosen terrains of struggle, their prescriptions for racial uplift and, of course, their respective characters. While the lives of both men do cry for psychoanalytic interpretation, for example both grew up without fathers, both of their mothers died in their sons teenage years, and both are, in a real sense, self-invented we shall resist that temptation to focus on their lives where they overlap, especially the period from 1895 to We want to locate Du Bois and Washington within the tradition of black leadership of which they were a part, situate them in the history of their times, track the development of their ideas, and reflect on the efficacy of their strategies and programs. AFROAM 692F. From Reconstruction to Renaissance This course examines African American literature and culture from the rise of Reconstruction through the onset of Jim Crow and the Great Migration to the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance. We will be particularly interested in the relationship between African American literature and culture during this period and the notions of modernity, modernism, and the artistic and social avant-garde in the United States. AFROAM 692G. African American Women s Narrative (622) Gender, race, class, slavery, the woman as artist, domesticity, and the territory of love, all are concepts that are located in the narratives of the African American women writers that have been selected for this course. Participants in this course will interrogate these issues, among others, in the narratives of nineteenth and twentieth century African American women and will be encouraged to examine critically the challenges and the victories that these writers present in their texts. Course participants also will be encouraged to find connections as well as any disjunctures among these writers and to develop their facility for discussing these narratives as specific instances of a writer s literary style and as an historically, as well as politically, marked literary texts in African American literature. AFROAM 692H. Africa in the Americas The effectiveness of cultural politics within the dynamics of the struggles for liberation, equality, and participation in the African diaspora. Seminar supplemented by visual cultures. AFROAM 692I. Africa in Latin America The error of slavery in the Americas was that it underestimated the resiliency of Africans over many generations of displacement, dislocation, dispossession, exploitation, and dehumanization in the New World. Although distorted history has often depicted enslaved subjects and cultures as passive and content in their new environments and conditions, this seminar contends that while enslaved Africans were questing for freedom, they equally devised strategies of survival and subversion even when it seemed that they were merely entertaining or adapting their pain and memories. In addition to establishing the African presence and contribution to the Americas, this seminar focuses on three main cultures as geographical case-studies: the USA, Brazil, and the Caribbean, especially the Bahamas. Through the perspectives of history, politics, sociology, anthropology, religion, literature, and culture, the course provides a balanced interrogation of the effectiveness of politics of culture and participation as opposed to cultural politics in the African Diaspora. 17

18 AFROAM 692J. African American Literary Movements (621) The New Negro Harlem Renaissance writers (1920s), the Chicago Writers (1930s and 1940s), the Black Arts and Aesthetics Movement writers (1960s and 1970s), and Black Womanist/Gender issues writers (1980s) mark four distinct periods of heightened literary production among African American writers. Participants in this course will investigate formative themes and concepts (protest/social literature, Pan-Africanism, uplift, Black aesthetic, among others.) that have shaped these movements and will examine the cross-talk shared concepts, ideas, and ideals that gives these movements as well as twentieth-century African American literature certain recognizable features that have been shaped and reshaped over time. AFROAM 692K. Class & Culture: 20 th Century AFROAM 692L. Black Studies: History, Theory & Practice This seminar begins with a discussion of antecedents to institutionalized Black Studies departments and programs that emerged on college campuses starting in 1968; explores the historical development of the field up to and including today; and concludes with informed speculation concerning challenges to its future. Readings and reflections on the origins of Black Studies on the UMass Amherst campus will specifically be covered. Topics for exploration include the interrelationship of Black Studies to traditional fields and disciplines, the transition of Black Studies from political movement to professionalized institutionalization, the changing audience involved in that transition, and interpretations of American history and culture within the Black Studies matrix that challenge standard narratives regarding these issues. AFROAM 692M. African American Women s Literature AFROAM 692N. Seminar on the NAACP AFROAM 692Q. African Diaspora Studies: Introduction to Concepts and Historiography *Required foundations course for Graduate Certificate in African Diaspora Studies. This course will offer an introduction to 1) key concepts and definitions e.g. diaspora, Pan-Africanism, Afrocentrism, etc. 2) the classic works in the field. 3) major trends in contemporary scholarship. We will be reading a selection of works discussing the contours and history of the field as well as examples of recent scholarship. Two papers on major themes will be required. This course is required for the Graduate Certificate in African Diaspora Studies and is open both to students pursuing the certificate and to graduate students with a general interest in the subject. AFROAM 692R. Afro-Latin American History This seminar course explores the historical agency and varied social identities of African-descended women and men in Latin America and in their subsequent migration to the United States. The course reviews the political, cultural, and social activities of these groups over three important historical periods: during colonial slavery; immediately following slave emancipation and the founding of independent Latin American nations; and our contemporary transnational moment. The course offers broad coverage of black communities throughout Latin America, with some emphasis on Brazil, Colombia, and Cuba. AFROAM 692S. Classic Figures of 20th Century Afro-American Literature A comprehensive and intensive examination of the work of major figures in 20 th century Afro-American literature, with an examination of the major relevant criticism. AFROAM 697A. Historical Sociology of the Black Atlantic: Afro-Latino Diasporas This course will dig into the histories, politics, and cultures of Afro-Latinos in the Americas and the complex and shifting relationship between African-Americans and Latinas/os in the United States. It will begin with an 18

19 historical analysis of the place of Afro-Latino diasporas within the Black Atlantic since the emergence of such diasporic formation in the long sixteenth century to quickly move into a discussion of the divide of the two Americas in the contexts of the Mexican-American War and the 1898 Spanish-Cuban-American War. We will then draw a general map of racial formations and black cultures in the Americas analyzing differences, patterns of similarity, and forms of interaction and exchange (e.g., political and cultural) of the African Diaspora throughout the Americas. After this the focus will turn into the United States and particularly on the relationship between Hispanic Caribbean Latinos and African-Americans (in the sense of U.S. Blacks) and on the specificity of Afro-Latinos in the U.S. as an historical identity. Among the topics to be covered are: Afro- Latinos and the Harlem Renaissance, Afro-diasporic musical expressions from Mambo to Hip-Hop, the relationship between the black freedom movement and the Latino power movement in the sixties, co-operation and conflict in urban political coalitions of Blacks and Latinos in New York and Chicago, how the relationship between race and class frames labor and community politics, and in which ways Afro-Latinos break the very distinction between African-Americans and Latinos. AFROAM 697B. Radical Thought in the 3 rd World A comprehensive and intensive examination of the work of major figures in 20 th century Afro-American literature, with an examination of the major relevant criticism. AFROAM 697D. The Sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois The focus of the course this semester will be three fold: 1) W.E.B. Du Bois contributions to the development of sociology in the U.S. and especially that of African Americans and of race relations, 2) Du Bois interactions with such contemporaries as Franz Boas, Robert E. Park, and later E. Franklin Frazier, Charles Johnson, St. Clair Drake and Oliver Cox, and 3) Du Bois views as contrasted to other scholars of the diaspora such as Melville Herskovits, Gilberto Freyre, Frank Tannenbaum, etc. AFROAM 697J. Cross-Disciplinary Contemporary Issues Education Before and After Brown From an interdisciplinary investigation of how African Americans negotiated and attempted to transform the U.S. education system, this course studies schooling from before the 1954 Brown decision to present-day conditions. Other Graduate Seminars: Dynamics of Law and Race An intensive examination of the intersection of race with American law. The focus will be on the critique of established legal theories mounted by a number of legal scholars in what has come to be known as the Critical Race Theory Movement. Supreme Court cases and other legal materials will combine with theoretical, historical and critical works on the law and American society. Among the topics to be covered are the law of slavery, affirmative action, voting rights, and the nature of legal education. Weekly papers, class presentations, and final research report. History of the South from the Colonial Period to 1900 This seminar will examine the history of the south as a distinctive region in the United Sates from the colonial period to Populism. We will not only look at what set southern societies apart from the rest of the nation but also at those factors which divided the south internally along regional, class, race and gender lines. Topics will include the rise and fall of slavery, southern women s history, southern nationalism, the transition from slavery to capitalism, the underdevelopment of the postbellum southern economy, race relations, and the agrarian revolt of small farmers at the turn of the century. The format of the seminar is discussion. 19

20 Topics in Black Women s History We will be reading some of the latest scholarship on the role of African American women in political and advancement organizations. We also will be exploring some of the developing bodies of primary source material on the history of Black women. Extensive reading and a research paper will be required. Jesse Jackson & American Presidential Politics This seminar will examine the modern efforts of Black Americans to influence electoral politics in general and the Democratic party in particular through the medium of presidential campaigns. Beginning with the Great Depression, we will look at the movement of Blacks into the Democratic Party, the significance of the black vote in national elections, the contradictory role of black elected officials, and the theory and practice of the balance of power strategy as exemplified by Jesse Jackson s two historic campaigns for President. Jackson s impact upon Democratic party politics and policies will also be assessed as will the vagaries of press coverage in the 1988 campaign. AFROAM Major Works in Afro-American Studies I and II *Open to Afro-American Studies M.A. and Ph.D. Students Only. AFROAM 753. Special Topics in Afro-American Literature & Culture For graduate students only. An intensive study of the history of the blues. The nature of blues music and lyrics in an African and African American social, political, and musical context, and the use of the blues tradition in literature. No reading knowledge of music required or expected. AFROAM 791C. Radical Perspectives This is a proseminar which has as its purpose is to initiate you into the professional academic world of Africana Studies. The course is based upon and promotes an open, collegial atmosphere without intimidation or oneupmanship. It aims at helping you to develop your ability to produce radical, transformative scholarship about the African American experience in the very best of the Afro-American Studies scholarly tradition. The way we will do this involves three interrelated processes: (1) We will build on the scholarship you studied in the Major Works sequence and/or other previous course work; (2) We will study and discuss some key literature on black hermeneutics, epistemic formations, and knowledge revolutions; and (3) We will critique each other's scholarly work in development. AFROAM 791Z. Toni Morrison (710) Participants in this seminar will focus primarily on Toni Morrison's fiction and the scholarship on it. The seminar also will include readings from her essays, lectures, and criticism. Other Graduate Seminars: Classic Figures of 20th Century Afro-American Literature A comprehensive and intensive examination of the work of major figures in 20 th century Afro-American literature, with an examination of the major relevant criticism. Dynamics of Law and Race An intensive examination of the intersection of race with American law. The focus will be on the critique of established legal theories mounted by a number of legal scholars in what has come to be known as the Critical Race Theory Movement. Supreme Court cases and other legal materials will combine with theoretical, historical and critical works on the law and American society. Among the topics to be covered are the law of slavery, affirmative action, voting rights, and the nature of legal education. Weekly papers, class presentations, and final research report. 20