Courses

African American Studies Courses

Fall 2008

ANSO 300 African American Feminist Thought: Thoery and Practice
Zandria Robinson
TuTh 8:00-9:15
This course will explore the micro-level and institutional intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality by placing African American women′s thought at the center of class discourse. It will map the genealogy of African Amerian feminist thought from early American "race women" like Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Anna Julia Cooper, to contemporary hip-hop feminists like Tricia Rose and Joan Mogan. It will consider various instantiations of black feminist identity and activism and explore black feminist praxi. Further, it will examine the dialectic of state oppression and micro-level resistance in black women′s lives. Particular emphasis will be placed on social scientific methodology and theory.

ANSO 341 Peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar
Susan Kus
MWF 10:00-10:50
Besides a prehistoric, geographical, and environmental introduction to sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar, this course will focus on a number of fascinating anthropomorphic themes which will include cultural and linguistic diversity of traditional populations, Africa and Malagasy systems of thought, European and colonial activity in African and indigenous responses, and fiction and film as imprtant openings into African and Malagasy culture.

ENGLISH 265 Introduction to African American Literature
Rychetta Watkins
MWF 9:00-9:50
This course will introduce you to the African American literary tradition from its beginnings through the present day. During the course of the semester, you will read selections from the Norton Anthology of African American Literature and several additional novels, including Nella Larsens Passing, Alice Walker′s Meridian, an Colson Whitehead′s The Intuitionist. We will pay particular attention to issues of identity, citizenship, belonging, and subjectivity, considering how authors constructed selves and imagined audiences through their stories and  the way they told them. This course will also consider African American literary tradition in relations to social, historical, and cultural contexts.

ENGLISH 364 Locating the Harlem Rennaisance(s)
Rychetta Watkins
MWF 1:00-1:50
This course will acquaint students with the art and literature of the Harlem Renaissance, allow students to develop the skills of close reading and literay analysis and interpretation, and introduce students to the methodology of African American literary studies. We will read a range of authors, including Langston Hghes, arguably the most well known and prolific figure of the HR, Claude McKay, Nella Larsen, Jean Toome, Alan Locke and others.We will also introduce critics like Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Houston Baker in order to provide a theoretical framework for critiquing the Harlem Renaissance as a cultural phenomena. Finally, you will also have an oppotunity to write creatively in modes pioneered by Hughes.

FRENCH 154 African Literatures of French Expression in Translation
Katheryn Wright
TuTH 11:00-12:15
An introduction to the reading and analysis of African literatures written in French. Central to this course is the study of how writers approach and artistically express some of the most challenging issues facing their societies and themselves as writers. The course examines such concepts as identity/ otherness, oral literatures, gender-related issues, the power of language and literature and post-colonialsim . No prior knowledge of French is necessary: All works are read in translation and discussd in Englsh. Prerequisite: English 151.

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 245-01 Government and Politics of Africa
Shadrack Nasong’o
TTH 12:30-1:45
The African mosaic in its complexity is introduced to students in this course.  Beginning with a brief review of African history, the politics, economics and social transitions on the continent since 1945 will be examined.  The role of both external and internal factors in shaping these transitions provides the theoretical focus for an investigation of present political economy, and future possibilities.
Prerequisites: International Studies 200 or permission of the instructor.

POLITICAL SCIENCE 230 Black Politics
Marcus Pohlmann
W 2:00-4:45
A critical analysis of a variety of political goals, strategies, and tactics espoused in the 20th century. Views of Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X are among those normally considered. Prerequisites: Political Science 151.

RELIGIOUS STUDIES 258-02 African American Religious Tradition
Luther Ivory
MWF 11:00-11:50
This course represents an historical approach to investigating the development of black religion and the black church in America.  We intend to consider the impact of the Black Religious Tradition upon the total fabric of black life in the U.S. Our AIM is to: examine historical antecedents, investigate the emergence and subsequent development of what scholars refer to as the “institutional black church,” explore the extent to which various modalities of black religious expression represent both symptoms and responses, and consider the prominent role of BLACK WOMEN as integral shapers of black religious consciousness in both historical and contemporary African American life.

RELIGIOUS STUDIES 259 Martin Luther King
Luther Ivory
TuTh 12:30-1:45
This course is concerned with an investigation and examination of the life and thought of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  In so doing, we may expect to encounter four (4) primary movements in the course: Historical Contexts, Polemical Threads, Doctrinal Emphases, and Relevancy.

Spring 2009

ANSO 343 Race/Ethnic Identities, Experiences, and Relations
Carla Shirley
MW 3:00-4:15
This course uses fundamental sociological concepts and theoretical perspectives to examine race/ethnicity within our everyday lives and the lives of "others" in the United States. The course focuses on historical and contemporary patterns of immigration, social stratification, including the intersection of race/ethnicity, social class, and gender, and social change. Prerequisites: Anthropology/Sociology 103 or 105 or by Permission of Professor.

HISTORY 105 African American Intellectual Tradition
Charles McKinney
MWF 12:00–12:50
Intellectual history is largely defined by the role that elite thinkers play in the shaping of ideas. This course will adhere to the definition of intellectual history as “the history not of thought, but of [people] thinking.” To that end, students will grapple with an intellectual tradition that encompasses the work and thought of both “elite” and “non-elite” actors in the African American experience. From slaves to senators, the African American Intellectual tradition is broad, wide and deep. Students will examine intellectual responses to slavery, emancipation, nation-building, and the long civil rights movement. In our examination of expressive culture, writings and speeches, we will come to a greater understanding of the centrality and multi-layered meanings of freedom. Finally, students will explore the critical role that African American intellectuals “in all their guises” have played in the shaping of the American historical and intellectual landscape.

HISTORY 242 African American History
Charles McKinney
MWF 10:00–10:50
The experiences of African American people in the United States can be described as a continuous quest for empowerment; this quest has been affected by myriad factors (e.g., gender roles, class divisions, secular and non-secular ideologies, regionalism) in addition to racism. This course, through the use of secondary and primary material, historical documentaries, and critical analyses, will chart the historically complex journeys of African Americans, from the impact of the African diaspora on colonial America to the Black student sit-ins and the formation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in 1960, and beyond.

HISTORY 343 African American Civil Rights Movement
Charles McKinney
MWF 3:00-3:50
This seminar examines the social, political, and economic climate of the 1950s through the 1960s, and considers how both Blacks and Whites were affected. Specifically, the course will focus on various organizations and the strategies they implemented which resulted in events such as the Brown v. Board of Education case and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Additionally, the course will analyze the subtle and not-so-subtle reactions to initiatives that allowed African Americans to attain many of the rights and privileges that have become commonplace in today’s society.

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 253 Ethnic Conflict in Africa
Shadrack Nasong’o
MWF 1:00-1:50
The course focuses on the processes through which ethnic identities are socially constructed and maintained even in the face of ethnic commingling through social interactions including marriage and religious worship. Second, it probes and explores the multi-ethnic nature of African states and the seemingly ubiquitous conflicts therein, seeking to systematically explain these in terms of the nature of interactions between and among the various ethnicities from historical, religious, political, and economic perspectives. Third, students are exposed to the types and forms of interactions within prevailing social institutions that make for conflict in multi-ethnic societies – especially the instrumentalization of such identities and their deployment as a political resource by competing political actors. Particular emphasis is placed on the impact and implications of these conflicts on issues of responsible citizenship and the prospects for institutionalization of stable forms of statehood in Africa.

PHILOSOPHY 250 Philosophy of Race
Leigh Johnson
TuTh 12:30 – 1:45
What is "race"? Is it a valid biological category? Is it a valid census category? What is the relationship between the continued use of racial categories and the persistence of racism? Is race central to one′s subjectivity, or sense of self? What race is a mixed-race person? How should questions of racial identity be decided, and by whom? 
In this course, we will examine the advent and evolution of the concept of “race,” how it has been treated philosophically, and its application to the fields of ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, scientific methodology, and politics.  We will conduct a careful study of the history of race, racialism and racism in the United States, South Africa and (Western) Europe, paying particular attention to the political effects of racial identities and enmities.  Students are encouraged to think critically not only about race as a global phenomenon or philosophical concept, but also as it may bear on their own particular experience.

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