Courses ofInstruction
Africana Studies
Program Faculty
Keoka Grayson, Economics, Co-director
James McCorkle, Africana Studies and General Curriculum, Co-director
Christopher Annear, Anthropology
Alex Black, English and Creative Writing
Brian Clark, Anthropology
Kanaté Dahouda, French and Francophone Studies
Kevin Dunn, International Relations
Janette Gayle, History
Kelly Johnson, Dance
DeWayne Lucas, Political Science
H May, Theatre
S. Ani Mukherji, American Studies
Robinson Murphy, Environmental Studies
Virgil Slade, History
Kellin Stanfield, Economics
Angelique Szymanek, Art History
The Africana Studies program offers an accredited interdisciplinary major in Africana Studies with concentrations in African, African-American, or Africana, and interdisciplinary minors in African, African-American, and Africana studies. The aim of the program is to provide students with a broad, interdisciplinary understanding of the culture and history of the peoples of Africa and of African descent. We do so by offering courses that explore the dynamic intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and culture. These courses aim to foster an in-depth understanding of the history, culture, literature, intellectual heritage and social, political and economic development of people of Africa and its Diaspora.
All students are encouraged to share their enthusiasm and background in campus activities, with groups such as the Model African Union, Latin American Organization, International Students Club, the Pan-African Latin Organization, and Sankofa, the Black Student Union. Students are encouraged to study abroad on short or semester-long programs to Kenya, Senegal, or South Africa. Through our work as teachers in the various sub-fields, hosting campus events, providing opportunities for off-campus study, and collaborative research, we seek to equip students with the skills, tools, sensitivities, and the knowledge necessary to be responsible citizens in a diverse and global society.
Mission Statement
Africana Studies examines Africa and its Diaspora, through an examination of the centrality of racism and colonialism in the construction of the modern world, and the importance of opposition and resistance to these forces in the pursuit of social justice. The Africana Studies Program gives students the opportunity to complete a major in Africana studies or a minor in African studies, Africana studies, and African-American studies. The program faculty strive to enhance the educational development of students by providing them with academically challenging courses that develop students’ analytic, critical and creative thinking, writing and research skills. Our curriculum focuses on impact of migration, imperialism, racism, nationalism, and globalization in shaping lives, ideas, and cultural identities.
Offerings
Africana Studies Major (B.A.)
interdisciplinary, 10 courses
Learning Objectives:
- Foster a sense of belonging to an affirming community.
- An understanding of the historical legacies of enslavement, colonialism, and the post-colony.
- Develop an understanding of how race intersects with class, sexuality, and gender.
- Develop an understanding of the ongoing cultural expressions of the African Diaspora.
- Understand the historical contributions within the sweep of African and Diasporic cultures.
- Experience different modes of learning within and external to the classroom.
Requirements:
One introductory Africana Studies course (AFS 110 Introduction to Africa, AFS 150 Foundations of Africana Studies, AFS 180 Black Atlantic or approved substitute, such as FSEM 042), eight courses, and a 400-level capstone, seminar course, or internship. No more than two courses may be at the 100-level. Within the eight courses of the concentration, there must be at least one course exploring each of the following perspectives: historical (H), contemporary (CP), artistic/literary (AL), anthropological (A), and comparative or cross-cultural (C). An independent study may substitute for the capstone if such a course is not offered.
Africana Studies Minor
interdisciplinary, 5 courses
An introductory course and four courses at the 200-level or higher. At least three different perspectives (historical, contemporary, artistic/literary, anthropological, and comparative or cross-cultural) must be represented within these four courses. One perspective must be historical, the other two should be chosen in consultation with an advisor in the program. Students are encouraged to take as many comparative or cross-cultural courses as their program permits.
Core and Crosslisted Courses
Introductory Courses
AFS 110 Introduction to African Experience
AFS 115 Demythologizing Race: A Re-Education of Difference
AFS 150 Foundations of Africana Studies
AFS 180 Black Atlantic
Africana and Cross Listed Courses
AFS 208 Growing Up Black (AL)
AFS 211 Black Earth: Nature and African American Writing (AL)
AFS 219 Beyond Colonialism: North African Cinema & Literature (AL)
AFS 230 Revolutionary Poetics of the Black Diaspora (AL)
AFS 235 Healer and Humanist: Frantz Fanon the Revolutionary
AFS 305 Revolutionary African American Autobiography (AL)
AFS 309 Black Cinema (AL, C, CP)
AFS 310 Black Images/White Myths
AFS 311 Social Media Empires and eColonialism
AFS 312 Digital Africana Studies
AFS 315 #blacklivesmatter
AFS 326 Black Popular Culture (H, AL)
AMST 208 Race and Ethnic Relations (A, C)
ANTH 110 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (A)
ANTH 217 Precolonial Africa (A)
ANTH 296 Africa: Beyond Crisis, Poverty and Aid (A, C)
ANTH 354 Food, Meaning and Voice (A, C)
ARAB 101 Beginning Arabic I (CP, C)
ARAB 102 Beginning Arabic II (CP, C)
ARAB 201 Intermediate Arabic I (CP, C)
ARAB 202 Intermediate Arabic II (CP, C)
ARTH 201 African American Art (AL)
DAN 110 Introduction to Global Dance Forms (AL)
DAN 907 Introduction to Jamaican Dance (AL)
DAN/DAN 950 Jamaican II (AL)
DAN/DAT 955 Global Dance Techniques (AL)
ECON 210 Economic Inequality (C, CP)
ECON 243 Political Economy of Race (H, CP)
ECON 248 Poverty and Welfare (C, CP)
ECON 293 Racial Utopias (C, CP)
ECON 476 Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa (C)
EDUC 081 Teaching for Equity (CP)
EDUC 337 Education and Racial Diversity in the U.S. (CP)
ENG 165 Introduction to African American Literature I (AL)
ENG 270 Globalization and Literature (AL)
ENG 362 Body, Memory, and Representation (AL)
FRN 253 Paris-outre-mer (CP, AL, C)
FRN 351 Francophone African Fictions (AL)
FRN 355 Caribbean Francophone Identities (AL)
FRNE 155 Memory, Culture and Identity in French Caribbean Literatures (AL)
FRNE 219 Beyond Colonialism: North African Cinema and Literature
GLS 101 Introduction to Global Studies (CP)
HIST 112 Soccer: Around the world with the Beautiful Game (H, CP)
HIST 227 African American History I (H)
HIST 228 African American History II: The Modern Era (H)
HIST 283 South Africa in Transition (H, CP)
HIST 284 Africa: From Colonialism to Neocolonialism (H)
HIST 306 Civil War and Reconstruction: 1845-1877 (H)
HIST 331 Law in Africa (H)
HIST 332 African Perspectives on Slavery, 1500 to the Present (H)
HIST 345 Race-ing America: An Exploration of Race in America (H)
HIST 348 Black Women in the Struggle for Rights in America (H)
HIST 353 The Invention of Africa (H)
HIST 364 Seminar: African History (H)
HIST 371 The Civil War in American Popular Culture (H)
INRL 208 Gender & Politics in Middle East and North Africa (C, CP)
INRL 258 State, Society, and Market in the Middle East and North Africa (C, CP)
INRL 259 African Politics (C, CP)
INRL 260 Human Rights and International Law
INRL 285 Borders, Belonging, and Rights in the Middle East and North Africa (C, CP)
MUS 207 Big Band to Bossa, Bop to Blues: A History of Jazz (AL)
MUS 215 Power, Privilege, and the Other in US Popular Music (AL)
PHIL 210 Philosophy of Race and Racism (C, CP)
POL 333 Civil Rights (CP)
POL 348 Racisms, Class, and Conflict (C, CP)
POL 370 Black Radical Political Thought (CP)
REL 238 Liberating Theology (C)
REL 241 Rastaman and Christ (C)
REL 293 Racial Utopias (C, CP)
SOC 221 Race and Ethnic Minorities (A, C)
SOC 223 Inequalities (C)
SOC 251 Sociology of the City (C, CP)
SOC 353 Global Cities(C, CP)
SOC 357 Race and Education (C, CP)
THTR 290 Theater for Social Change (AL)
THTR 310 African American Theatre (AL)
URST 210 Gentrification (C, CP)
GSIJ 213 Transnational Feminism and Performance (C)
GSIJ 219 Black Feminism (C, CP)
GSIJ 308 Chicana and Latina Art: Altars, Ofrendas, and Racial Acts (AL, C, CP)
WRRH 251 Black Talk/White Talk (C)
Course Descriptions
AFS 110 The African Experience: Intro to Africa Studies The African continent houses fifty-four countries, more than two thousand languages, and the most genetically diverse population in the world. This course introduces you to the major themes in the study of African history, culture, literature, politics, and economics. From the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the HIV/AIDS crisis, from precolonial oral traditions to contemporary cinema, we will explore both the challenges facing Africa and the continent's rich cultural and political tradition. Major themes will include the impact of colonialism on African politics and culture; the determinants of economic growth and human development; and debates about "modernity"and "tradition" in the African context.
AFS 115 Demythologizing Race: A Re-Education of Difference "I don't see race..." We have all encountered (or maybe even said) statements like this that generally attempts to project a recognition of equality: "I see people, not color". Yet, what can often be heard is a denial of what it means to live in a particular body: "You don't know what it means to be black...". These kinds of misfire of communication remain commonplace because we have been socialized to avoid speaking honestly about how we understand race, and what informs that understanding. This socialization has often rendered us as unprepared to make ourselves vulnerable or to meet other people where they are. Yet, while confronting the realities and violences of race can often lead to discomfort, if we all remain on the sidelines of this conversation then nothing in our world is going to change. This class, therefore, offers students the opportunity to interrogate the historic construction of race as we presently understand it; exposes the political, social, and economic agendas that informed this creation; and explores ways to think about racial difference that can dissolve the racial hierarchy we have inherited. (Slade, annually Spring)
AFS 150 Foundations of Africana Studies This course provides the foundations and context for Africana Studies from a historical and contemporary perspective. It defines the geographical parameters which include the study of Africans on the Continent and in the Diaspora (Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean). It also clarifies concepts and corrects false perceptions of Africa and Africans, with a focus on inclusiveness and diversity of both the traditional and the modern. This course is multidisciplinary cross-cultural, taught from an African-centered perspective sensitive to race, gender, and class. Faculty members from the departments of anthropology, economics, French, history, political science and sociology participate as guest lecturers. (Pinto, McCorkle, offered alternate years)
AFS 180 The Black Atlantic: Cultures Across an Ocean The concept of the "Black Atlantic" was created by Paul Gilroy to counteract the divisive forces of nationalism and race, which gives rise in people of African descent to a 'double consciousness'. In the Black Atlantic, we seek to understand how the conceptualization of nation/culture around "race" creates a double consciousness and how, in spite of this, peoples of African descent have sustained cultural links that stretch across the Atlantic, uniting Africa, Europe and the Americas. Starting with possible pre-Columbian voyages, through the Middle Passage to the return voyages of contemporary Americans to Africa, we chart these connections across time and space. (McCorkle, annually fall)
AFS 208 Growing Up Black This course focuses on the development of racial consciousness and identity in adolescence in African and African Diaspora literatures, with a special emphasis on global health, intersections with gender and class, and the nexsus of education and social justice. Should be of interest to those interested in education, LGBTQ+ studies, and public health. (McCorkle, alternate years relative to AFS 305)
AFS 211 Black Earth: Nature and African-American Writing Writing about nature – whether from the tradition of the sublime or as an expression of American potentiality or from the perspective of eco-criticism – has excluded considerations of the contributions of African-Americans. What concepts of nature and one's interaction with nature that survived the Middle Passage, the relationship of slavery, migration, and rural and urban life, as well as contemporary appraisals of the environment, will be among the topics considered. In particular, through literary works – whether essays, novels, or poems – environmental concerns and approaches to nature are addressed. The course proposes there is a decided and profound tradition within the African-American community of addressing nature that both parallels and is quite distinct from European traditions. Secondly, the course proposes to examine the conjunction of discrimination and environmental degradation, that the bifurcation of humans from nature is intrinsically linked to social injustice and inequality. (McCorkle, alternate years relative to AFS 230)
AFS 219 Beyond Colonialism: North African Cinema and Literature At the intersection of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, Francophone North Africa (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia) is a linguistically, ethnically, and culturally diverse region that witnessed major transformations since its independence from France. These transformations include the rise and fall of dictatorships, a civil war, contested territories, and the spread of religious extremism. In this course, students will explore the cultural landscape of Francophone North Africa, and its diaspora, and reflect on questions of religious, national, tribal, linguistic, gender, and personal identities. The course materials include contemporary North African films, fiction, poetry, and graphic novels, with an emphasis on representations of social resistance and countercultures. Open to all. This course is cross listed with Africana Studies, Media and Society, and Peace Studies; it should be of interest to students of Comparative Literature, History, International Relations, and Political Science.
AFS 230 The Revolutionary Poetics of the Black Diaspora Among the aims of this course, and corresponding to the mission of Africana Studies, is to provide an understanding and appreciation of cultural transactions and movements centered on a poetics of Black aliveness and being. Secondly, the course will introduce the relationship of poetics to political and cultural movements. Exploring the Harlem Renaissance, Négritude, and the Blacks Arts Movement not only as aesthetic movements, but anti-colonial and emancipatory movements. Exlores new structures of affective language, of re-encountering the Black archive, and world-making. Readings include works by Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Leopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Cesaire, Kamau Braithwaite, Derek Walcott, Audre Lorde, Edouard Glissant, Claudia Rankine, NourbeSe Philip, and Will Alexander. (McCorkle, offered alternate years relative to AFS 211)
AFS 235 Healer and Humanist: Frantz Fanon the Revolutionary It is fair to characterize Frantz Fanon as one of the most influential and one of the most controversial thinkers of his time. To some he was a liberator. To others he was a warmonger. In this course we will explore Fanon the humanist and Fanon the healer. One of Fanon's most notable contributions, the one highlighted in the course, is his understanding of the link between the individual's mental health and the socialization process for which they are embedded. A socialization process is a tool societies use to reproduce itself. It defines right; it defines wrong. A socialization process delimits normal human behavior, but more ominously, it circumscribes what is and thus names what is not human. Its purpose is to make and remake the society or rather to make and remake the individuals that inhabit the society throughout time. It's a survival mechanism. We will argue that Fanon believed that the socialization process could also be a process of individual un-making. Through his concepts of humanity, power, and violence, Fanon constructs a theory of social un-making or rather a theory of how the non-human is made. We will follow Fanon through his intellectual process by conducting an extensive analysis of his five major texts: Black Skin, White Masks, The Wretched of the Earth, Dying Colonialism, and Toward the African Revolution. Ultimately, we will attempt to locate Fanon's thought amongst other influential humanists of his time including: Paulo Freire, Antonio Gramsci, Malcolm X, Steve Biko, James Baldwin, Aimee Cesaire, and Patrice Lumumba.
AFS 305 Revolutionary African-Amercian Autobiography The memoir or autobiography is often cast as a personal narrative; this course proposes that the memoir, and in particular the African-American memoir, serves as not only the record of one's life, but also as having political agency and intention. Beginning with Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Malcolm X's Autobiography and Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling of my Name, to Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, the course will consider the autobiography as an argument for political and social change; as a witness to one's life, it also enacts a re-visionary process of social justice. To what degree does the structure of the slave narrative continue to inform contemporary narratives? In what ways might there be a definitive element for African-American autobiographical writing? How do the community and writers interact and are interdependent? What is at stake for the African-American autobiographer? (McCorkle, offered alternate years to AFS 208)
AFS 309 Black Cinema This course examines films by African, African American, and other African diaspora directors. It focuses on the attempt by different filmmakers to wrest an African/diasporic identity and aesthetic from a medium that has been defined predominantly by American and European models. Students analyze the implicit and explicit attempts to formulate a black aesthetic within film, as well as the general phenomenon of the representation of blacks in film. Directors considered include Haile Gerima, Ousmane Sembene, Souleymane Cisse, Charles Burnett, Camille Billops, Isaac Julien, Sara Maldoror, Julie Dash, Spike Lee and others.
AFS 310 Black Images/White Myths This course will examine the ways in which blackness and the black body are deployed in speculative cinema. Developing a framework grounded in critical race theory, philosophy and film studies, we will work to understand 'blackness' as philosophical concept, racial signifier and political position. We will then analyze the cinematic imaginaries of the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres to excavate the placement of black bodies in visual culture. Screenings will include independent and mainstream cinema as well as popular television shows from the US and the UK.
AFS 311 Social Media Empires and eColonialism In 1980, Thomas McPhail coined the term electronic colonialism to describe how "mass media and internet firms are leading to a new concept of empire." While social media has given rise to #BLM and #NoDAPL it has also been home to the counter discourses of #AllLivesMatter and #WhiteGenocide. Some social media platforms like Gab or WeSearchr were purposely launched as digital havens of "free speech" for those blocked from the more mainstream sites for their white nationalist and supremacist messages. If the internet is not an inherently postracial space, what kind of racialized or racializing space is it? How does it reproduce or reinvent the notion of empire? And where does our understanding of race in the digital age fit into the history of European colonialism? To answer these questions, this course will critically review the basic interventions of postcolonial theory, critical race and critical whiteness studies, working through the central tropes of whiteness and power as well as the seemingly general concepts of enterprise, empire, the global, capitalism, and technologies of colonialism. We will supplement our reading of postcolonial theory with the latest work in digital media studies theorizing race on the internet, comparing their approaches to develop our own method of inquiry. Finally, we will directly examine the digital texts, trends, performances, and platforms, like Tumblr, Facebook, etc., that illustrate these problems to synthesize a theory of coloniality for the digital age.
AFS 312 Digital Africana Studies If Africana Studies is perpetually engaged in theorizing the contemporary moment, how does it frame the digital age and the era of the internet? In Digital Africana Studies, students will explore the contributions of scholars whose work brings together questions of race, Blackness, and coloniality with the problems of digital and virtual life such as Ruha Benjamin, Andre Brock, Shaka McGlotten, and Alondra Nelson, among others. We will compare the methodologies used by different digital race scholars, like Wendy Hui Kyong Chun who theorizes race itself as a technology or Safiya Noble whose work Algorithms of Oppression unveils how technology reifies racial discrimination. Over the semester, students will develop their own research projects to interrogate the intersection of technology, race, and power.
AFS 315 #blacklivesmatter This course examines the history of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. It considers it in its historical specificity as a 2010s US activist movement, in its global (and viral) dimensions, and in its departures and intersections with other black intellectual movements. The course examines invisibility and spectacle in black death, voyeurism, and the significance of the destruction of the black body in the new public square. We ask whether it is true that black lives are more easily taken and black bodies destroyed with less legal consequence than others: What are the ways in which black lives do not matter? In search for our answers this course analyzes media coverage and debates on social media about black death. We place these discussions in conversation with the critique of race and racialized violence offered in literature, music, film and social theory. We also consider the ways in which all lives matter, racist universalisms and white supremacist antiracist ideology, paying particular attention to #AllLivesMatter, #BlueLivesMatter and #MarchForOurLives. Students will develop, employ, and critique a number of methodological approaches to the study of racialized violence and engage with intersectionality, critical race theory, womanism/feminism, queer theory, anti-colonial theory and Marxist-Fanonist theory.
AFS 465 Africana Studies Capstone The capstone course in Africana Studies is a required seminar for senior majors to learn advanced forms of intensive writing, critical reading, oral presentation, and media application for conveying and analyzing Africana Studies knowledge. It reviews the major methodological and theoretical interventions of the field through the study of diverse topics (race, gender, ethnicity, and identity) that will model different ways of analyzing the Black experience in the contexts of political, cultural, and economic powers in North America, Africa, and the Diaspora. Students build on the fundamental interdisciplinarity of Africana Studies to design and present their own independent research projects. While the form of each course varies by the instructor, students will be guided in practicing the skills of developing a research project that centers Africana studies concerns; compiling or exploring an archive; applying Africana Studies methods in their analysis; and presenting their findings. Students must be senior AFS majors or have permission of the instructor. (Staff, offered annually)