AFR 111 Introduction to Black Culture (4 Credits)

An introduction to some of the major perspectives, themes, and issues in the field of Afro-American studies. Our focus is on the economic, social and political aspects of cultural production, and how these inform what it means to read, write about, view and listen to Black culture. {S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 117 History of African American People to 1960 (4 Credits)

An examination of the broad contours of the history of African American people in the United States from ca. 1600 to 1960. Particular emphasis is given to how African Americans influenced virtually every aspect of U.S. society, slavery and Constitutional changes after 1865, debates on the meaning of freedom and citizenship, and the efforts to contest discrimination, segregation and anti-Black violence. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 155 Introduction to Black Women’s Studies (4 Credits)

This course examines historical, critical and theoretical perspectives on the development of Black feminist theory/praxis. The course draws from the 19th century to the present, but focuses on the contemporary Black feminist intellectual tradition that achieved notoriety in the 1970s and initiated a global debate on Western and global feminisms. Central to our exploration is the analysis of the intersectional relationship between theory and practice, and of race, to gender and class. We conclude the course with the exploration of various expressions of contemporary Black feminist thought around the globe as a way of broadening our knowledge of feminist theory. {S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 170/ ENG 235 Survey of African American Literature 1746–1900 (4 Credits)

Offered as AFR 170 and ENG 235. An introduction to the themes, issues and questions that shaped the literature of African Americans during its period of origin. Texts include poetry, prose and works of fiction. Writers include Harriet Jacobs, Frances Harper, Charles Chesnutt, Frederick Douglass and Phillis Wheatley. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 175/ ENG 236 African American Literature 1900 to the Present (4 Credits)

Offered as AFR 175 and ENG 236. A survey of the evolution of African American literature during the 20th century. This class builds on the foundations established in AFR 113, Survey of Afro-American Literature 1746 to 1900. Writers include Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Paule Marshall. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 201 Colloquium: Methods of Inquiry in Africana Studies (4 Credits)

Designed to introduce students to the methods of inquiry used for research in Africana Studies. Through intensive study of a single topic (past examples: Toni Morrison's Beloved, the American South, The Black Seventies) students will consider the formation of the field, engage canonical texts, attend lectures and learn from scholars whose work is based in a variety of disciplines. Focus will be on the challenges and opportunities made possible by doing multi- and interdisciplinary research: how and why scholars ask and approach research questions and have conversations with each other. Students may explore and develop their own research project. {S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 202aa Topics in Africana Studies-Anthropology and the African Diaspora (4 Credits)

The African continent’s place as the cradle of humanity has made it central to Anthropology. However, Anthropology’s imperial origins have long put it at odds with the people of the African Diaspora. This course examines the complexities of the relationship between Anthropology and the African Diaspora. The course explores the African Diaspora as space, place and identity; critically examines Anthropology’s history; explores the discipline’s core theories and thinkers; broadens students' thinking of the discipline’s canon; and examines key ethnographies of and from the African diaspora. Enrollment limited to 50. {S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 202am Topics in Africana Studies-Art, Activism and Media (4 Credits)

Black artist-activists have long used art and media as a means of chronicling, demanding and inducing change. Examining film, photography, visual art, theater, literature and social media, among other forms, this course considers the work of Black artists and activists, their relationship to the political and the reception of their work. The course critically engages performances and representations of Blackness to explore Black subjectivity and think through how artists and activists craft space for Black agency. The work is animated by key questions surrounding the relationship between art and politics, media and activism, and Black art and survival. Enrollment limited to 50. {A}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 202ba Topics in Africana Studies-The Black Archive (4 Credits)

Why has the construction of archives that center on the experiences of people of African descent been so critical to black political, cultural, and social life? What do black archives look like and what do they offer us? How do they expand the way we consider archives in general? This course seeks to address these questions by examining the conception and development of black archives, primarily, although not exclusively, as they arose in the United States across the twentieth century. Enrollment limited to 20. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 202bq Colloquium: Topics in Africana Studies-Black Queer Diaspora (4 Credits)

This interdisciplinary course explores over two decades of work produced by and about Black Queer Diasporic communities throughout the circum-Atlantic world. While providing an introduction to various artists and intellectuals of the Black Queer Diaspora, this course examines the viability of Black Queer Diaspora world-making praxis as a form of theorizing. We will interrogate the transnational and transcultural mobility of specific Black Queer Diasporic forms of peacemaking, erotic knowledge productions, as well as the concept of “aesthetics” more broadly. Our aim is to use the prism of Blackness/Queerness/Diaspora to highlight the dynamic relationship between Black Diaspora Studies and Queer Studies. {A}{H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 203 Colloquium: The Black Archive (4 Credits)

Why has the construction of archives that center on the experiences of people of African descent been so critical to black political, cultural, and social life? What do black archives look like and what do they offer us? How do they expand the way we consider archives in general? This course seeks to address these questions by examining the conception and development of black archives, primarily, although not exclusively, as they arose in the United States across the twentieth century. Enrollment limited to 20. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 210 Colloquium: Black Political Economy-From Slavery to Reparatory Justice (4 Credits)

What constitutes the field of study called Black Political Economy? This course excavates a radical tradition of political economy in African diaspora studies, a tradition which has sheltered some of the most thoroughgoingly insightful perspectives on Black oppression in the Americas over the last 500 years. The course takes a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary approach which draws on several fields, including Africana intellectual history, political economy, sociological studies and cultural studies in its presentation of the field of study termed Black political economy. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 212 Family Matters: Representations, Policy and the Black Family (4 Credits)

In this course we examine contemporary African American families from both a sociocultural and socioeconomic perspective. We explore the issues facing African American families as a consequence of the intersecting of race, class and gender categories of America. The aim of this course is to broaden the student’s knowledge of the internal dynamics and diversity of African American family life and to foster a greater understanding of the internal strengths as well as the vulnerabilities of the many varieties of African American families. {S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 215 Topics in Africana Studies-Caribbean Political Thought and the Quest for Freedom (4 Credits)

How have the history and geography of the Caribbean shaped the political claims of its thinkers in the quest for freedom from domination? This course tracks their contribution to issues fundamental to societal formation in the Caribbean, expressed in the aspiration for national independence and self-determination. The ideas of revolutionaries and intellectuals are counterposed with manifestos, constitutional excerpts, speeches and modes of creative expression to provide a survey of the range of political options, challenges and the immense choices that have faced the region’s people over the last 500 years. Enrollment limited to 40. {A}{H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 223 Caribbean Cultural Thought: The Plantation, Diaspora and the Popular (4 Credits)

The course introduces students to the main theoretical interpretations of culture in the Caribbean, and gives an overview of Caribbean cultural history. Students will be expected to analyze the impact of colonialism, race, class, gender and sexuality in the formation of Caribbean cultural practices, and to interpret cultural expression in its broadest political sense. Key theoretical terms that are central to any understanding of Caribbean cultural thought – the plantation, diaspora, creolization – will be addressed in detail in the course. These key terms in Caribbean cultural thought are mobilized in order to give students the analytical tools to consider a wide variety of Caribbean cultural practices, identity formations, and ways of interpreting social reality in the region. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 243 Black Autobiography (4 Credits)

This course examines the U.S. Black autobiographical tradition from the eighteenth century to the present. “Autobiography” is constituted broadly to include slave narratives, memoirs, travelogues, poems, speeches, sketches and essays. The class explores questions of form, genre, publication history, narrative voice, language, audience and other literary markers. Students examine the narratives' socio-political, historical and economic milieus. And students explore the tradition, they consider how Black autobiographers engage Carolyn Rodgers’ meditation-cum-query in, Breakthrough: “How do I put my self on paper/ The way I want to be or am and be/ Not like any one else in this/ Black world but me.”. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 245/ ENG 282 The Harlem Renaissance (4 Credits)

Offered as AFR 245 and ENG 282. A study of one of the first cohesive cultural movements in African American history. This class focuses on developments in politics, and civil rights (NAACP, Urban League, UNIA), creative arts (poetry, prose, painting, sculpture) and urban sociology (modernity, the rise of cities). Writers include Zora Neale Hurston, David Levering Lewis, Gloria Hull, Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen among others. Enrollment limited to 40. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 249 Black Women Writers (4 Credits)

How does gender matter in a black context? That is the question this course asks and attempts to answer through an examination of works by such authors as Harriet Jacobs, Frances Harper, Nella Larsen, Zora Hurston, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange and Alice Walker. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 289 Colloquium: Race, Feminism and Resistance in Movements for Social Change (4 Credits)

This interdisciplinary colloquial course explores the historical and theoretical perspectives of African American women from the time of slavery to the post-civil rights era. A central concern of the course is the examination of how black women shaped and were shaped by the intersectionality of race, gender and sexuality in American culture. Not open to first years. Enrollment limited to 25. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 319 Seminar: The Black Radical Tradition (4 Credits)

What is the nature of the Black radical imagination? This course on the Black Radical Tradition draws on the thought and marronage emblematic of the Black experience of New World coloniality, through speech acts, poetry, essays, historical studies and cultural criticism, students will immerse themselves in an intensive examination of the meaning of Blackness at the beginning of the third decade of an unsettled century. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors & Seniors only. Instructor permission required. {H}{L}{S}

Fall, Spring, Annually

AFR 333 Seminar: Writing Blackness- A Calderwood Seminar in Writing for the Public Sphere (4 Credits)

Learn how to bring your  expertise in black history and culture into the public sphere. This Calderwood Seminar challenges students in an intimate workshop setting to grow as writers. Throughout the semester, students will build a writing portfolio that might include op-eds, book reviews, journal article reviews, coverage of public talks, movie reviews, and interviews with Africana studies scholars. Classes will include collaborative editing workshops, guest lectures from expert writers, and activities to build a strong writing foundation. You have learned how to write for college, now learn how to write for life. Prerequisite: At least one course in Africana studies. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and Seniors only. Instructor permission required. WI {H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 335 Seminar: Free Blacks in the U.S. Before 1865 (4 Credits)

A study of the history of free blacks from the 17th century to the abolition of slavery in 1865. A major problem created by the establishment of slavery based on race by the 1660s was what was to be the status of free blacks. Each local and state government addressed the political, economic, and even religious questions raised by having free blacks in a slave society. This course addresses a neglected theme in the history of the Afro-American experience that is, the history of free blacks before the passage of the 13th amendment. Recommended background: AFR 117. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 345 Seminar: Classic Black Texts (4 Credits)

This course looks closely at a series of canonical black texts. The intention is to examine these texts in their specific historical context with careful attention to their place within Africana intellectual history. This course either focuses on a series of intensive investigations of a set of major texts within Africana studies, or it operates thematically. A thematic treatment of the course involves taking one leading critical figure within the field – for example Frantz Fanon, Toni Morrison, Aimé Césaire, Paule Marshall or Kamau Brathwaite – and constructing the course around a reflection on their work and influence on the field of Africana studies. Enrollment limited to 15. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required. {H}{L}{S}

Fall, Spring, Annually

AFR 360/ ENG 323 Seminar: Toni Morrison (4 Credits)

Offered as AFR 360 and ENG 323. This seminar focuses on Toni Morrison’s literary production. In reading her novels, essays, lectures and interviews, we pay particular attention to three things: her interest in the epic anxieties of American identities; her interest in form, language, and theory; and her study of love. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 366bb Seminar: Contemporary Topics in Africana Studies-Blackness, Being and Becoming (4 Credits)

This class uses canonical literature, as well as cultural productions and critical theory, in order to explore blackness as a modern racial formation (i.e. an idea with material consequences) and an identity. Beginning with the 19th century slave narrative tradition, and moving through the 20th and 21st centuries, we will explore how African Americans use written, sonic and visual languages to resist Eurocentric projections of otherness onto black bodies. Using theoretical frames—such as fugitive and unmoored subjectivity, demonic grounds, and the black interior—students will critically engage representational works that meditate on “blackness” not only in terms of nonbeing, but also in terms of becoming. In other words, we will treat the black imagination as a critical site of inquiry because of its construction of racialized subjectivity as varied, complex, and evolving. Examples from sonic and visual culture will be drawn from multiple sources. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 366rs Seminar: Contemporary Topics in Africana Studies-Race, Sex & Tourism (4 Credits)

Tourism is often lauded as the key to economic development for many countries. However, scholarly work has shown that historical relationships to imperialism and colonialism impact how people and places experience tourism. This course introduces students to debates, methods and conceptual frameworks in the study of race, sex and tourism. Through a review of scholarly texts, tourism paraphernalia, films and travelogues, the course examines the social, political and ethical considerations inherent in multiple forms of tourism including eco-tourism, wellness or health, sun-sand-sea, heritage, dark and voluntourism in locales ranging from the Caribbean and the Americas to Africa and Europe. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and Seniors only. Instructor permission required. {S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 367 Seminar: The Politics of Grief (4 Credits)

What role has grief played in the black freedom struggle? How have conceptions of race and gender been articulated, expanded and politicized through public performances of collective mourning? This seminar explores the ways in which post-emancipation black politics developed through efforts, often led by women, to not only challenge but to also embody and inhabit trauma. The course considers a range of theoretical texts alongside historical documents from the late nineteenth century to today. The course is structured around addressing two major questions: what is the politics of grief and is there such a thing as a particularly black politics of grief? Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and Seniors only. Instructor permission required. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 370 Seminar: Modern Southern Africa (4 Credits)

In 1994 South Africa underwent a peaceful revolution with the election of Nelson Mandela. This course studies the historical events that led to this dramatic development in South Africa from 1948 to 2000. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 399 Seminar: Black Latinx Americas-Movements, Politics & Cultures (4 Credits)

This course examines the extensive and diverse histories, social movements, political mobilization and cultures of Black people (Afrodescendientes) in Latin America. While the course will begin in the slavery era, most of our scholarly-activist attention will focus on the histories of peoples of African descent in Latin America after emancipation to the present. Some topics we will explore include: the particularities of slavery in the Americas, the Haitian Revolution and its impact on articulations of race and nation in the region, debates on “racial democracy,” the relationship between gender, class, race, and empire, and recent attempts to write Afro-Latin American histories from “transnational” and “diaspora” perspectives. We will engage the works of historians, activists, artists, anthropologists, sociologists, and political theorists who have been key contributors to the rich knowledge production on Black Latin America. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 400 Special Studies (1-4 Credits)

By permission of the department, for junior and senior majors.

Fall, Spring

AFR 430D Honors Project (4 Credits)

Fall, Spring

AFR 431 Honors Project (8 Credits)

Fall, Spring, Annually