Department of African and African American Studies

Course Offerings

Fall 2025 Courses:

We are excited to share the list of AAAS courses the department will offer this Fall.

Intro to African and African American Studies
Wangui Muigai
AAAS 5A | Tuesday, Friday | 9:35-10:55 AM

An interdisciplinary introduction to major topics in African and African American studies. Provides fundamental insights into Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas through approaches and techniques of social science and the humanities. Usually offered every year.

African Refugees
Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso
AAAS 127A  | Tuesday, Friday | 9:35-10:55 AM

An in-depth study of African refugees in dynamic contexts, and their centrality to the understanding and analysis of key issues in the politics, history, and international relations of African States. Usually offered every year.

Africa and the World: Recentering Africa in Global History and Politics
Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso
AAAS 138A | Tuesday, Friday | 11:10-12:30 PM

A wide-ranging survey of transnational history to the present, linked throughout by the thread of African connections to the global. The course is a nuanced and specific interrogation of African presence, influence, agency, and impact on aspects of the past, present, and future of the world as we know it, from human origins to slavery, the World Wars, globalization, feminism, environmentalism, global popular cultures, Afropolitanism, and global social justice campaigns such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. Usually offered every year.

Carceral Studies
Rachel Klein
AAAS/WGS 122A | Tuesday, Friday | 12:45-2:05 PM

With more than 10 million people imprisoned around the world in jails, detention centers, refuge camps, for-profit prisons, the effects of a carceral state are evident in many ways. Modern democratic societies often rely upon practices of incarceration, detention, and surveillance to demonstrate the power of a rule of law. This course will be an introductory study covering the social costs of the practice of incarceration across geographies and global communities. Usually offered every second year.

Intellectual History of Black Women 
Shoniqua Roach
AAAS/WGS 125A | Monday, Wednesday | 2:30-3:50 PM

Takes a historical approach to the development of black feminist thought in the United States. We will explore major themes and events in U.S. history from the perspectives of black women (e.g., forced black migration to the Western world, transatlantic slavery, black emancipation from slavery, Jim Crow, the great migration(s), the civil rights era, and the 'post' civil rights era, etc.). We will contextualize the emergence of black feminist thought within and in relation to these events, as well as highlight black feminisms' intersections with other black intellectual traditions and freedom struggles. By the end of the course, students will be able to demonstrate a robust familiarity with the above mentioned historical events as well as define black feminist conceptual/theoretical frameworks such as standpoint theory; oppositional consciousness; intersectionality; the culture of dissemblance; the politics of respectability; controlling images; pleasure, and the erotic, among others. Usually offered every year.

Contemporary African Lit: Global Perspectives
Emilie Diouf
ENG 62B | Monday, Wednesday, Thursday | 12:20-1:10 PM

What is "African" in African literature when the majority of writers are somehow removed from the African societies they portray? How do expatriate writers represent African subjectivities and cultures at the intersection of Diaspora and globalization? Who reads the works produced by these writers? Usually offered every third year.

Vampires: Dark Fictions of Blood
Brandon Callender
ENG 52B | Monday, Wednesday, Thursday | 11:15-12:05 PM

Highlights the innovations that black artists and scholars have made within the vampire tradition. Our sources range from literature and comics to television and film. Usually offered every third year.

Resistance and Revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean
Gregory Childs
HIS 175B | Tuesday, Friday | 11:10-12:30 PM

Focuses on questions of race, gender and modernity in resistance movements and revolutions in Latin American and Caribbean history. The Haitian Revolution, Tupac Amaru Rebellion, and Vaccination Riots in Brazil are some topics that will be covered. Usually offered every second year.

The Color Purple: Novel, Film, Musical, Manifesto
Andie Berry
THA 143B | Monday, Wednesday | 2:30-3:50 PM

Traces the evolution of Alice Walker’s 1985 novel The Color Purple from its original publication through its adaptations as a film, a stage musical, and a musical film. Beginning in the 1970s and stretching into the present, the course explores The Color Purple’s significance as a seminal text in African American literature, women’s writing, contemporary cinema, American musical theater, and queer representation. Usually offered every second year.

Economics of Race and Gender
Mahsa Akbari 
ECON 69a | Tuesday, Friday | 9:35-10:55 AM

The role of race and gender in economic decision making. Mainstream and alternative economic explanations for discrimination, and analysis of the economic status of women and minorities. Discussion of specific public policies related to race, class, and gender. Usually offered every second year.

Racial/Ethnic and Gender Inequalities in Health and Health Care
Rajesh Sampath
HSSP 114b | Monday, Wednesday | 2:30-3:50 PM

An examination of the epidemiological patterns of health status by race/ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic status. Addresses current theories and critiques explaining disparities in health status, access, quality, and conceptual models, frameworks, and interventions for eliminating inequalities. Usually offered every second year.

Race Theories & Education
Tanishia Lavette Williams
ED 172A |  Tuesday | 2:20 - 5:10 PM

This interdisciplinary course explores how race and education intersect in the U.S., examining how racial hierarchies are constructed and contested in schools. Anchored in Critical Race Theory and engaging a range of race theories, students will analyze the historical, political, and cultural forces shaping public education. Through deep reflection and creative application, the course invites students to reimagine schools as both sites of oppression and spaces for transformative justice.

Women Writing Desire: Caribbean Fiction and Film (Fall 2025 grad students only)
Faith Smith
ENG 107 | Tuesday | 2:20 - 5:10 PM

How are the terms “Caribbean,” “women” and “desire” articulated as converging with each other in texts (poetry, memoirs, novels, cultural theory, film and other visual culture) of the last decade? How do these mappings of various generations and temporalities, appearing in our present, reflect the preoccupations of the region, and of the global communities in which diasporic Caribbean people make a life – but also that of older activists’ assessments of decades of struggle in institutions and social movements? How do these texts reflect on their own form (i.e. genre, as in poem, film, essay, memoir, novel)? What are the objects of desire that they tease out? What worlds do they imagine? Responding to desires, or prescribed desires, of various kinds (“What do women want?”; “…When do we want it? Now!”; “You can get it if you really want it”), do novelists have different aspirations from, say, filmmakers, and does desiring on the left of the ideological spectrum look different from that of the right? Who/what are the kin on which a claim is being made, and what stands in the way of such claims? As we use these texts to map some of the contemporary preoccupations of the region, we will consider the extent to which border-crossing, tourism, legal rulings around transgender and queer citizens, the impact of hurricanes and pandemics, reparations, and extractivism benefit from or are limited by ongoing contexts of imperialism, sovereignty, and postcolonial governance.