Department of African and African American Studies

(1-99) Primarily for Undergraduate Students

AAAS 5a Introduction to African and African American Studies
[ deis-us dl ss ]
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.
Chad Williams

AAAS 60a Economics of Third World Hunger
[ nw ss ]
Employs the tools of social science, particularly economics, to study causes and potential solutions to problems in production, trade, and consumption of food in the underdeveloped world. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 70a Introduction to African American History
[ ss ]
Introduces the experiences of African Americans from the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to the present. Explores major themes that have shaped African American history, such as survival and resistance, struggles for freedom, citizenship and equality, institution building and the meaning of progress. Particular attention given to the role of class, gender and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 79b African American Literature of the Twentieth Century
[ hum ss wi ]
An introduction to the essential themes, aesthetic concerns, and textual strategies that characterize African American writing of this century. Examines those influences that have shaped the poetry, fiction, and prose nonfiction of representative writers. Usually offered every second year.
Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman or Faith Smith

AAAS 80a Economy and Society in Africa
[ nw ss wi ]
Perspectives on the interaction of economic and other variables in African societies. Topics include the ethical and economic bases of distributive justice; models of social theory, efficiency, and equality in law; the role of economic variables in the theory of history; and world systems analysis. Usually offered every third year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 98a Independent Study
Independent readings and research on a topic within the student's interest under the direction of a faculty supervisor. Usually offered every year.
Staff

AAAS 98b Independent Study
Independent readings and research on a topic within the student's interest under the direction of a faculty supervisor. Usually offered every year.
Staff

AAAS 99d Senior Research
Usually offered every year.
Staff

AAAS/ENG 80a Black Looks: The Promise and Perils of Photography
[ deis-us djw hum wi ]
Formerly offered as ENG 80a.
Explores photography and Africans, African-Americans and Caribbean people, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This course will examine fiction that refers to the photograph; various photographic archives; and theorists on photography and looking. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS/FA 74b Introduction to African Art
[ ca nw ss ]
Surveys the visual artistic traditions of Africa. Investigates the different forms of visual art in relation to their historical and socio-cultural context. Symbolism and complexity of Africa's visual art traditions are explored through analysis of myth, ritual, cosmology, and history. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

AAAS/FA 75b History of African American Art
[ ca deis-us ]
"Black art has always existed," stated artist Romare Bearden, "It just hasn't been looked for in the right places." This course examines how black artists in the U.S. explore beauty, individuality, justice and other themes through personal, racial, and societal lenses. Usually offered every third year.
Ellen Tani

(100-199) For Both Undergraduate and Graduate Students

AAAS 102a African Cinema
[ nw ss ]
Explores the foundation and development of African cinema in the context of African history, culture and politics. Examines issues of social change, gender, class, tradition, and modernization through various African cinematic genres. Usually offered every second year.
Salah Hassan

AAAS 115a Introduction to African History
[ djw nw ss ]
Explores the history of African societies from their earliest beginnings to the present era. Topics include African participation in antiquity as well as early Christianity and preindustrial political, economic, and cultural developments. Usually offered every year.
Staff

AAAS 120a African History in Real Time
[ djw nw oc ss ]
This information literacy-driven course equips students with the skills to place current events in Africa in their historical context. Collectively the class builds 5-6 distinct course modules which entail sourcing and evaluating current newstories from a range of media outlets, selecting those that merit in-depth historical analysis, and developing a syllabus for each one. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 122a Politics of Southern Africa
[ nw ss ]
Study of clashing nationalisms, alternative patterns of development, and internationalization of conflict in southern Africa. The political economy of South Africa in regional context and its effect on the politics of its neighbors, particularly Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. Usually offered every third year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 123a Third World Ideologies
[ nw ss wi ]
Analyzes ideological concepts developed by seminal Third World political thinkers and their application to modern political analysis. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 124a After the Dance: Performing Sovereignty in the Caribbean
[ hum oc ss ]
Utilizing short fiction, essays, plays, poetry, and the visual arts, this class theorizes movement and/as freedom in the spectacular or mundane movements of the region, including annual Carnival and Hosay celebrations. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 125b Caribbean Women and Globalization: Sexuality, Citizenship, Work
[ ss wi ]
Utilizing perspectives from sociology, anthropology, fiction, and music to examine the relationship between women's sexuality and conceptions of labor, citizenship, and sovereignty. The course considers these alongside conceptions of masculinity, contending feminisms, and the global perspective. Usually offered every second year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 126b Political Economy of the Third World
[ nw ss wi ]
Development of capitalism and different roles and functions assigned to all "Third Worlds," in the periphery as well as the center. Special attention will be paid to African and African American peripheries. Usually offered every year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 130b Black Brandeis, Black History
[ ss ]
Examines the history of African Americans and other people of African descent at Brandeis University from 1948 to present. Usually offered every third year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 133b The Literature of the Caribbean
[ hum nw ss wi ]
An exploration of the narrative strategies and themes of writers of the region who grapple with issues of colonialism, class, race, ethnicity, and gender in a context of often-conflicting allegiances to North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Usually offered every second year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 134b Novel and Film of the African Diaspora
[ hum nw ]
Writers and filmmakers, who are usually examined separately under national or regional canonical categories such as "(North) American," "Latin American," "African," "British," or "Caribbean," are brought together here to examine transnational identities and investments in "authentic," "African," or "black" identities. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 135a Race, Sex, and Colonialism
[ djw oc ss ]
Explores the histories of interracial sexual relations as they have unfolded in a range of colonial contexts and examines the relationships between race and sex, on one hand, and the exercise of colonial power, on the other. Usually offered every year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 146b African Icons
[ djw nw oc ss wi ]
From Walatta Petros, a seventeenth century Ethiopian nun turned anticolonial agitator to Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, this course introduces a broad range of iconic figures in Africa's history to students who also acquire the investigative and analytical skills associated with sound historical research and writing. Usually offered every year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 151b Africa: A Reggae Anthology
[ djw nw oc ss ]
Draws on the genre of reggae music as a course of understanding how Africa, its people, its history, and its contemporary circumstances are imagined, understood, represented, and engaged by African descended people in Jamaica and in the broader African diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 155b Hip Hop History and Culture
[ ss ]
Examines the history of hip hop culture, in the broader context of U.S., African American and African diaspora history, from the 1960s to the present. Explores key developments, debates and themes shaping hip hop's evolution and contemporary global significance. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 156a #BlackLivesMatter
[ deis-us ss ]
Explores the evolution of the modern African American civil rights movement through historical readings, primary documents, films and social media. Assesses the legacy and consequences of the movement for contemporary struggles for black equality. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 157a African American Political Thought
[ deis-us ss wi ]
Examines the ideological and intellectual traditions that have influenced African American politics. Addresses the question of what are the best strategies for black Americans to pursue freedom and opportunity in the United States. Usually offered every second year.
Amber Spry

AAAS 158a Theories of Development and Underdevelopment
[ nw ss wi ]
Humankind has for some time now possessed the scientific and technological means to combat the scourge of poverty. The purpose of this seminar is to acquaint students with contending theories of development and underdevelopment, emphasizing the open and contested nature of the process involved and of the field of study itself. Among the topics to be studied are modernization theory, the challenge to modernization posed by dependency and world systems theories, and more recent approaches centered on the concepts of basic needs and of sustainable development. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 159a Identity Politics in the United States
[ deis-us ss wi ]
Examines the politics of identity in the United States. It brings together several disciplines: history, political science, sociology, psychology, and others. It spans several groups and social movements in order to equip students with the skills to understand identity group politics through historical contexts, theoretical underpinnings, and current manifestations. The course is organized around a central question: what is the relationship between democracy and identity politics in the United States? In addressing this question, the course will explore the complexities of intergroup relations across race, ethnicity, class, and gender, and examine when, why, and how policy and politics respond to group interests. Usually offered every year.
Amber Spry

AAAS 161b African Diaspora Theory
[ nw ss ]
Examines the contributions of African and African Diaspora intellectuals to critical theory, cultural studies, and the humanities in general. Usually offered every second year.
Salah Hassan

AAAS 162a Assassination: A History of 20th Century Africa
[ djw nw oc ss ]
Examines the assassinations of a range of different political, cultural, and activist figures, such as Patric Lumumba, Steve Biko, and Ken Saro-Wiwa, and assesses the social, political, economic, and cultural implications and legacies this particular form of murder has had on twentieth-century Africa. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 164b Afrofuturism
[ ss ]
Analyzes the various ways in which African Diaspora cultural producers - writers, visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers - use Afrofuturism to critique racial asymmetries in the present and to imagine as-yet-unrealized, free black futures. Usually offered every second year.
Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman

AAAS 170a Black Childhoods
[ deis-us ss ]
Explores historical experiences of growing up black in America. We will examine the role of race in shaping experiences and meanings of childhood from slavery to the present day, including studies of black girlhood and boyhood. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Maigai

AAAS 175a Comparative Politics of North Africa
[ nw ss ]
Explores the formation and development of political cleavages and cleavage systems, and of mass-based political groups, analyzing the expansion of mass political participation, elections, the impact of the military on political groups, and international factors. Usually offered every third year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS/ENG 141b Critical Race Theory
[ hum ]
Traces an intellectual and political history of critical race theory that begins in law classrooms in the 1980s and continues in the 21st century activist strategies of Black Lives Matter movement. We proceed by reading defining theoretical texts alongside African American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

AAAS/HIS 131a African Americans and Health
[ ss ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took AAAS 131a in prior years.
Examines African American health experiences from the 17th century to the present, with a focus on the strategies and practices African Americans have employed to improve their health. Explores the historical development of “racial” diseases and inequalities. Topics include: slave health, the black hospital movement, eugenics, midwifery, and the crack and opioid epidemics. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Muigai

AAAS/HIS 154b Race, Science, and Society
[ deis-us ss ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took AAAS 154b in prior years.
Traces scientific concepts of race from the 18th century to today, interrogating their uses and transformations over time. It explores how science has defined race, how people have challenged such conceptions, and alternate ways for understanding human difference. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Muigai

AAAS/SOC 177a The Other African Americans: Comparative Perspectives on Black Ethnic Diversity
[ ss ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took AAAS 177a in prior years.
Explores the identities, immigration and integration of Black Africans and Afro-Caribbeans in the United States and United Kingdom from interdisciplinary perspectives. It examines intra-racial and inter-ethnic similarities and differences, conflicts and collaborations that animate the lived experiences of native and new Blacks. Usually offered every second year.
Derron Wallace

AAAS/WGS 125a Intellectual History of Black Women
[ deis-us ss ]
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.
Shoniqua Roach

AAAS/WGS 136a Black Feminist Thought
[ deis-us oc ss ]
Formerly offered as AAAS 136a.
Critical examination of the historical, political, economic, and ideological factors that have shaped the lives of African-American women in the United States. Analyzing foundation theoretical texts, fiction, and film over two centuries, this class seeks to understand black women's writing and political activism in the U.S. Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

AAAS/WGS 149a Black Privacy
[ deis-us ]
Informed by recent work in Black feminist, queer, and trans studies, this course explores "Black privacy" and its various meanings and contours. What is Black privacy? Can "Black privacy" exist given the public construction of blackness? How do we make legal claims to Black reproductive, informational, biomedical and domestic privacy when it is already a nebulous concept and an illusory constitutional right? How might Black privacy safeguard against or potentially reinforce the proliferation of public blackness, or its hypervisibility, iconicity, and/or surveillance? What is the erotic potentiality of Black privacy? How do concepts and practices of privacy respond to carceral regimes that animate Black surveillance and counter-surveillance? How do we balance the use of digital media as a strategy of self-making and community building even as Black critical information studies scholars demonstrate that the Internet is a space in which private information is sold and exchanged for "public" resources? Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

African and African American Studies: History