University Bulletin (2023-2024)

• Minor
• Major (BA)

The department welcomes all members of the student body who have an interest in Africa and/or African America. The major is arranged through consultation with the departmental adviser or another professor. Majors may ask for guidance in the selection of elective courses with related content or approach within their chosen disciplines.

The African and African American Studies Department is multidisciplinary with some of its faculty holding joint appointments in other departments. The department brings together scholars and scholarship from various disciplines to explore the cultures, histories and societies of African and African descended people. The department’s offerings range across the traditional fields of anthropology, economics, history, literature, music, politics. The field of African and African American Studies is not only multidisciplinary, but also interdisciplinary, comparative and cross-cultural. The disciplines are integrated by certain themes that underscore the uniqueness of the department.

First, the AAAS subject matter focuses on African peoples and their cultures and those peoples of the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa who are descendants of Africans. Second, the AAAS department’s courses offer a non-western comparative, and a non-racial approach to the interpretations and understandings of the experiences of African peoples of the wider world social, economic, and political systems. Third, the AAAS courses broadens the scope and range of traditional disciplines and offer general education courses in which the knowledge of the presence, roles, and cultural contributions and experiences of African peoples and their descendants have been omitted or neglected.

The AAAS variety of course offerings affirms the intellectual importance of research and scholarship of the contribution of peoples of African descent globally. In sharing the University’s commitment to academic excellence, the AAAS department provides students with the requisite tools to comprehend, analyze, and evaluate events and phenomena that structure the experiences and possibilities of Africans in the continent of Africa and its diaspora.

Knowledge

Students completing a major in African and African American Studies will come away with a strong understanding of:

1. History of the diversity of African peoples worldwide and their struggles for social, political, and economic empowerment.
2. Contributions of Africans in Africa and the diaspora in the development of the cultural, social, political and global interdependence.
3. How to think critically about arguments based on analysis and evaluation of evidence.
4. Major questions, concepts, theories, ethical and research methodologies used in interdisciplinary comparative, and cross-cultural studies.

Skills

A major in African and African American Studies emphasizes core skills in data collection, critical thinking and communication. AAAS majors will be trained and prepared to:

1. Conduct scholarly, professional and original research applying interdisciplinary, comparative and cross-cultural research methodologies
2. Synthesize, as well as articulate orally and in writing, a coherent narrative about the history, religions, cultures, and societies in the continent of Africa and the Africa diaspora.
3. Situate texts, documents, traditions, ideas, artistic productions and relevant data in their contexts.
4. Evaluate information critically with particular attention to examining and analyzing new areas of research in Africa and the African diaspora.

Social Justice

The African and African American Studies curriculum provides students with knowledge and perspectives necessary to participate as informed citizens in the global community. AAAS courses incorporate a multifaceted approach to social justices. These courses strive to simultaneously promote human development and the common good through addressing challenges related to both individual and distribute justice. This approach allows for the empowerment of individuals and groups as well as active confrontation of injustice and inequality in society, both as they impact clientele and in their systemic contexts. The social justice courses include discussions of four critical principles that guide their work: equity, access, participation, and harmony.

1. From this perspective, equity is the fair distribution of resources, rights and responsibilities to all members of society.
2. Access is key to a socially just world. It includes notions of fairness for both the individual and the common good based on the ability of all people to access the resources, services, power, information, and understanding crucial to realizing a standard of living that allows for self-determination and human development.
3. Participation is also crucial to a socially just world. This principle describes the right of every person in society to partake in and be consulted on decisions that impact their lives as well as the lives of other people in their contexts and systems.
4. The final element of social justice is harmony. This is a principle of social adjustment wherein the actions revolving around the self-interests of any individual or group ultimately produces results that afford the best possible outcomes for the community as a whole.

The AAAS curriculum fosters an open climate for a consideration of a full range of discussion of issues that affect injustice, economic inequities, social, political, and religious oppression in Africa and the African diaspora. The courses address issues that deal with international political economy, poverty alleviation, oppression, exploitation, and economic and political empowerment of the marginalized throughout the world.

Upon Graduating

A Brandeis student with a major in African and African American Studies will be prepared to:

1. Pursue graduate study and a scholarly career in African and African American Studies or in any of the disciplines represented in the department.
2. Pursue professional training in a variety of careers including healthcare, social work, government, international organizations, business, journalism, law, education, entertainment, and non-profit organizations in and outside the United States of America.

Chad Williams, Chair
African American military and political environments of the World War I era.

Wangui Muigai
History of science, medicine, and technology. African American intellectual history. Intersections of race and science.

Wellington Nyangoni
Africa: economic development. Comparative Third World political economy.

Soham Patel
Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Afro-Asian Diaspora Studies

Carina Ray, Faculty Mentoring Program Director,  StudyAbroad Liaison
Africa and the Black Atlantic world. Race and sexuality. Comparative colonialisms and nationalisms. Migration and maritime histories. Relationships between race, ethnicity, and political power.

Shoniqua Roach
Black feminisms. Black sexuality studies. African American literature and culture. Visual culture. Performance studies.

Faith Smith, Undergraduate Advising Head
Literature and popular culture of the Caribbean. African American literature. African Diaspora.

Amber Spry
American Politics. Race and identity studies. Political behavior. Political psychology. Inequality and social justice. Quantitative and qualitative research methods.

Affiliated Faculty (contributing to the curriculum, advising and administration of the department or program)

Brandon Callender (English)
V Varun Chaudhry (WGS)
Greg Childs (History)
Abigail Cooper (History)
Emilie Diouf (English)
Anita Hill (Heller School)
Brian Horton (Anthropology)
Daniel Kryder (Politics)
Siri Suh (Sociology)
Derron Wallace (Sociology)
Isaiah Matthew Wooden (Theater Arts)
Leah Wright Rigueur (History)

To complete the minor in AAAS, students must take five semester courses as follows:

1. AAAS 5a Introduction to African and African American Studies. This should ideally be taken as your first course towards the minor requirements, as it provides you with a core foundation in AAAS.
2. Four additional courses, three of which must be AAAS designated, meaning they cannot be cross-listed from another department.
3. The approval of one course transferred from study abroad or elsewhere is subject to the approval of the department's undergraduate advising head. When possible, please consult in advance with the undergraduate advising head about study abroad plans.
4. Minors are eligible to take the AAAS senior capstone seminar, which may count towards the minor requirements.
5. No grade below a C- will be given credit toward the minor. No course taken pass/fail may count toward the minor requirements.

Students will provide a brief statement about their decision to declare the minor and the courses they have selected to take as part of the declaration process. We encourage students, in consultation with the department UAH, to develop a minor curriculum that reflects the interdisciplinary and geographic breadth of the department and its course offerings.

1. Required of all candidates: nine semester courses from among the AAAS and cross-listed courses below.
2. Two of the nine courses must be AAAS 5a (Introduction to African and African American Studies) and AAAS 189a (Senior Capstone Seminar). Students enrolled in AAAS 99d (Senior Thesis) are exempt from the Senior Capstone.
3. At least one course must be taken in each of the following areas: history, arts and social sciences (see lists in letter D below).
4. Four additional courses must be taken within one field of specialization listed below.
   1. History: AAAS 70a, AAAS 115a, AAAS 120a, AAAS 130b, AAAS 131a, AAAS 135a, AAAS 146b, AAAS 151b, AAAS 155b, AAAS 156a, AAAS 162a, AAAS 170a, AAAS/HIS 131a, AAAS/HIS 154b, AAAS/WGS 125a, HIS/HSSP 142a, HIST 71a, HIST 71b, HIST 153b, HIST 157b, HIST 159b, HIST 162a, HIST 172b, HIST 175b.
   2. Arts: AAAS 79b, AAAS 102a, AAAS 124a, AAAS 133b, AAAS 134b, AAAS 151b, AAAS 155b, AAAS 164b, AAAS/ENG 80a, AAAS/FA 74b, AAAS/FA 75b, AAAS/WGS 136a, AAAS/WGS 149a, AMST 120a, AMST 121b, COML 168a, ENG 48b, ENG 107a, ENG 117a, ENG 127b, ENG 137b, ENG 138b, ENG 143b, ENG 167b, ENG 170a, ENG 172b, HIST 162A, THA 144b.
   3. Social Sciences: AAAS 60a, AAAS 80a, AAAS 120a, AAAS 123a, AAAS 125b, AAAS 126b, AAAS 135a, AAAS 157a, AAAS 158a, AAAS 159a, AAAS 161b, AAAS 164b, AAAS 175a, AAAS/ENG 141b, AAAS/HIS 131a, AAAS/HIS 154b, AAAS/SOC 177a, AAAS/WGS 136a, AAAS/WGS 149a, ANTH 31b, ANTH 113b, ECON 69a, ED 170a, HIS/HSSP 142a, HS 515a, HSSP 114b, POL 124b, SOC 113b, SOC 138a, WMGS 170a.
   4. Africa: AAAS 60a, AAAS 102a, AAAS 115a, AAAS 120a, AAAS 122a, AAAS 146b, AAAS 151b, AAAS 161b, AAAS 162a, AAAS/FA 74b, ANTH 31b, COML 168a, ENG 62b, ENG 137b, ENG 170a, ENG 171b, ENG 172b, WMGS 135b.
   5. African-American or the Americas: AAAS 70a, AAAS 79b, AAAS 124a, AAAS 125b, AAAS 130b, AAAS 133b, AAAS 134b, AAAS 151b, AAAS 155b, AAAS 156a, AAAS 157a, AAAS 159a, AAAS 161b, AAAS 168b, AAAS 170a, AAAS/ENG 80a, AAAS/ENG 141b, AAAS/FA 75b, AAAS/HIS 131a, AAAS/HIS 154b, AAAS/SOC 177a, AAAS/WGS 136a, AAAS/WGS 149a, AMST 120a, AMST 121b, COML 168a, ECON 69a, ED 170a, ENG 48b, ENG 107a, ENG 117a, ENG 127b, ENG 138b, ENG 167b, HIST 71a, HIST 71b, HIST 153b, HIST 157b, HIST 159b, HIST 162a, HIST 172b, HIST 175b, HS 515a, HSSP 114b, THA 144b.
5. Foundational Literacies: As part of completing the major, students must:
   • Fulfill the writing intensive requirement by successfully completing one of the following: Any WI-designated course approved for the major.
   • Fulfill the oral communication requirement by successfully completing one of the following: AAAS 99d or any OC-designated course approved for the major.
   • Fulfill the digital literacy requirement by successfully completing: AAAS 5a or any DL-designated course approved for the major.

6. Five of the nine required courses must be AAAS-designated. No course with a final grade below C- can count toward the major. No course taken pass/fail may count toward the major requirements.

7. Two approved study abroad course may count towards parts C or D of the major requirements.

8. Candidates for departmental honors must satisfactorily complete AAAS 99d (Senior Research).

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.

Brandon Callender or Faith Smith

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.
Brandon Callender or Faith Smith

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.
Staff

AAAS 104a Colorism in Paradise
[ djw dl oc ss ]

Introduces the concept of colorism, its relationship to racism, and consider the prevalence of color over race as a preferred identity and socio-political category across Latin America and the Caribbean. The course requires students to read interdisciplinary academic texts and utilize critical race and social praxeology theory to interrogate specific, national contexts within the Latin American and Caribbean region. Special one-time offering, Fall 2021.
Rachel Cantave

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.
Carina Ray

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 news stories 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 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 127a African Refugees
[ djw ss ]

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.

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

AAAS 128b Contemporary Africa
[ djw ss ]

A broad synopsis of the dynamic character of contemporary Africa and key current issues dominating the continent. Designed for students from all disciplines, the course will emphasize the utilization of critical thinking skills to consider the place and future of Africa in today's highly globalized world. Usually offered every second year.

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

AAAS 131b African Women's and Gender Studies
[ djw ss wi ]

Introduction to the genealogy, epistemology, and pedagogy of African Women's and Gender Studies. Students examine a range of gendered experiences in Africa by applying interdisciplinary frames from feminist theory, history, queer studies, development studies, political science, economics, peace studies, literary, art and performance studies, and so on. Students critically evaluate scholarship that deconstructs static notions about women and gender in Africa by centering decolonial perspectives on the topics covered. Usually offered every second year.

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

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 136b Black Politics in the United States: Visions, Values, and Voice
[ deis-us ss ]

AAAS 145b The Transformative Life and Politics of Malcolm X
[ deis-us djw ss ]

How did the world shape Malcolm X and his radical political philosophy? In asking this question, we will study how Malcolm X's transformation from a hustler to a prisoner to a Black Muslim significantly shaped his revolutionary vision for liberation. His life experience gave him an understanding that Black liberation in the United States is entangled with Third World. For Malcolm, Islam became the link between Africa and Asia, and between those subjected to racial violence domestically and globally. As a class, we will situate Malcolm X within this complex history of anticolonialism and Civil Rights to learn how Malcolm X transformed himself to transform the world. Usually offered every year.
Soham Patel

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 160b If We Must Die: War and Military Service in African American History
[ ss ]

Traces African American participation in the nation's military from the American Revolution to Afghanistan. Examines the relationship between African Americans and warfare, paying particular attention to the relationship between race and military service. Students will re-conceptualize the meaning of African American military history by addressing themes such as slavery and freedom, the meaning of citizenship, nationalism and imperialism, war and civil rights activism, manhood and respectability, and violence and trauma. Usually offered every third year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 168b The Black Intellectual Tradition
[ ss wi ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Introduces broad historical themes, issues and debates that constitute the black intellectual tradition. Examines the works of male and female black intellectuals from slavery to present. Will explore issues of freedom, citizenship, uplift, gender, and race consciousness. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

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 Muigai

AAAS 189a Senior Capstone Seminar
[ ss ]

Enrollment limited to seniors with a declared major or minor in African and African American Studies.

Senior seminar provides a culminating experience in AAAS with the goal of producing a final capstone project. Working alongside the peers as well as current and former faculty, students will have the opportunity to interrogate critical themes, methods, questions and problems in the discipline of AAAS. Usually offered every year.
Staff

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 121a Black Visibility
[ deis-us ss ]

Drawing on theories of the Black gaze rooted in both Black feminist visual culture (Tina Campt, bell hooks, Nicole Fleetwood) and surveillance studies (Simone Browne, Kelly Ross), this interdisciplinary course pairs a discussion of histories of anti-Black social control with an emphasis on Black reclamations of the visual field in modalities including popular film, social media, performance art, and literature. Students will emerge with a deepened understanding of how linked formations of Blackness, gender, and sexuality shape ways of seeing in American culture, and how different Black women, gender-expansive, and queer folx negotiate these formations with their art. Usually offered every year.
Carmel Ohman

AAAS/WGS 122a Carceral Studies
[ deis-us djw ss ]

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. Special one-time offering, fall 2021.
Anya Wallace

AAAS/WGS 123b Black Girlhood Sexual Politics
[ deis-us ss ]

This seminar uses a feminist perspective to provide students with an overview of the achievements, experiences, productions, and sexual politics of Black girlhood in art, visual culture, 20th century American Literature, and popular media. We will explore the ways Black girlhood has been understood in popular imaginings as well as the ways Black girls represent themselves—their experiences, bodies, sexuality, race, class, knowledge histories, and labors, cultural productions. This seminar introduces students to the field of gender and sexuality as cultural study through visual culture and the aesthetics of narrative. Special one-time offering, spring 2021.

Anya Wallace

AAAS/WGS 124a Gender and Surrealism in Popular Black TV and Film
[ deis-us ]

Interprets contemporary Black experimental TV and Film (including Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness, Misha Green’s Lovecraft Country) through two distinct yet overlapping intellectual and political traditions: Black feminism (as a politic that interrogates assumptions behind gender, sexuality, and race in the interests of Black women’s freedom) and Afrosurrealism (as an anti-imperialist poetic, musical, and artistic movement that denaturalizes linked power structures from African diasporic perspectives). Students will identify and articulate key features, principles, and goals of Black feminism and Afrosurrealism, tracing how different Black artists and thinkers have employed and revised these traditions since the 1960s. Special one-time offering, fall 2022.

Carmel Ohman

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

AAAS/WGS 152b Beyoncé and Beyond: The Politics of Black Popular Music
[ deis-us ss ]

Prerequisite: AAAS 5a, AAAS/WGS 125a or AAAS/WGS 136a.

Introduces the history of contemporary black popular music and uses Beyoncé's wide-ranging and African diasporic musical repertoire as an entry-point into Black sound cultures from the US, Africa, the Caribbean, and Western Europe. Each week will spotlight part of Beyoncé's repertoire, i.e., Lemonade, Black is King, B-day, and Dangerously in Love, taking these as a jumping off point from which to survey and delve into such genres as R&B, Hip-hop, Disco, Dancehall, UK Garage, Trap Soul, New Orleans Bounce, as well as Jungle & Afrobeats. In addition to understanding these histories and genres, students will also explore public-facing popular music writing and criticism, and produce a piece of music criticism such as a blog post or Op-ed. Overall, this course investigates the aesthetic, political, cultural, and economic dimensions of Black popular music, paying particular attention to questions of gender, sexuality, class, nation, language, and technology. Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

AAAS/WGS 180b Black Sexual Politics
[ deis-us ss ]

Prerequisites: AAAS 5a and/or WGS 5a recommended for participating undergraduates.

Grounded in Black feminist theories of eroticism, pleasure, and embodiment, this seminar invites students into complex conversations about how racially and sexually minoritized people build robust sexual worlds even in the face of anti-Blackness, misogyny, and heterosexism. Inspired by Patricia Hill Collins’ 2004 monograph Black Sexual Politics, this seminar asks: how have Black women, Black queer people, and Black gender-expansive people in America used culture and social movements to create in-group knowledge and to challenge linked racial-sexual structures of oppression? How have different practitioners created and revised theories of sexuality depending on time and place? Students will emerge from this seminar with a deepened understanding of Black feminist theoretical vocabularies including but not limited to: the politics of respectability, the culture of dissemblance, ungendering, fungibility, theories of the flesh, pleasure, and misogynoir. Special one-time offering, spring 2023.

Carmel Ohman

AAS/AAPI 129b The Spirit of Bandung: Afro-Asian Insurgency and Solidarity
[ deis-us djw ss ]

Examines the racial conflicts between Black and Asian American communities and develops an understanding of how the Afro-Asia political project is an insurgent coalitional project. To do this, we will explore the historical and contemporary struggles, insurgencies, and solidarities of Black and Asian peoples. We will learn together how Afro-Asia serves as an insurgent site of critique, resistance, and revolutionary aesthetics that connects distant geographies, diasporas, and Black and Asian peoples to a global anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial political imaginary. Usually offered every year.
Soham Patel

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.

Brandon Callender or Faith Smith

AAAS 104a Colorism in Paradise
[ djw dl oc ss ]

Introduces the concept of colorism, its relationship to racism, and consider the prevalence of color over race as a preferred identity and socio-political category across Latin America and the Caribbean. The course requires students to read interdisciplinary academic texts and utilize critical race and social praxeology theory to interrogate specific, national contexts within the Latin American and Caribbean region. Special one-time offering, Fall 2021.
Rachel Cantave

HIST 157b Marginalized Voices and the Writing of History
[ deis-us dl ss wi ]

Seeks to understand not only the system but the inner lives and cultures of slaves within that system. This course is a reading-intensive seminar examining both primary and secondary sources on American slaves. Focuses on the American South but includes sources on the larger African diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Abigail Cooper

AAAS 104a Colorism in Paradise
[ djw dl oc ss ]

Introduces the concept of colorism, its relationship to racism, and consider the prevalence of color over race as a preferred identity and socio-political category across Latin America and the Caribbean. The course requires students to read interdisciplinary academic texts and utilize critical race and social praxeology theory to interrogate specific, national contexts within the Latin American and Caribbean region. Special one-time offering, Fall 2021.
Rachel Cantave

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 news stories 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 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 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/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 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.
Brandon Callender or 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 131b African Women's and Gender Studies
[ djw ss wi ]

Introduction to the genealogy, epistemology, and pedagogy of African Women's and Gender Studies. Students examine a range of gendered experiences in Africa by applying interdisciplinary frames from feminist theory, history, queer studies, development studies, political science, economics, peace studies, literary, art and performance studies, and so on. Students critically evaluate scholarship that deconstructs static notions about women and gender in Africa by centering decolonial perspectives on the topics covered. Usually offered every second year.

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

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 168b The Black Intellectual Tradition
[ ss wi ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Introduces broad historical themes, issues and debates that constitute the black intellectual tradition. Examines the works of male and female black intellectuals from slavery to present. Will explore issues of freedom, citizenship, uplift, gender, and race consciousness. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

ENG 12a Decolonizing Tongues: Language in African Literature
[ deis-us djw hum wi ]

A comparative exploration of the politics of language in postcolonial African Literature and its impact on literary production. It locates the language question in anglophone and francophone African Literature within the context political independence. Usually offered every third year.

Emilie Diouf

HIST 157b Marginalized Voices and the Writing of History
[ deis-us dl ss wi ]

Seeks to understand not only the system but the inner lives and cultures of slaves within that system. This course is a reading-intensive seminar examining both primary and secondary sources on American slaves. Focuses on the American South but includes sources on the larger African diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Abigail Cooper

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.
Carina Ray

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 news stories 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 127a African Refugees
[ djw ss ]

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.

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

AAAS 128b Contemporary Africa
[ djw ss ]

A broad synopsis of the dynamic character of contemporary Africa and key current issues dominating the continent. Designed for students from all disciplines, the course will emphasize the utilization of critical thinking skills to consider the place and future of Africa in today's highly globalized world. Usually offered every second year.

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

AAAS 131b African Women's and Gender Studies
[ djw ss wi ]

Introduction to the genealogy, epistemology, and pedagogy of African Women's and Gender Studies. Students examine a range of gendered experiences in Africa by applying interdisciplinary frames from feminist theory, history, queer studies, development studies, political science, economics, peace studies, literary, art and performance studies, and so on. Students critically evaluate scholarship that deconstructs static notions about women and gender in Africa by centering decolonial perspectives on the topics covered. Usually offered every second year.

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

AAAS 145b The Transformative Life and Politics of Malcolm X
[ deis-us djw ss ]

How did the world shape Malcolm X and his radical political philosophy? In asking this question, we will study how Malcolm X's transformation from a hustler to a prisoner to a Black Muslim significantly shaped his revolutionary vision for liberation. His life experience gave him an understanding that Black liberation in the United States is entangled with Third World. For Malcolm, Islam became the link between Africa and Asia, and between those subjected to racial violence domestically and globally. As a class, we will situate Malcolm X within this complex history of anticolonialism and Civil Rights to learn how Malcolm X transformed himself to transform the world. Usually offered every year.
Soham Patel

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/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

ENG 62b Contemporary African Literature, Global Perspectives
[ djw dl hum nw oc ]

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.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 137b Women and War
[ djw dl hum nw ]

Examines how African women writers and filmmakers use testimony to bear witness to mass violence. How do these writers resist political and sociocultural silencing systems that reduce traumatic experience to silence, denial, and terror? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 171b African Feminism(s)
[ djw hum nw ]

Examines African Feminism(s) as a literary and activist movement that underlines the need for centering African women's experiences in the study of African cultures, societies, and histories. Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 172b African Literature and Human Rights
[ hum nw ]

Human rights have been central to thinking about Africa. What do we mean when we speak of human rights? Are we asserting a natural and universal equality among all people, regardless of race, class, gender, or geography? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

WGS 135b Postcolonial Feminisms
[ hum oc ]

Examines feminist theories, literature, and film from formerly colonized, Anglophone countries in South Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa. It takes the shared path of decolonization and postcoloniality to discuss the development of feminist discourse and the diverse trajectories of gendered lives. Usually offered every third year.
Harleen Singh

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.
Brandon Callender or Faith Smith

AAAS 104a Colorism in Paradise
[ djw dl oc ss ]

Introduces the concept of colorism, its relationship to racism, and consider the prevalence of color over race as a preferred identity and socio-political category across Latin America and the Caribbean. The course requires students to read interdisciplinary academic texts and utilize critical race and social praxeology theory to interrogate specific, national contexts within the Latin American and Caribbean region. Special one-time offering, Fall 2021.
Rachel Cantave

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 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 136b Black Politics in the United States: Visions, Values, and Voice
[ deis-us ss ]

AAAS 145b The Transformative Life and Politics of Malcolm X
[ deis-us djw ss ]

How did the world shape Malcolm X and his radical political philosophy? In asking this question, we will study how Malcolm X's transformation from a hustler to a prisoner to a Black Muslim significantly shaped his revolutionary vision for liberation. His life experience gave him an understanding that Black liberation in the United States is entangled with Third World. For Malcolm, Islam became the link between Africa and Asia, and between those subjected to racial violence domestically and globally. As a class, we will situate Malcolm X within this complex history of anticolonialism and Civil Rights to learn how Malcolm X transformed himself to transform the world. Usually offered every year.
Soham Patel

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 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 160b If We Must Die: War and Military Service in African American History
[ ss ]

Traces African American participation in the nation's military from the American Revolution to Afghanistan. Examines the relationship between African Americans and warfare, paying particular attention to the relationship between race and military service. Students will re-conceptualize the meaning of African American military history by addressing themes such as slavery and freedom, the meaning of citizenship, nationalism and imperialism, war and civil rights activism, manhood and respectability, and violence and trauma. Usually offered every third year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 168b The Black Intellectual Tradition
[ ss wi ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Introduces broad historical themes, issues and debates that constitute the black intellectual tradition. Examines the works of male and female black intellectuals from slavery to present. Will explore issues of freedom, citizenship, uplift, gender, and race consciousness. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

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 Muigai

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/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/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.
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 121a Black Visibility
[ deis-us ss ]

Drawing on theories of the Black gaze rooted in both Black feminist visual culture (Tina Campt, bell hooks, Nicole Fleetwood) and surveillance studies (Simone Browne, Kelly Ross), this interdisciplinary course pairs a discussion of histories of anti-Black social control with an emphasis on Black reclamations of the visual field in modalities including popular film, social media, performance art, and literature. Students will emerge with a deepened understanding of how linked formations of Blackness, gender, and sexuality shape ways of seeing in American culture, and how different Black women, gender-expansive, and queer folx negotiate these formations with their art. Usually offered every year.
Carmel Ohman

AAAS/WGS 122a Carceral Studies
[ deis-us djw ss ]

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. Special one-time offering, fall 2021.
Anya Wallace

AAAS/WGS 123b Black Girlhood Sexual Politics
[ deis-us ss ]

This seminar uses a feminist perspective to provide students with an overview of the achievements, experiences, productions, and sexual politics of Black girlhood in art, visual culture, 20th century American Literature, and popular media. We will explore the ways Black girlhood has been understood in popular imaginings as well as the ways Black girls represent themselves—their experiences, bodies, sexuality, race, class, knowledge histories, and labors, cultural productions. This seminar introduces students to the field of gender and sexuality as cultural study through visual culture and the aesthetics of narrative. Special one-time offering, spring 2021.

Anya Wallace

AAAS/WGS 124a Gender and Surrealism in Popular Black TV and Film
[ deis-us ]

Interprets contemporary Black experimental TV and Film (including Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness, Misha Green’s Lovecraft Country) through two distinct yet overlapping intellectual and political traditions: Black feminism (as a politic that interrogates assumptions behind gender, sexuality, and race in the interests of Black women’s freedom) and Afrosurrealism (as an anti-imperialist poetic, musical, and artistic movement that denaturalizes linked power structures from African diasporic perspectives). Students will identify and articulate key features, principles, and goals of Black feminism and Afrosurrealism, tracing how different Black artists and thinkers have employed and revised these traditions since the 1960s. Special one-time offering, fall 2022.

Carmel Ohman

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

AAAS/WGS 152b Beyoncé and Beyond: The Politics of Black Popular Music
[ deis-us ss ]

Prerequisite: AAAS 5a, AAAS/WGS 125a or AAAS/WGS 136a.

Introduces the history of contemporary black popular music and uses Beyoncé's wide-ranging and African diasporic musical repertoire as an entry-point into Black sound cultures from the US, Africa, the Caribbean, and Western Europe. Each week will spotlight part of Beyoncé's repertoire, i.e., Lemonade, Black is King, B-day, and Dangerously in Love, taking these as a jumping off point from which to survey and delve into such genres as R&B, Hip-hop, Disco, Dancehall, UK Garage, Trap Soul, New Orleans Bounce, as well as Jungle & Afrobeats. In addition to understanding these histories and genres, students will also explore public-facing popular music writing and criticism, and produce a piece of music criticism such as a blog post or Op-ed. Overall, this course investigates the aesthetic, political, cultural, and economic dimensions of Black popular music, paying particular attention to questions of gender, sexuality, class, nation, language, and technology. Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

AAAS/WGS 180b Black Sexual Politics
[ deis-us ss ]

Prerequisites: AAAS 5a and/or WGS 5a recommended for participating undergraduates.

Grounded in Black feminist theories of eroticism, pleasure, and embodiment, this seminar invites students into complex conversations about how racially and sexually minoritized people build robust sexual worlds even in the face of anti-Blackness, misogyny, and heterosexism. Inspired by Patricia Hill Collins’ 2004 monograph Black Sexual Politics, this seminar asks: how have Black women, Black queer people, and Black gender-expansive people in America used culture and social movements to create in-group knowledge and to challenge linked racial-sexual structures of oppression? How have different practitioners created and revised theories of sexuality depending on time and place? Students will emerge from this seminar with a deepened understanding of Black feminist theoretical vocabularies including but not limited to: the politics of respectability, the culture of dissemblance, ungendering, fungibility, theories of the flesh, pleasure, and misogynoir. Special one-time offering, spring 2023.

Carmel Ohman

AAS/AAPI 129b The Spirit of Bandung: Afro-Asian Insurgency and Solidarity
[ deis-us djw ss ]

Examines the racial conflicts between Black and Asian American communities and develops an understanding of how the Afro-Asia political project is an insurgent coalitional project. To do this, we will explore the historical and contemporary struggles, insurgencies, and solidarities of Black and Asian peoples. We will learn together how Afro-Asia serves as an insurgent site of critique, resistance, and revolutionary aesthetics that connects distant geographies, diasporas, and Black and Asian peoples to a global anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial political imaginary. Usually offered every year.
Soham Patel

AMST/ENG 167b Writing the Nation: James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison
[ deis-us hum ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 57b in prior years.

An in-depth study of three major American authors of the twentieth century. Highlights the contributions of each author to the American literary canon and to its diversity. Explores how these novelists narrate cross-racial, cross-gendered, cross-regional, and cross-cultural contact and conflict in the United States. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ECON 69a The Economics of Race and Gender
[ deis-us ss ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a.

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.
Elizabeth Brainerd

ED 170a Race, Power, and Urban Education
[ deis-us oc ss wi ]

Examines the nature of urban schools, their links to the social and political context, and the perspectives of the people who inhabit them. Explores the historical development of urban schools; the social, economic, and personal hardships facing urban students; and challenges of urban school reform. Usually offered every year.
Derron Wallace

ENG 15b Black Joy
[ deis-us hum ]

Explores the exuberant and sometimes strained relationship between black people
and joy. In addition to literature, we will encounter various performances and perspectives that approach joy from multitude of perspectives, including minstrelsy, meditation, nature writing, ancestral remembrance, and the erotics of eating well and feeling good. Usually offered every year.
Brandon Callender

ENG 52b Vampires: Dark Fictions of Blood
[ deis-us hum ]

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.

Brandon Callender

ENG 106a Representing Slavery
[ deis-us hum wi ]

Examines the culture and politics of slavery in the US. We will read some of the classic slave narratives, some diaries of enslavers, political speeches by abolitionists and defenders of slavery, letters and public papers of President Lincoln, and novels written by authors with a close engagement with slavery. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 107a Women Writing Desire: Caribbean Fiction and Film
[ hum ]

About eight novels of the last two decades (by Cliff, Cruz, Danticat, Garcia, Kempadoo, Kincaid, Mittoo, Nunez, Pineau, Powell, or Rosario), drawn from across the region, and read in dialogue with popular culture, theory, and earlier generations of male and female writers of the region. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

ENG 117a The Harlem Renaissance
[ deis-us hum ]

Examines the explosive artistic, political, and cultural period known as the Harlem Renaissance. A major movement in African American literature, the Harlem Renaissance sought to redefine American blackness and establish artistic freedom. Usually offered every third year.
Gabrielle Everett

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ djw hum nw ]

Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines the textual and visual constructions of the Caribbean as colony, homeland, backyard, paradise, and Babylon, and how the region's migrations have prompted ideas about evolution, hedonism, imperialism, nationalism, and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Faith Smith

ENG 168b Plotting Inheritance
[ djw dl hum ]

Examines novels published in the last two decades set during slavery and indenture in the British Caribbean, alongside (and as) theorizations of accumulation, inheritance, and freedom. How does fiction account for and plot material, moral and emotional worth? Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

ENG 175b Getting Behind in Black Gay Men's Literatures
[ deis-us hum ]

Examines black queer men’s sexualities in the field of twentieth and twenty-first century American literatures. Our focus on “getting behind” draws together topics that we will explore throughout term. These include varying attitudes that black queer writers have toward cruising and intimacy; falling behind the times; and falling behind at work, or in life, because of certain sexual pursuits. Usually offered every third year.

Brandon Callender

HIST 71a Latin American and Caribbean History I: Colonialism, Slavery, Freedom
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Studies colonialism in Latin America and Caribbean, focusing on coerced labor and struggles for freedom as defining features of the period: conquest; Indigenous, African, and Asian labor; colonial institutions and economics; Independence and revolutionary movements. Usually offered every year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 153b Slavery and the American Civil War: #1619 Project
[ deis-us dl ss ]

A hard look at American slavery from the Middle Passage to Mass Incarceration, plus an investigation into the Civil War through the lens of Black self-emancipation. Uses the tools and insights from #1619 Project. Usually offered every second year.
Abigail Cooper

HIST 157b Marginalized Voices and the Writing of History
[ deis-us dl ss wi ]

Seeks to understand not only the system but the inner lives and cultures of slaves within that system. This course is a reading-intensive seminar examining both primary and secondary sources on American slaves. Focuses on the American South but includes sources on the larger African diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Abigail Cooper

HIST 159b Modern African American History
[ deis-us ss ]

Introduces students to some of the key social, political, economic, and cultural moments that defined the African American experience in the United States, 1865 through the present. Through the use of primary and secondary source materials, critical surveys, lectures, and guided discussion, this class highlights the richness and significance of the African American history. This course covers a diverse array of key themes and topics including: Reconstruction and segregation; the Great Migration; the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Feminist movements; black political power; mass incarceration and the surveillance state; and Hip Hop culture. Usually offered every second year.

Chad Williams

HIST 162a Writing on the Wall: Histories of Graffiti in the Americas
[ djw dl ss ]

Focuses on the history of graffiti in the U.S. from 1960s forward. Includes the historical role of Caribbean migration, the impact of criminology and economic recession of the 1970s on graffiti culture, and the relationship between private property, public space, and graffiti. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 172b Historicizing the Black Radical Tradition
[ djw ss ]

Introduces students to the many ways that people and scholars of African descent have historically struggled against racial oppression by formulating theories, philosophies, and practices of liberation rooted in their experiences and understandings of labor, capitalism, and modernity. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 175b Resistance and Revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean
[ djw nw ss wi ]

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.
Gregory Childs

HIST 176a Haiti and the Modern Caribbean
[ djw ss ]

Studies how Haitian political thought traveled throughout and the Caribbean in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some of the themes we will thus encounter include: race and the formation of nation-states in the 19th century Caribbean; the place of Haiti in the world economy; Haiti-US diplomatic relations; and interactions, antagonisms, and entwined histories of Haiti with other Caribbean societies. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HSSP 114b Racial/Ethnic and Gender Inequalities in Health and Health Care
[ ss ]

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.
Staff

LACLS 152a Race and Nation in the Caribbean
[ deis-us djw hum ]

The Caribbean is an emblematic site for understanding the origins of modern forms of capitalism, globalization, and trans-nationalism. In this course, we will explore how academics and people in the Caribbean deploy ideas about 'race' and 'nation' to make sense of these transformations and impacts in the region. In particular, we will discuss the founding moments of Caribbean history, including colonialism, the genocide of Native populations, the enslavement of African people, the rise of plantation economies, and the development of global networks of goods and peoples. We will also examine tourism and debt as the continuation of long- extractive colonial practices that continue to generate stark inequalities and racial hierarchies in the region. Special one-time offering, spring 2021.
Isar Godreau

THA 144b Black Theater and Performance
[ ca deis-us ]

Explores aesthetic innovations and transformations in African American theater and performance and examines the crucial role the stage has played in shaping perceptions and understandings of blackness. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

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.
Brandon Callender or Faith Smith

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 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 145b The Transformative Life and Politics of Malcolm X
[ deis-us djw ss ]

How did the world shape Malcolm X and his radical political philosophy? In asking this question, we will study how Malcolm X's transformation from a hustler to a prisoner to a Black Muslim significantly shaped his revolutionary vision for liberation. His life experience gave him an understanding that Black liberation in the United States is entangled with Third World. For Malcolm, Islam became the link between Africa and Asia, and between those subjected to racial violence domestically and globally. As a class, we will situate Malcolm X within this complex history of anticolonialism and Civil Rights to learn how Malcolm X transformed himself to transform the world. Usually offered every year.
Soham Patel

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/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.
Staff

AAAS/WGS 121a Black Visibility
[ deis-us ss ]

Drawing on theories of the Black gaze rooted in both Black feminist visual culture (Tina Campt, bell hooks, Nicole Fleetwood) and surveillance studies (Simone Browne, Kelly Ross), this interdisciplinary course pairs a discussion of histories of anti-Black social control with an emphasis on Black reclamations of the visual field in modalities including popular film, social media, performance art, and literature. Students will emerge with a deepened understanding of how linked formations of Blackness, gender, and sexuality shape ways of seeing in American culture, and how different Black women, gender-expansive, and queer folx negotiate these formations with their art. Usually offered every year.
Carmel Ohman

AAAS/WGS 123b Black Girlhood Sexual Politics
[ deis-us ss ]

This seminar uses a feminist perspective to provide students with an overview of the achievements, experiences, productions, and sexual politics of Black girlhood in art, visual culture, 20th century American Literature, and popular media. We will explore the ways Black girlhood has been understood in popular imaginings as well as the ways Black girls represent themselves—their experiences, bodies, sexuality, race, class, knowledge histories, and labors, cultural productions. This seminar introduces students to the field of gender and sexuality as cultural study through visual culture and the aesthetics of narrative. Special one-time offering, spring 2021.

Anya Wallace

AAAS/WGS 124a Gender and Surrealism in Popular Black TV and Film
[ deis-us ]

Interprets contemporary Black experimental TV and Film (including Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness, Misha Green’s Lovecraft Country) through two distinct yet overlapping intellectual and political traditions: Black feminism (as a politic that interrogates assumptions behind gender, sexuality, and race in the interests of Black women’s freedom) and Afrosurrealism (as an anti-imperialist poetic, musical, and artistic movement that denaturalizes linked power structures from African diasporic perspectives). Students will identify and articulate key features, principles, and goals of Black feminism and Afrosurrealism, tracing how different Black artists and thinkers have employed and revised these traditions since the 1960s. Special one-time offering, fall 2022.

Carmel Ohman

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

AAAS/WGS 152b Beyoncé and Beyond: The Politics of Black Popular Music
[ deis-us ss ]

Prerequisite: AAAS 5a, AAAS/WGS 125a or AAAS/WGS 136a.

Introduces the history of contemporary black popular music and uses Beyoncé's wide-ranging and African diasporic musical repertoire as an entry-point into Black sound cultures from the US, Africa, the Caribbean, and Western Europe. Each week will spotlight part of Beyoncé's repertoire, i.e., Lemonade, Black is King, B-day, and Dangerously in Love, taking these as a jumping off point from which to survey and delve into such genres as R&B, Hip-hop, Disco, Dancehall, UK Garage, Trap Soul, New Orleans Bounce, as well as Jungle & Afrobeats. In addition to understanding these histories and genres, students will also explore public-facing popular music writing and criticism, and produce a piece of music criticism such as a blog post or Op-ed. Overall, this course investigates the aesthetic, political, cultural, and economic dimensions of Black popular music, paying particular attention to questions of gender, sexuality, class, nation, language, and technology. Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

AAS/AAPI 129b The Spirit of Bandung: Afro-Asian Insurgency and Solidarity
[ deis-us djw ss ]

Examines the racial conflicts between Black and Asian American communities and develops an understanding of how the Afro-Asia political project is an insurgent coalitional project. To do this, we will explore the historical and contemporary struggles, insurgencies, and solidarities of Black and Asian peoples. We will learn together how Afro-Asia serves as an insurgent site of critique, resistance, and revolutionary aesthetics that connects distant geographies, diasporas, and Black and Asian peoples to a global anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial political imaginary. Usually offered every year.
Soham Patel

AMST/ENG 167b Writing the Nation: James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison
[ deis-us hum ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 57b in prior years.

An in-depth study of three major American authors of the twentieth century. Highlights the contributions of each author to the American literary canon and to its diversity. Explores how these novelists narrate cross-racial, cross-gendered, cross-regional, and cross-cultural contact and conflict in the United States. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 12a Decolonizing Tongues: Language in African Literature
[ deis-us djw hum wi ]

A comparative exploration of the politics of language in postcolonial African Literature and its impact on literary production. It locates the language question in anglophone and francophone African Literature within the context political independence. Usually offered every third year.

Emilie Diouf

ENG 15b Black Joy
[ deis-us hum ]

Explores the exuberant and sometimes strained relationship between black people
and joy. In addition to literature, we will encounter various performances and perspectives that approach joy from multitude of perspectives, including minstrelsy, meditation, nature writing, ancestral remembrance, and the erotics of eating well and feeling good. Usually offered every year.
Brandon Callender

ENG 42a Blackness and Horror
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Examines the tense and transformative place that blackness has within the horror tradition, beginning with the late nineteenth century and moving into the present. In addition to documentaries and critical texts, we will analyze literature, films, and various aspects of material culture that explore the relationship between blackness and horror. Usually offered every third year.
Brandon Callender

ENG 52b Vampires: Dark Fictions of Blood
[ deis-us hum ]

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.

Brandon Callender

ENG 102a Ghosts of Race
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Examines ghost stories and films from across the African Diasporic. Our discussions will consider a range of phenomena, from ancestral visitations and paranormal ethnography to haunted plantation tours. We will do so in order to highlight a variety of pressing themes within Black film and literatures, including trauma, memory, and xenophobia. Usually offered every third year.
Brandon Callender

ENG 106a Representing Slavery
[ deis-us hum wi ]

Examines the culture and politics of slavery in the US. We will read some of the classic slave narratives, some diaries of enslavers, political speeches by abolitionists and defenders of slavery, letters and public papers of President Lincoln, and novels written by authors with a close engagement with slavery. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 107a Women Writing Desire: Caribbean Fiction and Film
[ hum ]

About eight novels of the last two decades (by Cliff, Cruz, Danticat, Garcia, Kempadoo, Kincaid, Mittoo, Nunez, Pineau, Powell, or Rosario), drawn from across the region, and read in dialogue with popular culture, theory, and earlier generations of male and female writers of the region. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

ENG 117a The Harlem Renaissance
[ deis-us hum ]

Examines the explosive artistic, political, and cultural period known as the Harlem Renaissance. A major movement in African American literature, the Harlem Renaissance sought to redefine American blackness and establish artistic freedom. Usually offered every third year.
Gabrielle Everett

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ djw hum nw ]

Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines the textual and visual constructions of the Caribbean as colony, homeland, backyard, paradise, and Babylon, and how the region's migrations have prompted ideas about evolution, hedonism, imperialism, nationalism, and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Faith Smith

ENG 137b Women and War
[ djw dl hum nw ]

Examines how African women writers and filmmakers use testimony to bear witness to mass violence. How do these writers resist political and sociocultural silencing systems that reduce traumatic experience to silence, denial, and terror? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 142b Black Queer Literatures
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Examines various works by black queer critics and cultural producers, beginning in the early twentieth century and continuing into the present. While we largely focus upon the attempt to create the shared sense of a world and a tradition in common, we also attend to important divisions brought about by various forms and feelings of difference (including race, gender, class, nation, age and ability). Usually offered every third year.
Brandon Callender

ENG 143b Chaucer's "Global and Refugee Canterbury Tales"
[ deis-us djw dl hum ]

Focuses on situating Chaucer, and particularly the Canterbury Tales, as a global
work. We will examine black feminist writers, playwrights, and poets of the African diaspora who have revised, adapted, extrapolated, and voiced the Canterbury Tales in Jamaican patois, Nigerian pidgin, and the S. London dialects of Brixton. Usually offered every second year.
Dorothy Kim

ENG 168b Plotting Inheritance
[ djw dl hum ]

Examines novels published in the last two decades set during slavery and indenture in the British Caribbean, alongside (and as) theorizations of accumulation, inheritance, and freedom. How does fiction account for and plot material, moral and emotional worth? Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

ENG 172b African Literature and Human Rights
[ hum nw ]

Human rights have been central to thinking about Africa. What do we mean when we speak of human rights? Are we asserting a natural and universal equality among all people, regardless of race, class, gender, or geography? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

HIST 162a Writing on the Wall: Histories of Graffiti in the Americas
[ djw dl ss ]

Focuses on the history of graffiti in the U.S. from 1960s forward. Includes the historical role of Caribbean migration, the impact of criminology and economic recession of the 1970s on graffiti culture, and the relationship between private property, public space, and graffiti. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

THA 144b Black Theater and Performance
[ ca deis-us ]

Explores aesthetic innovations and transformations in African American theater and performance and examines the crucial role the stage has played in shaping perceptions and understandings of blackness. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

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.
Carina Ray

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 news stories 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 145b The Transformative Life and Politics of Malcolm X
[ deis-us djw ss ]

How did the world shape Malcolm X and his radical political philosophy? In asking this question, we will study how Malcolm X's transformation from a hustler to a prisoner to a Black Muslim significantly shaped his revolutionary vision for liberation. His life experience gave him an understanding that Black liberation in the United States is entangled with Third World. For Malcolm, Islam became the link between Africa and Asia, and between those subjected to racial violence domestically and globally. As a class, we will situate Malcolm X within this complex history of anticolonialism and Civil Rights to learn how Malcolm X transformed himself to transform the world. Usually offered every year.
Soham Patel

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 160b If We Must Die: War and Military Service in African American History
[ ss ]

Traces African American participation in the nation's military from the American Revolution to Afghanistan. Examines the relationship between African Americans and warfare, paying particular attention to the relationship between race and military service. Students will re-conceptualize the meaning of African American military history by addressing themes such as slavery and freedom, the meaning of citizenship, nationalism and imperialism, war and civil rights activism, manhood and respectability, and violence and trauma. Usually offered every third year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 168b The Black Intellectual Tradition
[ ss wi ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Introduces broad historical themes, issues and debates that constitute the black intellectual tradition. Examines the works of male and female black intellectuals from slavery to present. Will explore issues of freedom, citizenship, uplift, gender, and race consciousness. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

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 Muigai

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/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

AAS/AAPI 129b The Spirit of Bandung: Afro-Asian Insurgency and Solidarity
[ deis-us djw ss ]

Examines the racial conflicts between Black and Asian American communities and develops an understanding of how the Afro-Asia political project is an insurgent coalitional project. To do this, we will explore the historical and contemporary struggles, insurgencies, and solidarities of Black and Asian peoples. We will learn together how Afro-Asia serves as an insurgent site of critique, resistance, and revolutionary aesthetics that connects distant geographies, diasporas, and Black and Asian peoples to a global anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial political imaginary. Usually offered every year.
Soham Patel

ENG 106a Representing Slavery
[ deis-us hum wi ]

Examines the culture and politics of slavery in the US. We will read some of the classic slave narratives, some diaries of enslavers, political speeches by abolitionists and defenders of slavery, letters and public papers of President Lincoln, and novels written by authors with a close engagement with slavery. Usually offered every third year.

HIS/HSSP 142a Health Activism
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Formerly offered as HSSP 142a.

Examines the history of health activism in the U.S. over the past 125 years, from late 19th century debates over compulsory vaccination to contemporary public health campaigns around gang violence and incarceration. Usually offered every third year.
Wangui Muigai

HIST 71a Latin American and Caribbean History I: Colonialism, Slavery, Freedom
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Studies colonialism in Latin America and Caribbean, focusing on coerced labor and struggles for freedom as defining features of the period: conquest; Indigenous, African, and Asian labor; colonial institutions and economics; Independence and revolutionary movements. Usually offered every year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 153b Slavery and the American Civil War: #1619 Project
[ deis-us dl ss ]

A hard look at American slavery from the Middle Passage to Mass Incarceration, plus an investigation into the Civil War through the lens of Black self-emancipation. Uses the tools and insights from #1619 Project. Usually offered every second year.
Abigail Cooper

HIST 157b Marginalized Voices and the Writing of History
[ deis-us dl ss wi ]

Seeks to understand not only the system but the inner lives and cultures of slaves within that system. This course is a reading-intensive seminar examining both primary and secondary sources on American slaves. Focuses on the American South but includes sources on the larger African diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Abigail Cooper

HIST 159b Modern African American History
[ deis-us ss ]

Introduces students to some of the key social, political, economic, and cultural moments that defined the African American experience in the United States, 1865 through the present. Through the use of primary and secondary source materials, critical surveys, lectures, and guided discussion, this class highlights the richness and significance of the African American history. This course covers a diverse array of key themes and topics including: Reconstruction and segregation; the Great Migration; the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Feminist movements; black political power; mass incarceration and the surveillance state; and Hip Hop culture. Usually offered every second year.

Chad Williams

HIST 162a Writing on the Wall: Histories of Graffiti in the Americas
[ djw dl ss ]

Focuses on the history of graffiti in the U.S. from 1960s forward. Includes the historical role of Caribbean migration, the impact of criminology and economic recession of the 1970s on graffiti culture, and the relationship between private property, public space, and graffiti. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 172b Historicizing the Black Radical Tradition
[ djw ss ]

Introduces students to the many ways that people and scholars of African descent have historically struggled against racial oppression by formulating theories, philosophies, and practices of liberation rooted in their experiences and understandings of labor, capitalism, and modernity. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 175b Resistance and Revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean
[ djw nw ss wi ]

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.
Gregory Childs

HIST 176a Haiti and the Modern Caribbean
[ djw ss ]

Studies how Haitian political thought traveled throughout and the Caribbean in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some of the themes we will thus encounter include: race and the formation of nation-states in the 19th century Caribbean; the place of Haiti in the world economy; Haiti-US diplomatic relations; and interactions, antagonisms, and entwined histories of Haiti with other Caribbean societies. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

AAAS 104a Colorism in Paradise
[ djw dl oc ss ]

Introduces the concept of colorism, its relationship to racism, and consider the prevalence of color over race as a preferred identity and socio-political category across Latin America and the Caribbean. The course requires students to read interdisciplinary academic texts and utilize critical race and social praxeology theory to interrogate specific, national contexts within the Latin American and Caribbean region. Special one-time offering, Fall 2021.
Rachel Cantave

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 news stories 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 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 127a African Refugees
[ djw ss ]

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.

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

AAAS 128b Contemporary Africa
[ djw ss ]

A broad synopsis of the dynamic character of contemporary Africa and key current issues dominating the continent. Designed for students from all disciplines, the course will emphasize the utilization of critical thinking skills to consider the place and future of Africa in today's highly globalized world. Usually offered every second year.

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

AAAS 131b African Women's and Gender Studies
[ djw ss wi ]

Introduction to the genealogy, epistemology, and pedagogy of African Women's and Gender Studies. Students examine a range of gendered experiences in Africa by applying interdisciplinary frames from feminist theory, history, queer studies, development studies, political science, economics, peace studies, literary, art and performance studies, and so on. Students critically evaluate scholarship that deconstructs static notions about women and gender in Africa by centering decolonial perspectives on the topics covered. Usually offered every second year.

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

AAAS 136b Black Politics in the United States: Visions, Values, and Voice
[ deis-us ss ]

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/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 122a Carceral Studies
[ deis-us djw ss ]

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. Special one-time offering, fall 2021.
Anya Wallace

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

AAAS/WGS 180b Black Sexual Politics
[ deis-us ss ]

Prerequisites: AAAS 5a and/or WGS 5a recommended for participating undergraduates.

Grounded in Black feminist theories of eroticism, pleasure, and embodiment, this seminar invites students into complex conversations about how racially and sexually minoritized people build robust sexual worlds even in the face of anti-Blackness, misogyny, and heterosexism. Inspired by Patricia Hill Collins’ 2004 monograph Black Sexual Politics, this seminar asks: how have Black women, Black queer people, and Black gender-expansive people in America used culture and social movements to create in-group knowledge and to challenge linked racial-sexual structures of oppression? How have different practitioners created and revised theories of sexuality depending on time and place? Students will emerge from this seminar with a deepened understanding of Black feminist theoretical vocabularies including but not limited to: the politics of respectability, the culture of dissemblance, ungendering, fungibility, theories of the flesh, pleasure, and misogynoir. Special one-time offering, spring 2023.

Carmel Ohman

ANTH 113b Race and Ethnicity: Anthropological Perspectives
[ ss ]

Examines theories and ethnographies of race and ethnicity through three units: literary and social scientific theories of race and othering; the race system in the U.S. today; and a comparative look at the American racial system to explore ways in which America's race system varies cross-societally and cross-historically. One goal of the course is to understand changing ideas of race and ethnicity that have emerged from anthropologists and cultural critics. Usually offered every fourth year.
Patricia Alvarez Astacio

ECON 69a The Economics of Race and Gender
[ deis-us ss ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a.

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.
Elizabeth Brainerd

ED 170a Race, Power, and Urban Education
[ deis-us oc ss wi ]

Examines the nature of urban schools, their links to the social and political context, and the perspectives of the people who inhabit them. Explores the historical development of urban schools; the social, economic, and personal hardships facing urban students; and challenges of urban school reform. Usually offered every year.
Derron Wallace

HIS/HSSP 142a Health Activism
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Formerly offered as HSSP 142a.

Examines the history of health activism in the U.S. over the past 125 years, from late 19th century debates over compulsory vaccination to contemporary public health campaigns around gang violence and incarceration. Usually offered every third year.
Wangui Muigai

HSSP 114b Racial/Ethnic and Gender Inequalities in Health and Health Care
[ ss ]

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.
Staff

LACLS 152a Race and Nation in the Caribbean
[ deis-us djw hum ]

The Caribbean is an emblematic site for understanding the origins of modern forms of capitalism, globalization, and trans-nationalism. In this course, we will explore how academics and people in the Caribbean deploy ideas about 'race' and 'nation' to make sense of these transformations and impacts in the region. In particular, we will discuss the founding moments of Caribbean history, including colonialism, the genocide of Native populations, the enslavement of African people, the rise of plantation economies, and the development of global networks of goods and peoples. We will also examine tourism and debt as the continuation of long- extractive colonial practices that continue to generate stark inequalities and racial hierarchies in the region. Special one-time offering, spring 2021.
Isar Godreau

SOC 113b Sociology of Race and Racism
[ deis-us ss ]

Provides an introduction to the study of race and racism and focuses on specific socio-historical issues surrounding racial inequality in the United States. A variety of media to examine topics such as the institutionalization of white privilege, the social construction of "otherness", racial formation processes, and racial segregation are used" Usually offered every third year.
Sarah Mayorga or Derron Wallace

SOC 187a Race, Health and Medicine in the African Diaspora
[ ss ]

Offers critical perspectives on race, medicine, health, and illness in the African Diaspora. Specifically, we explore how intertwining ideologies of race and gender have contributed to the (mis)management of illness and health in populations of African descent from the periods of slavery and colonization until the present day. Usually offered every year.
Siri Suh