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Africana Studies Current Courses

Spring 2024

Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
AFST 100-01 Introduction to Africana Studies
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
Cross-listed with LALC 121-01. This interdisciplinary introduction to Africana Studies combines teaching foundational texts in the field with instruction in critical reading and writing. The course will cover Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade, the creation of African Disaporic communities, the conceptualization and representation of Black culture and identity, and the intellectual and institutional development of Black and Africana Studies. This course is cross-listed as LALC 121.
09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
ALTHSE 08
AFST 171-01 African History since 1800
Instructor: Robin Crigler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HIST 171-01. In this course we will study the political, social, economic and ecological forces that have shaped African societies since 1800. We will examine in depth the Asante kingdom in West Africa, the Kongo kingdom in Central Africa, and the Zulu kingdom in Southern Africa. European's colonization of Africa and Africans' responses will be a major focus of the course.This course is cross-listed as HIST 171.
09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 103
AFST 220-01 Health and Healing in Africa
Instructor: James Ellison
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ANTH 256-01. This course addresses three interrelated aspects of health and healing in Africa. We examine health in Africa from a biomedical perspective, learning about disease, morbidity, mortality, and biomedical care. We place African health and health care into a framework of political economy, examining the causes and consequences of illness and disease and the forces that shape and constrain care. We also examine the cultural and historical dimensions of health and healing in specific regions of the continent, bringing ethnographic knowledge to bear on contemporary health problems and thereby gaining an understanding of the lived experiences of health and healing in Africa.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 212
AFST 220-02 Pause: The Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Hip Hop
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MUAC 210-01 and WGSS 201-05. This course examines the complex and dynamic relationship between race, gender, and sexuality in hip hop, one of the largest cultural movements in the world. However, since hip hop is more than music, fashion, language, and style, and transcends the commercialization of products both in mainstream U.S.A. and globally, this course sets out to achieve two goals: (1) To introduce students to classic and emergent scholarship in the interrelated fields of critical race theory, feminist and gender studies, and queer theory which will be used to analyze hip hop and (2) to use hip hop as a heterogeneous and constantly shifting cultural and political formation that informs, complicates, and offers new of imaginings of these fields of study. Ultimately, utilizing a primarily interdisciplinary approach, this course will examine the ways in which the historical and contemporary social organizations of sexuality, gender, and race are mutually negotiated, contested, and constructed within and across hip hop music, film, dance, dress, and other sites of cultural performance. Students will have ample opportunity to engage hip hop lyrics, videos, and images throughout the span of the course.
11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
ALTHSE 08
AFST 220-03 African Government & Politics
Instructor: Ed Webb
Course Description:
Cross-listed with POSC 252-01. An introduction to the politics of contemporary Africa. After reviewing the large historical, international, and socio-economic patterns of African politics, the course examines in greater depth a sampling of national political systems and salient regional or continent-wide themes. Prerequisite: one course in political science.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 204
AFST 220-04 The Atlantic Slave Trade and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1850
Instructor: Robin Crigler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HIST 272-01 and LALC 272-01. During several centuries of European colonization in the New World, a thriving slave trade forced the emigration of millions of Africans across the Atlantic-an immigration far larger than the simultaneous immigration of Europeans to the same regions. We will address not only the workings of the slave trade on both sides (and in the middle) of the Atlantic, but also the cultural communities of West and West-Central Africa and encounters and exchanges in the new slave societies of North and South America. Through examination of work processes, social orders, cultural strategies and influences, and ideas about race and geography, across time and in several regions, we will explore the crucial roles of Africans in the making of the Atlantic world
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 103
AFST 220-05 Ecological History of Africa
Instructor: Robin Crigler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HIST 284-01. This course provides an introduction to the ecological history of Africa. We will focus in some detail on demography, the domestication of crops and animals, climate, the spread of New World crops (maize, cassava, cocoa), and disease environments from the earliest times to the present. Central to our study will be the idea that Africa's landscapes are the product of human action. Therefore, we will examine case studies of how people have interacted with their environments. African ecology has long been affected indirectly by decisions made at a global scale. Thus we will explore Africa's engagement with imperialism and colonization and the global economy in the twentieth century. The course ends with an examination of contemporary tensions between conservation and economic development.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 103
AFST 220-06 Angela Davis
Instructor: John Rufo
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AMST 200-03 and WGSS 201-01. This class introduces the political and philosophical contributions of Angela Y. Davis. We will discuss international communism, Black feminism, and abolition as crucial concepts and practices in her repertoire. Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944, Angela Davis became internationally known in the late '60s/early '70s as a political prisoner. She successfully gained her freedom from prison through an enormous global campaign. Davis has been active in international movements for freedom against class oppression, racism, imperialism, sexism, incarceration, and transphobia. We will consider key texts by Davis, including An Autobiography, the edited volume If They Come in the Morning, Women, Race, and Class, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, and Are Prisons Obsolete? We may also read excerpts from Davis' influences, teachers, and comrades: Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Claudia Jones, Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, George Jackson, Erika Huggins, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mike Davis, and Assata Shakur. Key areas of study addressed include Representation and Structures & Institutions.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
DENNY 212
AFST 320-01 James Baldwin: Reflections of a Radical
Instructor: Nadia Alahmed
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 301-01. This is an interdisciplinary seminar that seeks to explore the different sides of James Baldwin: a writer, an intellectual, a cosmopolitan, a radical, and an activist. The seminar will focus on James Baldwin's essays, in addition to his major novels and works of fiction. We will watch the recent, highly acclaimed film based on his writings, "I am not your Negro" as well as his speeches and debates with prolific figures like Malcolm X. Finally, we will explore Baldwin's invaluable contributions to the discourses on Queer Studies, critical race theory, class, philosophy, and above all, his visions of Black liberation and the meaning of freedom.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 203
AFST 320-02 Education in the African/Black Community: 19th Century to the Present
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
Cross-listed with EDST 391-02. This course investigates the ways that various historical, political, sociological, and psychological issues impact education for African/Black children in the U.S., specifically as it pertains to resources, goals, outcomes, attitudes, and beliefs. To address the historical issues, this course will discuss the importance of education for African/Black people in relation to the growth of educational achievements from 1865 to the present. We will address the politics of education for African/Black people by examining the role that it plays in fostering agency, self-definition, and self-determination and positively transforming and revitalizing African/Black communities. Lastly, this course will survey the sociological and psychological issues that impact the educational experiences of African/Black people. Afrocentric and culturally relevant approaches to education, pedagogy, and teaching will then be introduced and discussed as essential guides for education in African/Black communities.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
ALTHSE 110
AFST 400-01 Writing in Africana Studies
Instructor: Nadia Alahmed
Course Description:
This course will build on experiences in the methods course. Students in this course continue research toward and writing of a senior thesis. The emphasis is on writing skills and course material; assignments link those skills to work in Africana Studies. Seniors in the major will work independently with the director of Africana Studies and a second faculty reader (representing a discipline closer to the senior's interest) to produce a lengthy paper or special project which focuses on an issue relevant to the student's concentration. Under the direction of the director of Africana Studies, students will meet collectively two or three times during the semester with the directors (and, if possible, other Africana Studies core and contributing faculty) to share bibliographies, research data, early drafts, and the like. This group will also meet at the end of the semester to discuss and evaluate final papers and projects. Prerequisites: 100 and 200; four 200/300-level AFST approved courses (2 Africa, 2 Diaspora); three 300-level (in area of concentration).
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
EASTC 105
AFST 500-01 Black Education in the U.S.
Instructor: Nadia Alahmed
Course Description:

AFST 500-02 Climate Control: The Small School Politics of Racial Politics
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:

Courses Offered in AMST
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
AMST 200-03 Angela Davis
Instructor: John Rufo
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 201-01 and AFST 220-06. This class introduces the political and philosophical contributions of Angela Y. Davis. We will discuss international communism, Black feminism, and abolition as crucial concepts and practices in her repertoire. Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944, Angela Davis became internationally known in the late '60s/early '70s as a political prisoner. She successfully gained her freedom from prison through an enormous global campaign. Davis has been active in international movements for freedom against class oppression, racism, imperialism, sexism, incarceration, and transphobia. We will consider key texts by Davis, including An Autobiography, the edited volume If They Come in the Morning, Women, Race, and Class, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, and Are Prisons Obsolete? We may also read excerpts from Davis' influences, teachers, and comrades: Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Claudia Jones, Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, George Jackson, Erika Huggins, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mike Davis, and Assata Shakur. Key areas of study addressed include Representation and Structures & Institutions.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
DENNY 212
Courses Offered in ANTH
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
ANTH 256-01 Health and Healing in Africa
Instructor: James Ellison
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-01. This course addresses three interrelated aspects of health and healing in Africa. We examine health in Africa from a biomedical perspective, learning about disease, morbidity, mortality, and biomedical care. We place African health and health care into a framework of political economy, examining the causes and consequences of illness and disease and the forces that shape and constrain care. We also examine the cultural and historical dimensions of health and healing in specific regions of the continent, bringing ethnographic knowledge to bear on contemporary health problems and thereby gaining an understanding of the lived experiences of health and healing in Africa.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 212
Courses Offered in EDST
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
EDST 391-02 Education in the African/Black Community: 19th Century to the Present
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 320-02. This course investigates the ways that various historical, political, sociological, and psychological issues impact education for African/Black children in the U.S., specifically as it pertains to resources, goals, outcomes, attitudes, and beliefs. To address the historical issues, this course will discuss the importance of education for African/Black people in relation to the growth of educational achievements from 1865 to the present. We will address the politics of education for African/Black people by examining the role that it plays in fostering agency, self-definition, and self-determination and positively transforming and revitalizing African/Black communities. Lastly, this course will survey the sociological and psychological issues that impact the educational experiences of African/Black people. Afrocentric and culturally relevant approaches to education, pedagogy, and teaching will then be introduced and discussed as essential guides for education in African/Black communities.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
ALTHSE 110
Courses Offered in HIST
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
HIST 171-01 African History since 1800
Instructor: Robin Crigler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 171-01. In this course we will study the political, social, economic and ecological forces that have shaped African societies since 1800. We will examine in depth the Asante kingdom in West Africa, the Kongo kingdom in Central Africa, and the Zulu kingdom in Southern Africa. European's colonization of Africa and Africans' responses will be a major focus of the course.This course is cross-listed as AFST 171.
09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 103
HIST 211-02 Race and Second Wave Feminism the U.S.
Instructor: Say Burgin
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 202-06.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
DENNY 304
HIST 272-01 The Atlantic Slave Trade and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1850
Instructor: Robin Crigler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-04 and LALC 272-01. During several centuries of European colonization in the New World, a thriving slave trade forced the emigration of millions of Africans across the Atlantic-an immigration far larger than the simultaneous immigration of Europeans to the same regions. We will address not only the workings of the slave trade on both sides (and in the middle) of the Atlantic, but also the cultural communities of West and West-Central Africa and encounters and exchanges in the new slave societies of North and South America. Through examination of work processes, social orders, cultural strategies and influences, and ideas about race and geography, across time and in several regions, we will explore the crucial roles of Africans in the making of the Atlantic world. This course is cross-listed as LALC 272. Offered every two years.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 103
HIST 284-01 Ecological History of Africa
Instructor: Robin Crigler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-05. This course provides an introduction to the ecological history of Africa. We will focus in some detail on demography, the domestication of crops and animals, climate, the spread of New World crops (maize, cassava, cocoa), and disease environments from the earliest times to the present. Central to our study will be the idea that Africa's landscapes are the product of human action. Therefore, we will examine case studies of how people have interacted with their environments. African ecology has long been affected indirectly by decisions made at a global scale. Thus we will explore Africa's engagement with imperialism and colonization and the global economy in the twentieth century. The course ends with an examination of contemporary tensions between conservation and economic development. Offered every two years.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 103
Courses Offered in LALC
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
LALC 121-01 Introduction to Africana Studies
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 100-01. This interdisciplinary introduction to Africana Studies combines teaching foundational texts in the field with instruction in critical reading and writing. The course will cover Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade, the creation of African Disaporic communities, the conceptualization and representation of Black culture and identity, and the intellectual and institutional development of Black and Africana Studies.This course is cross-listed as AFST 100.
09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
ALTHSE 08
LALC 272-01 The Atlantic Slave Trade and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1850
Instructor: Robin Crigler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-04 and HIST 272-01. During several centuries of European colonization in the New World, a thriving slave trade forced the emigration of millions of Africans across the Atlantic-an immigration far larger than the simultaneous immigration of Europeans to the same regions. We will address not only the workings of the slave trade on both sides (and in the middle) of the Atlantic, but also the cultural communities of West and West-Central Africa and encounters and exchanges in the new slave societies of North and South America. Through examination of work processes, social orders, cultural strategies and influences, and ideas about race and geography, across time and in several regions, we will explore the crucial roles of Africans in the making of the Atlantic world. This course is cross-listed as HIST 272. Offered every two years.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 103
Courses Offered in MUAC
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
MUAC 210-01 Pause: The Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Hip Hop
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-02 and WGSS 201-05.
11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
ALTHSE 08
Courses Offered in POSC
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
POSC 252-01 African Government & Politics
Instructor: Ed Webb
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-03. An introduction to the politics of contemporary Africa. After reviewing the large historical, international, and socio-economic patterns of African politics, the course examines in greater depth a sampling of national political systems and salient regional or continent-wide themes. Prerequisite: one course in political science.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 204
Courses Offered in WGSS
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
WGSS 201-01 Angela Davis
Instructor: John Rufo
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-06 and AMST 200-03. This class introduces the political and philosophical contributions of Angela Y. Davis. We will discuss international communism, Black feminism, and abolition as crucial concepts and practices in her repertoire. Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944, Angela Davis became internationally known in the late '60s/early '70s as a political prisoner. She successfully gained her freedom from prison through an enormous global campaign. Davis has been active in international movements for freedom against class oppression, racism, imperialism, sexism, incarceration, and transphobia. We will consider key texts by Davis, including An Autobiography, the edited volume If They Come in the Morning, Women, Race, and Class, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, and Are Prisons Obsolete? We may also read excerpts from Davis' influences, teachers, and comrades: Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Claudia Jones, Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, George Jackson, Erika Huggins, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mike Davis, and Assata Shakur. Key areas of study addressed include Representation and Structures & Institutions.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
DENNY 212
WGSS 201-05 Pause: The Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Hip Hop
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-02 and MUAC 210-01. This course examines the complex and dynamic relationship between race, gender, and sexuality in hip hop, one of the largest cultural movements in the world. However, since hip hop is more than music, fashion, language, and style, and transcends the commercialization of products both in mainstream U.S.A. and globally, this course sets out to achieve two goals: (1) To introduce students to classic and emergent scholarship in the interrelated fields of critical race theory, feminist and gender studies, and queer theory which will be used to analyze hip hop and (2) to use hip hop as a heterogeneous and constantly shifting cultural and political formation that informs, complicates, and offers new of imaginings of these fields of study. Ultimately, utilizing a primarily interdisciplinary approach, this course will examine the ways in which the historical and contemporary social organizations of sexuality, gender, and race are mutually negotiated, contested, and constructed within and across hip hop music, film, dance, dress, and other sites of cultural performance. Students will have ample opportunity to engage hip hop lyrics, videos, and images throughout the span of the course.
11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
ALTHSE 08
WGSS 202-06 Race and Second Wave Feminism the U.S.
Instructor: Say Burgin
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HIST 211-02.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
DENNY 304
WGSS 301-01 James Baldwin: Reflections of a Radical
Instructor: Nadia Alahmed
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 320-01. This is an interdisciplinary seminar that seeks to explore the different sides of James Baldwin: a writer, an intellectual, a cosmopolitan, a radical, and an activist. The seminar will focus on James Baldwin's essays, in addition to his major novels and works of fiction. We will watch the recent, highly acclaimed film based on his writings, "I am not your Negro" as well as his speeches and debates with prolific figures like Malcolm X. Finally, we will explore Baldwin's invaluable contributions to the discourses on Queer Studies, critical race theory, class, philosophy, and above all, his visions of Black liberation and the meaning of freedom.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 203