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Africana Studies Current Courses

Fall 2024

Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
AFST 170-01 African Civilizations to 1850
Instructor: Jeremy Ball
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HIST 170-01. This course provides an overview to the political, social, and ecological history of Africa. We will examine the peopling of the continent, the origins of agriculture, the growth of towns and the development of metal technology. Written sources before the 1400s are almost nonexistent for most of Africa, and so we will use archaeological and linguistic sources. The geographic focus of the course will be the Middle Nile, Aksum in Ethiopia, the Sudanic states in West Africa, Kongo in Central Africa, the Swahili states of the East African coast, and Zimbabwe and KwaZulu in Southern Africa. We will also examine the Atlantic Slave Trade and the colonization of the Cape of Good Hope.This course is cross-listed as HIST 170.
09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 313
AFST 200-01 Approaches to Africana Studies
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
This course will investigate the importance of conceptual analysis and the development of concepts in the theoretical and textual research of Africana Studies. Thus, the course will focus on various interpretive frameworks and approaches to organizing and understanding Africana Studies, including but not limited to the African model, Afrocentricity, diaspora model, critical race theory, post-modernism, and post colonialism. Prerequisite: 100.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
ALTHSE 07
AFST 220-01 Pause: The Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Hip Hop
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MUAC 210-01 and WGSS 201-01. 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.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
ALTHSE 201
AFST 220-02 The Atlantic Slave Trade and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1850
Instructor: Jeremy Ball
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HIST 272-01 and LALC 272-01. Part of the Atlantic Slave Trade Ghana Mosaic. While the class is open to all students, students in the Mosaic will be given priority. 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
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 313
AFST 220-04 Francophone African and Caribbean Cultures
Instructor: Benjamin Ngong
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FREN 304-01. This course examines cultures, literatures and films of some French-speaking countries and regions, notably the French Caribbean and Francophone sub-Saharan Africa. Since dominant intellectual and cultural traditions in the US derive primarily from Europe and post-colonial North America, commonly referred to as "Western traditions," this global diversity course subsequently aims to encourage students to examine societies and cultures that have been shaped predominantly by other historical traditions to think critically about dominant Western traditions, so to engage the world more effectively. Students will learn to place each work into its cultural and historical context, and develop intelligent and informed understanding of concepts such as Negritude, Colonialism, Imperialism, Nationalism, Postcolonialism, etc. Students will watch films and read a series of original texts by French-speaking authors outside France. Emphasis will be on the initiation to analysis and close reading of texts and films during class discussions and at the end of which students will write an organized reflecting essay.
11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
BOSLER 309
AFST 320-01 African American Women Writers
Instructor: Lynn Johnson
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 301-01. This course examines a range of the literary productions written by African American women. Specifically, we will span the African-American literary tradition in order to discover the historical, political, and social forces that facilitated the evolution of Black women's voices as well as their roles inside and outside the Black community. Additionally, we will discuss such issues as self-definition, womanhood, sexuality, activism, race, class, and community.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
ALTHSE 109
AFST 320-02 Africana Theater of Expression: An Examination of Race and Other Themes in 20th Century America
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
What is Black theater and what does its history tell us about the struggle to radically articulate Black liberation across the African diaspora? In this course, we will explore a variety of plays and performances as creative outlets for Black artists to challenge various injustices during the 20th century by critically engaging the works of individuals such as Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, Langston Hughes, Charles Fuller, Ama Ata Aidoo, George C. Wolfe, and Ntozake Shange. We will also survey the tradition of black theater, paying particular attention to the formal aspects of drama and covering a range of historical and thematic contexts such as slavery, identity, family, interracial relations, intra-racial differences (including class, gender, and sexuality), black feminism/womanism, masculinity, and whiteness. Along the way, we will critically discuss and engage questions about privilege, class, sexuality, gender, identity, religion, and ability as they intersect with questions about race in America.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
ALTHSE 07
AFST 320-03 Teaching Blackness: Race and the Contemporary Classroom
Instructor: Jacquie Forbes
Course Description:
Cross-listed with EDST 391-01. Part of the Atlantic Slave Trade Ghana Mosaic. While the class is open to all students, students in the Mosaic will be given priority. Since 2020, multiple states have moved to enact legislation that regulates how race and racism are discussed in K12 schools. For teachers, these laws have implications as it relates to the restrictions on pedagogical strategies that teachers can employ as well as the content they can draw on in their lessons. Drawing from historical events-- from the Transatlantic Slave Trade through the Black Lives Matter movement-- this course will a) examine how race has shaped the US political, economic, and social landscapes broadly, b) highlight a variety of approaches to teaching about race and racial events in schools, and c) analyze recent laws and policies that prohibit the teaching racial histories and events at the K12 and university levels. This course aims to facilitate and deepen students' understanding and analysis of Black racial histories in the US and abroad as well as introduce the methods and tactics that K12 and university educators use to navigate the contemporary legislation that prohibits the teaching of topics such as race, racism, diversity, and critical race theory.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 311
AFST 500-01 Ghanaian Women's advocacy for Gender Equality within Education
Instructor: Jacquie Forbes
Course Description:

Courses Offered in EDST
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
EDST 391-01 Teaching Blackness: Race and the Contemporary Classroom
Instructor: Jacquie Forbes
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 320-03. Part of the Atlantic Slave Trade Ghana Mosaic. While the class is open to all students, students in the Mosaic will be given priority. Since 2020, multiple states have moved to enact legislation that regulates how race and racism are discussed in K12 schools. For teachers, these laws have implications as it relates to the restrictions on pedagogical strategies that teachers can employ as well as the content they can draw on in their lessons. Drawing from historical events-- from the Transatlantic Slave Trade through the Black Lives Matter movement-- this course will a) examine how race has shaped the US political, economic, and social landscapes broadly, b) highlight a variety of approaches to teaching about race and racial events in schools, and c) analyze recent laws and policies that prohibit the teaching racial histories and events at the K12 and university levels. This course aims to facilitate and deepen students' understanding and analysis of Black racial histories in the US and abroad as well as introduce the methods and tactics that K12 and university educators use to navigate the contemporary legislation that prohibits the teaching of topics such as race, racism, diversity, and critical race theory.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 311
Courses Offered in FREN
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
FREN 304-01 Francophone African and Caribbean Cultures
Instructor: Benjamin Ngong
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-04. This course examines cultures, literatures and films of some French-speaking countries and regions, notably the French Caribbean and Francophone sub-Saharan Africa. Since dominant intellectual and cultural traditions in the US derive primarily from Europe and post-colonial North America, commonly referred to as Western traditions, this global diversity course subsequently aims to encourage students to examine societies and cultures that have been shaped predominantly by other historical traditions to think critically about dominant Western traditions, so to engage the world more effectively. Students will learn to place each work into its cultural and historical context, and develop intelligent and informed understanding of concepts such as Negritude, Colonialism, Imperialism, Nationalism, Postcolonialism, etc. Students will watch films and read a series of original texts by French-speaking authors outside France. Emphasis will be on the initiation to analysis and close reading of texts and films during class discussions and at the end of which students will write an organized reflecting essay.Prerequisite: FREN 231 or FREN 232.
11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
BOSLER 309
Courses Offered in HEST
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
HEST 250-01 Reproductive Justice
Instructor: Katie Oliviero
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 224-01. Reproductive Justice is a global social movement strategy and human rights platform that places reproductive power in the context of the larger social, racial and economic well-being of women, communities and families (Ross 2011). This course explores the origins and applications of reproductive justice. It investigates how the reproductive lives of many people, particularly women of color, are embedded in embattled legal, social, economic, racial and national frameworks that shape their capacity to control their intimate and procreative lives. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the course first maps reproductive justices origins, exploring: political philosophies of sexual and reproductive liberty; racialized and disability-based histories of eugenics, population control, and adoption; the black womens health movement; birth control and abortion law; social welfare and healthcare politics; the reproductive politics of incarceration and state violence; disability and prenatal testing; and the transnational and LGBTQ applications of assisted reproductive technologies. The course will subsequently explore how reproductive justice platforms can enable diverse people to thrive: making the decision to prevent, terminate or have a pregnancy a real choice. It will assess the conditions that enable access to quality health care, economic security, racial justice, womens equality, transgender and queer rights, environmental sustainability, disability justice, sexual autonomy, and community vitality.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 204
Courses Offered in HIST
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
HIST 170-01 African Civilizations to 1850
Instructor: Jeremy Ball
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 170-01. This course provides an overview to the political, social, and ecological history of Africa. We will examine the peopling of the continent, the origins of agriculture, the growth of towns and the development of metal technology. Written sources before the 1400s are almost nonexistent for most of Africa, and so we will use archaeological and linguistic sources. The geographic focus of the course will be the Middle Nile, Aksum in Ethiopia, the Sudanic states in West Africa, Kongo in Central Africa, the Swahili states of the East African coast, and Zimbabwe and KwaZulu in Southern Africa. We will also examine the Atlantic Slave Trade and the colonization of the Cape of Good Hope.This course is cross-listed as AFST 170.
09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 313
HIST 272-01 The Atlantic Slave Trade and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1850
Instructor: Jeremy Ball
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-02 and LALC 272-01. Part of the Atlantic Slave Trade Ghana Mosaic. While the class is open to all students, students in the Mosaic will be given priority. 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.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 313
Courses Offered in LALC
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
LALC 272-01 The Atlantic Slave Trade and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1850
Instructor: Jeremy Ball
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HIST 272-01 and AFST 220-02. Part of the Atlantic Slave Trade Ghana Mosaic. While the class is open to all students, students in the Mosaic will be given priority. 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.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 313
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 220-01 and WGSS 201-01. 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.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
ALTHSE 201
Courses Offered in WGSS
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
WGSS 201-01 Pause: The Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Hip Hop
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-01 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.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
ALTHSE 201
WGSS 224-01 Reproductive Justice
Instructor: Katie Oliviero
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HEST 250-01. Reproductive Justice is a global social movement strategy and human rights platform that places reproductive power in the context of the larger social, racial and economic well-being of women, communities and families (Ross 2011). This course explores the origins and applications of reproductive justice. It investigates how the reproductive lives of many people, particularly women of color, are embedded in embattled legal, social, economic, racial and national frameworks that shape their capacity to control their intimate and procreative lives. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the course first maps reproductive justices origins, exploring: political philosophies of sexual and reproductive liberty; racialized and disability-based histories of eugenics, population control, and adoption; the black womens health movement; birth control and abortion law; social welfare and healthcare politics; the reproductive politics of incarceration and state violence; disability and prenatal testing; and the transnational and LGBTQ applications of assisted reproductive technologies. The course will subsequently explore how reproductive justice platforms can enable diverse people to thrive: making the decision to prevent, terminate or have a pregnancy a real choice. It will assess the conditions that enable access to quality health care, economic security, racial justice, womens equality, transgender and queer rights, environmental sustainability, disability justice, sexual autonomy, and community vitality.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 204
WGSS 301-01 African American Women Writers
Instructor: Lynn Johnson
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 320-01. This course examines a range of the literary productions written by African American women. Specifically, we will span the African-American literary tradition in order to discover the historical, political, and social forces that facilitated the evolution of Black women's voices as well as their roles inside and outside the Black community. Additionally, we will discuss such issues as self-definition, womanhood, sexuality, activism, race, class, and community.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
ALTHSE 109