| AFST 100-01 |
Introduction to Africana Studies
Instructor: Jeremy Ball
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.
|
10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 203 |
| AFST 171-01 |
African History since 1800
Instructor: Jeremy Ball
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 203 |
| AFST 220-01 |
Hip Hop Dance
Instructor: Eric Durden
Course Description:
Cross-listed with THDA 214-01.
|
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
2527WH DANCE STU |
| AFST 227-01 |
It’s a Hip Hop World: The Rise and Implications of Hip Hop beyond the US
Instructor: Nadia Alahmed
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MUAC 210-01. This course is an introduction to critical Hip Hop studies from the genesis of the culture in Black America in the 1970s until the global phenomenon it is today. Focusing on the Hip Hop production of marginalized peoples, the course will explore the nature of cultural and political processes which take place when Hip Hop integrates into the dominant or indigenous culture and music. We will discuss the meaning and implications of authenticity in Hip Hop in the face of commercialization, cultural syncretism, and identity politics. We will address issues of appropriation that are embedded in these cultural processes. Finally, we will trace the aesthetic, cultural, and political evolutions of Hip hop on a global scale. Some of the questions the course poses are: how did Hip Hop evolve through the years within the global context? How are the defining features of this culture and music shaped within different marginalized groups and national borders? What unique musical, cultural, and political features make Hip Hop the most popular genre of resistance and self-affirmation around the world? What are some of Hip Hops contributions to global social change movements? In this Hip Hop world, which track will you play next?
|
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 104 |
| AFST 256-01 |
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. This course is cross-listed as ANTH 256.
|
10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 212 |
| AFST 310-01 |
From Plantation to Page: Literary Conscience in the Francophone Caribbean
Instructor: Benjamin Ngong
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FREN 401-01 and LALC 300-01. This course is taught in French.
This seminar explores contemporary literature from Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique in relation to the political, linguistic, and cultural legacies of colonialism. Caribbean writers create distinctive aesthetics that weave together resistance, memory, and identity reconstruction within contexts of cultural domination and globalization. Through novels, poetry, and essays, combined with critical and psychoanalytic approaches, the course examines tensions between dominant and marginalized languages, the reimagining of symbolic spaces, and the shaping of collective memory. Ultimately, it considers how Francophone Caribbean literature negotiates France's political and cultural hegemony while engaging with evolving global paradigms of power, voice, and identity.
|
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
BOSLER 214 |
| AFST 320-01 |
African American Thought and Culture Since Emancipation
Instructor: Emily Hawk
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HIST 311-01. As jazz composer Duke Ellington once said, African Americans are "something apart" within American society, but still "an integral part" of the nation's identity and history. This course takes up Ellington's provocation to consider how Black Americans have advanced important ideas about race, citizenship, activism, and culture that offer vital insight into African American and American history alike. Taking a broad view of intellectual history, the course will pair secondary literature with relevant primary sources from politics, literature, education, and the visual and performing arts. We will explore how, denied full access to political representation, education, and mobility in public space, African Americans have developed innovative and insurgent modes of making their ideas about the world known to a multiracial public. Each week, we will ask: what does it mean to be an intellectual? How are ideas and actions interconnected? What forms can ideas take, and how do they circulate beyond texts? How do these examples help us understand discourse, culture, and activism in our current moment? Across class discussion and written assignments, students will come to appreciate the breadth, multiplicity, and dynamism of African American thought and culture. Together, we will examine the complex ambitions, morals, struggles, and triumphs of African American people to unlock a more profound understanding of past and present.
|
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
DENNY 103 |
| AFST 331-01 |
African American Novel I
Instructor: Lynn Johnson
Course Description:
This course examines the roots and subsequent development of the African American novel from the 19th to the 20th centuries. Specifically, we explore the multiple ways that African American authors use the novel to (re)define black identity, to build community, and to enter the realm of social protest. We will also consider the trans-cultural and transnational influences on the evolution of the novel's form. Novelists whose works we will read include William Wells Brown, Harriet Wilson, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.
|
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
BOSLER 213 |
| AFST 341-01 |
Black Politics: A Century of Black Radicalism
Instructor: Nadia Alahmed
Course Description:
Cross-listed with POSC 215-01. This is an interdisciplinary course that engages theory, history, and literature in order to explore the evolution of radical Black thought from the abolitionist movement and slave rebellions to the global Black Lives Matter movement. The course will establish and highlight the global Black diaspora as the key agent of political, historical and cultural transformation. We will discuss issues and challenges faced by Black people with respect to global political systems, examine various avenues of political expression, and raise questions and new ideas pertaining to the exploration of Black politics. The course will introduce a wide spectrum of political trends and movements, focusing on radical Black politics: Black Nationalism, Black Marxism, Black Internationalism, Black Feminism, Queer Theory, Afro-Pessimism, as well as contemporary thought on the prison-industrial complex and prison abolition. Cross-listed with POSC 215.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 211 |
| 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
ALTHSE 07 |
| Courses Offered in ANTH |
| ANTH 256-01 |
Health and Healing in Africa
Instructor: James Ellison
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 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.This course is cross-listed as AFST 256.
|
10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 212 |
| Courses Offered in FREN |
| FREN 401-01 |
From Plantation to Page: Literary Conscience in the Francophone Caribbean
Instructor: Benjamin Ngong
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 310-01 and LALC 300-01. This course is taught in French.
This seminar explores contemporary literature from Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique in relation to the political, linguistic, and cultural legacies of colonialism. Caribbean writers create distinctive aesthetics that weave together resistance, memory, and identity reconstruction within contexts of cultural domination and globalization. Through novels, poetry, and essays, combined with critical and psychoanalytic approaches, the course examines tensions between dominant and marginalized languages, the reimagining of symbolic spaces, and the shaping of collective memory. Ultimately, it considers how Francophone Caribbean literature negotiates France's political and cultural hegemony while engaging with evolving global paradigms of power, voice, and identity.
|
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
BOSLER 214 |
| Courses Offered in HIST |
| HIST 171-01 |
African History since 1800
Instructor: Jeremy Ball
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 203 |
| HIST 311-01 |
African American Thought and Culture Since Emancipation
Instructor: Emily Hawk
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 320-01. As jazz composer Duke Ellington once said, African Americans are "something apart" within American society, but still "an integral part" of the nation's identity and history. This course takes up Ellington's provocation to consider how Black Americans have advanced important ideas about race, citizenship, activism, and culture that offer vital insight into African American and American history alike. Taking a broad view of intellectual history, the course will pair secondary literature with relevant primary sources from politics, literature, education, and the visual and performing arts. We will explore how, denied full access to political representation, education, and mobility in public space, African Americans have developed innovative and insurgent modes of making their ideas about the world known to a multiracial public. Each week, we will ask: what does it mean to be an intellectual? How are ideas and actions interconnected? What forms can ideas take, and how do they circulate beyond texts? How do these examples help us understand discourse, culture, and activism in our current moment? Across class discussion and written assignments, students will come to appreciate the breadth, multiplicity, and dynamism of African American thought and culture. Together, we will examine the complex ambitions, morals, struggles, and triumphs of African American people to unlock a more profound understanding of past and present.
|
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
DENNY 103 |
| Courses Offered in LALC |
| LALC 121-01 |
Introduction to Africana Studies
Instructor: Jeremy Ball
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.
|
10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 203 |
| LALC 300-01 |
From Plantation to Page: Literary Conscience in the Francophone Caribbean
Instructor: Benjamin Ngong
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 310-01 and FREN 401-01. This course is taught in French.
This seminar explores contemporary literature from Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique in relation to the political, linguistic, and cultural legacies of colonialism. Caribbean writers create distinctive aesthetics that weave together resistance, memory, and identity reconstruction within contexts of cultural domination and globalization. Through novels, poetry, and essays, combined with critical and psychoanalytic approaches, the course examines tensions between dominant and marginalized languages, the reimagining of symbolic spaces, and the shaping of collective memory. Ultimately, it considers how Francophone Caribbean literature negotiates France's political and cultural hegemony while engaging with evolving global paradigms of power, voice, and identity.
|
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
BOSLER 214 |
| Courses Offered in MUAC |
| MUAC 210-01 |
It’s a Hip Hop World: The Rise and Implications of Hip Hop beyond the US
Instructor: Nadia Alahmed
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 227-01. This course is an introduction to critical Hip Hop studies from the genesis of the culture in Black America in the 1970s until the global phenomenon it is today. Focusing on the Hip Hop production of marginalized peoples, the course will explore the nature of cultural and political processes which take place when Hip Hop integrates into the dominant or indigenous culture and music. We will discuss the meaning and implications of authenticity in Hip Hop in the face of commercialization, cultural syncretism, and identity politics. We will address issues of appropriation that are embedded in these cultural processes. Finally, we will trace the aesthetic, cultural, and political evolutions of Hip hop on a global scale. Some of the questions the course poses are: how did Hip Hop evolve through the years within the global context? How are the defining features of this culture and music shaped within different marginalized groups and national borders? What unique musical, cultural, and political features make Hip Hop the most popular genre of resistance and self-affirmation around the world? What are some of Hip Hops contributions to global social change movements? In this Hip Hop world, which track will you play next?
|
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 104 |
| Courses Offered in POSC |
| POSC 215-01 |
Black Politics: A Century of Black Radicalism
Instructor: Nadia Alahmed
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 341-01. This is an interdisciplinary course that engages theory, history, and literature in order to explore the evolution of radical Black thought from the abolitionist movement and slave rebellions to the global Black Lives Matter movement. The course will establish and highlight the global Black diaspora as the key agent of political, historical and cultural transformation. We will discuss issues and challenges faced by Black people with respect to global political systems, examine various avenues of political expression, and raise questions and new ideas pertaining to the exploration of Black politics. The course will introduce a wide spectrum of political trends and movements, focusing on radical Black politics: Black Nationalism, Black Marxism, Black Internationalism, Black Feminism, Queer Theory, Afro-Pessimism, as well as contemporary thought on the prison-industrial complex and prison abolition. Cross-listed with AFST 341.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 211 |
| Courses Offered in THDA |
| THDA 214-01 |
Hip Hop Dance
Instructor: Eric Durden
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-01. Hip Hop Dance: Embodiment, Resistance and Joy examines the roots of hip hop dance found in African American, Latinx and Caribbean cultures. Through twice a week studio classes and readings students will learn foundational hip hop styles and vocabulary from popping and locking to C-walk. Students will study the migration pattens of hip-hop dance globally, locally and commercially with an emphasis on cultural respect and engagement. As a dance form born in the streets students will understand how hip-hop dance embodies ideas of protest, emotion, community and joy.
|
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
2527WH DANCE STU |