Courses

This course explores some issue, theme or period related to Africana Studies. May be repeated for credit with different topics.

Spring Semester information

290A: Tps:Gender Law and Womanism/African Feminism

290B: Tps:African American Women Playwrights

Many readers may be familiar with groundbreakers like Lorraine Hansberry, whose Raisin in the Sun has become part of the canon of Civil Rights era reading. But in the 1960s and 1970s, African American women playwrights like Adrienne Kennedy and Ntozake Shange were doing experiments with language and theatricality that had never been seen before. And from the 1980s into the present, we continue to witness important works by writers like Anna Deavere Smith, Suzan-Lori Parks (the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama), Lynn Nottage, and many others.
This course focuses primarily on works by these more recent playwrights, with specific attention to ways that race/racism and gender/sexuality-- as well as social class and professional marginalization--have affected their work and become integral to their plays. This is a course that will require active participation; since it is also a "W" class, students will do a variety of writing exercises and more formal papers.

Fall Semester information

290A: Topics:Black Global Cinemas

This course introduces students to black filmmaking traditions across the globe. By approaching film as a text to be read, analyzed, and discussed, we will explore black cinematic storytelling through aesthetic, historical, and socio-political lenses. Course films include (but are not limited to) Ousmane Sembene's, Black Girl/La Noire de..., Djibril Diop Mambety's Touki Bouki, Rungano Nyoni's I am Not a Witch, and Sara Gomez's One Way or Another.

As a 'W' course, we will spend time on writing composition, with emphasis on how to craft a thesis statement, close read a text, track the argument(s) of scholarly articles, and read/annotate and strategically. Ultimately, students will learn how to effectively communicate observations, syntheses, and analyses in the form of article reading responses, argumentative essays, a final paper, film notes, and class discussions.

290B: Topics:Contemporary Black Writers

This course will focus on African American writers whose works in the past decade have been instrumental in our understanding of what it means to live in a world fraught with inequalities, but also one that has the potential for growth and joy. We will read across the genres of fiction, drama, poetry, and memoir in our efforts to feel the present-day urgency of Black voices as informed by the historical past. Since this is a "W" course, students will be expected to engage in writing about these works as well as participating actively in class discussion.

290C: Topics:Racial/Ethnic Relations

290D: Topics:Black Britain

While contemporary British popular culture acknowledges the contributions of Black athletes, musicians, fashion designers, actors and film-makers, the historic Black presence in Britain has been overwhelmingly denied, "othered" or rendered invisible. HIST 200AFST 290 - "Black Britain" seeks to redress the balance by emphasizing and analyzing the presence and contributions of the African diaspora in Britain from the Tudor era to the present. Particular emphasis will be placed upon 20th century events, ideas and experiences including the post-1945 West Indian "Windrush" generation. The course is interdisciplinary, drawing upon scholarship in History, Black and Africana Studies, Cultural Studies and Sociology, among others. The course will also utilize materials from literature, film, art and music to explore articulations of "Blackness" in a British context.

290E: Topics:Introduction to Human Rights

What are human rights, where do they originate, and how do they function in today's legal and political arenas? To whom are human rights accessible? Who is responsible for protecting your human rights? This course will introduce students to human rights as an interdisciplinary area of study and practice. It exposes students to the field of study of human rights that can be applied across all disciplines. In this course, we will investigate human rights within historical, political, legal, and cultural frameworks, posing questions about what they are, how they work, and whether they have any restrictions. This course will also consider the contextual approach to human rights from a globalized perspective-African, Asian, Middle East, European and Western perspectives. This course will further reflect on the contextual, culturally diverse, and universalist approaches to rights. Students will be exposed to the works of practitioners and activists and understand how and why we use the lens of human rights to examine contemporary issues including women's rights, children's rights, prisoner's rights, gender issues, etc.

290F: Topics:Fear,Love,and Loathing in South African Film & Lit