AFAS 150B1 – Contemporary Afro Brazil

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 1 Individuals & Societies/150

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

This course challenges historical and contemporary popular culture perceptions of Brazil as a tourist haven and paradise replete with festivities and beautiful beaches while also reinforcing an interdisciplinary and multiple perspective approach to the study of Afro-Brazilian people¿s history, cultures, arts, music, dance, cinema, cuisines, and sports, and the protracted systemic discrimination and exclusion from political and economic rights, as well as the racial and educational inequalities and disparities that Brazilians of African descent have experienced over the years.

AFAS 160A1 – Traditions and Societies of the World - The Africana Experience

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 1 Traditions and Cultures/160

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

This course will introduce students to the fundamental issues and concepts in the Africana experience in Africa and the United States from a humanist and interdisciplinary perspectives. Principal topics of discussion will be drawn from areas of history, philosophy, political-economy, literature and the arts, religion and society.

AFAS 160A2 – African Diaspora: Religion and Culture

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 1 Traditions and Cultures/160

This course surveys continental African religions and their manifestations in the African Diaspora. Brazil, Jamaica, Trinidad, Cuba, Haiti and the U.S.A. are highlighted. The epistemologies and practices of the Fon, Yoruba, and Bantu peoples are analyzed to understand their continued impact on the contemporary world.

AFAS 160D1 – Introduction to African American Literature

Gen Ed: Tier 1 Traditions and Cultures/160

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

Introduction to African American literature will explore the linguistic and cultural roots and traditions of literary writing by African Americans in three centuries of American history focusing on select readings in poetry, drama, non-fiction, and fictional prose. The overall goal of the course is to introduce students to different perspectives of American history, through an Africana lens, and apply the different genres, contexts, and content of literary production by African American writers from the 1700s to the late 20th century, to an overall critique of American Culture.

AFAS 200 – Introduction to Africana Studies

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

Course provides a comprehensive understanding of the African American experience as grounded in the humanities and social sciences. A broad investigation of Africana history and culture and its subsequent evolution in the United States.

AFAS 208 – History of Africa

Gen Ed: Building Connections

This course is an introduction to the history of an enormous continent, Africa. Because of the size of the geography, population and time covered, one of the main purposes of this course is to pave the way to the upper division regional and thematic classes. We will move our way through African history both temporally and thematically. Lectures will introduce key themes and ideas and in section you will discuss historical evidence for African communities, cultures and ideas. This course is suitable to those who know nothing of Africa, and to those who are considering taking an upper division lecture classes or seminar in African history or Africana Studies.

AFAS 218 – Introduction to Hip-Hop Dance

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Arts

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Artist

This beginning level hip- hop dance class combines straight lectures, lively discussions and problem solving with actual movement practice with the objective of equipping students the relevant cultural, historical and practical knowledge of hip-hop dance and cultures in general. This course takes off from the premise that hip-hop dance is a vital component of wider hip-hop cultures which contain both global and sub-national constituents. As such, it adopts a historical approach to explore the beginnings, influences and parallels of hip-hop dance in continental African, Caribbean, Latin American and local US cultures. The course proceeds to examine the different hip-hop dance and movement styles, techniques, vocabulary and cultures emanating from particular geographic regions especially the East Coast, West Coast, Midwest and the Deep South in the USA as well as hip-hop dance's current state of global popularity, cross-cultural appeal, production and consumption. The ultimate objective is to challenge and encourage students to create final dance projects where they apply knowledge acquired throughout the semester to demonstrate their understanding of the cultural, historical and practical knowledge of hip-hop dance and cultures in general. Most importantly, the course examines how hip-hop dance expressions and representations challenge and/or reinforce social constructs of race, gender, and class. As a combination lecture/studio class this course will focus on both theory and practice. Where possible the course will take advantage of Hip-Hop dancers and scholars residing in or visiting Arizona to deliver guest performances and workshop. Students are not required to have prior dance knowledge to enroll in this class and will participate at their ability levels. The class culminates in a research paper and an option to do a performance or a digital project.

AFAS 220 – Introduction to African American Studies

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

Introductory survey of the literature, history, culture and social issues affecting Black Americans.

AFAS 222 – African American Studies: A History of Ideas

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

Pass/Fail Option Available to Qualified Students

This course is concerned with the history of oppression of African and other Indigenous peoples in the world and examines ideas by radical philosophers and scholars from the African Diaspora directed toward liberation from oppression.

AFAS 230 – Introduction to African Literature

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

Anglophone and Francophone literature. Focuses on major authors; Achebe, Soyinka, Head, Wa Thiong'O, Brutus, Emecheta. Employs bio-literary analysis.

AFAS 245 – African Literature Matters

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Artist

Introduction to African literature coming from the African continent and the diaspora, which explores the representation of Black experience in a variety of geographical and cultural settings. Select themes (such as liberation, oppression, identity) will invite students to reflect on current debates in historical perspective. Taught in English.

AFAS 260 – Ethnic and Race Relations in the United States

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Social Scientist

Analysis of minority relations and mass movements in urban society; trends in the modern world, with special reference to present-day race problems and social conflict.

AFAS 280 – Brazilian Identity: Class, Race, and Citizenship

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Social Scientist

This course takes representations and experiences of citizenship in modern Brazil as the springboard for the study of cross-cultural membership in society. How are understandings and experiences of citizenship bound up with the definition and institutionalization of race/ethnicity, class, and gender? This broad question will be examined in specific areas in Brazil such as public health, urban and rural development, environment, education, law, politics, and pop culture. The course covers theoretical readings and case studies from different geographical areas. Instructional materials are interdisciplinary, drawing mainly on the fields of History, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, and Geography.

AFAS 300 – Historical Overview of African and African Diaspora Cinema

Stresses techniques, styles, aesthetics, and comparative content analysis. Explores "socialist realist" narrative and other themes.

AFAS 302 – Africana Studies Research Approaches

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

This course is designed to provide students with skills in conducting social science research in the field of Africana Studies. The course will consist of discussions of the role of knowledge, the various methods by which knowledge is acquired, and the manner that interpretations of knowledge occur.

AFAS 303 – Black Womanist Writers

Cross Listed

This course examines the lives and writings of Black women from selected ethnicities such as Caribbean, Canadian, Latin American and African American who, despite geography, form bridges to meet and develop a dialogue which enlightens us.

AFAS 304B – The Social Construction of Race: Blackness

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

In constructing this course, the recognition of Whiteness/Blackness is not solely a reactionary response to challenges from persons of color: it is also a reflection of the need to provide a narrative of Whiteness/Blackness that intends an understanding of the notion of Whiteness/Blackness as a racial category and the implications of this categorization and association. For example, naming Whiteness displaces it from the unmarked status that is itself an effect of dominance. Within the particular disciplines of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies, Whiteness, Blackness and Race have come to be earnest subjects of Study. Being White or Black in the 21st Century, however, is far from straightforward. It is riddled with ambiguity and marked by a general sense of racial angst as to what it means to be White or Black. This course will attempt to respond to the question: what does it mean to be Black/White in our global climate?

AFAS 306 – African-American Autobiographies: Women and Their Histories

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

Students will gain insight into the historical and cultural factors that have created, and continue to perpetuate gender and ethnic inequity. Students will come to understand African American writers, particularly women, as historical agents and self-defined individuals. While the course will emphasize the multiple roles of African American women, as portrayed autobiographically it also incorporates the historical struggles of those around them. It is my goal that through the course material students will see how African Americans are constantly recreating themselves in the face of adversity.

AFAS 310 – Afro-Latin American Literature

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

A bio-critical discussion/study of writers of African decent/extraction from Latin America.

AFAS 330 – Minority Groups and American Politics

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Writing Emphasis Course

Political problems of the poor; analysis of systematic poverty in the U.S. and theories of causation; selected policy problems: education, housing, job training, enforcement of anti-discrimination statutes; future of "power" movements.

AFAS 335 – Rap, Culture and God

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

Gen Ed: Building Connections

Pass/Fail Option Available to Qualified Students

This course is a study of popular culture and religion in African-American and Latin@ communities, with a focus on the place of rap music in the cultural identity of these traditions. The class will begin with a study of some major themes in cultural studies concerning identity, class, race, and gender in addition to a study of the role of religion in Black and Latin@ communities. We will consider the approaches and self-understandings of identity and culture in rap music with special attention to the voices of protest, resistance, and spirituality among rap artists.

AFAS 340 – The Politics of Race and the African Experience

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

By examining both primary and secondary sources this course explores the historical development of African-American civil rights from 1619 with the arrival of the first Africans to Jamestown colony, to the momentous decision by the Supreme court to desegregate schools in 1954.

AFAS 342 – Writers, Women and the Gods

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

In order to conceptualize the way gender and ethnicity has shaped women's lives in the public and private domain students will "hear" the voices of African American women in ethnography, history and literature as we discuss the Africana concepts of life, health, beauty and family. The experiences of these women, as expressed in literature have become "formidable" presences in African American culture and history. The self-expression and self-definition, expressed by African American women's voices have generated social and political changes in American history that have also impacted the dominant Euro-American culture of American society.

AFAS 371 – Hip-Hop Cinema

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Arts

Gen Ed: Building Connections

Course provides a strong foundation in the history and development of hip - hop cinema. Major films, directors, and movements are studied in their historical, social, and cultural context, with a particular focus on the aesthetics of visual language and cinematic techniques .

AFAS 373 – US & Francophone Hip-Hop Cultures

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Artist

Examination of the historical, ethical, social, and political impacts and perspectives of hip-hop artistic practices and works on communities and societies in the United States and in the French-speaking world. Taught in English.

AFAS 376 – Global Soccer

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Social Scientist

While the British invented ¿football¿ (as soccer is known around the world), the French were key players in structuring it worldwide. This interdisciplinary course is about the emergence and growing notoriety of soccer in France, the French - speaking world, and as a worldwide global phenomenon through explorations in the following areas: cultural and global studies, philosophy, history, institutions, anthropology, sociology, and language. The course presents several important themes that allow to understand the popularity and identification of the populations with soccer worldwide, as well as the human values it represents: olympism, pacifism, imperialism, colonialism and post - colonialism , national identities, race, politics, gender, and globalization.

AFAS 150B1 – Contemporary Afro Brazil

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 1 Individuals & Societies/150

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

This course challenges historical and contemporary popular culture perceptions of Brazil as a tourist haven and paradise replete with festivities and beautiful beaches while also reinforcing an interdisciplinary and multiple perspective approach to the study of Afro-Brazilian people¿s history, cultures, arts, music, dance, cinema, cuisines, and sports, and the protracted systemic discrimination and exclusion from political and economic rights, as well as the racial and educational inequalities and disparities that Brazilians of African descent have experienced over the years.

AFAS 160A1 – Traditions and Societies of the World - The Africana Experience

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 1 Traditions and Cultures/160

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

This course will introduce students to the fundamental issues and concepts in the Africana experience in Africa and the United States from a humanist and interdisciplinary perspectives. Principal topics of discussion will be drawn from areas of history, philosophy, political-economy, literature and the arts, religion and society.

AFAS 160D1 – Introduction to African American Literature

Gen Ed: Tier 1 Traditions and Cultures/160

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

Introduction to African American literature will explore the linguistic and cultural roots and traditions of literary writing by African Americans in three centuries of American history focusing on select readings in poetry, drama, non-fiction, and fictional prose. The overall goal of the course is to introduce students to different perspectives of American history, through an Africana lens, and apply the different genres, contexts, and content of literary production by African American writers from the 1700s to the late 20th century, to an overall critique of American Culture.

AFAS 200 – Introduction to Africana Studies

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

Course provides a comprehensive understanding of the African American experience as grounded in the humanities and social sciences. A broad investigation of Africana history and culture and its subsequent evolution in the United States.

AFAS 209 – African American History (1440-1877)

Cross Listed

This course evaluates the early experiences of peoples of African descent in North America. The culture of African captives, their daily lives under different slave regimes, slave resistance, free blacks, and emancipation are the main subjects addressed in this class.

AFAS 218 – Introduction to Hip-Hop Dance

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Arts

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Artist

This beginning level hip- hop dance class combines straight lectures, lively discussions and problem solving with actual movement practice with the objective of equipping students the relevant cultural, historical and practical knowledge of hip-hop dance and cultures in general. This course takes off from the premise that hip-hop dance is a vital component of wider hip-hop cultures which contain both global and sub-national constituents. As such, it adopts a historical approach to explore the beginnings, influences and parallels of hip-hop dance in continental African, Caribbean, Latin American and local US cultures. The course proceeds to examine the different hip-hop dance and movement styles, techniques, vocabulary and cultures emanating from particular geographic regions especially the East Coast, West Coast, Midwest and the Deep South in the USA as well as hip-hop dance's current state of global popularity, cross-cultural appeal, production and consumption. The ultimate objective is to challenge and encourage students to create final dance projects where they apply knowledge acquired throughout the semester to demonstrate their understanding of the cultural, historical and practical knowledge of hip-hop dance and cultures in general. Most importantly, the course examines how hip-hop dance expressions and representations challenge and/or reinforce social constructs of race, gender, and class. As a combination lecture/studio class this course will focus on both theory and practice. Where possible the course will take advantage of Hip-Hop dancers and scholars residing in or visiting Arizona to deliver guest performances and workshop. Students are not required to have prior dance knowledge to enroll in this class and will participate at their ability levels. The class culminates in a research paper and an option to do a performance or a digital project.

AFAS 220 – Introduction to African American Studies

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

Introductory survey of the literature, history, culture and social issues affecting Black Americans.

AFAS 255 – African American Politics

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

This course is designed to illumine the political economy of the African American community in the United States, with special attention to issues of race, politics, class and gender. Major themes in the course will focus on the struggles of African American people for justice from the period of reconstruction through the civil rights and post-civil rights eras. The question of Black political organizing and institution building both within and outside the dominant structures of the U.S. political economy will be discussed throughout the course.

AFAS 302 – Africana Studies Research Approaches

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

This course is designed to provide students with skills in conducting social science research in the field of Africana Studies. The course will consist of discussions of the role of knowledge, the various methods by which knowledge is acquired, and the manner that interpretations of knowledge occur.

AFAS 304A – The Social Construction of Race: Whiteness

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

Pass/Fail Option Available to Qualified Students

In constructing this course, the recognition of Whiteness/Blackness is not solely a reactionary response to challenges from persons of color; it is also a reflection of the need to provide a narrative of Whiteness/Blackness that intends an understanding of the notion of Whiteness/Blackness as a racial category and the implications of this categorization and association. For example, naming Whiteness displaced it from the unmarked, and unnamed status that is itself an effect of dominance. Within the particular disciplines of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies, Whiteness, Blackness and Race have come to be earnest subjects of study. Being White or Black in the 21st Century, however, is far from straightforward. It is riddled with ambiguity and marked by a general sense of racial angst as to what it means to be White or Black. This course will attempt to respond to the question: What does it mean to be Black/White in our global climate?

AFAS 306 – African-American Autobiographies: Women and Their Histories

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

Students will gain insight into the historical and cultural factors that have created, and continue to perpetuate gender and ethnic inequity. Students will come to understand African American writers, particularly women, as historical agents and self-defined individuals. While the course will emphasize the multiple roles of African American women, as portrayed autobiographically it also incorporates the historical struggles of those around them. It is my goal that through the course material students will see how African Americans are constantly recreating themselves in the face of adversity.

AFAS 310 – Afro-Latin American Literature

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

A bio-critical discussion/study of writers of African decent/extraction from Latin America.

AFAS 320 – The African American Slave Narrative: History and Literature

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

This course is designed to introduce undergraduate students to the history of narratives by African slaves before and after the American Civil War. This course will benefit majors/minors in American/African Literature or other interdisciplinary majors who wish to study the historical experiences of minority ethnic cultures in America.

AFAS 342 – Writers, Women and the Gods

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

In order to conceptualize the way gender and ethnicity has shaped women's lives in the public and private domain students will "hear" the voices of African American women in ethnography, history and literature as we discuss the Africana concepts of life, health, beauty and family. The experiences of these women, as expressed in literature have become "formidable" presences in African American culture and history. The self-expression and self-definition, expressed by African American women's voices have generated social and political changes in American history that have also impacted the dominant Euro-American culture of American society.

AFAS 345 – Caribbean Politics

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

This course provides an introduction to the politics of Caribbean states, from 1960 to the present. It will discuss major issues that affect the Caribbean region, namely, migration, poverty, regional economic cooperation and political integration, democratic institutions, and U. S. foreign policy towards the region.

AFAS 371 – Hip-Hop Cinema

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Arts

Gen Ed: Building Connections

Course provides a strong foundation in the history and development of hip - hop cinema. Major films, directors, and movements are studied in their historical, social, and cultural context, with a particular focus on the aesthetics of visual language and cinematic techniques .

AFAS 373 – US & Francophone Hip-Hop Cultures

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Artist

Examination of the historical, ethical, social, and political impacts and perspectives of hip-hop artistic practices and works on communities and societies in the United States and in the French-speaking world. Taught in English.

AFAS 376 – Global Soccer

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Social Scientist

While the British invented ¿football¿ (as soccer is known around the world), the French were key players in structuring it worldwide. This interdisciplinary course is about the emergence and growing notoriety of soccer in France, the French - speaking world, and as a worldwide global phenomenon through explorations in the following areas: cultural and global studies, philosophy, history, institutions, anthropology, sociology, and language. The course presents several important themes that allow to understand the popularity and identification of the populations with soccer worldwide, as well as the human values it represents: olympism, pacifism, imperialism, colonialism and post - colonialism , national identities, race, politics, gender, and globalization.

AFAS 377 – Digital Africana Studies: The Harlem Renaissance

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

Digital Africana Studies aims to bridge the best of Africana Studies (key concepts, theories, methods of inquiry, and pedagogies) with the democratic potential of Digital Humanities. Digital Africana Studies examines and re-imagines possibilities for the practices and structural logics of Digital Humanities and digital media broadly by questioning the often taken-for-granted assumptions of Digital Humanities spaces, discourses and cultural productions. To the degree that Africana Studies has long advocated for the inclusion of African American contributions and the documenting of historical racial struggles for diversity and social justice, Digital Africana Studies encourages critical yet productive engagements through literature, art, history and popular culture.

AFAS 150B1 – Contemporary Afro Brazil

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 1 Individuals & Societies/150

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

This course challenges historical and contemporary popular culture perceptions of Brazil as a tourist haven and paradise replete with festivities and beautiful beaches while also reinforcing an interdisciplinary and multiple perspective approach to the study of Afro-Brazilian people¿s history, cultures, arts, music, dance, cinema, cuisines, and sports, and the protracted systemic discrimination and exclusion from political and economic rights, as well as the racial and educational inequalities and disparities that Brazilians of African descent have experienced over the years.

AFAS 160A1 – Traditions and Societies of the World - The Africana Experience

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 1 Traditions and Cultures/160

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

This course will introduce students to the fundamental issues and concepts in the Africana experience in Africa and the United States from a humanist and interdisciplinary perspectives. Principal topics of discussion will be drawn from areas of history, philosophy, political-economy, literature and the arts, religion and society.

AFAS 160D1 – Introduction to African American Literature

Gen Ed: Tier 1 Traditions and Cultures/160

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

Introduction to African American literature will explore the linguistic and cultural roots and traditions of literary writing by African Americans in three centuries of American history focusing on select readings in poetry, drama, non-fiction, and fictional prose. The overall goal of the course is to introduce students to different perspectives of American history, through an Africana lens, and apply the different genres, contexts, and content of literary production by African American writers from the 1700s to the late 20th century, to an overall critique of American Culture.

AFAS 200 – Introduction to Africana Studies

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Humanist

Course provides a comprehensive understanding of the African American experience as grounded in the humanities and social sciences. A broad investigation of Africana history and culture and its subsequent evolution in the United States.

AFAS 209 – African American History (1440-1877)

Cross Listed

This course evaluates the early experiences of peoples of African descent in North America. The culture of African captives, their daily lives under different slave regimes, slave resistance, free blacks, and emancipation are the main subjects addressed in this class.

AFAS 210 – African American History (1865-Present)

Cross Listed

This course evaluates the experience of peoples of African descent in the United States after the Civil War. Reconstruction, "Jim Crow" segregation, "New Negro" Movement, Cold War, Civil Rights Movement, and the "Great Society" are the main subjects addressed in this class.

AFAS 218 – Introduction to Hip-Hop Dance

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Arts

Gen Ed: Exploring Perspectives, Artist

This beginning level hip- hop dance class combines straight lectures, lively discussions and problem solving with actual movement practice with the objective of equipping students the relevant cultural, historical and practical knowledge of hip-hop dance and cultures in general. This course takes off from the premise that hip-hop dance is a vital component of wider hip-hop cultures which contain both global and sub-national constituents. As such, it adopts a historical approach to explore the beginnings, influences and parallels of hip-hop dance in continental African, Caribbean, Latin American and local US cultures. The course proceeds to examine the different hip-hop dance and movement styles, techniques, vocabulary and cultures emanating from particular geographic regions especially the East Coast, West Coast, Midwest and the Deep South in the USA as well as hip-hop dance's current state of global popularity, cross-cultural appeal, production and consumption. The ultimate objective is to challenge and encourage students to create final dance projects where they apply knowledge acquired throughout the semester to demonstrate their understanding of the cultural, historical and practical knowledge of hip-hop dance and cultures in general. Most importantly, the course examines how hip-hop dance expressions and representations challenge and/or reinforce social constructs of race, gender, and class. As a combination lecture/studio class this course will focus on both theory and practice. Where possible the course will take advantage of Hip-Hop dancers and scholars residing in or visiting Arizona to deliver guest performances and workshop. Students are not required to have prior dance knowledge to enroll in this class and will participate at their ability levels. The class culminates in a research paper and an option to do a performance or a digital project.

AFAS 220 – Introduction to African American Studies

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

Introductory survey of the literature, history, culture and social issues affecting Black Americans.

AFAS 255 – African American Politics

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

This course is designed to illumine the political economy of the African American community in the United States, with special attention to issues of race, politics, class and gender. Major themes in the course will focus on the struggles of African American people for justice from the period of reconstruction through the civil rights and post-civil rights eras. The question of Black political organizing and institution building both within and outside the dominant structures of the U.S. political economy will be discussed throughout the course.

AFAS 302 – Africana Studies Research Approaches

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

This course is designed to provide students with skills in conducting social science research in the field of Africana Studies. The course will consist of discussions of the role of knowledge, the various methods by which knowledge is acquired, and the manner that interpretations of knowledge occur.

AFAS 304A – The Social Construction of Race: Whiteness

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

Pass/Fail Option Available to Qualified Students

In constructing this course, the recognition of Whiteness/Blackness is not solely a reactionary response to challenges from persons of color; it is also a reflection of the need to provide a narrative of Whiteness/Blackness that intends an understanding of the notion of Whiteness/Blackness as a racial category and the implications of this categorization and association. For example, naming Whiteness displaced it from the unmarked, and unnamed status that is itself an effect of dominance. Within the particular disciplines of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies, Whiteness, Blackness and Race have come to be earnest subjects of study. Being White or Black in the 21st Century, however, is far from straightforward. It is riddled with ambiguity and marked by a general sense of racial angst as to what it means to be White or Black. This course will attempt to respond to the question: What does it mean to be Black/White in our global climate?

AFAS 306 – African-American Autobiographies: Women and Their Histories

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

Students will gain insight into the historical and cultural factors that have created, and continue to perpetuate gender and ethnic inequity. Students will come to understand African American writers, particularly women, as historical agents and self-defined individuals. While the course will emphasize the multiple roles of African American women, as portrayed autobiographically it also incorporates the historical struggles of those around them. It is my goal that through the course material students will see how African Americans are constantly recreating themselves in the face of adversity.

AFAS 330 – Minority Groups and American Politics

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Writing Emphasis Course

Political problems of the poor; analysis of systematic poverty in the U.S. and theories of causation; selected policy problems: education, housing, job training, enforcement of anti-discrimination statutes; future of "power" movements.

AFAS 335 – Rap, Culture and God

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

Gen Ed: Building Connections

Pass/Fail Option Available to Qualified Students

This course is a study of popular culture and religion in African-American and Latin@ communities, with a focus on the place of rap music in the cultural identity of these traditions. The class will begin with a study of some major themes in cultural studies concerning identity, class, race, and gender in addition to a study of the role of religion in Black and Latin@ communities. We will consider the approaches and self-understandings of identity and culture in rap music with special attention to the voices of protest, resistance, and spirituality among rap artists.

AFAS 342 – Writers, Women and the Gods

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

In order to conceptualize the way gender and ethnicity has shaped women's lives in the public and private domain students will "hear" the voices of African American women in ethnography, history and literature as we discuss the Africana concepts of life, health, beauty and family. The experiences of these women, as expressed in literature have become "formidable" presences in African American culture and history. The self-expression and self-definition, expressed by African American women's voices have generated social and political changes in American history that have also impacted the dominant Euro-American culture of American society.

AFAS 345 – Caribbean Politics

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Individuals and Societies

This course provides an introduction to the politics of Caribbean states, from 1960 to the present. It will discuss major issues that affect the Caribbean region, namely, migration, poverty, regional economic cooperation and political integration, democratic institutions, and U. S. foreign policy towards the region.

AFAS 352 – Slavery in Latin America

Cross Listed

A broadly comparative introduction to slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. Exploration of slavery, the use of slave labor, and the daily lives of slaves and slave owners in different settings and different cultures.

AFAS 371 – Hip-Hop Cinema

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Arts

Gen Ed: Building Connections

Course provides a strong foundation in the history and development of hip - hop cinema. Major films, directors, and movements are studied in their historical, social, and cultural context, with a particular focus on the aesthetics of visual language and cinematic techniques .

AFAS 374 – The Politics of Protest in Africa and the Diaspora

Cross Listed

Gen Ed: Diversity Emphasis

Gen Ed: Tier 2 Humanities

Survey of the politics of protest in Africa and the Diaspora. Students will gain a solid understanding of the patterns of resistance adopted by people of African descent during the modern era, beginning with the slave revolt in Haiti. Their various modes of resistance will be considered in relationship to relevant institutions (political, social, cultural) as well as popular forms of expression (folk music, literature) and behavior (demonstrations). Students will also discover the defining aspects of European and Euro-American domination through the end of Apartheid, including the formulation of policies, major strategies employed and their consequences. Questions of race, ethnic origin and class relations are at issue throughout this course.