Course Schedule

AFAS 200 – Introduction to Africana Studies

Course provides a comprehensive understanding of the African American experience as grounded in the humanities. 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

When you think of hip-hop, you often think of gangsters, thugs, pimps, drugs, crime, wealth, violence ,and misogyny. Students taking this course will be expected to take the artist perspective to dig deeper into the historical underpinnings of where this contemporary art form comes from as well as its evolution and proliferation nationally and beyond(globally). This beginning level class combines practical movement practices based on actual hip-hop dance styles with straight lectures and lively discussions that help students to be critical, analytical, logical, questioning, reflective and evaluative thinkers This holistic approach which combines theory and practice, will furnish learners with the relevant cultural, historical, and practical knowledge of hip-hop dance and cultures in general. Similarly, in order to fully examine and acquire the different hip-hop dance and movement styles, skills, techniques, vocabulary, and cultures emanating from particular historical and evolutionary periods and geographic regions in the USA and globally, the course will adopt ahistorical-geographical approach. The ultimate objective is to challenge and encourage students to take on the lens of the artists and independently create final dance projects where they dig deeper and get immersed in to the core values, knowledge, theories, world views, concepts, and ideas specific to the Africana Studies discipline. Students are not required to have prior dance knowledge to enroll in this class and will participate at their ability levels. To demonstrate the student's mastery of disciplinary content, methodologies, skills, knowledge and value systems, the class will culminate with an independently conceived practical performance, or a digital project accompanied by a critical/analytical write up.

AFAS 220 – Introduction to African American Studies

Cross Listed

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

AFAS 255 – African American Politics

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

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 306 – African-American Autobiographies: Women and Their Histories

Cross Listed

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 314 – Caribbean Literature and Culture (West Indies)

Cross Listed

The course examines how the literature captures the multifaceted social, cultural, and political life of the region.

AFAS 330 – Minority Groups and American Politics

Cross Listed · 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 · 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

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 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

This course provides a strong foundation in the history and development of hip-hop cinema from Africana Studies, Cinema and Cultural Studies perspectives. Major films, theories, and movements are studied in their historical, social, and cultural context, with a particular focus on the aesthetics of visual language and cinematic techniques. Interdisciplinary analysis will allow for viewing hip hop and cinema in revolutionary but academic ways.

AFAS 374 – Dynamics of Protest in Africa and the Diaspora

Cross Listed

This course investigates how the dynamics of resistance and repression have shaped protest in Africa and the diaspora since the slave revolt in Saint-Domingue that produced modern-day Haiti (1791-1804). In the years since, uprisings have occurred that actively renegotiated freedoms, rights, and ideas of citizenship for peoples of African descent with a grounding in the French-speaking world. This course looks at a range of materials from historical documents, poetry, song, films, and fiction to deepen our understanding of how historical progress has been shaped by the dynamic interplay between resistance and repression.

AFAS 376 – Global Soccer

Cross Listed

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

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 425 – Environmental Justice/Environmental Racism

This course will explore how racial, economic and cultural background affect peoples access to a clean and safe environment. Through lectures, field trips, literature review, guest lecturers, and videos we will examine how people's environmental rights are being threatened locally, nationally and globally and the mechanisms being used to secure these rights.

AFAS 444 – Rethinking Race and Health in the United States

Cross Listed

This course is designed to expose undergraduates to the complexity of cultural and ethnic considerations as they pertain to the health and well being of underrepresented groups in the U. S., such as, African Americans. Drawing on perspectives from public health, the social/behavioral sciences, and perspectives from Africana Studies, we will engage in the comparative study of health cultures. We will explore the historical and contemporary multilayered social, cultural, political, and economic systems that engender the social and cultural determinants that shape health status, health behavior and health inequalities of Africana peoples in the United States.

AFAS 466 – Racism and Resistance in Latin America

Cross Listed

In this course, we will explore race and resistance across the Americas. Taking the Brazilian situation as a springboard, this class will critically analyze notions of race, racism, and anti-racism. Students will have the opportunity to work on projects that explore racial ideology, structural/institutional racism, and anti-racist resistance across the Americas. Through a social science lens, students will select, examine, and share examples of racial injustice in a particular country, paying attention to how race has been a determining factor in discrimination, exclusion, and resistance. Course materials are organized around critical discussions of the deeply seated racial inequality and discrimination that impact all aspects of economic and social life, as well as the ways in which different forms of mobilization confront racism.

AFAS 467 – Race and Ethnic Relations

Cross Listed · Pass/Fail Option Available to Qualified Students

Social processes involved in minority groups in terms of race, caste, class, ethnicity, politics, and religion.

AFAS 475 – USA & South Africa: Comparative Historical & Political Perspectives

Cross Listed

This course will focus on the historical and political developments of colonialism, racism, and racial segregation in the United States and in South Africa *(Azania) since the beginning of the colonialism-slavery epochs to the present. It will illumine the striking similarities and differences particularly between the slave and Jim Crow South and apartheid South Africa and between dispossession of Indigenous peoples in North America and those of Azania, paying special attention to issues of ideology, color, class, and gender. This class does satisfy requirements for the Africana Studies minor, Study Area I, Africana History, Politics and Economics.

AFAS 493 – Internship

Specialized work on an individual basis, consisting of training and practice in actual service in a technical, business, or governmental establishment.

AFAS 494 – Practicum

The practical application, on an individual basis, of previously studied theory and the collection of data for future theoretical interpretation.

AFAS 498 – Senior Capstone

A culminating experience for majors involving a substantive project that demonstrates a synthesis of learning accumulated in the major, including broadly comprehensive knowledge of the discipline and its methodologies. Senior standing required.

AFAS 200 – Introduction to Africana Studies

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

AFAS 218 – Introduction to Hip-Hop Dance

When you think of hip-hop, you often think of gangsters, thugs, pimps, drugs, crime, wealth, violence ,and misogyny. Students taking this course will be expected to take the artist perspective to dig deeper into the historical underpinnings of where this contemporary art form comes from as well as its evolution and proliferation nationally and beyond(globally). This beginning level class combines practical movement practices based on actual hip-hop dance styles with straight lectures and lively discussions that help students to be critical, analytical, logical, questioning, reflective and evaluative thinkers This holistic approach which combines theory and practice, will furnish learners with the relevant cultural, historical, and practical knowledge of hip-hop dance and cultures in general. Similarly, in order to fully examine and acquire the different hip-hop dance and movement styles, skills, techniques, vocabulary, and cultures emanating from particular historical and evolutionary periods and geographic regions in the USA and globally, the course will adopt ahistorical-geographical approach. The ultimate objective is to challenge and encourage students to take on the lens of the artists and independently create final dance projects where they dig deeper and get immersed in to the core values, knowledge, theories, world views, concepts, and ideas specific to the Africana Studies discipline. Students are not required to have prior dance knowledge to enroll in this class and will participate at their ability levels. To demonstrate the student's mastery of disciplinary content, methodologies, skills, knowledge and value systems, the class will culminate with an independently conceived practical performance, or a digital project accompanied by a critical/analytical write up.

AFAS 220 – Introduction to African American Studies

Cross Listed

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

AFAS 222 – African American Studies: A History of Ideas

Cross Listed

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 260 – Ethnic and Race Relations in the United States

Cross Listed

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 302 – Africana Studies Research Approaches

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 306 – African-American Autobiographies: Women and Their Histories

Cross Listed

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 · 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

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

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 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 363 – #Black Lives Matter Across The Americas: Race & Racism in Latin America

Cross Listed

How are race and racism perceived and experienced in countries in Latin America particularly such as Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia where a mixed-race ideology and the myth of racial equality have traditionally been at the core of national identity? This class critically analyzes notions of race and anti-racist activism to examine the ideologies and circumstances of the political structure, race-targeted public policies, and black activism in contemporary Latin America.

AFAS 371 – Hip-Hop Cinema

This course provides a strong foundation in the history and development of hip-hop cinema from Africana Studies, Cinema and Cultural Studies perspectives. Major films, theories, and movements are studied in their historical, social, and cultural context, with a particular focus on the aesthetics of visual language and cinematic techniques. Interdisciplinary analysis will allow for viewing hip hop and cinema in revolutionary but academic ways.

AFAS 373 – US & Francophone Hip-Hop Cultures

Cross Listed

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.