Afro-American Studies - AFRO

Description:  This course explores the dynamic processes of the dispersal of Africans and their descendants throughout the world to develop strategies to engage with "the practice of diaspora." Our approach is historical, examining why and how this phenomenon of dispersion occurred and changed over a long period of time. Such a sweeping historical perspective allows us to: (1) assess the relationship between Africa and the world at large both before and after the "transatlantic moment" of the fifteenth century; (2) explore Africa's place in the modern world and how it continues to play a critical role in it; (3) examine the transformation of identities and struggles for Africanity and pan-Africanism in the New World. In addition, this course is interested in exploring the possibilities of the African diaspora, as well as challenges facing the communities of the African diaspora in such places as the United States and other parts of the Americas in the contemporary world. Throughout the semester, we will searchingly look for ways to reconnect with Africa and myriad communities of the African diaspora in new ways. Our methods of inquiry include personal reflection, group work, written assignments, and class discussion. Students who are interested in international Black history, Black radicalism, pan-Africanism, and questions of identity and politics are encouraged to take this course.

Class Time: 50% Lecture, 50% Discussion.

Work Load: 80 pages reading per week, 18 pages writing per term, 3 papers, 2 presentations.

Grade: 60% reports/papers, 5% attendance, 10% reflection paper, 15% in-class presentation, 10% class participation.

Instructor:  Onishi,Yuichiro

Description:  What does it take to discuss race seriously? An exploration of this question demands a counter-narrative, for our contemporary moment is such that a growing public opinion (1) casts America as a "raceless" nation, (2) interprets antiracism as "reverse racism," and (3) embraces "diversity" to maintain the racial status quo. Talking about race is not easy to be sure; it engenders a host of unsettling emotions ranging from guilt and shame to anger. Yet not talking about race as a social fact in American life and culture forecloses possibilities to understand how racial differences are constructed through domination over time and ultimately to reach across myriad boundaries of social difference to strive toward a shared sense of community and belonging. Together, we will participate in racial struggles, albeit at times painful and challenging, to address and grapple with ethico-political imperatives to pursue social justice and make the notion of diversity anew.

Class Time: 40% Lecture, 40% Discussion, 20% Small Group Activities.

Work Load: 80-100 pages reading per week, 18 pages writing per term, 1 exams.

Grade: 80% written homework, 20% class participation.

Instructor:  Onishi,Yuichiro

Description:  This course will examine the story of some of the people of this region, especially through the changes and developments which took place among several individual groups. The emphasis will be upon understanding well, the events of some "representative" people's histories, rather than attempting to understand what occurred in each and every group. There are too many groups and activities to study in a semester. Main themes of the course will include the family or lineage as the building block of all other institutions, the development of centralized political authority or states in West Africa, and the organization of people who did not adopt the state idea. We will examine economic developments, the spread of Islam, and the appearance of Europeans off certain coastal areas. Here a new frontier or border formed, one of hundreds in West African History. As with all other West African borders, the operational institutions of the African-European frontier were mainly being set by West African mechanisms. Until well into the nineteenth century, therefore, European (and American) traders were paying tribute and were in client, guest, or "stranger" relations with their West African patrons, hosts, or "landlords".

Instructor:  Coifman,Victoria Bomba

Description:  This course will be a history of South Africa from early man to the arrival of the first Dutch settlers at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 to the unification of South Africa in 1910. A major theme will be the historical patterns of interaction and conflict relations that characterized contact between the white expansionist communities and the indigenous peoples of the region. We will examine such topics as: the "myth of the empty land" thesis used by the colonial state to justify the appropriation of African lands; the institution of slavery and the emergence of racial attitudes in the Cape colony; strategies of opposition to European encroachment as well as African collaboration with the settler regime. Also we will analyze two case studies of African state formation; the rise and fall of the African peasantry within the context of the mineral revolutiona and the development of the South African migrant labor system; the emergence of a new work culture; Afrikaner nationalism and new forms of African protest polities.

Class Time: 70% Lecture, 25% Discussion. videos

Work Load: 60 pages reading per week, 2 exams, 1 papers.

Grade: 20% mid exam, 35% final exam, 35% reports/papers, 10% class participation.

Exam Format: Essay

Instructor:  Atkins,Keletso E

Description:  Trace the "genres and styles impacted of music which...define African-American music in the United States."(Southern) We will follow elements found in West African culture and music such as "call and response" and the "2nd Line" as it travels to the "New World" and expressed through Spirituals, Symphonies, Gospel Music, Jazz, Rock and Roll, Step Bands and more. Study will take place during lectures, readings and discussion both online and in class. Vintage performances found on videos and audio examples will provide tangible examples of the music as it evolves. Special focus is placed on the social, political and economic issues faced by the innovators and consumers of these musical styles and genres.

Class Time: 60% Lecture, 20% Discussion. audio_visual presentations

Work Load: 20 pages reading per week, 2 exams, 5 papers. The above includes: Live Performance papers; Blues composition and reponse papers

Grade: 20% mid exam, 20% final exam, 20% reports/papers, 10% class participation, 30% other evaluation. Written assignments: Live Performance Experiences, Blues composition, Listening Assignments, etc.

Exam Format: Multiple choice,True-False, Matching and Essay

Instructor:  Williams,Yolanda Y | Instructor Photo | Instructor Bio

Description:  Student may contact the instructor or department for information.

Instructor:  Pate,Alexs D.

Description:  AFRO/ENGL 3597W African Americans are "America?s metaphor," Richard Wright declared, posing both a riddle and a riff that together reverse conventional perspectives and intimate how we might discover in the shadows of American literary life our brightest mirrors. Following his lead, we will try to see ourselves--and the paradoxes and potentialities of our national experience--through the world of words and images conjured up over the past two centuries by African American writers. In AFRO/ENGL 3597W, we will employ a cornucopia of literary texts, oral traditions, audiovisual materials, and internet resources to bring the figures of black literary tradition out of the shadows and under an extended exploratory gaze. Understandably, African American literature evolved as a heavily ?committed? tradition with both ancient African and Euro-American antecedents. Much of its mythological system and special ?equipment for living? has been built on the communal base of the most elaborate vernacular tradition in American English--epic tales and legends, spirituals, blues, work songs, ballads, rhymed toasts, riddles, proverbs, jazz, jokes, and the rhetoric of rap music. During this first semester, our caravan will lead us forward from pre-modern Africa itself and the era of the earliest African American literary works ? 18th and 19th century slave autobiographies, oral folk texts, abolitionist essays, orations and poems?on to the contemporary period of literature marked by burgeoning diversity and modernist innovation, by growing critical acclaim, and by the Jazz Age politico-aesthetic art movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Final Course Grade Components: 3 short essays?1/6th each; combined quizzes--1/6th; final paper?1/3rd (80% for the final draft of the paper itself, 20% for the preliminary thesis and full sentence outline submitted at the Research Paper Workshop)

Co-Instructor:  Mangini,Anthony J

Co-Instructor:  Wright,John Samuel (Morse Alumni Award)

Co-Instructor:  Aleixo,Marina Bandeira (Morse Alumni Award)

Description:  AFRO 3601W covers both broad and specialized topics in the African literary tradition. Students should be informed that the reading and writing assignments in this class entail exceptionally detailed and sophisticated analyses of texts belonging to a literary tradition with its own unique perspective. The themes covered will be varied, multi-layered, and complex. Assigned texts will include works by authors from different parts of Africa. Course reserve readings and other extra-textual resources will be geared towards highlighting the composite issues that these texts engage with. Besides the extensive literary readings, cultural and literary theory will be of significant importance in understanding the issues that the literary texts explore. During in-class discussions, cultural and historical backgrounds will be surveyed in order to help illuminate crucial aspects of the societies studied, as well as to reinforce students? understanding of the texts and the dynamics in which they unfold. All this entails that students read, understand, and critically write about the material on ?its own? terms, not any ?customary,? ?usual? and ?prevailing? way the students may be acquainted with prior to taking this class. Students enrolling in this class are expected to be knowledgeable in research methods (reference of sources, citations, writing of research papers?), basic literary vocabulary, concepts and devices. On the whole, the methodological approach to texts in this course is inspired by theoretical perspectives focusing on concepts of identity production (representation, othering, etc.), translation of reality, the relationship between text and context, language and power. Some background knowledge of these theories, while not mandatory, should prove particularly useful.

Class Time: 40% Lecture, 20% Film/Video, 30% Discussion, 5% Small Group Activities, 5% Web Based. We watch video/films in class related to topics being explored then discuss the material viewed.

Work Load: 50-60 pages reading per week, 40 pages writing per term, 2 papers, 1 presentations, 4 homework assignments, 8 quizzes. Consistent and regular study outside of the classroom is a requisite. Lack of prior preparation and sustained engagement with course materials and concepts will negatively affect your grade.

Grade: 40% reports/papers, 30% quizzes, 10% in-class presentation, 20% class participation. The assumption being that students read the assigned texts (and view films on reserve) prior to class, pop-quizzes and in class graded exercises will be given in class throughout the semester and they will constitute 20% of the final grade.

Exam Format: Two (2) of four (4) papers, each of them 6-10 pages (typed, double spaced) due on dates indicated on the syllabus. In each one of them, students will be expected to focus on a theme and develop it through careful exploration and analytical insight.

Co-Instructor:  Githire,Njeri R | Instructor Photo | Syllabus

Co-Instructor:  Wanyama,Mzenga Aggrey

Description:  Student may contact the instructor or department for information.

Instructor:  Mayes,Keith A

Description:  AFRO /ENGL 4593: The African American Novel Since romanticism and literary abolitionism converged in the 1850s, African American storytellers have discovered strategic uses for the modern novel -- making it both an ethical instrument and a vessel of ancestral traditions. Inclined initially more to social realism than to fantasy, romance, or surrealism, black American novelists have created a ?committed? literature rooted in the view that the images and ideas of the novel are potential weapons in the struggle for social justice and social transformation. Yet an ever-ready countercurrent of comedies, satires, historical fables, and speculative fictions conjured up by African American novelists express their indebtedness also to philosophical and folk traditions that view literature as a ritualistic and healing exploration of human possibility and the transmundane -- of alternate worlds and worldviews. This course explores these African American novelistic traditions -- plot patterns, character types, settings, symbols, themes, movements, and mythologies. From the little known novelistic worlds of late nineteenth century preachers and journalists to Harlem Renaissance political thrillers and urban picaresques to internationally renowned neo-slave narratives, Black Arts magic realism, and philosophical metafictions from the late twentieth century, we will steer a course through the creative and critical torrents of the modern black imagination. Because these writers have been profoundly concerned with social and historical ?truth,? we will find that the materials and techniques of many African American novels, while dramatizing the conflicts and consciousness of the individual, attempt to "reconstruct" emblematically the experiences and historical consciousness of the group. To complement lectures, during regular class meetings we will rely periodically on filmed interviews or documentaries, as well as on a variety of informal small groups to help focus your attention on the texts and concepts at hand, to strengthen your abilities to articulate and share what you have learned, and to provide another gauge of how successfully you are mastering various elements of the course. The course is designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Written assignments and grading options as follows: Critical Research Paper: Each student is required to write an 10-12 page typed research paper (15-20 pages for graduate students) examining the critical reception (original reviews, etc.), interpretive controversies, and current standing of one of the course novels Grades: Option A ? 40% journal, 40% term paper, 10% one-page rationales, 10% class participation Option B ? 30% short paper, 50% term paper, 10% rationales, 10% class participation

Instructor:  Wright,John Samuel (Morse Alumni Award)

Description:  Student may contact the instructor or department for information.

Instructor:  Atkins,Keletso E

Description:  Student may contact the instructor or department for information.

Instructor:  Lindquist,Malinda A