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Africana Studies

Africana studies considers how racial blackness, and the concept of race itself, influences the development of the modern world. We investigate the social, historical, cultural and aesthetic works and practices of populations of African-descent throughout the diaspora. A multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary endeavor, our interrogations begin not with race as an assumed concept but as a site of profound social formation that must be considered in relation to gender, class, nation, ethnicity, religion and sexuality. We encourage students to explore classes from such departments as philosophy, government, psychology, women and gender studies and more.

Requirements & Courses

Goals for Majors in Africana Studies

  • Ability to study interdisciplinarily and multidisciplinarily.
  • Use close reading as evidence for argument.
  • Write a critical research paper.
  • Ability to study blackness/race intersectionally (that is, in regard to gender, class, nation and sexuality).
  • Ability to study blackness/race in regard to the Diaspora.
  • Experience studying closely classic texts or figures or historical periods or movements.
  • Experience considering the aesthetic and theoretical principles undergirding 19th-, 20th- and 21st-century African American culture.

Africana Studies Major

Requirements

Eleven courses (44 credits)

  1. Three core courses: ​AFR 111AFR 117 and AFR 201
  2. Four courses with a general focus
    1. Three courses at the 100- or 200-level
    2. One course at the 100- or 200-level with a primary focus on the African diaspora
  3. Three courses with an advanced focus organized in one of five areas or pathways: history, literature/cultural studies, social science, black women’s studies or diaspora studies
    • At least one course must be at the 300-level
    • At least one course must have a primary focus on the African diaspora
  4. The designated capstone seminar, taken in the junior or senior year and required of all majors, including honors thesis students.

Honors

Please consult the director of honors or the departmental website for specific requirements and application procedures. 

Africana Studies Minor

Requirements

Six courses (24 credits)

  1. Two of the three core courses: AFR 111AFR 117 and AFR 201
  2. Four electives
    • At least one course with a primary focus on the African diaspora
    • At least one seminar or 300-level course

Courses

AFR 111 Introduction to Black Culture (4 Credits)

An introduction to some of the major perspectives, themes and issues in the field of Afro-American studies. The focus is on the economic, social and political aspects of cultural production, and how these inform what it means to read, write about, view and listen to Black culture. {S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 117 History of African American People to 1960 (4 Credits)

An examination of the broad contours of the history of African American people in the United States from ca. 1600 to 1960. Particular emphasis is given to how African Americans influenced virtually every aspect of U.S. society, slavery and Constitutional changes after 1865, debates on the meaning of freedom and citizenship, and the efforts to contest discrimination, segregation and anti-Black violence. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 155 Introduction to Black Women’s Studies (4 Credits)

This course examines historical, critical and theoretical perspectives on the development of Black feminist theory/praxis. The course draws from the 19th century to the present, but focuses on the contemporary Black feminist intellectual tradition that achieved notoriety in the 1970s and initiated a global debate on Western and global feminisms. Central to the exploration is the analysis of the intersectional relationship between theory and practice, and of race, gender and class. The course concludes with the exploration of various expressions of contemporary Black feminist thought around the globe as a way of broadening our knowledge of feminist theory. {S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 170/ ENG 235 Survey of African-American Literature 1746–1900 (4 Credits)

Offered as AFR 170 and ENG 235. An introduction to the themes, issues and questions that shaped the literature of African Americans during its period of origin. Texts include poetry, prose and works of fiction. Writers include Harriet Jacobs, Frances Harper, Charles Chesnutt, Frederick Douglass and Phillis Wheatley. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 175/ ENG 236 African American Literature 1900 to the Present (4 Credits)

Offered as AFR 175 and ENG 236. A survey of the evolution of African American literature during the 20th century. This class builds on the foundations established in AFR 113. Writers include Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Paule Marshall. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 201 Colloquium: Methods of Inquiry in Africana Studies (4 Credits)

Designed to introduce students to the methods of inquiry used for research in Africana Studies. Through intensive study of a single topic (past examples: Toni Morrison's Beloved, the American South, The Black Seventies) students consider the formation of the field, engage canonical texts, attend lectures and learn from scholars whose work is based in a variety of disciplines. Focus is on the challenges and opportunities made possible by doing multi- and interdisciplinary research: how and why scholars ask and approach research questions and have conversations with each other. Students may explore and develop their own research project. Enrollment limited to 18. {S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 202aa Colloquium: Topics in Africana Studies-Anthropology and the African Diaspora (4 Credits)

The African continent’s place as the cradle of humanity has made it central to Anthropology. However, Anthropology’s imperial origins have long put it at odds with the people of the African Diaspora. This course examines the complexities of the relationship between Anthropology and the African Diaspora. The course explores the African Diaspora as space, place, and identity; critically examines Anthropology’s history; explores the discipline’s core theories and thinkers; broadens students' thinking of the discipline’s canon; and examines key ethnographies of and from the African diaspora. Restrictions: AFR 202 may be taken for credit a total of three times with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 20. {S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 202am Colloquium: Topics in Africana Studies-Art, Activism and Media (4 Credits)

Black artist-activists have long used art and media as a means of chronicling, demanding and inducing change. Examining film, photography, visual art, theater, literature and social media, among other forms, this course considers the work of Black artists and activists, their relationship to the political and the reception of their work. The course critically engages performances and representations of Blackness to explore Black subjectivity and think through how artists and activists craft space for Black agency. The work is animated by key questions surrounding the relationship between art and politics, media and activism, and Black art and survival. Restrictions: AFR 202 may be taken for credit a total of three times with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 20. {A}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 202ba Colloquium: Topics in Africana Studies-The Black Archive (4 Credits)

Why has the construction of archives that center on the experiences of people of African descent been so critical to black political, cultural and social life? What do black archives look like and what do they offer? How do they expand the way archives are considered in general? This course seeks to address these questions by examining the conception and development of black archives, primarily, although not exclusively, as they arose in the United States across the twentieth century. Restrictions: AFR 202 may be taken for credit a total of three times with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 20. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 202bq Colloquium: Topics in Africana Studies-Black Queer Diaspora (4 Credits)

This interdisciplinary course explores over two decades of work produced by and about Black Queer Diasporic communities throughout the circum-Atlantic world. While providing an introduction to various artists and intellectuals of the Black Queer Diaspora, this course examines the viability of Black Queer Diaspora world-making praxis as a form of theorizing. Students interrogate the transnational and transcultural mobility of specific Black Queer Diasporic forms of peacemaking, erotic knowledge productions, as well as the concept of “aesthetics” more broadly. The aim is to use the prism of Blackness/Queerness/Diaspora to highlight the dynamic relationship between Black Diaspora Studies and Queer Studies. Restrictions: AFR 202 may be taken for credit a total of three times with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 20. {A}{H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 210 Colloquium: Black Political Economy-From Slavery to Reparatory Justice (4 Credits)

What constitutes the field of study called Black Political Economy? This course excavates a radical tradition of political economy in African diaspora studies, a tradition which has sheltered some of the most thoroughgoingly insightful perspectives on Black oppression in the Americas over the last 500 years. The course takes a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary approach which draws on several fields, including Africana intellectual history, political economy, sociological studies and cultural studies in its presentation of the field of study termed Black political economy. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 214 Black Europe (4 Credits)

This course examines the social and historical construction of blackness in Europe with particular attention to the impact of European colonialism, racist ideology and antiblack policies on the experiences of people of African descent. Topics of inquiry include: What is the relationship between the Black Mediterranean, the Black Atlantic and Black Europe? How have transnational migrations, political transformations and intellectual exchange shaped African diasporic identities, activism and cultural productions in Europe? Meditations are informed by accounts of Black life in European narratives and media as well as interdisciplinary scholarship in Black Studies, Sociology, History and Cultural Studies. {A}{H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Annually

AFR 215 Topics in Africana Studies-Caribbean Political Thought and the Quest for Freedom (4 Credits)

How have the history and geography of the Caribbean shaped the political claims of its thinkers in the quest for freedom from domination? This course tracks their contribution to issues fundamental to societal formation in the Caribbean, expressed in the aspiration for national independence and self-determination. The ideas of revolutionaries and intellectuals are counterposed with manifestos, constitutional excerpts, speeches and modes of creative expression to provide a survey of the range of political options, challenges and the immense choices that have faced the region’s people over the last 500 years. Enrollment limited to 40. {A}{H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 223 Caribbean Cultural Thought: The Plantation, Diaspora and the Popular (4 Credits)

The course introduces students to the main theoretical interpretations of culture in the Caribbean and gives an overview of Caribbean cultural history. Students are expected to analyze the impact of colonialism, race, class, gender and sexuality in the formation of Caribbean cultural practices, and to interpret cultural expression in its broadest political sense. Key theoretical terms that are central to any understanding of Caribbean cultural thought – the plantation, diaspora, creolization – are addressed in detail in the course. These key terms in Caribbean cultural thought are mobilized in order to give students the analytical tools to consider a wide variety of Caribbean cultural practices, identity formations and ways of interpreting social reality in the region. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 243 Black Autobiography (4 Credits)

This course examines the U.S. Black autobiographical tradition from the eighteenth century to the present. “Autobiography” is constituted broadly to include slave narratives, memoirs, travelogues, poems, speeches, sketches and essays. The class explores questions of form, genre, publication history, narrative voice, language, audience and other literary markers. Students examine the narratives' socio-political, historical and economic milieus. As students explore the tradition, they consider how Black autobiographers engage Carolyn Rodgers’ meditation-cum-query in, Breakthrough: “How do I put my self on paper/ The way I want to be or am and be/ Not like any one else in this/ Black world but me.”. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 245/ ENG 282 The Harlem Renaissance (4 Credits)

Offered as AFR 245 and ENG 282. A study of one of the first cohesive cultural movements in African American history. This class focuses on developments in politics, and civil rights (NAACP, Urban League, UNIA), creative arts (poetry, prose, painting, sculpture) and urban sociology (modernity, the rise of cities). Writers include Zora Neale Hurston, David Levering Lewis, Gloria Hull, Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen among others. Enrollment limited to 40. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 249 Black Women Writers (4 Credits)

How does gender matter in a black context? That is the question this course asks and attempts to answer through an examination of works by such authors as Harriet Jacobs, Frances Harper, Nella Larsen, Zora Hurston, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange and Alice Walker. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 289 Colloquium: Race, Feminism and Resistance in Movements for Social Change (4 Credits)

This interdisciplinary course explores the historical and theoretical perspectives of African American women from the time of slavery to the post-civil rights era. A central concern of the course is the examination of how black women shaped and were shaped by the intersectionality of race, gender and sexuality in American culture. Restrictions: Not open to first-years. Enrollment limited to 25. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 319 Seminar: The Black Radical Tradition (4 Credits)

What is the nature of the Black radical imagination? This course on the Black Radical Tradition draws on the thought and marronage emblematic of the Black experience of New World coloniality, through speech acts, poetry, essays, historical studies and cultural criticism, students immerse themselves in an intensive examination of the meaning of Blackness at the beginning of the third decade of an unsettled century. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}{L}{S}

Fall, Spring, Annually

AFR 322 Seminar: Black Magic: Africana Encounters with the Paranormal (4 Credits)

What is the role of magic, supernaturalism and psychic power in the lives of Africana people? This seminar critically interrogates how race, coloniality, sexuality and gender shape the social construction of the paranormal through narratives, representations and belief systems invoked by people of African descent. Drawing upon a diverse range of accounts and interdisciplinary perspectives, the class examines the historical, religious, philosophical, political and literary dimensions of Black spiritualism, divination, ghosts, mediums, psychics, conjurers, witches, shamans, superheroes and alien encounters. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission required. {A}{H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Annually

AFR 333 Seminar: Writing Blackness- A Calderwood Seminar in Writing for the Public Sphere (4 Credits)

Learn how to bring expertise in black history and culture into the public sphere. This Calderwood Seminar challenges students in an intimate workshop setting to grow as writers. Throughout the semester, students build a writing portfolio that might include op-eds, book reviews, journal article reviews, coverage of public talks, movie reviews and interviews with Africana studies scholars. Students have learned how to write for college; in this course students learn how to write for life. Prerequisite: At least one course in Africana studies. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. WI {H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 335 Seminar: Free Blacks in the U.S. Before 1865 (4 Credits)

A study of the history of free blacks from the 17th century to the abolition of slavery in 1865. A major problem created by the establishment of slavery based on race by the 1660s was what was to be the status of free blacks. Each local and state government addressed the political, economic and even religious questions raised by having free blacks in a slave society. This course addresses a neglected theme in the history of the Afro-American experience, the history of free blacks before the passage of the 13th amendment. AFR 117 recommended. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 345 Seminar: Classic Black Texts (4 Credits)

This course looks closely at a series of canonical black texts. The intention is to examine these texts in their specific historical context with careful attention to their place within Africana intellectual history. This course either focuses on a series of intensive investigations of a set of major texts within Africana studies, or it operates thematically. A thematic treatment of the course involves taking one leading critical figure within the field – for example Frantz Fanon, Toni Morrison, Aimé Césaire, Paule Marshall or Kamau Brathwaite – and constructing the course around a reflection on their work and influence on the field of Africana studies. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission required. {H}{L}{S}

Fall, Spring, Annually

AFR 360/ ENG 323 Seminar: Toni Morrison (4 Credits)

Offered as AFR 360 and ENG 323. This seminar focuses on Toni Morrison’s literary production. In reading her novels, essays, lectures and interviews, the class pays particular attention to three things: her interest in the epic anxieties of American identities; her interest in form, language and theory; and her study of love. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 366rs Seminar: Contemporary Topics in Africana Studies-Race, Sex & Tourism (4 Credits)

Tourism is often lauded as the key to economic development for many countries. However, scholarly work has shown that historical relationships to imperialism and colonialism impact how people and places experience tourism. This course introduces students to debates, methods and conceptual frameworks in the study of race, sex and tourism. Through a review of scholarly texts, tourism paraphernalia, films and travelogues, the course examines the social, political and ethical considerations inherent in multiple forms of tourism including eco-tourism, wellness or health, sun-sand-sea, heritage, dark and voluntourism in locales ranging from the Caribbean and the Americas to Africa and Europe. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 367 Seminar: The Politics of Grief (4 Credits)

What role has grief played in the black freedom struggle? How have conceptions of race and gender been articulated, expanded and politicized through public performances of collective mourning? This seminar explores the ways in which post-emancipation black politics developed through efforts, often led by women, to not only challenge but to also embody and inhabit trauma. The course considers a range of theoretical texts alongside historical documents from the late nineteenth century to today. The course is structured around addressing two major questions: what is the politics of grief and is there such a thing as a particularly black politics of grief? Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 399 Seminar: Black Latinx Americas-Movements, Politics & Cultures (4 Credits)

This course examines the extensive and diverse histories, social movements, political mobilization and cultures of Black people (Afrodescendientes) in Latin America. While the course begins in the slavery era, most of the scholarly-activist attention focuses on the histories of peoples of African descent in Latin America after emancipation to the present. Discussions include: the particularities of slavery in the Americas; the Haitian Revolution and its impact on articulations of race and nation in the region; debates on “racial democracy"; the relationship between gender, class, race and empire; and recent attempts to write Afro-Latin American histories from “transnational” and “diaspora” perspectives. The class engages the works of historians, activists, artists, anthropologists, sociologists and political theorists who have been key contributors to the rich knowledge production on Black Latin America. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 400 Special Studies (1-4 Credits)

For junior and senior majors. Instructor permission required.

Fall, Spring

AFR 430D Honors Project (4 Credits)

Department permission required.

Fall, Spring

AFR 431 Honors Project (8 Credits)

Department permission required.

Fall, Spring

Crosslisted Courses

AFR 170/ ENG 235 Survey of African-American Literature 1746–1900 (4 Credits)

Offered as AFR 170 and ENG 235. An introduction to the themes, issues and questions that shaped the literature of African Americans during its period of origin. Texts include poetry, prose and works of fiction. Writers include Harriet Jacobs, Frances Harper, Charles Chesnutt, Frederick Douglass and Phillis Wheatley. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 175/ ENG 236 African American Literature 1900 to the Present (4 Credits)

Offered as AFR 175 and ENG 236. A survey of the evolution of African American literature during the 20th century. This class builds on the foundations established in AFR 113. Writers include Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Paule Marshall. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 245/ ENG 282 The Harlem Renaissance (4 Credits)

Offered as AFR 245 and ENG 282. A study of one of the first cohesive cultural movements in African American history. This class focuses on developments in politics, and civil rights (NAACP, Urban League, UNIA), creative arts (poetry, prose, painting, sculpture) and urban sociology (modernity, the rise of cities). Writers include Zora Neale Hurston, David Levering Lewis, Gloria Hull, Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen among others. Enrollment limited to 40. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 360/ ENG 323 Seminar: Toni Morrison (4 Credits)

Offered as AFR 360 and ENG 323. This seminar focuses on Toni Morrison’s literary production. In reading her novels, essays, lectures and interviews, the class pays particular attention to three things: her interest in the epic anxieties of American identities; her interest in form, language and theory; and her study of love. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFS 222 Colloquium: Popular Culture, Gender and Sexuality in Africa (4 Credits)

This course uses popular culture as a tool to analyze gender and sexuality issues in Africa. It discusses relevant issues in gender and sexuality across the continent, using selected African songs and movies, which feature these issues as centralized themes. It also examines the lived experiences of African actors, musicians and artistes, both historical and modern, as a means of discussing social norms on gender and sexuality and their subversion. Enrollment limited to 18. (E) {S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ANT 229 Africa and the Environment (4 Credits)

In Western discourses, African environments are defined by violence, famine and degradation. These characteristics are depicted as symptoms of an African resistance to Western values such as private property, democracy and environmentalism. This course encourages students to think critically about such portrayals by learning about specific environments in Africa and how humans have interacted with them across time. The syllabus is anchored in cultural anthropology, but includes units on human evolution, the origins and spread of pastoralism, the history of colonial conservation science and more. Discussions covered include gender, race, land grabbing, indigenous knowledge, the commons, the cattle complex, desertification, oil, dams and nationalism. {H}{N}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 290cv Colloquium: Topics in Art History-Colonialisms and Their UnMaking: Land, Water, Bodies, Belongings (4 Credits)

How does conquest by foreigners change the ways that images, objects, and environments (built and otherwise) are created and used? How do different forms of colonialism—settler, extractivist, etc.—remake values and thus objects, civic spaces, humans, and other living beings? What kinds of loss does colonization produce, what kinds of resilience? Focusing on recent scholarship, this class addresses these questions, highlighting the 16th–19th centuries. Discussion include: the production of colonial spaces and buildings; exchanges that brought people and objects into contact (and conflict); nationalist museum and archival projects; and current debates about decolonization, repatriation, and reparation. Counts for ARU. Restrictions: ARH 290 may be taken for credit a total of 4 times with different topics. Enrollment limited to 20. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

DAN 142wa Topics in Dance Forms of the African Diaspora: West African Dance (2 Credits)

This course introduces West African dance, music and song as a traditional mode of expression in various West African countries. It emphasizes appreciation and respect for African culture and its profound influence on American culture and art. Restrictions: DAN 142 may be taken for credit a total of 3 times with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 30. {A}

Fall, Spring, Variable

DAN 146 Beginner Hip Hop Dance (2 Credits)

Hip hop is a popular form of Afro-diasporic cultural production and, for many, a lifestyle. In this studio course for beginner dancers, students learn movements from the poppin', lockin', house and breakin’ dance techniques. This study of movement vocabulary is contextualized in analyses of hip hop’s history, culture and current trends. May be taken three times for a total of six credits. Enrollment limited to 30. {A}

Fall, Spring

DAN 242 Dance Forms of the African Diaspora Intermediate (2 Credits)

This studio course offers intermediate level technique training in any of the dance forms from Africa and the African Diaspora. The physical study of the form is contextualized socially, culturally and historically, favoring an interdisciplinary perspective. Through the course, students approach the study of dance as a catalyst for cultural empowerment and social change. Enrollment limited to 30. {A}

Spring

DAN 246 Intermediate Hip Hop (2 Credits)

This course journeys through time and allows students to experience in their own bodies the evolution of Hip hop from its social dance roots to the contemporary phenomenon of commercial choreography that Hip hop has become. Using film and text in addition to studio work, this class creates a framework from which to understand and participate in the global culture of Hip hop dance. May be taken twice for a total of four credits. Enrollment limited to 30. {A}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ECO 222 Economics of Race, Policy, and Mass Incarceration (4 Credits)

The United States has the world’s highest incarceration rate at more than five times the global median. This country is regrettably distinguished by significant racial-ethnic and gender disparities in its carceral population. This course uses the tools of economic analysis to address three main questions: First, how did the United States become the world’s leader in incarceration? Second, what are the economic implications and collateral consequences of racialized mass incarceration? Finally, can economic tools be used to examine the efficacy of criminal justice reform? Prerequisite: ECO 150. {S}

Fall, Spring, Annually

EDC 243 Multicultural Education (4 Credits)

This course examines the multicultural approach in education, its roots in social protest movements and its role in educational reform. The course aims to develop an understanding of the key concepts, developments and controversies in the field of multicultural education; cultivate sensitivity to the experiences of diverse people in American society; explore alternative approaches for working with diverse students and their families; and develop a sound philosophical and pedagogical rationale for a multicultural education. Strand Designation: International/Global. Enrollment limited to 35. {S}

Fall

ENG 241 The Empire Writes Back: Postcolonial Literature (4 Credits)

Introduction to Anglophone fiction, poetry, drama and memoir from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia in the aftermath of the British empire. Concerns include the cultural and political work of literature in response to histories of colonial and racial dominance; writers' ambivalence towards English linguistic, literary and cultural legacies; ways literature can (re)construct national identities and histories and address dominant notions of race, class, gender and sexuality; women writers' distinctiveness and modes of contesting patriarchal and colonial ideologies; and global diasporas, migration, globalization and U.S. imperialism. Readings include Achebe, Adichie, Aidoo, Dangarembga, Walcott, Cliff, Rushdie, Ghosh, Lahiri, Hamid and others. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ENG 246 Hoodoo Is What We Do: Black Poetry, Poetics and Spiritual Practice (4 Credits)

Visionary London-based designer Grace Wales Bonner “sees research as a spiritual and artistic endeavor,” writes Museum of Modern Art curator Michelle Kuo. This course of interdisciplinary reading and writing explores “how Black people have thought through, imagined, and articulated freedom through artistic and cultural production,” an idea central to Wales Bonner’s Artist’s Choice exhibition, Dream in the Rhythm—Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection. How is spirituality defined and activated through contemporary art and poetry? How do Black artists innovate and improvise beyond the realm of organized religions? The class works toward a practice-based poetics, where creating is a way of working through these questions to arrive at new ideas. Enrollment limited to 30. {L}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

ENG 308im Seminar: Topics-One Big Book-Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man from Jim Crow to Black Lives Matter (4 Credits)

Ralph Ellison’s groundbreaking Invisible Man (1952) occupies a central position for thinking about America and the American novel. This seminar traces Ellison’s influence as a writer and public intellectual, from Jim Crow to Black Lives Matter. The class begins by identifying Invisible Man’s central themes, metaphors and narrative strategies in the context of the historical moment in which it appeared. The class then looks at moments in which Ellison’s novel—and his most important essays—have come to mediate major postwar debates about race, integration, democracy and art. The course concludes by reading Percival Everett’s Erasure (2001), a contemporary re-writing of Invisible Man. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ENG 309 Seminar: Black Prison Intellectuals (4 Credits)

This course traces the role of black prison writings in the development of American political and legal theory, interrogating theories of intellectualism, including Antonio Gramsci’s notion of traditional and organic intellectuals, and distinctions between categories of criminal and enemy. From 18th-century black captivity narratives and gallows literature through to the work of 20th- and 21st-century thinkers like Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver and Angela Davis, this course asks how the incarcerated black intellectual has informed and challenged ideas about nationalism, community and self-formation from the early republic to the present. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ENG 333ca Seminar: Topics: A Major Writer in English-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (4 Credits)

Nigerian American fiction-writer, feminist and public intellectual Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is well-known for her TED talks, “The Danger of a Single Story” and “We Should All Be Feminists.” She is also internationally acclaimed for her short stories and novels, which have attracted “a new generation of young readers to African literature,” inspired countless young African writers and prompted much critical scholarship. This course focuses on this brilliant 21st century Anglophone writer’s fiction and non-fiction, and includes some recent social media debates. Supplementary readings include postcolonial and feminist theory, history and literary criticism. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

FRN 230ww Colloquium: Topics in French Studies-Women Writers of Africa and the Caribbean (4 Credits)

An introduction to works by contemporary women writers from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean. Topics studied include colonialism, exile, motherhood and intersections between class and gender. The study of these works and of the French language is informed by attention to the historical, political and cultural circumstances of writing as a woman in a former French colony. Texts include works by Mariama Bâ, Maryse Condé, Yamina Benguigui and Marie-Célie Agnant. Basis for the major. Prerequisite: FRN 220. Restrictions: FRN 230 may not be repeated. Enrollment limited to 18. Course taught in French. WI {F}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

FRN 380af Topics in French Cultural Studies-Les Annees Folles (4 Credits)

This class enters "les années folles" in Paris in this advanced culture class, taught in French. During the Roaring Twenties, jazz sizzled, Montmartre shimmied and Joséphine Baker’s Danse sauvage mesmerized crowds at the Music-Hall des Champs Elysées. Song, literature, dance, poetry, painting and the arts aligned to form an (in)coherent, (inter)national cultural proclamation. How might people interpret this riveting period today? The class discusses the roles of women, writers, soldiers, African Americans and others in “modern” French society at the end of the Great War. Restrictions: FRN 380 may be repeated once with a different topic. {F}{H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

FYS 182 Fighting the Power: Black Protest and Politics Since 1970 (4 Credits)

This course examines the various forms of black "politics," broadly conceived, that emerged and developed in the wake of the modern civil rights movement to the present time. Major topics of concern include: black nationalism and electoral politics, black feminism, resistance to mass incarceration, the war on drugs, black urban poverty, the rise of the black middle class, reparations, the Obama presidency, Black Lives Matter and other contemporary social movements. Restrictions: First years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

GOV 227 Contemporary African Politics (4 Credits)

This survey course examines the ever-changing political and economic landscape of the African continent. The course aims to provide students with an understanding of the unique historical, economic and social variables that shape modern African politics, and introduces students to various theoretical and analytical approaches to the study of Africa’s political development. Central themes include the ongoing processes of nation-building and democratization, the constitutional question, the international relations of Africa, issues of peace and security, and Africa’s political economy. Designation: Comparative. Enrollment limited to 35. {S}

Spring

HST 157 Africa and the Making of the Modern World (4 Credits)

Often seen as peripheral to the modern world, Africa and African peoples are often ignored in both popular and scholarly world histories traversing the last several centuries. This course aims to turn these narratives on their head by not only injecting African histories into world historical narratives, but by using these histories to detail Africa’s centrality to understanding the world. In doing so, the course examines the development of and African experiences with the varying forms of capitalism and trade that developed out of both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean trade networks, the genealogical roots of European imperialism and the ways in which African peoples navigated, resisted and transformed these broader global phenomena in the construction of the world around them. This course is open to all students and assumes no prior knowledge. Enrollment limited to 40. (E) {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 235 Independent Africa: A Social and Cultural History (4 Credits)

This course provides a general, introductory survey of African social and cultural history from approximately the end of World War II to the present. In doing so, the course will look beyond the formal political maneuvering of elite figures, focusing instead on the many and competing ways in which a broad array of African actors engaged the changing political and social contexts in which they lived. As such, key themes of the course such as anticolonialism, decolonization, development, and HIV/AIDS will serve as lenses into a range of perspectives on life in an independent Africa. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

HST 258 Modern Africa (4 Credits)

This course provides an introductory survey of African history under colonial rule and beyond. In doing so, the course offers students a framework for understanding the political, social and economic history of modern Africa by foregrounding the strategies African peoples employed as they made sense of and confronted their changing historical landscapes. Key subjects include the construction of the colonial state, African experiences with colonial rule, the dilemmas of decolonization and life in an independent Africa. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

HST 259dd Colloquium: Topics in African History-Discourses of Development (4 Credits)

This course interrogates and historicizes the problem of “development” in 20th-century Africa. In doing so, we query the assumptions made by colonial officials, postcolonial leaders, social scientific experts and local communities as they sought to understand and articulate African pathways into a largely ill-defined social and economic modernity. Key subjects of enquiry include an analysis of the relationship between western and non-western “modernities,” and explorations into the link between knowledge and power in our own interpretations of the past and of the so-called “underdeveloped world.” Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 259fm Colloquium: Topics in African History-Femininities, Masculinities and Sexualities in Africa (4 Credits)

This course examines the political, social and economic role of women, gender and sexuality in African history, while paying particular attention to the ways in which a wide variety of Africans engaged, understood and negotiated the multiple meanings of femininity, masculinity and sexuality in the changing political and social landscapes associated with life in Africa. Key issues addressed in the course include marriage and respectability, colonial domesticity regimes, sex and religion. Additionally, students interrogate the diversity of methodological techniques scholars have employed in their attempts to write African gender history. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 265 Race, Gender and US Citizenship, 1776-1865 (4 Credits)

Analysis of the historical realities, social movements, cultural expression and political debates that shaped U.S. citizenship from the Declaration of Independence to the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. From the hope of liberty and equality to the exclusion of marginalized groups that made whiteness, maleness and native birth synonymous with Americanness. How African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants and women harnessed the Declaration of Independence and its ideology to define themselves as citizens of the United States. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Annually

HST 266 Emancipation and the Afterlife of Slavery (4 Credits)

Examines the longevity of the U.S. Civil War in historical memory, as a pivotal period in the development of American racism and African American activism. Explores cutting-edge histories, primary source materials, documentaries, popular films, and visual and political culture. Explores the Civil War as a mass slave insurrection and studies the myriad meanings of Emancipation. Looks at the impact of slavery on race and racism on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Annually

HST 270sr Colloquium: Topics in American History-Anatomy of a Slave Revolt (4 Credits)

During slavery, white Americans, especially U.S. slaveholders, feared the specter of insurrection. Uprisings at Stono or those led by Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner proved that slaves often fought back. Yet the central historiographical question remains: why didn’t U.S. slaves overthrow enslavement like Haitian slaves did on Santo Domingo? Enslaved people challenged slavery in a variety of ways including violence, revolts, maroon communities, truancy, passing, suicide and day-to-day resistance. This course examines the primary documents and contentious historical debates surrounding the import of slave resistance, primarily in the American South. Students examine slave societies, theories on race, gender, sexuality and resistance, as well as modern literature and film to investigate violent and nonviolent resistance and how they are memorialized both in history and in the popular imagination. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 276rj Colloquium: Topics-Historians Read the News-Race, Democracy and Reproductive Justice (4 Credits)

This course interrogates the intersection between current events and historical research. Exploring topics including race, debt, citizenship, democracy and reproductive justice, the course offers a comparative and transnational perspective of how historians and other historically focused scholars have approached topics that have dominated the recent news cycle, while thinking through the challenges and possibilities of doing historical research on subjects of contemporary importance. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 371rs Seminar: Topics in 19th Century United States History-Remembering Slavery: A Gendered Reading of the WPA Interviews (4 Credits)

Despite the particular degradation, violence and despair of enslavement in the United States, African American men and women built families, traditions and a legacy of resistance. Using the WPA interviews—part of the New Deal Federal Writers Project of the 1930s—this course looks at the historical memory of former slaves by reading and listening to their own words. How did 70- through 90-year-old former slaves remember their childhoods and young adulthoods during slavery? And how do scholars make sense of these interviews given they were conducted when Jim Crow segregation was at its pinnacle? The course examines the WPA interviews as historical sources by studying scholarship that relies heavily on them. Most importantly, students explore debates that swirl around the interviews and challenge their validity on multiple fronts, even as they remain the richest sources of African American oral history regarding slavery. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

IDP 102 Thinking Through Race (1 Credit)

This course offers an interdisciplinary, historical and critical examination of race in the United States. Although race is no longer held by scientists to have any biological reality, it has played a central role in the formation of legal codes, definitions of citizenship, economics, culture and identities. Where did the concept of race come from? How has it changed over time? What pressures does it continue to exert on our lives? By bringing together faculty from a variety of programs and disciplines, and by looking at a range of cultural texts where racial distinctions and identities have been constructed and contested, this class presents students an understanding of how and why race matters. S/U only.

Fall, Spring, Variable

PSY 263 Colloquium: Psychology of the Black Experience (4 Credits)

The purpose of this course is to educate, sensitize and stimulate thinking about varied psychological issues affecting African Americans. Foundational frameworks, models and concepts for understanding African American psychology in a context that includes an historical analysis of African American adaptation to American society is emphasized. Prerequisites: PSY 100 or PSY 201, or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 25. {N}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

SOC 243 Race, Gender and Mass Incarceration (4 Credits)

This course introduces students to the historical roots of mass incarceration and how it shapes multiple aspects of life and society. Students focus on the particular experiences of currently and formerly incarcerated women, with an emphasis on the overrepresentation of Black women; the major social, political and economic factors that have contributed to the rise of mass incarceration in the United States; the primary ways mass incarceration alters the lives of people and communities; and why eliminating racial oppression cannot be disentangled from eliminating mass incarceration. Prerequisite: SOC 101. Enrollment limited to 35. {S}

Fall, Spring, Annually

SOC 350 Seminar: Caribbean Feminisms (4 Credits)

This course introduces students to the history and sociology of feminisms in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico and the broader Caribbean. Course materials include primary documents, secondary sources and historical fiction in English. However, students who are able to read Spanish have the option of engaging with texts in that language. Prerequisite: SOC 101, LAS 150 or SWG 150. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 14. Instructor permission required. (E) {H}{S}

Variable

SPN 252 Spanish Colonialism in Africa (4 Credits)

This course examines Spanish colonialism and its aftermath in Morocco and Equatorial Guinea. Topics include the development of Spanish imperialism, the Rif War of resistance (1919-26), the Civil War (1936-39), African immigration, the rise of Spanish right-wing populism, and the so-called “War on Terror” in Spain and in the rest of Europe. Enrollment limited to 20. {F}{H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

SWG 235 Colloquium: Black Feminism (4 Credits)

An in-depth discussion of the history, debates, theory, activism and poetics of Black Feminism. Students study the conversations, ruptures and connections produced in dominant feminist scholarship by black feminist theory. The class reads foundational and emergent work in the field. Students learn the history of those scholarly interventions and examine the pervasive ways of knowing that are being disrupted through black feminist scholarship. Students develop an understanding of the relationship between black feminism, feminism, women of color feminism and queer theory. Topics covered using theoretical texts, works of cinema and popular culture. Students examine cultural texts alongside theory to practice close reading as a methodological tool. Students finish with the analytical and methodological skills to identify and critique structures of power that govern everyday experiences of gender, the body, space, violence and modes of resistance. Prerequisite: SWG 150. Enrollment limited to 25.

Fall, Spring, Variable

WLT 205 Contemporary African Literature and Film (4 Credits)

A study of the major writers and diverse literary traditions of Africa, with emphasis on the historical, political, social and cultural contexts of the emergence of writing, reception and consumption. The course pays particular attention to several questions: in what contexts did modern African literature emerge? Is the term "African literature" a useful category? How do African writers challenge Western representations of Africa? How do they articulate the crisis of postcoloniality? How do women writers reshape our understanding of gender and the politics of resistance? Writers include Achebe, Ngugi, Dangarembga, Bâ, Ndebele and Aidoo. Films: Tsotsi , Softie and Blood Diamond. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

WLT 240 Imagining Black Freedom: African, Caribbean and African American Literature (4 Credits)

An examination of race, identity, and resistance in African, Caribbean, and African American literatures through the lens of coming-of-age novels. This course will enable students to critically engage the political and aesthetic imperatives of black writing by interrogating the thematics and legacies of slavery, colonialism, and racism. How do writers of Africa and the African diaspora appropriate the Bildungsroman as a literary form in their constructions of identity, freedom, and citizenship? What makes this genre particularly useful for the liberatory project of black imagination? Writers include Ngugi, Dangarembga, Wicomb, Cliff, Kincaid, Morrison and Wright. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

WLT 266md Colloquium: Topics in South African Literature and Film-Modern (4 Credits)

A study of South African literature and cinema from apartheid era to the present. The course focuses on the ways in which the political, economic and cultural forces of colonialism and apartheid have shaped culture and politics in contemporary South Africa. The course also pays attention to the ways in which literature and film helps us visualize the relationship between power and violence in apartheid and post-struggle South Africa. Enrollment limited to 18. {L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

Additional Programmatic Information

Students interested in honoring in the Department of Africana Studies must complete all the major requirements and a thesis.

The thesis consists of an 8-credit honors course, pursued over one or two semesters and during which the student completes a long document of original research, followed by a public presentation and an oral examination. The credits for the thesis substitute for one or two of the elective courses in the major.

Eligibility

A student must have at least a 3.5 GPA for all courses in the major, and at least a 3.3 GPA for courses outside the major through the junior year. A student must have fulfilled the requirements for Latin Honors distribution by the time of graduation, and must otherwise fit the college's criteria for honors eligibility, as defined by the Subcommittee on Honors and Independent Programs (SHIP).

Application

A completed application consists of all the required forms from SHIP (available from the Class Deans Office), including the "Application to Enter Departmental Honors" and a two- to three-page proposal that describes the topic. This proposal should include the organizing questions, methods of analysis, a short bibliography, and it must be approved by the thesis adviser. The proposal should also discuss the student's preparedness to undertake the topic (including a discussion of coursework).

The student may also be required to attend a meeting with faculty to answer questions about her proposal. The department will vote on the proposal and then forward a recommendation to SHIP for final approval.

The application is due by noon on the last day of classes of the final semester of a student's junior year. This application will be reviewed by the department and returned to the student with comments for clarification, revision and consideration. The student must submit a revised and final application in the fall semester of her senior year, due by noon on the first Friday of the semester. The application should be submitted to 130 Wright Hall to the director of honors. A student who is intending to graduate in December should contact the director of honors for application guidelines.

Adviser

Any regularly appointed faculty in the department can serve as an adviser to the thesis. A student should contact the director of honors if there are questions. Early in the thesis writing process the adviser, in consultation with the student, will choose a second reader. This reader can be outside of the department.

Calendar

The specific deadlines for the thesis can be established by the thesis adviser but must fit within the overall guidelines put forth by SHIP. A student must complete a significant draft of her thesis by the first day of classes in the spring semester of her senior year. The final revised thesis is due the first day of April of that semester, and a student will schedule two presentations: one to her committee to take place before the start of final exams, and one open to the public. The dates and procedures for final submission of the thesis are outlined in the SHIP document and are the responsibility of the student.

Evaluation

The thesis should be at least 40 pages in length, or the equivalent of a creative project. In calculating the honors designation, the thesis counts 60 percent, the public presentation 10 percent, and the average of all courses taken in the department counts 30 percent.

For questions, a student should contact the director of honors in the department or the senior class dean.

Courses

History 430d
Thesis: 8 credits
Full-year course; offered each year

History 431
Thesis: 8 credits
Offered each fall

Opportunities

Guidelines

The Ida B. Wells Prize for Distinguished Work in Africana Studies is ​​awarded annually to a senior for excellence in an essay or other project.

  • No more than one submission per student. Work may be on any aspect of Africana studies and may be of any length; creative pieces or portfolios as well as analytic/scholarly essays are welcome. Submission must include this completed cover sheet.
  • All papers should be paginated (i.e., each page should be numbered consecutively).
  • Only clean, unmarked papers should be turned in (i.e., without teacher’s comments or grades).
  • The prize will be awarded to work that is distinguished in achievement of its intellectual goals.

Use the following document to submit your work:

Ida B. Wells Prize Coversheet (PDF)

Deadline

Papers are due by noon on May 1 by electronic submission to David Osepowicz. Items that cannot be submitted electronically may be submitted in hard copy to the program office, Wright Hall 107.

The Cromwell Fellowship is for students doing research and work in Black studies. You can fund research or an internship during interterm or the summer.

How To Apply

Please submit a 1-2 page statement with a cover sheet that includes your name, student ID 99 number, campus mailbox number and home address, and indicate if you have a Smith College direct deposit account.

Describe your research project or internship in detail and how it relates to both your academic and career goals. Include the following:

  • a concise schedule
  • detailed budget
  • the names of two faculty references

Deadlines

  • Applications are due on November 4, 2024 at 9 a.m. for consideration for a interterm internship
  • Applications are due on April 15, 2024 at 9 a.m. for consideration for an summer internship.

Please submit applications to Wright Hall 107 or by email to africanastu@cellphonejoys.com.

Faculty

Aaron Kamugisha

Africana Studies

Ruth J. Simmons Professor of Africana Studies; Chair of the Department

Katwiwa Mule

World Literatures

Professor of World Literatures; Department Chair of Africana Studies

Katwiwa Mule

Samuel Ng

Africana Studies

Assistant Professor of Africana Studies

Samuel Ng

Karla Zelaya

Africana Studies

Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies

Emeriti

Ann Ferguson
Associate Professor Emerita of African American Studies

Paula Giddings
Elizabeth A. Woodson Professor Emerita of Africana Studies

Contact Department of Africana Studies

Seelye 307
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063

Phone: (413) 585-3056

Administrative Assistant:
Erin Hayes