Course Descriptions

This course provides students with an introduction to Black Studies. The first section of the course is devoted to a history of Black Studies in the U.S. using the integration and development of Black Studies here at the University of Texas, Austin as a case study. We will then turn to considerations of the historical construction of Africa, the Black Diaspora and the idea of Blackness. Building on this foundation the course provides students with the analytical tools to critically explore canonical Black Studies literature, themes, and theories. This section of the course interrogates race, gender, class, sexuality, and their intersections as well as culture, power and politics. The second section of the course will focus in on the expression and use of Black Studies in the areas of: Critical Black Studies; Education, Psychology, and Mental Health; Government, Law and Public Policy; Expressive Culture, Arts, Music, Sports; and Africa and its Diasporic Cultures.

This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the diversity of the societies and cultures of Africa, focusing on the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial historical, political, economic, and socio-cultural issues that have determined and shaped the lives of the people.

This course will explore the gender construction in Yoruba land, found in southwestern Nigeria. Also, through the analyses of religious, linguistic, and socio-political discourse and practices among the Yoruba, the course will also examine the variables between the realities of African gender perspectives and current gender theories.

The relationship between Africa and the United States is often imagined simply as a westward movement in which Africans are forcibly transported across the Atlantic as commodities and then violently folded into the fabric of the American experience. While it is true that chattel slavery and African American cultural practices have exerted tremendous influence over the history of the United States, not all movement has been westward. Americans—black and white—have also traveled east, from the United States to Africa, and in the process have developed and reinforced affective bonds that stretch across time and space. This class explores these affective bonds through the lens of first-person narratives read alongside political, economic, cultural, and historic scholarship. We will move forward in time from the Atlantic slave trade to the U.S. Overseas Contingency Operations, but will also trouble the notion that there is a single narrative of the relationship between Africa and the United States, or a singular Africa for Americans to write about. Since this is a writing flag course, students will analyze the historical context in which representations of Africa and Africans circulate through a series of course readings, group discussions, and writing exercises that culminate in a final paper and presentation worth 40% of students’ final grades.

Requirements

4 Reaction Papers:              10% each

Final Paper:                        35%

Final Paper Peer Review:      10%

Final Presentation:                5%

Participation:                      10%

Possible Texts

John H. Ghazvinian, Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil

Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route

Theodore Roosevelt, African Game Trails

Frank B. Wilderson III, Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid

Additional course readings will appear on the schedule and be available through Electronic Reserves.

Flag(s): Writing, Global Cultures

This class will look at the history of the political, economic and cultural relations between the United States and Africa from the early origins of the slave trade to the present. It explores the role of the US in historical global contexts. The class is intended to elucidate historical developments both in the US and on the African continent, and should satisfy students with a strong interest in US history as well as those interested in the place of the US in the African Diaspora.  The semester is divided into four parts, each covering a major theme.

Course Objectives

To develop a base of African and US history and increase the level of awareness of the African Diaspora in the US. 

To obtain a well-rounded approach to the political, economic, and cultural connections between the United States and Africa.

To reevaluate perceptions of Africa, to recognize the vibrant nature of African culture, and to apply new knowledge to the different cultural agents active in US popular culture, such as music, dance, literature, business and science.

To help students understand present-day politics in Africa at a deeper level and to obtain a better understanding of racial conditions in the US.

To learn how to assess historical materials -- their relevance to a given interpretative problem, their reliability and their importance -- and to determine the biases present within particular scholarship. These include historical documents, literature and films.

Texts:

1. Joseph E. Holloway, ed., Africanisms in American Culture  (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005 second edition).

2. Curtis A. Keim, Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind (Westview Press, 1999).

3. Alusine Jalloh, ed., The United States and West Africa (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008).

4. Kevin Roberts, ed., The Atlantic World 1450-2000 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008).

5. Karen Bouwer, Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: the Legacy of Patrice Lumumba (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

6. Gendering the African diaspora : women, culture, and historical change in the Caribbean and Nigerian hinterland / edited by Judith A. Byfield, LaRay Denzer, and Anthea Morrison. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.

Grading:

i. Public Lecture Review 10%    

ii. First  Examination 25%

iii. Book Review 20%

iv.   Book Review 20%

v. Second Examination 25%

The Black Power movement was a distinct period from the late 1960s and early 1970s that emphasized racial pride and the creation of black political and cultural institutions to nurture and promote black collective interests and advance black values, and secure black autonomy. The range of black power ideology ranged from the desire to create an all-black nation-state to the promotion of black economic power. This course will look at the major organizations, key figures, and ideologies of the black power movement.

Texts:

Negroes with Guns by Robert F. Williams  (read: weeks 1-2)

Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam by Tate (weeks 3-5)

Die, Nigger, Die by H. Rap Brown (weeks 6-8)

Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur (weeks 9-11)

Carl Stokes and the Rise of Black Political Power by Leonard Moore (weeks 12-14)

Under the Influence by Erin Patton (week 15)

Grading:

Exams will be given approximately every five weeks and the group project is due at the end of the semester.

Exam 1: 25%

Exam 2: 25%

Exam 3: 25%

Group Project: 25%

While providing an introduction to various artists and intellectuals of the black queer diaspora, this seminar examines the distinct socio-cultural, historical and geographical contexts in which same-sex desire and gender variance are embraced or contested in African diasporic communities.

This course explores the complex politics of race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, nation and other categories of power in relationship to systems of oppression and privilege in a transnational context. Focusing on the experiences of people of African descent, texts examined in this course will range from theoretical to first-person narratives. We will interrogate categories of sex, gender, and sexuality, and explore issues of identity, representation, socio-economic policy and political rights. We will examine African and Black feminist critiques of historical, institutionalized oppression, including poverty, poor working conditions, criminalization, reproductive and sexual control, gendered violence, stigma and stereotypes, homophobia, and xenophobia.  We will explore the relevance of changing understandings of the term "culture" for the study of women, gender, and/or sexuality across Africa and the African Diaspora. Particular attention will be devoted to the ways in which gender as practice, performance, and representation has differed for women and men according to race, class, and other divisions.   Women’s and Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary field committed to imagining justice through analysis and creation of culture. Part of our work will reveal how African and African Diaspora Feminisms have challenged racism and white supremacy within feminist scholarship and activism. Your work in this course will prepare you for advanced study and to participate in discussions for community and academic advocacy.

This course is a survey of cultural production by choreographers of African descent in the U.S. and the African Diaspora from the 20th century to the present, as well as and examination the ways “black aesthetics” have been embodied and challenged in the cultural products themselves.  We will examine texts and performance footage from different periods of the long Civil Rights Movement and take stock of the way historical contexts, along with factors concerning subject position, shape (but does not determine) artists’ and intellectuals’ responses to the idea of a “black dance”  In other words, we will explore the ways that the notion of ‘blackness’ has been and continues to be constructed, commodified, challenged, and reconceptualized in performance and other contemporary artistic forms. The course will consider the mutual impact that arts and social movements have on each other. The historical and theoretical materials will be contextualized by guest lectures, discussions, and performances involving visiting scholars, artists and activists.   Please bear in mind that like the course, this is a document in process.  It will evolve as we begin exploring the what’s, why’s, how’s and when’s of Black Dance.

Texts:

*African Dance by Kariamu Welsh-Asante *African American Concert Dance: The Harlem Renaissance and Beyond by John O. Perpener *Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance by Thomas DeFrantz

Grading breakdown:

Participation - 10%

Analysis Questionnaires - 25%

Quizzes 5%

Midterm - 20% 

Final - 20%

Final Project - 20% 

Throughout the history of African Americans there has existed a tradition whereby individuals whose attitudes, behavior, and politics differ from the Black majority have been labeled as Uncle Toms, negros, sellouts, and various other denigrating names. Underlying these labels is an orthodoxy of Black ideology that prescribes what is, and isn’t, authentic and normative Blackness. This course analyzes the idea that the activities and practices of certain Black celebrities, leaders, and intellectuals undermine Black progress.

Texts:

Kennedy, Randall (2008): Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal. Vintage Books. Baker, Houston (2008). Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era, University Press.

Grading breakdown:

6.7% Reaction Paper

26.7% - 8 pop quizzes 

26.7% - 4 journals

6.7% - Research Participation

33.3% final exam

Instructor:  Wilks, J            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  35035            Flags:  Cultural diversity, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2013            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 317F            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: This course will survey the importance of place and community in African American literature from the Harlem Renaissance to the present. We will consider how the community in which characters live or move—from neighborhood to island—influences their conceptions of race, gender, and identity. As this is a writing-intensive course, we will pay particular attention to the form as well as the content of our texts. Discussion will also play an integral role in the course.

Texts: Readings may include the following: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son; Toni Morrison, Sula; Colson Whitehead, Zone One.

Requirements & Grading: Two short papers (4 pages each): 40%; Final critical essay (5-7 pages): 25%; Rough draft (4 pages): 10%; Presentation: 10%; Reading responses and class participation: 15%.

Attendance is mandatory. More than three unexcused absences will result in a significant reduction of your grade.

Instructor:  Woodard, H            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  35045            Flags:  Cultural diversity, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2013            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 317F            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: This course is an introduction to selected African-American literature—slave narratives, novels, poetry, and plays—from slavery to the present. The course historicizes issues pertinent to the African-American literary tradition, such as slavery, double consciousness or the struggle for self-identity, as well as class, racism, and sexism. It thematizes these issues through stylistic forms, including the oral vernacular tradition, folk culture, double discourse, and chiasmus.

Primary Texts: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed. Classic Slave Narratives (Signet Classics); Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1974); Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha (New York: Harper, 1953); August Wilson, The Piano Lesson (New York: Penguin, 1990); Harryette Mullen, Sleeping With the Dictionary (Berkeley: U of California Press, 2002); Jesymn Ward, Salvage the Bones (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011).

Requirements & Grading: Three critical essays (six typed pages each, double-spaced) - 70%; Reading quizzes / Class participation / Oral and written (group) presentations, TBA - 30%.

Attendance: Regular attendance is required.  More than four absences will be sufficient grounds for failure in the course. The four allowed absences will include illness, deaths of relatives, and other emergencies. Upon your fifth absence, you will be notified of your failure of the course, and you need not return to class. If you are more than five minutes late or leave before class ends (without permission), you will be counted absent for that class. You are responsible for all work covered in your absence.

Papers: Papers are due at the beginning of class on the date assigned. Late papers will not be accepted. Do not slide papers under my door. Use the MLA Stylebook for all papers. Type papers on white, 8.5" x 11" paper, using one side only. Bind pages with a paper clip.

Policies: Absolutely no make-ups for quizzes; however, your lowest quiz grade will be dropped. Please read the entire assignment by the first day of class discussion for that work.

Grading Scale: A (94-95); A- (90-93); B+ (87-89); B (84-86); B- (80-83); C+ (77-79); C (74-76); C- (70-73); D+ (67-69); D (64-66); D- (61-63); F (0-60).

This upper division course examines the history of Blacks in the United States from the West African Heritage to the Civil War and provides a critical examination on central issues under scholarly debate in the reconstruction of the Black experience in America. The course thus engages the debate on the evolution of African-American slavery as a social, economic and political institution, with a special focus on antebellum slavery, including plantation slavery, industrial slavery, and urban slavery in addition to slave culture.

Also, the course assesses the institutional development of the free black community, during the age of slavery, with emphasis on free black protest activities, organizations, and leaders. Equally important, information is provided on the business and entrepreneurial activities of both slave and free blacks before the Civil War to underscore the long historic tradition of black economic self-help. Invariably, those slaves who purchased their freedom were slaves involved in various business enterprises. Also emphasized in the course are the various ways in which slave and free black women responded to slavery and racism before the Civil War, giving consideration to gender issues within the intersection of the dynamics of race, class, and sex.

The course format is primarily lecture, with informal class discussion, utilizing in part the Socratic method of teaching/pedagogy (especially useful for students who are pre-law), as we examine topics that broaden historical consciousness and critical thinking skills, such as: the role Africans played in the Atlantic slave trade; the historical forces that contributed to the origin of racism in Colonial America; the anomaly of black plantation slave owners in a race-based slave society; how white economic disparities and hegemonic masculinities were played out in class subordination and racial oppression; why race takes precedence over class in assessing the black historical experience; the extent to which judicial cases provide a pragmatic assessment of the realities of slave life; the extent to which American law supported the racial subordination of slave and free blacks; whether or not the economic and political imperatives that prompted antebellum African American settlement in West Africa can be considered colonialist in design and intent.

These and other questions will bring to the forefront the central issue of the agency of African Americans in their attempts to survive racism and slavery in attempts forge their own political and economic liberation. This course, consequently, emphasizes both the deconstruction of prevailing assessments and interpretations of the African American experience as well as provides information for a new reconstruction of the Black Experience from slavery to freedom. In each instance, emphasis will be on exploring different historical interpretations of the Black Experience.

African American slaves did not lead a monolithic slave experience. They shared life-time, hereditary, involuntary servitude, racial oppression and subordination. But many manipulated the institution and slave codes in attempts to mitigate that oppression. Others, such as Nat Turner and Dred Scott used other means to bring about an end to their servitude, while free blacks also fought to end slavery as well as improve their economic, societal and legal status.

The primary purposes of this course, then, are 1) to develop an understanding of the nature of historical inquiry and 2). to heighten historical consciousness 3), encourage critical thinking and analysis of historical material and 4) to recognizing the difference between what might have happened and what actually happened to blacks, both slave and free blacks during the age of slavery to the Civil War.

Texts:

Franklin, John H. and Alfred Moss, FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM, 9th ed

Holt, T. and Barkley-Brown, E. MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY, vol 1

Owens, Leslie, T

HIS SPECIES OF PROPERTY: SLAVE LIFE AND CULTURE IN THE OLD SOUTH

Tyler, Ron and Lawrence, R. Murphy, The Slave Narratives of Texas

Walker, Juliet E. K., FREE FRANK: A BLACK PIONEER ON THE ANTEBELLUM FRONTIER

Walker, Juliet E. K., THE HISTORY OF BLACK BUSINESS IN AMERICA: CAPITALISM, RACE, ENTREPRENEURSHIP

White, Deborah G.  AREN’T I A WOMAN:  FEMALE SLAVES PLANTATION SOUTH

Grading:

MID-TERM EXAM    35%

RESEARCH PAPER   30%

EXAM 2 (TAKE-HOME)  35%

Course participants will collect and discuss the intellectual work of Black Studies thinkers and professors, and use that material as the basis for a comprehensive new media analysis in the United States. Students will discuss their individual approaches to and understandings of social media. The course is focused on action research and professional development as students develop and implement a personalized philosophy of social media engagement as it relates to the field of Black Studies.

Texts:

Taking a Stand: Community Engaged Scholarship on the Tenure Track (Foster, 2012)

Partnerships for STEM Education (Foster, 2010)

Here Comes Everybody (Shirky 2008)

I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately (Marwick, 2011)

Social Networks That Matter: Twitter Under the Microscope (Huberman 2009)

From Informal Learning and Identity Formation (McNally)

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media for the 21st Century. (Jenkins, 2009)

Grading breakdown:

Social Media Tracking – 40%

Social Media Plan of Action – 40%

Reaction Papers – 10%

Participation/Attendance – 10%

Taking the precariousness of black life as its point of departure, Afro Pessimism is a rising interdisciplinary critical discourse which both explores the personal, cultural and political afterlife of Atlantic slavery and attempts to reformulate intellectual agendas, cultural production, and black politics around slavery’s living catastrophes. We will critically engage leading figures of this unsettling and controversial subfield of black studies with a view to enlarging our understandings of contemporary crises of black mortality, poverty, mass imprisonment, and racialized violence, among others; and to acquiring a scholarly appraisal of this disturbing but important literature.                 

Requirements

8-10 page Final paper (30%);

2  3-4 page critical analyses (30%);

4 in-class reading quizzes (20%)

Participation (20%)

Possible Texts

Baldwin, No Name in the Street

Patterson, Slavery and Social Death

Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

Butler, Kindred

Hartman, Scenes of Subjection

Wilderson, Red, White, and Black

Moten, In the Break

Robinson, Black Marxism

Butler, Precarious Life

West, “Black Strivings in a Twilight Civilization”

Upper-division standing required. Students may not enroll in more than two AMS 370 courses in one semester.

Flag(s): Writing, Cultural Diversity

When Harriet Tubman struck out for her own freedom and for that of countless others, she knew that her success depended on an intimate knowledge of the geographic boundaries of slave and fee territory and the network of safe(r) spaces known as the Underground Railroad. When segregationists advocated for laws and policies that reinforced the color line, they spoke from an interest in “keeping blacks in their place.” When current day media executives attempt to market their programming to African American audiences they often frame them in terms of an “urban” market.  As these examples show, social constructions of race and status in the United States have always intersected with social constructions of place.

This course explores these intersecting themes of race and place by considering a range of topics beginning with the formulation of an exclusively white national space from the conquest of indigenous land and the transportation of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. We will also consider various challenges to this white supremacist national logic, from the presence of the Haitian Republic to expressions of black nationalism, diasporic imaginings and exilic critique. We will discuss geographies of plantation slavery and Jim Crow segregation and black resistance to these geographies as individuals and groups such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Marcus Garvey, Anna Julia Cooper, Rosa Parks, and the Freedom Riders forced a reconfiguration of public and private space. We will focus on such iconic black urban and rural spaces such as Harlem, Chicago, New Orleans, the Sea Islands, and more to keep track of the varied and complex politics of race and belonging. This course will provide a theoretical foundation in critical race studies and cultural geography and it will engage a wide variety of media, including speeches, memoir, poetry, music, visual culture, performance culture, film, and television. 

Texts:

May include; Aimé Cesaire, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land; James Baldwin, Blues for Mister Charlie; Alice Walker, Meridian; Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Harlem is Nowhere and a course packet of excerpts from secondary and primary texts.

Grading breakdown:

3 response papers (2-3 pages): 10% each

summary and outline for the final project, 1 page(5%)

Oral presentation of final project (10-15 minutes) (15%)

Final paper, 8-10 pages (30%)

Participation and preparedness (20%)

Provides an overview of theories in the sociology of social control, with a focus on risk, power, ethics, and surveillance. Examines historical transformations in social control and the distributions of power in U.S. and global contexts, with attention to race, gender, and class. Topics include: the transatlantic slave trade; prisons and punishment; the gaze, voyeurism and reality television. watching; the Internet; travel and state borders; privacy; biometrics and the body. 

Cultural critic Wahneema Lubiano argues that “postmodernisn offers a site for African American cultural critics and producers to utilize a discursive space  that foregrounds the possibility of rethinking history, political positionality in the cultural domain, the relationship between cultural politics and subjectivity, and the politics of narrative aesthetics”. Other scholars such as Cornel West conclude that the Black experience in American is fundamentally absurd. If postmodernism is characterized by a de-centered human subjectivity then the Black condition in the Americans is fundamentally postmodern. This course examines texts that re-imagine Black subjectivity beyond traditional narratives of suffering and oppression. Class participants will become acquainted with a variety of genres such as literary satire, rock musical, faux documentary, and speculative fiction.

Texts:

Paul Beatty “White Boy Shuffle” (1996)

Octavia Butler “Kindred” (1979)

Edward P. Jones “The Known World” (2003)

Andrea Lee “Sarah Phillips” (1984)

Jill Nelson “Volunteer Slavery” (1993)

Baratunde Thurston “How to Be Black” (2012)

Grading breakdown (percentages):

Essay One – 5 pages – 20%

Midterm – 30%

Presentation – 10%

Essay 2 – 7 pages – 30%

Participation – 10%

This course focuses “women behaving badly” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America.  We are especially interested in exploring the histories of female murderers and criminals as well as examining the experiences of women who transgressed racial, gendered, and sexual mores; ultimately, we will investigate the tension between accepted social norms and the struggle for female autonomy.

Texts:

Lisa Duggan, Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity (Duke, 2001)

Kali Gross, Colored Amazons: Black Women, Crime, and Violence in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910 (Duke, 2006)

Mary Odem, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885-1920 (UNC, 1995)

Grading breakdown:

Engaged, critical participation 25%

Weekly writing responses 25%

Midterm Exam 25%

Final Paper 25%

In this course, students will explore the meaning of "literacy" and its application to everyday life, particularly for Black people. Scholars in literacy studies have recovered the contributions of ordinary men and women in the Black Freedom Struggle throughout the South through a commitment to the place of literacy within those narratives. While studies linking literacy to identities are robust, research into the relationship between literacy and the multiplicity of identities, particularly intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality, are few. Black transgender, lesbian, gay, bisexual,queer, and heterosexual people will be studied, particularly in relation to their use of both formal and informal literacy. This course will hopefully shed light on the significance of literacy when theorizing literary, visual, and performance as cultural activism is key to seeing how everyday folks act as political, cultural, and spiritual agents.

Texts:

Sojourner Truth -  "Ain't I a Woman";

Paul Freire – Pedagogy of the Oppressed

E. Patrick Johnson -  "Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South";

The Lady Chablis -  "Hiding My Candy: The Autobiography of the Grand Empress of Savannah;

Street -  "The New Literacy Studies"

Grading breakdown:

Final research paper -  30%

Critical analysis essay -  25%

Discussion leader exercise, - 25%

Worksheets – 10 %

Participation and attendance – 10%

Instructor:  Paredez, D            Areas:  V / G

Unique #:  35955            Flags:  Cultural Diversity

Semester:  Fall 2013            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 372E, MAS 374 (pending approval)            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: In recent years, numerous public discussions and critical commentaries have focused on the purported tensions between Black and Latino communities. By examining Black and Latino artistic products and cultural practices from the 1940s to the present, the historical trajectory of this course encourages students to challenge recent constructions of Black/Latino relations as inherently conflictual. We will pay particular attention to both thematic resonances between Black and Latino art and to actual Black/Latino artistic collaborations in theatre, dance, performance art, performance poetry, music, fashion and style. We will also study works by Afro-Latino artists whose art disrupts the discrete categories that often separate the two communities. Throughout the course, students will 1) chart a history of collaborations and resonances between Black and Latino artists; 2) identify Black and Latino aesthetic styles and traditions; and 3) develop and practice analytical skills for approaching the question: "What is Black and/or Latino performance?"

Texts to be selected from the following among others: (description approved by DP for posting as is, 3/11/13; no narrowing down of texts yet.)

Elam, Harry. Taking It to the Streets: The Social Protest Theater of Luis Valdez and Amiri Baraka

Gamson, Joshua. The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco

shange, ntozake. for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

Baraka, Amiri/Jones, Leroi. "AM/TRAK." Jazz Poetry Anthology. Eds. Sascha Feinstein & Yusef Komunyakaa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

_____. Dutchman. New York: Harper, 1971.

7_____. "A Jazz Great: John Coltrane." Black Music. New York: W. Morrow, 1967. 56-62.

_____. "The Revolutionary Theatre." http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/blackarts/documents.htm.

Flores, Juan. "Cha-Cha with a Back Beat: Songs and Stories of Latin Boogaloo." Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in Popular Music. Ed. Lise Waxer. New York: Routledge, 2002. 75-100.

Fusco, Coco. "Performance and Power of the Popular." Let’s Get It On: The Politics of Black Performance. Seattle: Bay Press, 1995. 158-176.

George-Graves, Nadine. "Basic Black." Theatre Journal 57.4 (2005): 610-612.

Habell-Pallán, Michelle & Mary Romero, "Introduction." Latino/a Popular Culture, Ed. Habell-Pallán & Romero. New York: New York University Press, 2002. 1-7.

Hall, Stuart Hall. "What is this Black in Black Popular Culture?" Black Popular Culture. Ed. Gina Dent. Seattle: Bay Press, 1992. 20-33.

Jacques, Geoffrey. "CuBop! Afro-Cuban Music and Mid-Twentieth Century American Culture." Between Race and Empire: African Americans and Cubans Before the Cuban Revolution. Eds. Lisa Brock & Digna Castenada-Fuertes. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. 249-265.

Kelley, Robin D. G. "The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black Cultural Politics During World War II" Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class. New York: Free Press, 1994. 161-182.

Lott, Eric. "Double V, Double Time: Bebop's Politics of Style." Jazz Among the Discourses.  Ed. Krin Gabbard. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. 243-255.

McCauley, Robbie. Sally's Rape. Moon Marked and Touched by Sun: Plays by African-American Women. Ed. Sydne Mahone. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1994. 211-238.

_____. "Thoughts on My Career, The Other Weapon, and Other Projects." Performance and Cultural Politics. Ed. Elin Diamond. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Muñoz, Jose. "Performing Disidentifications." Disidentifications: Queers o Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,1999. 1-13.

Neal, Larry. "The Black Arts Movement." http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/blackarts/documents.htm.

Pagán, Eduardo Obregón. "Chapter 5: Dangerous Fashion." Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 98-125.

Parks, Suzan-Lori. "Black Math." Theatre Journal 57.4 (2005): 576-583.

_____. "An Equation for Black People Onstage. The American Play and Other Works. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995.19-22.

Perdomo, Willie. "Nigger-Reecan Blues." Where a Nickel Costs a Dime. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996. 19-21.

Ramírez, Catherine. "Crimes of Fashion: The Pachuca and Chicana Style Politics," Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 2:2 (Spring 2002): 1-35.

Rivera, Raquel. "It's Just Begun" & "Whose Hip Hop?" New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone. New York: Palgrave, 2003. 49-96.

Sanchez, Sonia.  "a/coltrane/poem." Jazz Poetry Anthology. Eds. Sascha Feinstein & Yusef Komunyakaa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. 183-186.

El Teatro Campesino, "Los Vendidos." The Harcourt Brace Anthology of Drama. 3rd Edition. Ed. W.B. Worthen. New York: Heinle & Heinle, 1999. 1008-1012.      

Troyano, Alina. "The Conquest of Mexico as Seen Through the Eyes of Hernan Cortes' Horse." I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performing Between Cultures. New York: Beacon Press, 2000. 173-76.

_____. Milk of Amnesia. I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performing Between Cultures. New York: Beacon Press, 2000. 52-71.

Valdez, Luis. "Notes on Chicano Theatre." Early Works: Actos, Bernarbe, and Pensamiento Serpentino. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1994. 6-10.

Requirement and Grading: In addition to regular attendance and active participation, there are THREE ASSIGNMENTS required for this course:

1) Creative Response        25%

2) Performance Analysis        25%

3) Final Project        50%

a.  Presentation component    20%

b.  Written component    30%

1) Creative Response

DUE: During the second week of class, each student will sign up for a day to share their response.

A response to the performance/music/play/dance/style that is in a form other than a written analysis. This could be visual art:  a collage, a drawing, a painting; sculpture or a "prop" or tool or machine; music or sound; food; movement, gesture, or dance; or another written form: poetry, for example. The purpose of this approach is to encourage a different, perhaps more intuitive response to and analysis of the performance. Also, please include a short (less than one page typed, double-spaced) explanation of your response.

2) Performance Analysis

DUE: On the day we discuss the performance you are analyzing.

A 2-3-page, typed, double-spaced paper (around 500-750 words) in which you offer your own original interpretation of a performance form or cultural style studied this semester. Your essay should begin with Observation: What do you read or see or hear or feel? Then expand to Analysis: How does this observation connect to other elements of the performance or cultural artifact or create a pattern? And finally move to: Interpretation: What is significant about this observation? What does it mean? How does it contribute to the total meaning of the performance or cultural product?

3) Final Project

The final project is comprised of the following steps:

1) Proposal Draft (1 page typed abstract)

2) Presentation/Performance (15 min)

3) Completed Written Project (10-15 pp)

This project provides each seminar participant the opportunity to critically investigate and/or creatively produce Black or Latino performance. The project includes both an oral and written component. The oral component can take the form of a scholarly presentation or lecture, an original performance, an art installation, or an interactive workshop. The written component can take the form of a theoretical or historical research paper, an original script accompanied by an introductory "Artist's Statement," or a curatorial essay. We will explore other options as the semester proceeds.

This course examines the hip-hop rhetorics of Writers, performers, and activists of the hip-hopgeneration. These rhetors draw on hip-hop cultural tools, including rap, fashion, dance, graffiti, and deejayin', to construct their identities and make and disseminate meaning Within and about their social Worlds, particularly around issues of racism, sexism and misogyny, poverty, heterosexisrn, and xenophobia. Reading seminal ancl some recent scholarship in the nascent lielcl of Hip-Hop Studies, While applying critical social theory and rhetorical theory, We will examine the Ways hip-hop operates with historical, cultural, economic, and political consequence within the US. and all over the World.

Topics the course will cover include: hip hop and feminism; race and mascuiinities; Latinas and hip-hop; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) hip-hop performers; youth culture and activism; spoken Word and hip-hop theater; commerciaiism and commodilication of culture; hip-hop and the sex industry; southern hip hop; reggaeton; hip hop fashion, and hip-hop vernacular. Engaging these topics through a variety of Written and oral communication projects, students will learn the usefulness of employing hip-hop cultural tools as a rhetorical approach in their examination of and engagement within the everyday.

Assignments and Grading:

25% Final Paper

20% Paper 2

20% Paper 1

20% Performance Analysis Paper/Presentation

15% Class Participation (Quizzes, Writing Workshops, Exercises, Free-Writes)

Texts:

Course Reader, with essays/book chapters by: J.L. Austin, Marlon Bailey, Daphne Brooks, Kenneth Burke, Judith Butler, Jeff Chang, Aisha Durham, Jason King, Jeffrey McCune, Poncho McFarland, Joan Morgan, Mark Anthony Neal, Gvvenclolyn Pough, Eric Darnell Pritchard 8l Maria Bibbs, Elaine Richardson, Raquel Rivera, Tracey D. Sharpley-Whiting, Mireille MillerYoung.

Kinetic Storytelling is defined in this course as a mode of devising dance-based theater that is at once highly structured compositional improvisation (or precision choreography), lyrical word-weaving, graceful, poetic and explicitly informed by Africanist aesthetics. Influenced by the compelling issues of our day, by leaders and instigators of change and revolution, we will explore how to speak through our art approaching dance-theater-making as a practice of social justice and a metaphor for testimony.  Over the course of the semester we will each find an issue that speaks to us and experiment with ways to craft a movement-based performance that expresses a specific point of view informed by Africana and Dance Studies and that draws out questions about our chosen issue or effort. 

This course provides analysis of and training in the artistic, technical and managerial strategiesfor producing Black dance and theatre in the U.S. Written assignments include the production and rehearsal reports, audience analyses, dramaturgical statements and performance analyses of live events. Students will attend university productions, tour local arts facilities, apprentice with university and professional production managers, and Serve as production assistants for the fall 2013 performance events offered by Black Studies. There Will be a ñnal examination that requires students to problem solve a fictional production challenge.

Texts:

“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Langston Hughes

“Black Critics on Black Theatre in America” Abíodun Jeyifous

“Orderly and Disorderly Structures: Why Church and Sports Appeal to Black Americans and Theatre Does Not,” Rhett Jones

The Backstage Guide to Stage Management, 2nd. Edition, Thomas Kelly

“It’s a Long Way to St. Louis: Notes on the Audience for Black Drama,” Adam David Miller “Into Nationalism, Out of Parochíalism,” Larry Neal

“The Black Theatre Audience,” Thomas D. Pawley

“Critics, Standards and Black Theatre, Margaret Wilkerson

Grading breakdown:

Production/rehearsal reports (2) - 20% Audience analysis - 10% Dramaturgical statement - 20% Performance analysis - 10% Attendance at events (2) 10%

Instructor:  Woodard, H            Areas:  II / G

Unique #:  35975            Flags:  Cultural diversity, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2013            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 372E            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course is an introduction to select African-American literature--slave narratives, poetry, novels, essays—in a tripartite format that extends from slavery to Reconstruction through the Harlem Renaissance. The course proposes two primary objectives rooted in past and present literary representations of slavery. Thematizing “the trope of the talking book,” (Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s The Signifying Monkey), the course first examines seminal slave narratives, e.g. the literature of the enslaved as discursive strategies, from self-actualization and resistance to early formations of a black literary discouse. The course historicizes issues pertinent to the development of an African-American literary tradition, such as critical race theory, double consciousness or the struggle for self-identity, as complicated by issues pertaining to class, race, and gender. These issues are thematized through stylistic forms that include the oral vernacular tradition, blues ideology, and folk culture. In the third and final unit, the course examines an unprecedented flourishing of seminal literature, art, music, and culture produced throughout the Harlem Renaissance.

Required Readings: Classic Slave Narratives, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; The Poems of Phillis Wheatley, Phillis Wheatley; The Marrow of Tradition, Charles Chesnutt; Passing, Nella Larsen; The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance, Alain Locke, ed.; Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, Houston Baker; Course pack, Speedway on Dobie.

*Requirements & Grading:

.75   Three critical essays (25% each; 4-5 pages per essay, typed, double spaced)

         One major critical essay revision; see separate handout.

.15   Response papers, (in-class and out-of-class, based on course readings, 1-2 pages); reading quizzes; class participation

.10   Oral group presentations, accompanied by one-page written report

*The course contains select readings from African American literature from slavery through the Harlem Renaissance. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. The subject of each class meeting may be determined from the assigned reading for the day (see course schedule). The instructor retains the right to vary this syllabus.

ATTENDANCE: Regular attendance is required. More than four absences will be sufficient grounds for failure in the course.  The four allowed absences will include illness, deaths of relatives, and other emergencies. If you are more than five minutes late or leave before class ends (without permission), you will be counted absent for that class. You are responsible for all work covered in your absence.

CLASS POLICIES: Absolutely no make-up for reading quizzes. In exchange, the lowest quize grade will be dropped. Except under extreme emergencies, and then only with the permission of the professor, late assignments will not be accepted. I reserve the right to make these decisions on a case by case basis. You must bring your books to class and complete all reading assignments by the first day of class discussion for that text. Students are expected to turn in all required assignments on the agreed upon due date at the beginning of class. Papers turned in during or after class on the due day will be considered late. Use the MLA (Modern Language Association) Handout for all papers. Type papers on white, 8.5" x 11" paper, using one side only. Bind pages with a paper clip.

Special Accommodations for Students with a Disability: Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities, 471-6259. Please notify the professor of nyi special accommodations sthat you may need prior to the end of the second week of class.

Policy on Religious Observance: A student who is absent from a class or examinaation due to the observance of a religious holy day may complete the work missed within a reasonable time after the absence if proper notice has been given. Notice must be given at least fourteen days prior to the classes scheduled on dafes the student will be absent. For religious holy days that fall within the first two weeks of the semeser, notice should be given on the first day of the semester.

GRADING SCALE: Final grades will be determined on the basis of the following rubric. Please note that to ensure fairness, all numbers are absolute, and will not be rounded up or down at any stage. Thus, a B- will be inclusive of all scores of 80.000 through 83.999. The University does not recognize the grade of A+.

A (94-100); A- (90-93); B+ (87-89); B (84-86); B- (80-83); C+ (77-79); C (74-76); C- (70-73); D+ (67-69); D (64-66); D- (60-63); F (0-59).

Plus/minus grades will be assigned for the final grade. This is a writing-intensive course. No final exam is given.

Instructor:  Richardson, M            Areas:  II / G

Unique #:  35970            Flags:  Cultural diversity, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2013            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 372E            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course is a survey of major black writers in the context of slavery and its immediate aftermath from the eighteenth century and ending in the beginning of the twentieth century. The eighteenth century saw the inauguration of writing from enslaved Africans in America. Even from a condition of bondage, their work contributes to literary and intellectual debates about the nature and limitations of freedom, personhood and citizenship. We will begin by examining issues of gender and sexuality from the perspectives of slaves and freed people. Throughout the course, we will view films and documentaries that illuminate this period of African American culture and history. We will also examine works by African American authors writing a generation after slavery as they look back to slavery in order to imagine the future of African Americans.

Texts: Henry Bibb: Narrative of the life and adventures of Henry Bib; Olaudah Equiano: The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings; David Walker: Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World; Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life; Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: Iola Leroy; Charles Chesnutt: Marrow of Tradition; Nella Larsen: Quicksand and Passing.

Requirements & Grading: Two Short Papers (4-6 pages each), 40%; Final Paper, 40%; Attendance, 10%; Participation, 10%.

This course is a comparative survey of the institution of slavery on the American mainland (with some discussion of the Caribbean) from the era of seventeenth-century European colonialism through the antebellum period. We will begin by exploring Portuguese, French, Dutch, British, and Spanish colonizing efforts in the Americas, and their varying roles in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The class proceeds with discussions of the Middle Passage, and the development of plantation societies. Through historical and archaeological evidence, one begins to understand that there existed on monolithic slave experience.

How and when do cities burn? The modern US city has seen its share of urban unrest, typified by street protests (both organized and spontaneous), the destruction of private property, looting, and fires. Interpretations of urban unrest are varied: some describe it as aimless rioting, others as political insurrection. Most agree that the matter has something to do with the deepening of racism, poverty and violence. This course takes a closer look at the roots of urban unrest, exploring a range of origins: joblessness, state violence, white flight, the backlash against civil rights gains, new immigration and interracial strife. Urban unrest is often cast as an intractable struggle between black and white, yet this course examines the ways in which multiple racial groups have entered the fray. Beyond race and class, the course will also explore unrest as a mode of pushing the normative boundaries of gender and sexuality in public space. Course material will draw from film, literature, history, geography and anthropology.

Required Texts:

The majority of readings will be available as pdf on Blackboard. Students must acquire the following texts:

Robert F. Williams, Negroes With Guns

Robin D.G. Kelley, Yo Mama’s Dysfunctional: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America

Dan Georgakis and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution

Robert Gooding Williams eds. Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising

Grading:

Attendance:                                                                                                                                                      

15%

Participation:                                                                                                                                                   

10%

Three Reflection Papers and re-writes [4 pages each] (worth 15% each):

45%

Final [TBD]                                                                                                                                                           

30%

This course examines the historical experiences of people of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean (often called “Afro-Latin America”). The guiding questions of this course are: What is Afro-Latin America? Where is it? How can we write the histories of African descended peoples in the region we call “Latin America”? Can the histories of Africans and their descendants be contained within the confines of “nation”? Are there alternative frameworks (transnational and/or Diasporic) that can better enhance our understanding of these histories? While the course will begin in the slavery era, most of our attention will focus on the histories of Afro-Latin Americans after emancipation. Topics we will explore 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 race, and empire, and recent attempts to write Afro-Latin American histories from “transnational” and “diaspora” perspectives. While historians have written most of the work we will read in this course, we will also engage the works of anthropologists and sociologists who have also been key contributors to this scholarship. Thus, the course has a three-fold objective:

1)   To deepen our understanding of the diverse histories of Africans and their descendants in the region.

2)   To continually probe the ongoing tension between national and transnational processes that is embedded in much of this scholarship.

3)   To explore alternative frameworks that might enhance our understanding of the histories of people of African descent in the region.

Texts:

Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution

Lara Putnam, The Company they Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender in Caribbean Costa Rica, 1870-1960

George Michael Hanchard, Orpheus and Power: The Movimento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1945-1988

Grading:

Active Class Participation                                         20%

Map Assignment                                                       25%

Short Essay                                                                15%

Final Paper                                                                40%

What is at stake in visions and revisions of the image of the Caribbean as sun, sand, and sea, a paradisiacal tropical landscape on the margins of modernity?  And what literary, cultural, and material work go into the constant (re)creation of this imagery?  This course provides students with an overview of Caribbean literature while exploring evolving answers to these questions in major literary movements from the mid-nineteenth century to the present: including slave narratives, Romanticism, Négritude/Negrismo, realism, magical realism, feminism, and Créolité. Within each movement, we will examine authors' changing imaginations of landscape and explore shifting formulations of Caribbean identity that landscape is mobilized to represent. Reading texts from the English- and French-speaking Caribbean, this course traces a regional literary history both across time and across linguistic divisions, questioning the ground on which regional identities are constructed in the West Indies.

Texts (needs to be specific texts, not “course packet” or “TBA)”:

Mary Prince, History of Mary Prince

Selected poetry by Oswald Durand, Alcibiade Fleury Battier and Virginie Sampeur

Aimé Césaire, Notebook of a Return to my Native Land

Selected poetry by Claude McKay, Ida Faubert and Una Marson

C.L.R. James, Minty Alley

J.S. Alexis, General Sun My Brother

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

Mayotte Capécia, I Am a Martinican Woman

Jean Bernabé et al, In Praise of Creoleness

Frank Martinus Arion, Doubleplay

Grading breakdown (percentages):

In-class presentation –  20%

3-5 page paper – 40%

Attendance/participation – 10%

Final exam – 30%

Instructor:  Bady, A            Areas:  V / G

Unique #:  35895            Flags:  Global Cultures

Semester:  Fall 2013            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 372G            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Where does African literature come from? What are the “breaks” which make it possible for a new literature to emerge? What forms of continuities—from oral to literate, traditional to modern, vernacular to English—make contemporary African writing a part of a cultural transmission out of the past? In this class, we will work both to understand how the canons of contemporary African literature were formed, and how problems of social continuity and change structure the visions which African writers have put forward for their societies, and their world. We will pay particularly close attention to gender, as one of the central focuses of literary struggle and social change, and in the idea of “generation” itself.

Texts: Anonymous, Life Turns Man Up and Down; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Okot p’Bitek, Song of Lawino; Ngugi wa Thiong’o, I Will Marry When I Want; Chinua Achebe “Girls at War” and Binyavanga Wainaina, “Discovering Home”; Flora Nwapa, Efuru; Yvonne Vera (ed), Opening Spaces: an Anthology of Contemporary African Women's Writing; Yvonne Vera, Butterfly Burning; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck; Shailja Patel, Migritude.

Films: Sembene Ousmane's "Le Noir de..." and Tsitsi Dangerembga's "Neria"

Requirements and Grading: Assignments: four 3-4-page essays, research project, and weekly close reading assignments. Grading: 50% essays; 25% research assignment, 25% close reading assignments and participation.

Since the late 1980s, the African film industry has undergone radical changes that reflect increased globalization, the availability of new production and distribution methods, and the rise of a new generation of African filmmakers. This revolution is characterized by the low-budget, direct to video films commonly referred to as Nollywood.  While these films have drawn criticism for their low production values and popularization of negative cultural stereotypes, the Nigerian video industry has become the third largest film industry in the world, sweeping across the continent and throughout the global diaspora.  

This course examines the rise of Nollywood and the genesis of a popular African art form. It assesses aspects of African culture such as gender roles in the society, cultural beliefs, westernization, education, and social constructs that are depicted in the films. One major way to evaluate these will be through examination of African women, who play diverse roles in the films. Women have been the bedrock of African societies ensuring continuity in traditions and families as well as socializing the young generations. Using films and the readings, this course seeks to highlight the status of African women, and to understand the changing roles of women in Africa.   

Through a combination of films and readings, students will explore how Nollywood, in comparison to Hollywood, depicts the society and culture of Nigeria and Africa as a whole.  Each week addresses a different theme in an attempt to introduce students to the various dynamics that shape African cultures, societies and governments.  Additionally, this course seeks to engage students in a debate about how popular films affect historical imaginations and memory.  While these images have previously been the product of Hollywood and European films, this course will introduce Nollywood as an African alternative to how films depict, and people understand, their history. 

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

1.     To increase the knowledge and understanding of African history, culture, and society.

2.     To identify key themes in African history that transcend national boundaries.

3.     To help students understand the social, cultural, political, and economic agents that have affected African history, particularly the role of women and gender.  

4.     To assess the viability of film as a historical source.

5.     To understand popular perceptions about Africa depicted in films and how they lead to misunderstandings of the past.

Texts:

Haynes, Jonathan, ed. Nigerian Video Films. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000.

Rosenstone, Robert A. Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Saul, Mahir and Ralph A. Austen, eds. Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century:

Art Films and the Nollywood Video Revolution. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010.

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Women Filmmakers of the African & Asian Diaspora: Decolonizing the Gaze, Locating Subjectivity  Southern Illinois University Press; 1st edition (May 1, 1997).

Kathleen Sheldon, ed. Courtyards, Markets, City Streets: Urban Women In    Africa. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996.

Toyin Falola and Nana Akua Amponsah. Women's Roles in Sub-Saharan Africa. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2012.

Kathleen M. Fallon. Democracy and the Rise of Women's Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

*There will also be several journal articles assigned throughout the semester.  These will be available through the university library’s online databases and posted to the course documents section of the class Blackboard page.

Grading:

Assignment              Due                         Points

Attendance              Every class session 50

Book/Film Review   Week 6             100

Conference Report  Week 10             50

Final Paper              Week 15             200

Discussion Posts   See syllabus for deadlines 100

The belief in Jesus through Christianity has been a a tool of colonial oppression, subjection, and alienation as well as a forum of African resistance and cultural appropriation. This course charts the development of Christianity in Africa, taking note of its mutually transformative processes for missionaries and for converts, this course approaches the belief in Jesus in Africa as a genuine spiritual experience, and as a site white modern African political and intellectual history can be examined. It is especially attune to the religious traditions African Christians integrated in their religious practice both in mission and African Initiated Churches. This course seeks to introduce students to some of the most formidable scholarship on African Christianity. It is both a course in which we will be attentive to the largest scholarly debates and also contextualize this work into the meteoric rise of African-Initiated Churches in Africa and among Africans abroad, keeping its history at the center.

Grading:

Attendance 10%Participation 10%Quizzes 10%Review Essay 20%Midterm 25%Final Exam 25%

Texts:

Cornaroff, Jean and John. Of Revelation & RevolutionHoefler-Fatton, Cynthia. Women of Fire & SpiritMagaziner, Dan. The Law and The Prophets.Mbiti, John. African Religions and Prophecy.

This multi-disciplinary course explores various experiences and theories of sex/intimacy/desire alongside intellectual and artistic engagements with power hierarchies and spirituality across black communities within and beyond the borders of the United States. We will consider the concept of “erotic subjectivity” from various theoretical and methodological angles principally within African Diasporic contexts.

Texts:

Alexander, M. Jacqui

    2005    Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics,

        Memory and the Sacred. Durham: Duke University Press.

Allen, Jafari

    2011    ¡Venceremos? The Erotics of Black Self-making in Cuba. Durham: Duke

        University Press.

Holland, Sharon P.

    2012    The Erotic Life of Racism. Durham: Duke University Press.

Hopkinson, Nalo

    2003    The Salt Roads. New York: Warner Books.

Murphy, Joseph and Mei-Mei Sanford

    2001    Osun Across the Waters: A Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas.

        Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.

Tinsley, Omise’eke

    2010    Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature. Durham:

        Duke University Press.

Grading:

Attendance                                                                              10%

Two class discussion facilitations                                                   20%

Five one-pg response papers                                                        30%

2 Quizzes                                                                                10%

Final paper                                                                              30%

We associate slavery with plantations, a rural institution, yet most slaves in the Americas wound up in cities, working as peddlers, artisans, barbers, pilots, healers, soldiers, and a variety of other occupations. Cities afforded slaves relatively more freedoms. In Spanish and Portuguese America it was common for urban slaves to purchase their own freedom through the institution of slave-for-hire, and cities witnessed the development of large free-colored communities.  Although cities enjoyed a larger presence of the government, often entire neighborhood remained outside state control, sheltering maroon communities (runways slaves). Finally, although port-cities were more connected to the European Atlantic world, they were also connected to the African world. Africa survived in cities just as it did in remote rural plantations. Students will read recent new works on urban slavery in the Portuguese-, Dutch-, French-, British-, and Spanish -American worlds, but also in Africa itself (Sierra Leone, Luanda, Ouida, Anobamo)

Texts:

Rebecca Shumway, The Fante and the Transatlantic SlaveTtrade (the city port of Anobamo, in Fante-Asante land, currently Ghana)

Robin Law. Ouidah. The Social History of a West African Slaving "Port," 1727–1892. (the city port of Ouidah,  part of the kingdom of  Dahomey, currently in Benin)

Roquinaldo Ferreira, Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade (the city port of Luanda, in Portuguese Angola)

Mariza de Carvalho Soares, People of Faith: Slavery and African Catholics in Eighteenth-Century Rio De Janeiro (Rio, in Brazil)

James H. Sweet. Domingos Alvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World (covers three cities, two in Brazil and one in Portugal: Recife, Rio, Lisbon)

Grading:

Weekly papers: 80 % grade

Participation-attendance: 10 % grade

Final paper: 10 % grade

This course is a study of one of the most traumatic periods in South African history. It is also a study of a people’s agency and resilience in the face state sanctioned terror. With a brief detour into the deeper past of South Africa to contextualize the rise of apartheid, the course will predominantly focus on the period since 1948. We will study the social, political, economic, and cultural history of a nation in the grip of legalized oppression from the perspectives of women, children, and men - of all "racial" backgrounds - who lived through that particular period. Since the course focuses on both oppression and agency, and the in-between-spaces, students are advised that some of the course content (books, audio, and video material) will include violent scenes – apartheid was violent by definition. The course will NOT cover everything, but aim for a deeper understanding of some of the key moments that illuminate apartheid in the history of South Africa. Course Objectives: a) Students will come away with a greater appreciation of not only of the history of that country, but of Southern Africa, and the United States’ role in supporting the apartheid regime as well as the anti-apartheid movement in South African and abroad. b) Students will greatly improve their critical reading and writing skills. c) Students will have a greater understanding of South Africa – and the continent’s – postcolonial opportunities and challenges. Samukele, Kamohelo, Welcome!

Texts:

• Robert Ross, A Concise History Of South Africa

• Nelson Mandela, Long Walk To Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

• Steve Biko (and Aelred Stubbs, ed.), I Write What I Like: Selected Writings

• Mamphela Ramphele, Across Boundaries

• Nadine Gordimer, July’s People 

• J.M. Coetzee, Boyhood

Grading:

  10% - Two Map Quizzes (5% each)

  20% - Attendance and Participation

  50% - Weekly Journal (2 typed pages each week)

  20% - Final paper (10 pages).

Southern Africa is one of the continent's rich and varied regions, a region that holds cradle of humanity historical sites as well as thriving modern cities and everything in-between. Designed to both introduce students to the history of the region and give an in-depth historical understanding of contemporary dynamics, the course focuses on two countries as case studies for understanding the region. Each year the country case studies may change; this year, 2013-14, the case countries will be Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Course Objectives: a) Students will understand the precolonial history of the region, and especially the impact of European colonialism on contemporary Southern Africa; b) Students will learn research methods in history; c) Students will learn how to write original research papers. Welcome!

Texts:

Gretchen Bauer, Politics in Southern Africa: State Society in Transition 

Kathleen Sheldon, Pounders of Grain, A History of Women, Work...

George Ndege, Cultures and Custom of Mozambique

Terence Ranger, Bulawayo Burning

Yvonne Vera, Butterfly Burning

Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions

Grading:

20% Attendance & Participation 

30%  Three Analytical Essays (x10% each)

10% Two map quizzes 

10% Proposal and Bibliography

30% Final Essay

In 1846, Archibald McMillin a North Carolina planter wrote to his wife during one of his many sojourns in the domestic slave trade. He informed her that he “could not sell in Darlington or Sumpter, [South Carolina,]” but that he was going to spend the day” in Charleston looking at sales at auction.”  Perhaps Charleston would prove a better market then the other cities, but if not, he would probably go further into the Deep South. Like the invention of the cotton gin was to the expansion of slavery into western territories, the domestic slave trade represented “the lifeblood of the southern slave system” according to historian Steven Deyle.  More than one million African Americans entered the domestic market and found themselves in coffles traveling by foot to various markets or were placed on boats and taken down the Mississippi River. Some traveled by ship along the Atlantic seaboard to port cities with large markets such as Savannah. 

This course will explore the inner-workings of the domestic slave trade from the perspectives of slaveholders, speculators, and the enslaved.  Students will have the opportunity to analyze maps, letters, diaries, newspaper advertisements, and legislation relating to the domestic slave trade. 

Texts:

Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. New York:

 Harvard University Press, 2001.

Johnson, Walter, ed. The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas. New

 Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Shermerhorn, Calvin. Money Over Mastery Family Over Freedom: Slavery in the

 Antebellum Upper South. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

Tadman, Michael. Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South.  Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

Recommended Readings:

Bancroft, Frederic. Slave Trading in the Old South. 1931. Reprint, Columbia: University of

South Carolina Press, 1996.

Campbell, Stanley W. The Slave Catchers. Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press,

 1970.

Catterall, Helen Tunncliff, ed. Judicial Cases Concern American Slavery and the Negro, 5

vols.  Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1926-37.

Deyle, Steven. Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life. New York:

Oxford University Press, 2005.

Gudmestad, Robert. A Troublesome Commerce: The Transformation of the Interstate Slave

Trade. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003.

Hadden, Sally. Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas. New York:

 Harvard University Press, 2001.

Martin, Jonathan. Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South. New York:

Harvard University Press, 2004.

Rothman, Adam. Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South.

 New York: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Electronic readings will be distributed or placed on Blackboard

Grading:

Attendance and Participation 10%

Response Papers 10%

Mapping and Historical Marker Project 10%

Primary Document Analysis 10%

Oral Presentation 20%

Research Proposal and Bibliography 5%

Rough Draft of Final Paper 10%

Final Paper 25%

This course is designed to develop, educate, and enhance the leadership skills of students of color. The course will focus on leadership development, issues affecting students of color as leaders, cultural diversity, decision making, communication, presentation skills, ethics, and group dynamics.

Texts:

Altremis M. Duren, Overcoming: A History Integration at the University of Austin, 1979, Univerity Printing Division

Bevek Daniel Tatum, Ph.D., 1997, "Why Are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" 1997, Basic Groups, Perseus Book Group

Our Stories: The Experiences of Black Professionals on Predominantly White Campuses, 2002; The John D. O'Bryant National Think Tank for Black Professionals on Predominantly White Campuses; King Printing Co., Inc.

Active Class Parîicipation 25% Short Essay 20% Ora! Presentation 15% Final Paper 40%

A half century after the high point of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most American students learn about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957 Little Rock conflict over school desegregation, the 1963 March on Washington, and the fire hoses in Birmingham. Far fewer encounter the less-televised moments of civil rights history, the meanings of freedom that included but went beyond desegregation, and the breadth of participation by local people. It is even less common to consider other movements that paralleled the black freedom movement among, for example, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative perspective, this upper division lecture course explores these aspects of the civil rights era. It also examines their larger historical context within American culture from the Second World War to the present. Finally, we consider questions about the writing of history: What does it mean to look back at such historic events with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?  

Texts:

Possible texts-

Cone, James H . Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare            :

Mankiller, Wilma. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. 

Garcia, Mario T. Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice

Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents

Sellers, Cleveland.  The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC           

Strum, Philippa. Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican American Civil Rights. 

Takaki, Ronald.  Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

Grading:

Three reading handouts  (5% each, 15% total)

Three in-class exams  (20% each, 60% total)

Five-page essay  (25%)

Regular class attendance (5%)

Within the construct of African American Business history, race, contemporary American popular culture and global capitalism, this course will focus on an important aspect in the contemporary political economy of black Americans. Specifically, the commodification (sale) of black culture provides the conceptual frame for an examination of the phenomenon of both the superstar black athlete as an entrepreneur and the Hip Hop Superstar as an entrepreneur in post-Civil Rights America. The emphasis in this course, then, is to critically examine and analyze the impact of a multiplicity of societal, cultural and economic factors in the post-modern information age, propelled by new technologies in the New Economy of Global Capitalism.  Also, consideration will be given to the new diversity as it impacts on the political economy of African Americans.

Proceeding from an interdisciplinary perspective, the course considers both the financial successes of superstar black athletes and hip hop entrepreneurs as well as their emergence as cultural icons, contrasted with the comparatively overall poor performance of Black Business not only within the intersection of race, gender, class, but also within the context of transnationalism in the globalization sale of African American Culture in post-Civil Rights America. But who profits?

Most important, why is it that business receipts for African Americans, who comprise almost thirteen percent of this nation's population, amounted in 2007 to only .5%, that is, less than one (1) percent of the nation's total business receipts? In addition, why is it that among the various occupational categories in which blacks participate in the nation's economy, especially as businesspeople, that black entertainers and sports figures are the highest paid? What does this say about race, class, gender and hegemonic masculinities in America at the turn of the new century?

Texts:

Boyd, Todd,      Young, Black, Rich and Famous:  The Rise of the NBA, The Hip Hop Invasion and the Transformation of American Culture

Curry, Mark,         Dancing With the Devil: How Puff Burned the Bad Boys of Hip Hop

Daniels, Cora,     Black Power, Inc: The New Voice of Black Success

Johnson,  Magic,    32  Ways to Be a Champion in Business

Kitwana, Bakari,   Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wangstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America

Lafeber, Walter, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism, New Expanded Edition

Oliver, Richard, Tim Leffel, Hip-Hop, Inc. : Success Strategies of the Rap Moguls   

Pulley, Brett, The Billion Dollar BET: Robert Johnson and the Inside Story of BET

Smith-Shomade, Beretta, Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy: Selling Black Entertainment Television           

Walker, Juliet E. K. History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship

Chaps, 6-11; Course Packet “The Commodification of Black Culture”   

Grading:

Critical Book Review Analysis                           25%

    (5 reviews, 2-3 pages 5 points each)

Class Discussion/participation                             25%

Oral Summary of Research Paper                         5%

Seminar Research Paper (15 pages)                    45%

In a New York Times Magazine article, Toni Morrison eloquently described the dilemmas of black female identity in a now oft quoted phrase: “…she had nothing to fall back on; not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything.  And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may well have invented herself.”  By examining the ways in which black women in the United States sought to “invent” themselves as historical agents despite economic, social, and political challenges, Morrison’s statement will, in many ways, form the basis of our intellectual journey.  To that end, the course will use primary sources, historical monographs, and essays to provide a chronological and thematic overview of the experiences of black women in America from their African roots to the circumstances they face in the present era.  This seminar class will be discussion driven and will address the following topics: the evolution of African American women’s history as field of inquiry; African American women historians; the trans-Atlantic slave trade; enslavement in the United States; abolition and freedom; racial uplift; urban migration; labor and culture; the modern civil rights movement; organized black feminism; hip-hop culture; AIDS and the Black Women's Health study.  Additionally, the course will draw upon readings written by and about African American women with a particularly emphasis on their approach to gender and race historiography.

Texts:

Wilma King and Linda Read, eds. African American Women (forthcoming, Blackwell Publishers)

Assata Shakur, Assata

Tiffany Gill, Beauty Shop Politics

Daina Ramey Berry, Swing the Sickle for the Harvest is Ripe

V.P. Franklin and Bettye Collier-Thomas, Sisters in the Struggle

Willie Lee Rose, A Documentary History of Slavery in North America

Carroll Parrott Blue, The Dawn at My Back: Memoir of a Black Texas Upbringing.

Deborah Gray White,ed.  Telling Histories:  Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower.

Grading:

Class Engagement     10% 

 Posting Responses to the Week’s Readings    10%

Cultural Critique    20%

Outline of Research Paper with Annotated Bibliography    25%

Final Research Paper and Presentation    35%

Racism preoccupies virtually every aspect of U.S. society: culture, law, politics, economies. Yet U.S.-based scholars have offered surprisingly few comprehensive theories or definitions of what, exactly, racism entails and where it comes from. This course examines the few theories/definitions of racism across several fields: anthropology, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, gender/sexuality studies. During the second half of the course, we turn our attention to anti-racist activism, particularly within people of color and immigrant communities. How have these anti-racist efforts measured up to existing scholarly theories of racism? Or do they instead produce new theories and definitions of their own?

This course explores Cuban/U.S. relations from the nineteenth century to the present. Our exploration of Cuban/U.S. relations prompts students to grapple with issues of empire and transnationalism, both as actual historical processes and as analytical tools that can be used to examine historic and contemporary phenomena. Drawing upon monographs, travel writings, primary documents, fiction, and audio/visual materials, students will examine the complex interactions between the island’s population and their U.S. American neighbors across all facets of society. A particular emphasis will be placed on the social and cultural engagements between Cuba and the United States before the Cuban Revolution in an effort to grasp the profound impact of the Cold War on the conceptualization of Cuban history and society in the post-1959 period. While this is a course primarily rooted in Cuban history, it does not attempt to provide a “national” survey of the island’s past. Instead, it invites students to think about writing post-national histories of Cuban/U.S. interaction, one that explores the multiple connections and alternative principles of affiliation that exist among Cubans and U.S. Americans.

Texts:

Achy Obejas, Memory Mambo

C. Peter Ripley, Conversations With Cuba

Coursepack Readings

Grading:

3 Tests at 25% each: 75% of final grade

Active Class Participation: 25%

This course explores race/gender/sexuality, violence and everyday life in Brazil. Brazil’s history has been characterized by moments of violent encounter, from colonization, to slavery, to clashes between police and residents across Brazil’s major cities today. These violent encounters have been, in many ways, racialized, gendered and sexualized. This class investigates the race/gender/sexuality aspects of multiple forms of violence in Brazil, and how this violence creates, defines and maintains social hierarchies in the nation. Throughout the course we will think through the question “what is violence?” as we discuss the concept’s physical, structural and symbolic forms. The course pays particular attention to the politics of blackness and the unique relationship black Brazilians have to the nation-state. We will also discuss the politics of writing and theorizing violence when doing social analysis, and the precarious balance between defining and addressing issues of violence, and glorifying it.

Core Texts

~ Nancy ScheperHughes, Death Without Weeping (selected Chapters)

~Theresa Caldeira, City ot VVaiIs (selected chapters)

~ Donna Goldstein, Laughter out of Piace (selected chapters) ~Robin Sheriff, Dreaming Equality (selected Chapters)

~Caldweli, Kia, Negras in Brazil: Reenvisioning Black Women, Citizenship, And the Politics of identity (selected chapters) ~De Jesus, Carolina Marie et al., The Unedited Diaries oi Caroline Maria de Jesus (seiected Chapters)

Supplemental Texts

~Michael Hanonard ed., Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil (selected Chapters)

~Gonzalez, Leila` “The Unified Black Movement: A New State in Black Political Mobilization” in Race, Class and Power in Brazil, ed. Pierre-Michel Fontaine

~Policing Rio de Janeiro: Repression and Resistance in a lQtn-oentury City. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. (selected chapters)

~Chevigny, Paul Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas (selected chapters)

~Michael Mitchell and Charles VVood, “lronies ot Citizenship: Skin Color, Police Brutality, and the Challenge to Democracy in Brazil.” Social Forces

~Arendt, Hannah “Reflections on Violence"

Booth, Wayne C, et al. The Craft of Research (guide to writing research papers selected Chapters).

Women's experiences in different cultures. Some topics partially fulfill legislative requirement for American history.

Topic: Diaspora visions: exiles, aliens and nomads.

Instructor:  Wilks, J            Areas:  II / G

Unique #:  35960            Flags:  Cultural Diversity, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2013            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 374F            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Long before the late-twentieth century arrival of Starbucks and Clintons, there was another Harlem Renaissance, a time during the 1920s and 1930s when African American artistic and cultural life flourished with Harlem as its epicenter. In this course we will draw upon nonfiction, fiction, and poetry not only to remember the Renaissance as traditionally portrayed in literary history, but also to re-member the movement, to piece together our own impressions of its people, places, and passions. Who were the leading figures of the Renaissance? What are the forgotten but no less important names? How did the movement’s influence extend beyond the confines of upper Manhattan? In addition to these questions, we will also address how literary production complemented and contrasted with the politics, music, and fine art of the period. Our ultimate goal is not only to emerge with a broader picture of the Harlem Renaissance, but also to understand the period’s significance as a pivotal transition in African American literary expression, one bridging the gap between Reconstruction literature of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and urban literature of the mid-twentieth century.

Texts: Nella Larsen, Passing; George Samuel Schuyler, Black No More; Jean Toomer, Cane; Venetria Patton and Maureen Honey, Double-Take: A Revisionist Harlem Renaissance Anthology.

Requirements & Grading: Two short papers (4 pages each), 40%; Final critical essay (5-7 pages), 35%; Reading responses, 15%; Rough draft of first short paper (4 pages), 10%.

Attendance is mandatory. More than three unexcused absences will result in a significant reduction of your grade.