Fall 2010

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African-American and African Studies Program

AAS 1010 - Introduction to African-American and African Studies (4)

Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira

Tues/Thurs. 12:30-1:45PM, Wilson Hall 301

This introductory course surveys the histories of people of African descent in Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean from approximately the Middle Ages to the 1850s. Emphases include the Atlantic slave trade and its complex relationship to Africa; the economic systems, cultures, and communities of Africans and African-Americans in the New World, in slavery and in freedom; and the rise of anti-slavery movements in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first section provides an overview of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its impacts on Africa. The second section centers on Latin America (Brazil and Cuba) and the French Caribbean - Haiti. The last section deals with North America, tracing the history of slavery from the seventeenth to the late eighteenth century. Course requirements include regular attendance and three written exams.

AAS 3157 - Caribbean Perspectives (3)

Instructor: Yarimar Bonilla

Weds. 3:30-6:00PM, Monroe Hall 124

Combined with ANTH 3157

Breaking with popular constructions of the region as a timeless tropical paradise, this course will re-define the Caribbean as the birthplace of modern forms of capitalism, globalization, and trans-nationalism. We will survey the founding moments of Caribbean history, including the imposition of slavery, the rise of plantation economies, and the development of global networks of goods and peoples. We will then examine the various forms of colonial and imperial power that have operated in the region during the latter part of the twentieth century and the lasting legacies of inequality and hierarchy that persist in contemporary Caribbean societies. Lastly, we will revisit the idea of the Caribbean as a tourist heaven and question popular images of the region as a site of tropical fantasy.

AAS 3200 - Martin, Malcolm and America (3)

Instructor: Mark Hadley

Mon./Weds./Fri. 2:00-2:50PM, Wilson Hall 215

Combined with RELG 3200

An intensive examination of African-American social criticism centered upon, but not limited to, the life and thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. We will come to grips with the American legacy of racial hatred and oppression systematized in the institutions of antebellum chattel slavery and post-bellum racial segregation and analyze the array of critical responses to, and social struggles against, this legacy. We will pay particular attention to the religious dimensions of these various types of social criticism.

AAS 3456 - Supreme Court and Civil Rights (3)

Instructor: Joseph G. Hylton

Tues/Thurs. 2:00-3:15PM, New Cabell Hall 319

This course explores the role of the United States Supreme Court in defining the legality of racial distinctions in the United States in the post-Civil War era. Special attention is paid to the role of the court¿s landmark 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education. The class will be taught in a discussion format based upon assigned readings.

AAS 3500-1 African Peoples and Cultures (3)

Instructor: Felistas (Njoki) Osotsi

Tues/Thurs. 3:30-4:45PM, Wilson Hall 215

The course explores the cultures of various African peoples through a variety of sources – films, ethnographies, narratives and literature. We will consider how Africa has been portrayed by anthropologists, explorers, historians and the media, and focus on issues that are relevant to an understanding of contemporary African societies: village life, urbanization, migration, status of women, the struggle to gain independence from colonial powers and the postcolonial period.

* NOTE: This course counts toward the African Studies Minor. It also fulfills the “one course about Africa” requirement within the AAS Major, or can be used for AAS elective credit.

AAS 3500-2 From Motown to Hip-Hop: The Evolution of African American Music (3)

Instructor: Claudrena Harold

Tues/Thurs. 9:30-10:45AM, Rouss Hall 410

This course takes a bold, sweeping look at the role of popular music in African Americans' push for self-definition, political power, and social recognition. It considers how musical expression has provided black women and men with an outlet for individual expression, community building, sexual pleasure, political organizing, and economic uplift. Some of the artists that we will explore in-depth include James Brown, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Public Enemy, Parliament-Funkadelic, Luther Vandross, Tupac, Lauryn Hill, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lil’ Wayne, Nikki Minaj, and Beyonce. Through an engagement with these and other artists’ sonic and visual representations (i.e. music videos) students will address larger questions surrounding the sexual exploitation of the black female body, the deep class divisions underlying black America's recurring debates over "proper" racial presentations, and white America’s historic exploitation of African American culture.

 

In addition to looking at the artistry of black music, we will also give attention to the business side of African American cultural productions. Thus, students will spend time looking at black owned/black-run companies like Motown, Philadelphia International, Master P’s No Limit, and Puff Daddy’s Badboy.

 

The primary material for this course will be written texts (books and articles), music, and videos.

AAS 4070 - Directed Reading and Research (3)

Students in the DMP enroll under this number for thesis writing.

AAS 4500 - Fictions of Black Identity (3)

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

Tues/Thurs. 11:00AM-12:15PM, Nau Hall 141

Combined with ENAM 4500

This advanced undergraduate seminar will explore the dual meaning of its title “Fictions of Black Identity.” The first implication suggests the literary inventions (novels, essays, critical works) that address the meanings of blackness in an American context. The second meaning is heavily invested in the first: that Black identity is a fiction, not necessarily in the sense of falsity, but in its highly mediated, flexible, and variable condition. Questions to consider include: how does one make and measure Black identity? Can one be phenotypically White and still be Black? What is the value of racial masquerade? What does it mean to be legitimately Black? Readings include, but are not limited to, Percival Everett’s Erasure, Rebecca Walker’s Black, White, and Jewish, Paul Beatty’s White Boy Shuffle, and a range of critical essays. Mandatory assignments include critical essays, leading class discussion, midterm and final exams. This class is restricted to online waitlist and/or instructor permission. It is designed for students majoring in English, African American Studies, and/or American Studies.

AAS 4570-1 - Violence and Africa (3)

Instructor: Cassie Hays

Tues, 3:30PM - 6:00PM, New Cabell Hall 319

Via the historical and sociological study of violence and Africa, this course poses and attempts to resolve a variety of questions. First, what are the patterns and policies of imperialism and colonial governance that manifest in expressions of violence? In what ways can we see modern actions as originating in the colonial era? How are race and ethnicity solidified, reinforced, or reconfigured through the lens of violence? How and why does gender, and particularly violence against women, become a meaningful way for perpetrators to articulate control or degrade their opposition? What are the roles of environment and natural resources in instigating or perpetuating violence by and against people? How can we begin to move beyond contemporary media representations and ‘read’ the politics of violence in Africa as unexceptional?

This course will focus on the colonial origins, postcolonial manifestations, and public culture depictions of violence in Africa. We will begin with a short history of genocide; several theoretical analyses of aggression; and a brief look at the roles of media and globalization in instigating and perpetuating violence (and perceptions of violence) in Africa. Building from this foundation, we will examine the concepts of colonialism and imperialism and their practice in German Namibia, Belgian Congo, and British Kenya. We begin our study of the post- and neo-colonial with a look at Algeria’s struggle for independence from the French and a late 20th century story of poaching in Zambia. Several weeks will be spent on investigating the colonial origins of violence in South Africa and Rwanda, concluding with the closely connected issues of war and rape in the DRC and gendered violence in South Africa.

A 20-page research paper is expected at the conclusion of the semester.

AAS 4570-2 -Race, Madness, and Violence in the Epistolary Genre (3)

Instructor: Dennis Tyler

Thurs, 3:30 - 6:00, Wilson 216

This course will primarily examine issues of madness and violence in the epistolary novel. The epistolary novel is a form that uses letters as the principal mode of communication, although diary entries, newspaper clippings, and other documents (recordings, blogs, and e-mails) are sometimes used in order to heighten the authenticity of a story and to mirror the realities of everyday life. We will analyze epistolary works as a portal to the complex range of human expression. In the course, we will talk about the letter form and letter writing in a variety of ways: as a personal and intimate type of communication, as an open forum for confession, as a locus of insanity, as a sort of political activism, and, in some cases, as a source of international exchange between nations (England, African countries, and the United States).

Some of the major issues we will discuss include, but are not limited to, the representation of domestic abuse and sexuality in Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of the novel; the complexities of memory and melancholy as a consequence of slavery in Caryl Phillips's Crossing the River; the trauma of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse in Sapphire's Push; and the crisis of identity in Percival Everett’s Erasure.

A twenty-page research paper is expected at the end of the semester.

AAS 4993 - Independent Study (1-3)

Allows students to work on an individual research project. Students must propose a topic to an appropriate faculty member, submit a written proposal for approval, prepare an extensive annotated bibliography on relevant readings comparable to the reading list of a regular upper-level course, and complete a research paper of at least 20 pages.

Department of Anthropology

ANTH 3157 - Caribbean Perspectives (3)

Instructor: Yarimar Bonilla

Weds. 3:30-6:00PM, New Cabell Hall 316

Combined with AAS 3157

Breaking with popular constructions of the region as a timeless tropical paradise, this course will re-define the Caribbean as the birthplace of modern forms of capitalism, globalization, and trans-nationalism. We will survey the founding moments of Caribbean history, including the imposition of slavery, the rise of plantation economies, and the development of global networks of goods and peoples. We will then examine the various forms of colonial and imperial power that have operated in the region during the latter part of the twentieth century and the lasting legacies of inequality and hierarchy that persist in contemporary Caribbean societies. Lastly, we will revisit the idea of the Caribbean as a tourist heaven and question popular images of the region as a site of tropical fantasy.

Department of Drama

DRAM 3070 - African American Theatre (3)

Instructor: Theresa Davis

Tues./Thurs., 2:00-3:15PM, Drama Education Bld. 217

This course presents a comprehensive study of 'Black Theatre' as the African-American contribution to the theatre. Explores the historical, cultural, and socio-political underpinnings of this theatre as an artistic form in American and world culture. Students gain a broader understanding of the relationship and contributions of this theatre to theatre arts, business, education, lore, and humanity. A practical theatrical experience is a part of the course offering. Prerequisite: Instructor permission.

Department of English

ENAM 3130 - African-American Survey I (3)

Instructor: Deborah McDowell

Tues./Thurs. 2:00-3:15, New Cabell Hall 424

This course surveys pivotal moments and texts in the history of African-American letters, from Briton Hammon's Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings (1860) to W. E. B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903)Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition (1901). Working our way through a variety of genres (elegy, drama, the captivity narrative, the slave narrative, the essay, public oratory, speeches, and novels), we will explore a number of matters pertinent to literary studies in general, as well as those with specific implications for African-American writing and writers. We will consider the circumstances of textual production and reception, ideas and ideologies of literary history and culture, aesthetics, authorship and audience. We will focus our attention immediately on the emergence of African-American writing under the regime of slavery and the questions it poses about "race," "authorship," "subjectivity," "self-mastery," and "freedom." We will consider the material and social conditions under which our selected texts were edited, published, marketed, and "authenticated," lingering especially on the role white abolitionists and editors played in the production and mediation of these texts for various reading publics. Our ultimate aim is to situate our selections within the broadest possible contexts of their time and ours. Other required texts include Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Frances Harper's Iola Leroy, William Wells Brown's Clotelle, Harriet Wilson's Our Nig and Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition.

ENAM 3280 - Reading the Black College Campus (3)

Instructor: K. Ian Grandison

Tues./Thurs. 3:30-4:45PM, New Cabell 122

College campuses are rich sources for interrogating how places and spaces around us manifest the negotiation of power among social groups distinguished by race in America. Landscapes connected with the black struggle to secure literacy in America, for example, are particularly fruitful for such exploration. In “Reading the Black College Campus,” we consider, for instance, the landscapes that shrouded enslaved people such as Frederick Douglass as they acted on a black cultural imperative to secure literacy against the grain of antebellum law and custom. We interrogate Historically Black College and University (HBCU) campuses, such as Virginia Union University’s, as well as (Historically White College and University (HWCU) campuses, such as the University of Virginia’s, to understand the contestation surrounding the democratization of higher education to include opportunities for African Americans from the promising beginning of the first HBCUs during the Reconstruction period; through the curricular compromises championed by Booker T. Washington responding to the inequality engineered by a doctrine of “separate but equal” under surging Jim Crow and the progress made as a result of growing challenges on behalf of racial equality especially in the wake of World War I and of World War II; to the reconstitution of inequality by dividing the landscape into enforced race and class territories in our own post-Jim Crow moment. A student-centered course, our exploration will hinge on your careful study of required reading and other materials and on your participation in a required field trip to an HBCU campus and in related workshops to develop knowledge and abilities to interrogate graphic representations of landscapes. Requirements completed individually include a closed-book midterm and final exam and a three-page paper reflecting on the field trip. Assignments completed in groups include two informal exercises, student-led discussion of assigned materials scheduled for eight sessions of the semester and, most important, a final group research project that includes a prospectus, a report, and a presentation in a final symposium.

ENAM 3559 - Cross-Cultures of Harlem (3)

Instructor: Sandhya Shukla

Tues./Thurs. 9:30-10:45, New Cabell 320

This course explores the cultural production, intellectual history and political movements that construct the globality of Harlem. Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, we cover the development of various ethnic and racial neighborhoods arrayed across regions of the area—Black Harlem, Jewish Harlem, Italian Harlem and Spanish Harlem—and the conflicts and intimacies inherent in their transformations over time. We inquire into the representation and life of Harlem through the lens of the navigation and contestation of difference. Considering migrancy, diaspora, nationalism, race and ethnicity, and class formation in comparative perspective brings the global into the local and effectively reimagines how “minoritized space” is made both materially and symbolically. Materials to be discussed include works by Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, James Weldon Johnson, Piri Thomas, Yuri Kochiyama, Leroi Jones, Irving Horowitz, Gordon Parks Jr., Joe Cuba, Jacob Lawrence, and others.

ENAM 4500 - Fictions of Black Identity (3)

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

Tues/Thurs. 11:00AM-12:15PM, Nau Hall 141

Combined with AAS 4500

This advanced undergraduate seminar will explore the dual meaning of its title “Fictions of Black Identity.” The first implication suggests the literary inventions (novels, essays, critical works) that address the meanings of blackness in an American context. The second meaning is heavily invested in the first: that Black identity is a fiction, not necessarily in the sense of falsity, but in its highly mediated, flexible, and variable condition. Questions to consider include: how does one make and measure Black identity? Can one be phenotypically White and still be Black? What is the value of racial masquerade? What does it mean to be legitimately Black? Readings include, but are not limited to, Percival Everett’s Erasure, Rebecca Walker’s Black, White, and Jewish, Paul Beatty’s White Boy Shuffle, and a range of critical essays. Mandatory assignments include critical essays, leading class discussion, midterm and final exams. This class is restricted to online waitlist and/or instructor permission. It is designed for students majoring in English, African American Studies, and/or American Studies.

ENAM 4814 - African-American Women Authors (3)

Instructor: Angela Davis

Tues./Thurs. 9:30-10:45AM, New Cabell Hall 337

We will read several novels and short stories by African American women, examining in particular how the authors portray black women as individuals and in the context of American society. This course requires active class participation, two written responses to readings (each 2 to 3 double spaced typed pages long) and a formal essay (12 to 15 pages long). The reading list is: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls; Toni Morrison, Sula, and Tar Baby; Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble; Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones; Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place. Prerequisite: The course is first offered to fourth year majors in English, Women's Studies and Afro-American and African Studies.

Department of French Language & Literature

FREN 4743 - Africa in Cinema (3)

Instructor: Kandioura Drame

Tues./Thurs. 11:00-12:15, Wilson Hall 141A

Study of the representation of Africa in American, Western European and African films. Ideological Constructions of the African as 'other'. Exoticism in cinema. History of African cinema. Economic issues in African cinema: production, distribution, and the role of African film festivals. The socio-political context. Women in African cinema. Aesthetic problems: themes and narrative styles.

Prerequisite: FREN 332 and FREN 344 or another 300-level literature course in French.

FREN 4813 - Introduction to Francophone Caribbean (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti) (3)

Instructor: Stephanie Berard

Mon. 3:30-6:00PM, Wilson Hall 215

 

Focuses on the literature, culture and arts of the Francophone Caribbean (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti). Issues of colonialism and postcolonialism, slavery and freedom, exile and immigration, race and gender will be examined through poetry, novels, storytelling, theater, music and film analysis.

Prerequisite: A 300-level French literature course

Department of History

HIAF 1501 - Reading the African Diaspora (3)

Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira

Thurs. 3:30-6:00, Nau 141

 

This seminar uses movies, novels and a vast array of audio-visual of resources (including the slave trade dataset, the largest attempt ever to quantify pre-nineteenth-century African migration) to explore the African Diaspora in the Atlantic from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. We will pay particular attention to the intellectual debates that have shaped the field of Diaspora Studies in the past sixty years. The class will closely assess state-of-the-art scholarship on African culture, formation of Africa-descent communities, and resistance to slaving. We will read Vincent Brown’s The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery; Laurent Dubois’ Avengers of the New World; and Jane Landers’ Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions. Course requirements include regular attendance and participation, class presentation, and a research paper. This class fulfills the second writing requirement.

HIAF 2001 - Early African History through the Era of the Slave Trade (4)

Instructor: Joseph C. Miller

Tues/Thurs, 9:30-10:45AM, Gibson Hall 211

From the mists of the once-dark continent’s unwritten past Early African History draws out Africans’ distinctive strategies and achievements in culture, politics, and economics. Starting broadly at the dawn of history and continuing in detail from the millennium before the Present Era, HIAF 2001 follows the sometimes-surprising ways in which village elders, women, merchants, kings, cattle lords, and ordinary farmers pursued meaningful lives without the technologies that modern Americans take for granted. The last third of the course examines the ironic interplay of tragedy and ambition in a continent increasingly trapped in exiling its own people in slavery to Europeans, until the Atlantic slave trade began to wind down after about 1800. (A second semester of modern African history, HIAF 2002, taught in spring semester, follows subsequent events down through twentieth-century colonialism and the post-1960 era of independence and impoverishment.)

HIAF 2001 is an introductory lower-division survey. The instructor presents the major themes of the early history of the continent in twice-weekly lectures. Students meet additionally in discussion sections for reviews of readings, map quizzes, and preparation for written assignments. Requirements include short written responses to each class, weekly short map quizzes, a short paper reacting to assigned readings, and a take-home final exercise. The course belongs to the Afro-American and African Studies curriculum, qualifies for the minor in African Studies, meets the “non-western/non-modern” requirement for the major in History, counts as an adjunct course for Studies in Women and Gender, and qualifies for the College area requirements in “non-western perspectives” and “historical perspective”.

 

HIAF 3021 - History of Southern Africa (4)

Instructor: John Mason

Tues./Thurs. 9:30-10:45 AM, Nau Hall 211

HIAF 3021 is a lecture and discussion course on the history of southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The emphasis is on South Africa.

The course begins with a look at the pre-colonial African societies of the region, before moving on to a study of conquest, colonialism, the rise and fall of apartheid, and the recent rebirth of African independence.

By the end of the nineteenth century, all of the African peoples of southern Africa had been conquered by European powers and incorporated into Dutch, British, Portuguese, and German colonial empires. Conquest had not come easily. Every society in the region resisted European domination fiercely, sometimes for many decades before being finally defeated. Colonialism and African responses to it dramatically reshaped societies in southern African, transforming political and economic systems, gender and class relations, even religious beliefs.

Resistance to colonialism assumed new forms in the twentieth century, as Africans began to bridge ethnic divisions to create multi-ethnic trade unions, churches, political parties, and liberation movements. Particularly in South Africa, African nationalism was influenced by nonracialism, uniting blacks and progressive whites in the ultimately successful struggle against apartheid.

Course materials include biographies, memoirs, fiction, music, and films, as well as academic studies. Students will take periodic quizzes on the readings and write two blue-book exams, a mid-term and a final.

 

HIAF 4511 - Colloquium in African History: Color and Culture in South Africa and the United States (3)

Instructor: John Mason

Tues./Thurs. 3;30-4:45PM, New Cabell B031

HIAF 4511 is a small, research-oriented course that explores the histories of South Africa and the United States in comparative perspective.

South Africa and the American South are cousins: instantly recognizable as members of the same family, but with distinctively different personalities. Both countries owe much of their early economic development to slavery. In both complex systems of racial domination shaped society for generations before and after the emancipation of the slaves. And in both the interracial struggle against racial domination gave rise to some of the most important people and events in their histories.

At the same time, the differences between the two countries cannot be ignored. In South Africa blacks constitute the overwhelming majority of the population, and the descendants of European immigrants are a small minority. In the United States, of course, the reverse is true. Both white supremacy and the struggle against it were more violent in South Africa than in the United States. And, since 1994, a democratic political system has ensured that black South Africans have enjoyed a degree of political power that black Americans have never experienced.

The course holds the similarities and differences between the two countries in a creative tension. Through biography, autobiography, music, photography, and scholarship, we will look at the ways in which race shaped the lives of South Africans and Americans, both black and white.

HIAF 4511 is designed primarily, but not exclusively, for history majors and fulfills the history department's seminar/colloquium requirement. Students enrolling in the course must have taken at least one course in African history, preferably South Africa, and two courses in American history.

 

HIUS 3471 - American Labor History (3)

Instructor: Claudrena Harold

Tues./Thurs. 11-12:15, Nau 211

This course examines the political engagements, labor struggles, and cultural endeavors of the U.S. working class from the end of the Civil War to the present. It chronicles how the lives of the U.S. laboring majority was shaped by the rise of big business during the Gilded Age, the social upheavals of the World War I era, the economic hardships brought about by the Great Depression, the social policies of the New Deal, the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, and continuing debates over the meanings of work, citizenship, and democracy in the United States. A major issue to be explored in our discussions of U.S. working class history will be in the ways in which laboring people have been divided along racial, gender, ethnic, and regional lines.

 

HIUS 3671 - the History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)

Instructor: Julian Bond

Tues. 3:30-5:30PM, Clark Hall 107

This lecturecourse discusses, critiquesand analyses the American civil rights movement from 1900 through the 1960s, examining the movement's leadership, opposition, tactics, setbacks, achievements and interactions with Presidents, Congressional leadership, and the involvement of rank-and-file activists.

Texts required are: James Forman's The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Julian Bond and Andrew Lewis' I'm Gonna SitAt The Welcome Table, and Roy Wilkins' Standing Fast.

Department of Music

MUEN 2690/3690 or 4690 (registration number depends on student seniority in the ensemble) - African Music and Dance Ensemble (2)

*This course fulfills requirements for the African Studies Minor, but neither the AAS Major, nor the AAS Minor.

Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk

Thurs 5:15-7:15PM, Old Cabell Hall107

The African Music and Dance Ensemble is a practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from Western and Central Africa with performances during and at the end of the semester. Though no previous experience with music or dance is required, we will give special attention to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and a polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, and faithful attendance are required of each class member, the goal being to develop an ongoing UVa. African Music and Dance Ensemble.

Department of Politics

PLAP 3700 - Racial Politics (3)

Instructor: Lynn Sanders

Mon./Wed. 11:00-11:50AM, Minor Hall125

 

Examines how attributions of racial difference have shaped American Politics. Topics include how race affects American political partisanship, campaigns and elections, public policy, public opinion, and American political science.

Prerequisite: One course in PLAP or instructor permission.

 

PLCP 2020 - The Politics of Developing Areas (3)

Instructor: Robert Fatton

Mon/.Wed. 9:00-9:50AM, South Lawn Commons

 

PLCP 4840 Gender Politics in Africa (3)

Instructor: Denise Walsh

Tues./Thurs. 11:00-12:15, New Cabell Hall B026

Combined with SWAG 4320

This course focuses on the ways social structures and institutions shape gender in sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on the state. It begins with the highly contested conceptions of gender and feminism in Africa. Next, we turn to nationalism and gendered colonial African states. With the success of national liberation movements and the rise of African women’s movements many African countries liberalized; some became democracies. Those political transformations and the spread of a human rights culture meant women in much of Africa won a greater role in politics, the third theme of the course. Their success increased hopes among feminists that the state would attack sexism. Those hopes have yet to be fulfilled, as an investigation of the region’s most contemporary pressing problems, from the sexual division of labor to HIV/AIDS.

 

PLPT 4060 - Politics and Literature (3)

InstructorLawrie Balfour

Weds. 1:00-3:30, Gibson Hall 241

 

This advanced, interdisciplinary seminar considers how works of fiction enhance our understanding of the terms of democratic life. How do the authors contribute to our understanding of ourselves as individuals and as citizens and to our conception of political identity (local, national, global)? In what ways do they make use of the presence of the past; how do they redescribe familiar histories or bring silenced histories to the fore; and how do they address the legacies of historic injustice (slavery, colonialism, and state violence)? In what ways do different texts work on their readers and what, if any, are the political consequences? The theme of the seminar in the Fall of 2010 is the centrality of race and the afterlife of slavery in American political experience. Our core texts will be Moby DickInvisible Man, and Beloved. In addition, to considering these novels as works of political theory, will read other work by Melville, Ellison, and Morrison and an array of critics. Previous upper-level course-work in AAS, Political Theory, American Studies, or English is recommended.

Department of Psychology

PSYC 4870 The Minority Family: A Psychological Inquiry (3)

Instructor: Melvin Wilson

Weds. 9:00-11:30AM, Ruffner Hall 173

 

Examines the current state of research on minority families, focusing on the black family. Emphasizes comparing 'deficit' and 'strength' research paradigms. Prerequisite: PSYC 306 and at least one course from each of the following groups: PSYC 210, 215 or 230, and PSYC 240, 250 or 260, and students in the Afro-American and African studies or studies in women and gender programs.

Department of Religious Studies

RELA 3890 - Christianity in Africa (3)

Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

Tues/Thurs. 12:30-1:45PM, Gibson Hall 211

Combined with RELC 3890

 

This course examines the history of Christianity in Africa from its roots in Egypt and the Maghreb in the 2nd c. CE, to contemporary times when nearly half the continent's population claims adherence to the faith. Our historical overview will cover the flowering of medieval Ethiopian Christianity, 16th- and 17th- century Kongolese Christianity, European missions during the colonial period, the subsequent growth of independent churches, the emergence of African Christian theology, and the recent examples of charismatic and Pentecostal “mega-churches.” We will consider the relationship between colonialism and evangelism; assess efforts in translation and inculturation of the gospel; reflect on the role of healing, prophesy and spirit-possession in conversion, and explore a variety of ways of understanding religious change across the continent. We will attempt both to position the Christian movement within the wider context of African religious history, and to understand Africa's place in the larger course of Christian history.

RELC 3890 - Christianity in Africa (3)

Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

Tues/Thurs. 12:30-1:45PM, Gibson Hall 211

Combined with RELA 3890

 

This course examines the history of Christianity in Africa from its roots in Egypt and the Maghreb in the 2nd c. CE, to contemporary times when nearly half the continent's population claims adherence to the faith. Our historical overview will cover the flowering of medieval Ethiopian Christianity, 16th- and 17th- century Kongolese Christianity, European missions during the colonial period, the subsequent growth of independent churches, the emergence of African Christian theology, and the recent examples of charismatic and Pentecostal “mega-churches.” We will consider the relationship between colonialism and evangelism; assess efforts in translation and inculturation of the gospel; reflect on the role of healing, prophesy and spirit-possession in conversion, and explore a variety of ways of understanding religious change across the continent. We will attempt both to position the Christian movement within the wider context of African religious history, and to understand Africa's place in the larger course of Christian history.

 

RELC 5559-4 - African Americans and the Bible (3)

Instructor: Valerie Cooper

Thurs. 3:30-6:00PM, New Cabell Hall 324

 

In this course, we will look at the ways African American scholars, clergy, laity, men, women, the free, and the enslaved, have read, interpreted, preached, and taught scripture. In examining these uses, we will also seek to sketch out a broader theology, history, and sociology of black people as they used the tool at hand, the Bible, to argue for their own humanity, create their own cultures, and establish their own societies. We will also undertake the interpretive enterprise, seeking to find common ground for understanding the meaning of the biblical text in our own, and others’ communities.

RELG 3200 - Martin, Malcolm and America (3)

Instructor: Mark Hadley

Mon./Weds./Fri. 2:00-2:50PM, Wilson Hall 215

Combined with AAS 3200

An intensive examination of African-American social criticism centered upon, but not limited to, the life and thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. We will come to grips with the American legacy of racial hatred and oppression systematized in the institutions of antebellum chattel slavery and post-bellum racial segregation and analyze the array of critical responses to, and social struggles against, this legacy. We will pay particular attention to the religious dimensions of these various types of social criticism

Department of Sociology

SOC 3410 - Race and Ethnic Relations (3)

Instructor: Milton Vickerman

Mon./Weds. 2:00-3:15, New Cabell Hall 345

 

Introduces the study of race and ethnic relations, including the social and economic conditions promoting prejudice, racism, discrimination, and segregation. Examines contemporary American conditions, and historical and international materials.

SOC 4100 - Sociology of the African-American Family (3)

Instructor: Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl

Mon./Weds. 3:30-4:45PM, McLeod Hall 2005

 

The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear more comprehensive understanding of the history, struggle and diversity of the AfricanAmerican community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the AfricanAmerican Community within urban society and on the need for students to obtain knowledge of their cultural history. The course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for AfricanAmerican people sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. By means of discussions, lectures, videos, reading and class presentation as well as written assignments, this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamic of the AfricanAmerican community.

Studies in Women and Gender

SWAG 2224: Black Femininities and Masculinities in Media (3)

Instructor: Lisa Shutt

Mon. 6:30-9:00, Cocke Hall 115

This course will address the role the media has played in creating images and understandings of "Blackness" in the United States, particularly where it converges with popular ideologies about gender. We will explore how different media, including feature films, popular television, documentaries, popular fiction, television, and print news media create categories of race and gender in different ways for (different) Americans – each media encapsulating its own markers of legitimacy and expertise – each negotiating its own ideas of authorship and audience. We will concentrate on the particular ways various media produce, display, and disseminate information; in particular, we will be analyzing cultural texts, the cultural environment in which they have been produced, and the audience reception of those texts. Finally, we will ask what responsibilities those who create and circulate information have – and whether or not the consuming/viewing public shares in any sort of responsibility. This class will enable students to cultivate theoretical tools and critical perspectives to analyze and question the influence of the popular media that saturate our lives.

SWAG 4840 Gender Politics in Africa (3)

Instructor: Denise Walsh

Tues./Thurs. 11:00-12:15, New Cabell Hall B026

Combined with PLCP 4320

 

This course focuses on the ways social structures and institutions shape gender in sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on the state. It begins with the highly contested conceptions of gender and feminism in Africa. Next, we turn to nationalism and gendered colonial African states. With the success of national liberation movements and the rise of African women’s movements many African countries liberalized; some became democracies. Those political transformations and the spread of a human rights culture meant women in much of Africa won a greater role in politics, the third theme of the course. Their success increased hopes among feminists that the state would attack sexism. Those hopes have yet to be fulfilled, as an investigation of the region’s most contemporary pressing problems, from the sexual division of labor to HIV/AIDS.

Semester: 
Year Offered: 
2010
Graduate/Undergraduate: 
Undergraduate Courses