FALL 2019 Undergraduate Courses

Professor Kwame Otu

TuTh 12:30PM - 1:45PM

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 1880s. 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; the rise of anti-slavery movements; and the socio-economic systems that replaced slavery in the late 19th century.

Fulfills: 1010 requirement

Professor Lisa Shutt

TuTh 9:30AM - 10:45AM

This course, taught as a lower-level seminar, 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 medium 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.

TuTh 11:00AM - 12:15PM

This course, taught as a lower-level seminar, 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 medium 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.

Fulfills: Race and Politics in the US

Professor Kevin Gaines

TuTh 2:00PM-3:15PM

The course introduces students to the history of African American, U.S., and African diaspora social movements during much of the twentieth century through a focus on the social and cultural origins of various genres of popular music. Lectures (including listening to musical examples) will emphasize the social and political contexts for popular music forms including: the blues, folk music, jazz, gospel, calypso, rhythm and blues, soul, fusion, disco, funk, Latin music, reggae, African popular music and hip hop.  Throughout, we will highlight various forms of social protest music over time.  Key social movements include the Great migration, the U.S. labor movement, African American struggles for equality culminating in the civil rights and black power movements, labor rebellions in the Caribbean, 1960s youth counterculture, antiwar movements, second wave feminism, and African national liberation movements. We will also attend to connections between popular music and anti-racist liberation movements abroad, and assess the role of the popular music industry, radio, television and other mass media in aiding or abetting movements for social change.  We will also examine the global circulation and influence of American and African American popular music and culture.   Students will gain a basic knowledge of the main social political, and intellectual issues, concepts, social movements, and transformations of twentieth and twenty-first century African American and global history. 

Fulfills: History or Social Science

Professor H. Tim Lovelace

TuTh 11:00AM-12:15PM

This course will explore key themes in US civil rights law. We will engage competing visions of racial equality through law by examining contemporary topics such as affirmative action, school resegregation, and the criminal justice system. This course will also highlight the limitations of law in racial reform and will consider the ways in which law is often complicit in perpetuating race, gender, and class hierarchies.

Professor Kwame Otu

Mo 3:30PM - 6:00PM

In this course, we will grapple with the concept of struggle, as it pertains to Africans’ desire to wrestle themselves from the interlocking white supremacist systems of colonialism, enslavement, apartheid, and racialized capitalism. How has the desire to be “free” from these systems of oppression defined black identities both in Africa and its myriad diasporas? Our goal is to work together to comprehend blackness as a struggle, and to amplify how black bodies continue to contend with anti-black regimes spawned by enslavement, colonial oppression, and apartheid. Focusing on places like South Africa to Brazil to the USA to England, and from Haiti to Guinea, we shall emphasize how in the afterlives of slavery, colonialism, and apartheid, white supremacist structures and infrastructures continue to legitimize black death. In the face of death, nevertheless, the struggle to live a dignified life, and to be free from white supremacy continue to define black experiences in neocolonial and neoliberal scenes of empire. Understanding that this struggle is revolutionary, we shall tackle how the fight for freedom from white supremacy is constitutively part of the desire to be free from heteropatriarchal nationalism and sexism, homonegativity, and racialized capitalism. Thus, we will ask: How do African and African descended peoples’ quests for freedom in the circum-Atlantic world compel us to revision freedom as something other than a state of being, but as a condition continuously in the process of becoming?  

Fulfills: Africa, 3000-level

Professor Tony Perry

We 6:30PM - 9:00PM

From the period of enslavement onwards, black people have had a unique relationship to the environment. Despite there existing a rich written and artistic record of black people in North America engaging the environment, these perspectives have been largely under-explored in contemporary studies of American environmental thought. Thus, drawing on a range of sources including slave narratives, oral history, music, fiction, film, poetry, and visual art, this class will explore black perspectives on the environment across American history to the present. In doing so, we will study how black people's relationship to the environment has changed over time and how this relationship might inform contemporary environmental problems concerning and beyond matters of justice.

Fulfills: 3000-level

Professor Kimberly Fields

We 3:30PM - 6:00PM

This course explores the relationships between 'race', socio-economic status, interest group politics and environmental policy. We will address and contend with debates surrounding the claims that racialized and poor communities disproportionately shoulder society's negative environmental burdens.  Particular regard will be paid to the political and decision-making processes through which environmental issues are channeled, evaluated and  addressed. Through a variety of analytical and contextual lenses, we will examine fundamental environmental problems faced by individuals and communities of color and the policies and initiatives designed to address them. Attention will also be given to the political and economic responses of community, business, and political stakeholders towards perceived environmental inequities. Additionally, stakeholder responses to existing environmental justice policies and initiatives will also be considered. Furthermore, we will discuss arguments concerning political elites' and interest groups' perceived failures to provide a politically viable vision and remedial strategy to address environmental injustice.

 Through selected case studies, we will examine a number of topics and questions. Some key topics to be considered include: theories of racism and justice, the conceptual history and definitions of environmental racism, the historical development and goals of the environmental justice movement, the social, political, economic and environmental advantages and drawbacks of current systems of production and consumption, stakeholder responses to environmental inequities, the impact of environmental justice policies on environmental inequities as well as their impact on subsequent political behavior, pollution in developing nations and, indigenous peoples.  Additionally, the possible causes for patterns of injustice will be examined. Recent proposals to address the problem of environmental racism and injustice will be discussed and analyzed.

Professor Jermaine Scott

TuTh 8:00AM - 9:15AM

This course seeks to explore the relationship between Blackness and modern sports in the African Diaspora. While the dominant scholarship on Black athletes is often prescribed through African American Blackness, this course illuminates the experiences of Black athletes inside and outside the United States and addresses a number of critical questions: Why is modern sport a site of Black political struggle? Why is the African Diaspora a critical site for Black athletic politics? How do Black athletes negotiate the complicated terrains of race, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and community? This course will answer these questions by paying attention to Black athletes in different historical conjunctures across a range of sports, including but not limited to, boxing, baseball, track and field, football/soccer, cricket, and tennis. Moreover, students will learn the history of Black athletic politics in an effort to better contextualize its contemporary moment.

Professor Ashon Crawley

Mo. 3:30PM - 6:00PM

Is thought always already racialized, gendered, sexed? This course, Introduction to Black and Womanist Thought, takes as its line and root the idea that thinking and, as such, behaving, does not have to submit itself to modern ways of producing knowledge. We will discover that there are alternative ways to think and practice and be in the world with one another. And we call this alternative otherwise possibility. In this course we will not simply consider the history of Black Theology and Womanist Theology as accommodating the concept of theology; we will also consider the limits of particular concepts like theology, and how certain concepts are insufficient for understanding and contending with Black life. Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple and essay “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” will serve as the anchoring points for the course around which we can discuss Black Thought, Womanist Thought and otherwise possibility, alternatives to the normative world. We will read from James Cone, William R. Jones, Alice Walker, Sherman Jackson, Delores Williams and others.

Professor Lisa Shutt

We 2:00PM - 4:30PM

This course examines an array of African cultural worlds from the perspective of a variety of different life story genres. We will be addressing biography, autobiography, autofiction, memoirs, diaries, biographical documentary film and various artistic representations. Some critics claim that such genres, concentrating on the 'individual' in Western terms, are not appropriate for representing African experiences of personhood.

Fulfills: Africa, Social Science or History, 3000-level

Professor Njelle Hamilton

Tu 3:30PM - 6:00PM

In this course, we will read a sampling of some exciting new works of fiction from Africa's young and established writers. In particular, we will examine the literary innovations that African writers use to narrate issues affecting the continent such as dictatorship, the lingering effects of colonization, the postcolonial nation state, the traumas of war and geo-politics, religion, gender and sexuality, and migration, among others.

Fulfills:Humanities, 3000-level, Africa

Professor Sabrina Pendergrass

TuTh 2:00PM - 3:15PM

This course will examine how culture matters for understanding race and social inequality. It will survey social science research about cultural forms such as everyday discourse, styles of dress, music, literature, visual arts, and media as they relate to race and inequality.

Fulfills: Social Science or History, 3000-level

Professor Claudrena Harold

Tu 3:30PM - 6:00PM

Reading, class discussion, and research on a special topic in African-American and African Studies culminating in the composition of a research paper. Topics change from term to term, and vary with the instructor. Primarily for fourth-year AAS and History students--double majors and others. Crosslisted with the History major seminar.

Fulfills: 4000-level seminar, Social Science or History, 3000-level, Race and Politics in the US

Professor Ashon Crawley

Tu 3:30PM - 6:00PM

This course considers the radicalism internal to a European Mystical Tradition but also its delimitation, particularly with how it gets cognized in western thought. We will then investigate a Black Radical Mystical Tradition that cannot be, as Robinson might say, "understood within the particular context of it genesis." It is a lived and living tradition, a tradition against religion, a tradition against western thought and modern man.

MoWeFr 10:00AM - 10:50AM

Professor Anne Rotich

Swahili is the most widely-spoken language in eastern Africa.  SWAH 1010 provides a foundation for listening, speaking and writing basic Swahili grammatical structures and vocabulary. By the end of this course you will be able to construct simple Swahili sentences, identify with various cultural aspects and customs of Swahili speakers, and have a basic level of oral proficiency. We will have fun learning the language as we engage in dialogues, group activities and perform some cultural skits.

MoWeFr 11:00AM - 11:50AM

Professor Anne Rotich

Swahili is the most widely-spoken language in eastern Africa.  SWAH 1010 provides a foundation for listening, speaking and writing basic Swahili grammatical structures and vocabulary. By the end of this course you will be able to construct simple Swahili sentences, identify with various cultural aspects and customs of Swahili speakers, and have a basic level of oral proficiency. We will have fun learning the language as we engage in dialogues, group activities and perform some cultural skits. 

Prerequisite: limited or no previous knowledge of Swahili.

MoWeFri 12:00PM - 12:50PM

Professor Anne Rotich

This second year Swahili course is intended to equip you with more language skills in speaking, reading, writing, listening and cultures. It’s an opportunity for you to enhance your language skills. At the end of this course you will have increased your Swahili vocabulary, speak Swahili with more ease and less errors, understand and interact with Swahili speakers. You will be able to write and analyze texts and essays in Swahili on different topics and appreciate more the cultures of the Swahili people. You will also be able to express yourself, your everyday activities, discuss politics or current events in Swahili. To achieve this we will utilize multi-media resources, the internet, literary texts, magazines, and news broadcast stations to enhance your learning.

Prerequisite: SWAH 1020

Professor Jack Hamilton

We 3:30PM - 6:00PM

This seminar is intended to focus study, research, and discussion on a single period, topic, or issue, such as the Great Awakening, the Civil War, the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, or the 1960s. Topics vary.

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level

Staff

TuTh 12:30PM - 1:45PM

In this course we will draw on a series of classic and contemporary works in history and anthropology to come to a better understanding of current debates concerning corruption and patronage, marriage and sexuality, and medicine in Sub-Sahararn Africa.

Fulfiils: Social Science or History, 3000-level, Africa

Professor Lisa Woolfork

TuTh 8:00AM - 9:15AM

Topics in African-American writing in the US from its beginning in vernacular culture to the present day; topics vary from year to year. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.

Fulfills: Humanities

Profesor K. Ian Grandison

TuTh 3:30PM - 4:45PM

MoWeFr 11:00AM - 11:50AM

Usually an introduction to non-traditional or specialized topics in literary studies, (e.g., native American literature, gay and lesbian studies, techno-literacy, Arthurian romance, Grub Street in eighteenth-century England, and American exceptionalism). For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.

Fulfills: Humanities, Race and Politics in the US

Professor Marlon Ross

Th 5:30PM - 8:00PM

This course studies modern racial protest expressed through African American narrative art (fiction, autobiography, film) from the 1930s to 1980s, focusing on Civil Rights, Black Power, Black Panthers, womanism, and black gay/lesbian liberation movements. We explore the media, forms, and theories of modern protest movements, how they shaped and have been shaped by literature and film. What does it mean to lodge a protest in artistic form? Some themes include lynching, segregation, sharecropping, black communism, migration, urbanization, religion, crime and policing, normative and queer sexualities, war and military service, cross-racial coalitions, and the role of the individual in social change. Either directly or indirectly, all of these narratives ask pressing questions about the meaning of American citizenship and racial community under the conditions of racial segregation and the fight for integration or black nationalist autonomy. What does it mean to be “Negro” and American? How should African Americans conduct themselves on the world stage, and which international identifications are most productive? What roles do the press and popular media play in the sustenance and/or erosion of a sense of community both within a racial group and in relation to the country? What are the obligations of oppressed communities to the nation that oppresses them? What role should violence play in working toward liberation? We begin our study with the most famous protest novel, Richard Wright’s Native Son. Then we examine other narratives in this tradition, including works by Angelo Herndon, Ann Petry, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Essex Hemphill, and Joseph Beam. Films include Joseph Mankiewitz’s No Way Out, Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and The Watermelon Man, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, and Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied. In addition to fiction, film, and autobiography, we’ll read selections from pertinent texts in history, literary criticism, journalism, cultural criticism, film theory, and sociology. Assignments include two short essays, a midterm, and a final exam.

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level

Professor K. Ian Grandison

Tu 5:30PM - 8:00PM

Co-taught by K. Ian Grandison and Marlon Ross, this interdisciplinary seminar examines the spatial implications at work in the theories, practices, and experiences of race, as well as the cultural implications at stake in our apprehensions and conceptions of space. Themes include: 1) the human/nature threshold; 2) public domains/private lives; 3) urban renewal, historic preservation, and the new urbanism; 4) defensible design and the spatial politics of fear; and 5) the cultural ideologies of sustainability. The seminar foregrounds the multidimensionality of space as a physical, perceptual, social, ideological, and discursive phenomenon. This means melding concepts and practices used in the design professions with theories affiliated with race, postcolonial, literary, and cultural studies. We’ll investigate a variety of spaces, actual and discursive, through selected theoretical readings from diverse disciplines (e.g., William Cronon, Patricia Williams, Philip Deloria, Leslie Kanes Weisman, Gloria Anzaldua, Oscar Newman); through case studies (e.g., Indian reservations, burial grounds, suburban homes, gay bars, national monuments); and through local site visits. Requirements include a midterm and final exam, one site visit response paper, and a major team research project and presentation.

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level, 4000-level Seminar

Professor Lisa Woolfork

TuTh 9:30AM - 10:45AM

This course for advanced undergraduates and master's-level graduate students surveys African-American literature today. Assignments include works by Evreett, Edward Jones, Tayari Jones, Evans, Ward, Rabateau, and Morrison

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level

Professor Tamika Carey

TuTh 2:00PM - 3:15PM

A course for students who are already proficient academic writers and wish to develop their writing skills further in a workshop setting.

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level

Professor Kandioura Dramé

TuTh 12:30PM - 1:45PM

This course addresses various aspects of Francophone African Culture including, oral traditions, literature, theatre, cinema, and contemporary music and visual arts. Prerequisites: FREN 3031 & 3032

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level, Africa

Professor Kandioura Dramé

TuTh 3:30PM - 4:45PM

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 3032 and FREN 3584 or another 3000-level literature course in French.

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level, Africa

Professor James La Fleur

Th 3:30PM - 6:00PM

Introduces the study of history intended for first- or second-year students. Seminars involve reading, discussing, and writing about different historical topics and periods, and emphasize the enhancement of critical and communication skills. Several seminars are offered each term. Not more than two Introductory Seminars may be counted toward the major in history.

Fulfills: Social Science or History, Africa

Professor John Mason

TuTh 9:30AM - 10:45AM

Studies the history of Africa generally south of the Zambezi River. Emphasizes African institutions, creation of ethnic and racial identities, industrialization, and rural poverty, from the early formation of historical communities to recent times.

Fulfills: Social Science or History, Africa, 3000-level

Professor James La Fleur

TuTh 2:00PM - 3:15PM

History of West Africans in the wider context of the global past, from West Africans' first attempts to make a living in ancient environments through the slave trades (domestic, trans-Saharan, and Atlantic), colonial overrule by outsiders, political independence, and ever-increasing globalization.

Fulfills: Social Science or History, Africa, 3000-level

Professor Kirt Von Daacke

TuTh 9:30AM - 10:45AM

This course examines the history of slavery and its legacies at UVA and in the region, recovering the experiences of enslaved individuals and their roles in building/maintaining the university, & contextualizing those experiences within U.S. history. It also puts that history into political context, tracing the rise of sectional tensions, secession, the advent of emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, desegregation, and civil rights change.

Fulfills: Social Science or History, Race and Politics in the US

Professor Claudrena Harold

TuTh 11:00AM - 12:15PM

This course examines the history and contemporary experiences of African Americans at the University of Virginia from the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the present era.

Fulfills: Social Science or History, Race and Politics in the US, 3000-level

Professor Meredith Clark

TuTh 2:00PM - 3:15PM

Using a mix of scholarly and popular-press readings and an examination of digital artifacts, we will analyze the creations and contributions of Black digital culture from the mid-90s to the present. Covering topics including the early Black blogosphere; the creation of niche content sites like BlackPlanet.com; the emergence of Black Twitter; the circulation of memes, and the use second-screening.

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level

Professor Meredith Clark

We 5:00PM - 7:30PM

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of Media Studies.

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level

Professor A.D. Carson

TuTh 9:30AM - 10:45AM

Course focuses on the craft of writing raps. No previous experience writing raps required. Students will listen to, attempt to deconstruct, and evaluate a broad range of rap music while learning the basics of composing lyrics. Along with writing raps, students will learn songwriting techniques and some theoretical approaches to composing larger works such as a 'mixtape' or 'album' through examinations of music, criticism, and literature.

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level

MUSI 4065 The "Black Voice"

Professor A.D. Carson

TuTh 2:00PM - 3:15PM

This course focuses on critical analyses of and questions concerning the "Black Voice" as it pertains to hip-hop culture, particularly rap and related popular musics. Students will read, analyze, discuss a wide range of thinkers to explore many conceptions and definitions of "Blackness" while examining popular artists and the statements they make in and about their art.

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level

Professor Lawrie Balfour

MoWe 2:00PM - 3:15PM

This course examines key figures and central concepts in African American political thought from the 19th through the 21st centuries. Issues addressed include the relationship between slavery and American democracy, separation vs. integration, and the promise and limitations of formal equality. Prerequisite: one course in PLPT or instructor permission.

Fulfills: Social Science or History, Race and Politics in the US, 3000-level

Staff

TuTh 9:30AM - 10:45AM

A survey course which familiarizes students with African-derived religions of the Caribbean and Latin America

Fulfills: Humanities, Africa

Professor Larycia Hawkins

Mo 3:30PM - 6:00PM

These seminars introduce first- and second-year students to the academic study of religion through a close study of a particular theme or topic. Students will engage with material from a variety of methodological perspectives, and they will learn how to critically analyze sources and communicate their findings. The seminars allow for intensive reading and discussion of material. Not more than two Intro Seminars may count towards the Major.

Fulfills: Humanities, Race and Politics in the US

Professor Ashon Crawley

Mo 3:30PM - 6:00PM

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of Religious Studies.

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level

Staff

MoWe 2:00PM - 3:15PM

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of Religious Studies.

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level

Professor Ashon Crawley

Tu 3:30PM - 6:00PM

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new topic in the subject of general religion.

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level

Professor Sabrina Pendergrass

TuTh 11:00AM - 11:50AM

This course will examine various types of inequality (race, class, gender) in the US and abroad. We will discuss sociological theories covering various dimensions of inequality, considering key research findings and their implications. We will examine to what extent ascriptive characteristics impact a person's life chances, how social structures are produced and reproduced, and how individuals are able or unable to negotiate these structures.

Fulfills: Social Science or History, Race and Politics in the US

Professor Rose Buckelew

TuTh 9:30AM - 10:45AM

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.

Fulfills: Race and Politics in the US, Social Science or History, 3000-level

Professor Milton Vickerman

MoWe 2:00PM - 3:15PM

Racism, the disparagement and victimization of individuals and groups because of a belief that their ancestry renders them intrinsically different and inferior, is a problem in many societies. In this course we will examine the problem of racism by investigating the workings of these sociological processes theoretically, historically, and contemporaneously.

Fulfills: Social Science or History, 3000-level

Professor Anne Garland Mahler

MoWe 2:00PM - 3:15PM

Prerequisite: SPAN 3010, 3300, and 3 credits of 3400-3430, or departmental placement.

Fulfills: Humanities, 3000-level

Professor Lanice Avery

Th 2:00PM - 4:30PM

This course critically examines key ideas, issues, and debates in contemporary Black feminist thought. With a particular focus on Black feminist understandings of intersectionality and womanism, the course examines how Black feminist thinkers interrogate specific concepts including Black womanhood, sexual mythologies and vulnerabilities, class distinctions, colorism, leadership, crime and punishment, and popular culture.

Fulfills: Social Science or History, 3000-level