Spring 2010

Instructor: Claudrena Harold

12:30-1:45PM Tu/Th, Minor Hall 125

This introductory course builds upon the histories of people of African descent in Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean surveyed in AAS 101. Drawing on disciplines such as Anthropology, History, Religious Studies, Political Science and Sociology, the course focuses on the period from the late 19th century to the present and is comparative in perspective. It examines the links and disjunctions between communities of African descent in the United States and in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. The course begins with an overview of AAS, its history, assumptions, boundaries, and topics of inquiry, and then proceeds to focus on a number of inter-related themes: patterns of cultural experience; community formation; comparative racial classification; language and society; family and kinship; religion; social and political movements; arts and aesthetics; and archaeology of the African Diaspora.

Instructor: Joy James

9:00-11:00AM F, Wilson 141A

This course examines contemporary black feminist theory in the United States, and the civil rights, anti-war, student and second wave feminist movements that influenced and inspired its growth during the 1960s, 70s, 80s. This class explores the ideological distinctions between state and counter-state feminism, socialist feminism, “womanism” and “black feminism, and black lesbian and transgendered feminisms. The works of black women artists and the role of activism, anti-racism, and internationalism in the formation of black feminist thought will also be examined.

Texts include: Angela Y. Davis: An Autobiography; Assata: An Autobiography; Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider; Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness; K. McKittrick, Demonic Grounds.

Course requirements: Attendance and participation: 25%; group presentations: 25%; research paper and presentation: 50%

Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

12:30-1:45PM Tu/Th, Gibson 242

This course examines women’s religious activities, traditions and spirituality in a number of different African contexts. Drawing on ethnographic, historical, literary, and religious studies scholarship, we will explore a variety of themes and debates that have emerged in the study of gender and religion in Africa. Topics will include gendered images of sacred power; the construction of gender through ritual; sexuality and fertility; and women’s agency in indigenous religious movements, Muslim communities and Christian congregations in Africa.

Cross-listed as RELA 3000

Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri

5:00-6:15PM Tu/Th, New Cabell 134

This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to 20th century black urban studies. We will examine a variety of literary and scholarly texts concerned with representing, shaping, and contesting the government and organization of postwar US cities. Particular attention will be paid to the relation between the economy, the black freedom movement, the production and development of space, and the formation of racial identity. We will ask, in particular, what has been the relation between the black freedom movement and contestations over the production, use, and development of urban space? How has the American city been represented and experienced in relation to key political and economic changes that have occurred since World War II? The goal will be to generate a broad theoretical and historical understanding of postwar urbanism and its relation to the African American experience. Second, we will engage with recent scholarship on race and racism so as to develop an understanding of these concepts adequate to the study of late 20th century identity formation. Course assignments will be geared toward asking students to explore, through close reading and historical analysis, the political stakes of different approaches to the study and representation of black culture. Assessment criteria will include course participation in discussion, close engagement with readings evinced in short weekly writing assignments, and a mid-term and final essay.

Instructor: Jason Hickel

9:30-10:45 Tu/Thu, Pavillion VIII 103

This course draws on insights from critical theory to examine social issues and development in Africa. As part of a broader introduction to the history and politics of the continent, it explores the general contours of European colonialism, national independence, and the position of African states in today's global economic order. Against this backdrop, the course teaches students to handle various theories of underdevelopment and draws attention to specific case studies – such as Sudan, Rwanda, and South Africa – to discuss issues related to race, class, labor, gender, trade, and HIV/AIDS.

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

Instructor: K. Ian Grandison

6:30-9:00PM Th, New Cabell 134

Notwithstanding the amorphous boundaries of geography as a discipline—especially at its intersection with such discourses as environmentalism, urban planning, and landscape studies—there are several ideas that readily conjure “geography.” Geography, for instance, is a scientific inquiry; geographers are interested in the attributes of places; geographic discourse has as its central—though unspoken—commitment to catalogue the earth’s surface according to perceived opportunities and constraints for human exploitation. Here is the question of this seminar: How does “race,” as a concept of critical culture, fit into this empirical investigation and documentation of places? Do such geographical headers as “demography,” “population,” “people,” or “occupation,” enumerated along with such headers as “physical characteristics,” “climate,” “transport,” or “towns,” allow us to engage race critically? Emphasizing the case studies that draw mainly from “Virginia,” we will together attempt to develop themes and concepts to elucidate the notion of “Racial Geography.” Consider, for example, the implications of such a race-inflected exploration in urban geography. Quantitative and geometrical theories of urban distribution and location are of little use in helping us to understand the location of Washington DC. No consideration of the “rank” and “size” of adjacent urban centers or of proximity to natural and cultural advantages, such as deep water harbors, mountain passes, or potential sources of energy, can explain why the nation’s capital was sited in a swampy backwater of the Chesapeake. Indeed, Washington DC’s location is best explained by the energetic but stealthy campaign of powerful Virginia slave holders to site the capital of the young nation in territory that was firmly committed to the institution of slavery? Consider how this determined the fate of rival cities such as Quaker Philadelphia or even the definition of North and South as geographical subdivisions on the United States. We may even consider how this explains why the Chesapeake still, from time to time, fills some of the most official parts of the city with briny flood waters. Requirements of the seminar will include a midterm and final exam and a research paper of 15 pages. Students will be asked at the beginning of the semester to explain their motivations for wanting to participate in the seminar.

Instructor: Alisha Gaines

3:30-6:00PM Tu, Wilson 215

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg News penned an op-ed piece with a seemingly tongue-in-cheek question as its title: “Is Obama Guilty of Insufficient Blackness?” As Barack Obama began to dominate both political and popular discourses, questions over his racial legitimacy took hold in the cultural imagination. These debates remind us that blackness is not, and has never been, a bounded or agreed upon category, and often what is considered “real” and/or “authentic” leaves some on the margins of the community. Taking cues from these still lingering and poignant debates, this course seeks to interrogate the “facts” and “fictions” of blackness by moving those on the margins (queers, “oreos,” those that “talk white,” the upper-class, race traitors, passers, and “wiggers”) to the center. Through several different media including literary texts, film, television, music, and performance art, we will begin to think critically about authenticity, community, appropriation, performance, and belonging.

Questions to be considered in this course include: How does thinking about blackness inflect our understanding of (supposedly stable) categories of identity other than race including gender, class, and sexuality? Do we really know blackness when we see it? Hear it? How (and why) is blackness performed and for (and by) whom? In what ways is identity shaped by who can and can’t pass? How has globalization made blackness an even more accessible commodity? How has hip hop? And finally, just what does it take to be down?

Instructor: Cassie Hays

3:30-6:00PM Th, New Cabell 234

Via the historical and sociological study of violence in Africa, this course poses and attempts to resolve a variety of questions. First, what are the patterns and policies of 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, then, is the role of the racialized, gendered, or youthful body in postcolonial war? 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 broad overview of the concepts of colonialism, imperialism, and postcolonialism and a brief history of genocide around the world. Building from this foundation, we will spend several weeks examining case studies from the era of European colonialism in Africa by reading books and watching films on the Belgian Congo, British Kenya and French Algeria. We will then move to analyses of the contemporary examples of Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, and Sudan. Authors to be read include: Robert J.C. Young, Samantha Powers, Arjun Appadurai, Mahmood Mamdani, Frantz Fanon, Adam Hochschild, and Philip Gourevitch.

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

Instructor: Joy James

12:00-2:30PM F, New Cabell 324

Although FBI crime statistics inform that the vast majority of rapes are intraracial, media sensationalism of rape, both real and alleged, often centers on interracial sexual assault cases. This seminar explores American memory concerning sexual violence and racial constructions. Beginning with the height of lynching and anti-lynching crusades led by Ida B. Wells in 1892, we examine key cases throughout the twentieth century that marked American consciousness concerning race relations and racial repression, and Americans’ conventional understandings of human sexuality and violence against women. This graduate seminar examines representations of sexual assault in trial cases/legal text ,popular culture, journalistic discourse, and scholarship. Cases studied include: Scottsboro Boys, Jack Johnson, Mike Tyson, Harlem Six, Willie Horton, Central Park Case, Ben LaGuer, Jeffrey Dahmer.

Texts include: D’Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters; The Scottsboro Boys; William Patterson, ed., We Charge Genocide; Ida. B. Wells, Southern Horrors.

Course requirements: Attendance and participation: 25%; group presentations: 25%; research paper and presentation: 50%.

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

11:00-12:15 Tu/Th, Maury 113

This course seeks to explore the world of African American “speculative” fiction. This genre of writing largely includes science fiction, fantasy fiction, and horror. In this class, we will read, watch, and discuss narratives by black writers of speculative fiction to better understand the motivation, tone, and agenda in the work of black writers. We will also consider the role of black culture and representation in the larger field.

Cross-listed as ENAM 4500

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.

Instructor: Marlon Ross

6:30-9:00PM Tu, Bryan Hall 310

How have subjects identified as queer been constituted and understood in relation to racial formations and ideologies? Focusing especially on African American same-gender loving men and women and others viewed as outside of gender or sexual norms, this course investigates the emerging theories developed to address the intersection of race and sexual orientation in structures of cultural identity, psychic subjectivity, artistic production, political economy, and social history. The course is divided into four topics: 1) We begin with the queer body politic, examining political coverage of the Proposition 8 controversy as a way of seeing how different racial groups (blacks, Latinos, whites) are currently positioned in dominant discourses related to sexual orientation. 2) We move backward to examine the historical representation of minoritized sexuality through the concept of the queer token, focusing on the writings by and about three celebrated figures: James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Cherríe Moraga. 3) The next section takes up the emergence of black queer theory in concert with related minoritized sexual orientations, particularly Asian-American and Chicano/a, focusing on readings from the following volumes: E. Patrick Johnson’s Black Queer Studies, Dwight McBride and Jennifer deVere Brody’s Plum Nelly, Syliva Molloy and R. M. Irwin’s Hispanisms and Homosexualities, Phil Harper’s Private Affairs, Jose Muñoz’s Disidentifications, and David Eng’s Racial Castration. 4) Finally, we examine mass media representations (especially film and t.v.) of minoritized queerness, focusing on Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied, Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning, David Henry Hwang and David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, and Partik-Ian Polk’s Logo tv series Noah’s Arc. Requirements include several brief commentary papers, an annotated bibliography, and a 20-page term research paper.Restricted to 4th years and Graduate Students.

Cross-listed as ENCR 5559

Instructor: Yarimar Bonilla

3:30-6:00PM T, Cocke Hall 115

This interdisciplinary co-taught course will combine historical, anthropological, and literary approaches to the study of the French Caribbean islands. We will examine important periods in the history of French territorial expansion (including colonialism, slavery, decolonization, and the transformation of empire) with an eye towards how these histories informed the cultural and intellectual world of life in the Caribbean Colonies. We will also examine how varying ideological currents and philosophical projects (such as Negritude, Antillanité, Creolité, and the Tout-Monde) have sought to navigate the complicated relationships of alterity, political community, and national belonging that have shaped the French postcolonial world. Throughout the course we will examine the French Caribbean as an important analytical site for the study of racial hierarchies, colonial histories, and postcolonial projects.

Cross-listed as FREN 4559

Instructor: Yarimar Bonilla and Stephanie Berard

3:30-6:00PM Th, Clark Hall 101

This course will investigate various processes of opposition, resistance, and revolution. The first half of the course will survey foundational works of revolutionary theory, while the second half will examine political practice from an ethnographic perspective, with an eye towards the lived experience of political participation and the formation (and transformation) of resisting subjects. We will consider these themes across a wide spectrum of movements and moments: from early Marxist, nationalist, and anti-colonial models of struggle to the more recent uprisings against global capitalism and neo-liberal policies in the US, Latin America, and Europe. The geographical focus will be global, emphasizing connections and influences across borders and epochs, while highlighting the connections between cultural politics in "the margins" and "the center".

Instructor: Wende Marshall

11:00-12:15 Tu/Th, McLeod Hall 2006

We will explore the discursive construction of black life in works of anthropology, sociology, theology and fiction. Beginning with Du Bois's Philadelphia Negro, the course will examine the theoretical underpinnings and analytic frames through which black life is variously understood and map how conceptions of black life shift across the century. A specific focus of the course is the fraught relationship between blacks and modernity, and the struggle for civil rights.

Instructor: Ellen Contini-Morava

2:00-3:45PM Tu/Th, Brooks Hall 103A

An introduction to the linguistic diversity of the African continent, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. For about three-fourths of the course we will discuss linguistic structures (sound systems, word-formation, and syntax) among a wide variety of languages; the classification of African languages; and the use of linguistic data to reconstruct prehistory. For the last fourth of the course we will address a range of sociolinguistic topics, including language and social identity, social functions of language, verbal art, the politics of language planning, and the rise of “mixed” languages among urban youth. While lectures address general and comparative topics, each student will choose one language to focus on, using published materials available in the library. This language will be the basis for the major assignments. Some prior experience with linguistics is desirable (such as LNGS 3250/7010, ANTH 2400 or ANTH 7400), but the course will also be accessible to highly motivated students who have not taken a previous linguistics course. The course fulfills the Language Structure requirement for Linguistics majors and graduate students.

Instructor: Theresa Davis

2:00-3:15PM Tu/Th, Drama Education Bldg. 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.

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

9:30-10:45AM Tu/Th, New Cabell 119

A continuation of ENAM 3130, African American Literature I, this course concentrates on twentieth and twenty-first century African American novels, short stories, prose essays, and poetry. This lecture and discussion based class will address literature from pivotal cultural and political moments in African American life, such as the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement. Writers include, but are not limited to, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and several contemporary authors. Mandatory assignments include response paragraphs, papers, quizzes, midterm and final exams.

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

11:00-12:15 Tu/Th, Maury 113

This course seeks to explore the world of African American “speculative” fiction. This genre of writing largely includes science fiction, fantasy fiction, and horror. In this class, we will read, watch, and discuss narratives by black writers of speculative fiction to better understand the motivation, tone, and agenda in the work of black writers. We will also consider the role of black culture and representation in the larger field.

Cross-listed as AAS 4500

Instructor: K. Ian Grandison

7:00-9:30PM Tu, Bryan 332

How do assumptions about race operate when we consider the idea of an “American Place?” This interdisciplinary seminar interrogates this question by exploring place in America within the context of the “Culture Wars,” especially as these are catalyzed by the notion of race. We consider, for instance, how place is embroiled in the ideological work of distinguishing people according to identity and, then, of fixing identity groups within unyielding hierarchies. Consider, for example, how the seemingly innocuous story of The Three Little Pigs leads us to assume racial attributes of each pig based on materials and architectural styles. Thus, it seems so natural, so correct to identify groups of people as “primitive” and “destitute” versus “civilized” and “successful” based on assumptions about their housing. What are the implications of our culture’s insistence on promoting the notion that “Africans,” say, live in huts of mud or straw. We are interested in how such assumptions linking race and place are reinforced by planning, design, and preservation concepts and practice. How does the increasing popularity of Homeowners’ Associations maintain racial territories against the spirit of legal desegregation? Does the concurrency of homelessness and home-owners-associations in American society suggest anything about prevailing assumptions about a relationship between the right to privacy and racial and class identity? We study these questions with the help of targeted discussion of readings, required field trips to places around Charlottesville, informal workshops especially to develop the ability to interpret maps, plans, and other graphic representations of places, and student delivered presentations in class. Requirements include three informal small group exercises, an individual site-visit comment paper, a mid-term and final exam, and a group research project. The last requirement is presented in a symposium that represents the culmination of the semester.

Instructor: Marlon Ross

6:30-9:00PM Tu, Bryan Hall 310

How have subjects identified as queer been constituted and understood in relation to racial formations and ideologies? Focusing especially on African American same-gender loving men and women and others viewed as outside of gender or sexual norms, this course investigates the emerging theories developed to address the intersection of race and sexual orientation in structures of cultural identity, psychic subjectivity, artistic production, political economy, and social history. The course is divided into four topics: 1) We begin with the queer body politic, examining political coverage of the Proposition 8 controversy as a way of seeing how different racial groups (blacks, Latinos, whites) are currently positioned in dominant discourses related to sexual orientation. 2) We move backward to examine the historical representation of minoritized sexuality through the concept of the queer token, focusing on the writings by and about three celebrated figures: James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Cherríe Moraga. 3) The next section takes up the emergence of black queer theory in concert with related minoritized sexual orientations, particularly Asian-American and Chicano/a, focusing on readings from the following volumes: E. Patrick Johnson’s Black Queer Studies, Dwight McBride and Jennifer deVere Brody’s Plum Nelly, Syliva Molloy and R. M. Irwin’s Hispanisms and Homosexualities, Phil Harper’s Private Affairs, Jose Muñoz’s Disidentifications, and David Eng’s Racial Castration. 4) Finally, we examine mass media representations (especially film and t.v.) of minoritized queerness, focusing on Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied, Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning, David Henry Hwang and David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, and Partik-Ian Polk’s Logo tv series Noah’s Arc. Requirements include several brief commentary papers, an annotated bibliography, and a 20-page term research paper. Restricted to 4th years and Graduate Students.

Cross-listed as AAS 5528

Instructor: Kandioura Drame

3:30-4:45PM M/W, Astronomy Bldg. 265

This course will explore aspects of African literatures and cultures. It will focus on selected issues of special resonance in contemporary African life. Oral literature and its continuing impact on all other art forms. Key issues in French colonial policy and its legacy in Africa: language, politics, education. The course will examine the image of the postcolonial state and society as found in contemporary arts, paintings, sculpture, music, and cinema. Selections from painters like Cheri Samba (Democratic Republic of Congo), Werewere Liking (Cameroun) and sculptors like Ousmane Sow, including such popular icons as Mamy Wata and forms such as Souwere glass painting; from musicians like Youssou Ndour (Senegal), Cheb Khaled (Algeria), Seigneur Rochereau, Tshala Muana (DRC), Salif Keita (Mali), and Cesaria Evora (Cape Verde); from Mande, Peul, and Kabyle oral literatures in French translation; from filmmakers D.D. Mambety, Moussa Sene Absa, and Ngangura Mweze. Visit to National Museum of African Arts depending on availability of funding. The final grade will be based on contributions to discussions, a mid-term exam, 2 papers, and a final exam.

Selections from the following texts will feature among the required reading list:
Wéréwéré Liking - Statues colons
A. Sow - La Femme, la Vache, la Foi
D.T. Niane - Soundjata ou l'épopée mandingue
Amadou Hampaté Ba - Koumen

Instructor: Yarimar Bonilla and Stephanie Berard

3:30-6:00PM Tu, Clark Hall 101

This interdisciplinary co-taught course will combine historical, anthropological, and literary approaches to the study of the French Caribbean islands. We will examine important periods in the history of French territorial expansion (including colonialism, slavery, decolonization, and the transformation of empire) with an eye towards how these histories informed the cultural and intellectual world of life in the Caribbean Colonies. We will also examine how varying ideological currents and philosophical projects (such as Negritude, Antillanité, Creolité, and the Tout-Monde) have sought to navigate the complicated relationships of alterity, political community, and national belonging that have shaped the French postcolonial world. Throughout the course we will examine the French Caribbean as an important analytical site for the study of racial hierarchies, colonial histories, and postcolonial projects.

Cross-listed as ANTH 4559

Instructor: Stephanie Berard

2:00-3:15PM Tu/Th, New Cabell 234

This course examines how contemporary Francophone Caribbean and African writers and filmmakers attempt to reevaluate the history written on slavery and colonialism by “official” historians from the Western world. Analysis of works by poets, novelists, essayists, and filmmakers from Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Algeria and Senegal.

Instructor: Kandioura Drame

10:00-10:50AM M/W/F, Astronomy Bldg. 265

Introduction to the Francophone literature of Africa; survey, with special emphasis on post- World War II poets, novelists, and playwrights of Africa. The role of cultural and literary reviews (Légitime Défense, L'Etudiant noir, and Présence Africaine) in the historical and ideological development of this literature will be examined. Special reference will be made to Caribbean writers of the Negritude movement. Documentary videos on African history and cultures will be shown and important audio-tapes will also be played regularly. Supplementary texts will be assigned occasionally. Students will be expected to present response papers on a regular basis.
In addition to the required reading material, 2 essays (60%), regular class attendance, and contribution to discussions (10%), and a final exam (30%) constitute the course requirements. Papers are due on the dates indicated on the syllabus.
Required reading:
Diop, Birago. Les contes d’Amadou Koumba .
Chevrier, J. Anthologie Africaine: Poésie
Bâ, Mariama. Une si longue lettre.
Assia Djebar. Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (Toolkit).
Boudjedra, Rachid. L'escargot entêté

Prerequisite: French 332

Instructor: John Mason

9:30-10:45AM Tu/Th, Minor 125

HIAF 2002 explores the history of Africa from the decline of the Atlantic slave trade, in the early nineteenth century, to the present. Our goal is to examine the historical roots of the continent's present condition. We look at the slave trade and its consequences, the European conquest of most of the African continent, African resistance to colonial rule, and the reestablishment of African independence.

We will concentrate on three regions: West Africa, especially Nigeria; Central Africa, especially the Congo and Rwanda; and southern Africa, especially South Africa. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which colonialism affected ordinary Africans and with the various strategies that Africans employed to resist, subvert, and accommodate European domination.
HIAF 2002 is an introductory course and assumes no prior knowledge of African history. There will be two blue book exams--a mid-term and a final--and periodic quizzes on the readings.

Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira

12:30-1:45PM Tu/Th, Ruffner GOO4C

This class examines the history of the forced migration of Africans throughout the Atlantic from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. We will begin by analyzing the background to the European exploration of the Atlantic and will focus on the intellectual and ideological underpinnings of slavery in the Iberian Peninsula. We will then move to Africa and explore the interaction of Europeans and Africans along the West Coast of Africa, centering on the Gold Coast, Bight of Benin, and Bight of Biafra. The class will also pay considerable attention to the early development of the slave trade in Kongo, considering Kongolese appropriation of Christianity and diplomatic relations with Portugal. Angola will provide the last case study in Africa before we cross the Atlantic to Brazil, Cuba, and Mexico. In Angola, particular attention will be paid to the formation of the Portuguese colony of Angola, the rise of the slave trade, and the social and cultural milieu of the slave trade from Angola to Brazil. In the Americas, we will focus particularly on Brazil, Cuba and Mexico, providing a broad overview of the social History/lives of African and African-descendent people, with special attention to religion and culture.

Instructor: Joseph Miller

9:30-10:45AM Tu/Th, Wilson 216

HIAF 3091 explores “world history” from the perspective of Africa, for advanced undergraduates. The Department of History at the University of Virginia has offered courses placing Africa in broader “Atlantic” frameworks, mostly in the modern era but has not otherwise considered Africa’s place in the long-term history of the human race – even though genetic and other evidence establishes that all modern humans descend from ancestors who lived in Africa. Conversely, “world history”, a very recent addition to the UVa history curriculum, characteristically finds only the most marginal of roles for Africa – mostly as a continent victimized and colonized by others, Muslims and modern Europeans. Hegel, founding philosopher of the modern historical discipline, specifically excluded Africa from his schema of universal history as the continent lacking meaningful change.

HIAF 3091 tackles all these challenges: (1) to historicize an African past (all 50,000 years of it) still commonly seen in static, quasi-ethnographic terms; (2) to place this narrative of the challenges Africans faced and the changes they made in the broader story of human history throughout the world; and (3) to take their perspectives, strategies, and experiences as a basis for a fresh look at the familiar narrative of world “civilizations”. Additionally, historicizing Africa presents a rich opportunity to consider what makes history historical, among the many ways of contemplating the past. If you want to think again about what you thought you knew, about any part of the world (including the modern US), this should be the course for you. I hope to leave no one in the room unchallenged.

This course provides the narrative framework of Africa’s past through reading a current text (John Reader, Africa: A Biography) but develops significantly different interpretive emphases; the contrast will reveal the assumptions underlying the way that historians think – or should think, since surprisingly few of them actually do. We will also read a recent world-history text (Armesto, The World: A History) and critique its narrative through the argument to be developed in the course. We will also read technical articles on concepts and processes integral to understanding Africa and history. You need not have taken either HIAF 2001 or 2002 (Introductions to early and modern Africa), but if you have not you will need to take responsibility for grasping the basic narrative of Africa’s past from which the course will build.

Students will write short analytical “take-home points” at the conclusion of every class. Frequent, short map quizzes will encourage useful awareness of the geographical contexts of all human history. Written requirements will include periodic short “position papers” reflecting on the course content as it develops. There will be no in-class examinations. All student writing will be considered intensely and analytically. The final exercise will be a take-home essay responding to a single question: “Having spent a semester looking at the history of the world from the perspective of Africa, and vice versa, how do you now see the similarities and the differences between Africans’ experiences and those of other people elsewhere around the globe?”

Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira

3:30-6:00PM Tu/Th, Randall 212

This seminar investigates the relationship between Africa and the Atlantic World between the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries. The class begins by undertaking a critical reading of the historiography of the Black Atlantic/African Diaspora (Gilroy, Matory, Mann, among several others), then moving on to analyze contemporaneous accounts by Africans, including Equiano. Key issues that will be treated are the circulation of ideas in the Atlantic through the rise of the Afro-Brazilian religion, Candomblé, the conceptualization of slavery and the Atlantic world by Africans, as well as both failed and successful reverse migration movements. Students will write a research paper based on the accounts analyzed in class.

Instructor: Cynthia Nicoletti

11:00-12:15 Tu/Th, New Cabell 118

This course will cover the history of the American South from the founding of Jamestown and the introduction of slavery in the early seventeenth century to the end of Reconstruction in the late nineteenth century, paying particular attention to the ways in which southern society was shaped by race. We will explore the Atlantic slave trade and the rise of slavery in the United States, gentrification and the colonial South, the role of religion in southern history, the emergence of the plantation system, the impact of the law on the creation of racial categories and hierarchy, westward expansion in the nineteenth century, the South and the sectional crisis, the experience of the Civil War, the promise of Reconstruction, and the emergence of a new South at the end of the nineteenth century. The course format will consist of two lecture meetings a week, and the readings will average about 150 pages per week. Students will write an original research paper based on the extensive material on southern history at the University of Virginia, as well as two other short papers based on the reading. There will also be a final exam.

Possible readings may include: Anthony Parent, Foul Means, Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, Gary Gallagher, The Confederate War, Thavolia Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage, Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, C. Vann Woodward, The Burden of Southern History, and John Reed Shelton, “The South: Where is it? What is it?”

Instructor: Julian Bond

3:30-5:30PM Tu, Maury Hall 115

"History of the Civil Rights Movement", a lecture course, will examine the origins, philosophies, tactics, events, personalities and consequences of the southern civil rights movement from 1900 to the mid-‘1960s. Readings, lectures and out-of-class videos will be the basis for the final examination.Texts required: Bond, Julian and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, Thompson Learning Custom Publishing; Forman, James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, University of Washington Press; Wilkins, Roy with Tom Matthews, Standing Fast, Da Capo.
Viewing Required: “Eyes on the Prize”, America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, # 1-6, America at the Racial Crossroads, 1965-1985, # 1 & 2, PBS Video, Blackside Inc., Boston; “The Road to Brown”, William Elwood, California Newsreel.

Students will be required to write two short papers. The final grade will be determined on the basis of the two papers (25% each), the final examination (30%), and discussion section participation (20%).

Instructor: Claudrena Harold

3:30-6:00PM Tu, Nau 141

Over the course of the semester, students will examine the dynamic ways people of African descent in the United States have struggled for cultural, economic, and political empowerment within the context of a white supremacist culture. Much of the class will focus on the 1960s and the 1970s; however, previous and subsequent periods will also be analyzed. Students should leave this class with not only a broader knowledge of “Black Power” as a cultural, political, and ideological movement, but also with a more nuanced understanding of the research methods and interpretive frameworks utilized by historians, as well as other social scientists, interested in Black Power in particular and the Black freedom struggle in general. Students will also have the opportunity to further develop their research skills and techniques through a series of assignments designed to assist them in identifying research topics and questions, interpreting primary and secondary texts, and substantiating arguments with “sound” evidence.

Instructor: Phyllis Leffler and E. Dukes

4:00-6:30PM W, New Cabell 325

This special topics class will focus on the university and the surrounding community of Charlottesville with a special emphasis on issues of race. Students will explore the history of the University from its founding and construction to the late twentieth century, exploring both the documented history and the community’s perception of that history. Topics include: the early role of the enslaved in both building and maintaining the quality of life for students and faculty; U.Va.’s position and role during the Civil War; the evolution of the student body and surrounding communities in the era of Reconstruction and Jim Crow; the values of southern Progressivism; the place of eugenics at U.Va.; early efforts at racial and gender diversity and administrative responses; the acceptance of African American students and the responses of the Black Charlottesville community; employment practices during the twentieth century; issues of growth and their impact on communities; and how that history has and has not been represented on grounds and throughout the built environment.

This course will invite and encourage community members who have worked or lived in the surrounding area to help construct the forgotten or buried histories of university/community relations from their perspective. Students enrolled in the course will develop projects that actively engage members of the community, and will develop final products that serve the wider community needs for revealing and understanding this history.

U.Va. History: Race and Repair is directly connected with the University-Community Racial Reconciliation project. The course will be team taught and will be cross-listed with ARH 4500 and PLAN 4500. A maximum of 15 History students will be allowed to enroll, along with 15 from other disciplines.

Readings and Projects: Web-based readings of articles and essays for each weekly session of the class, along with projects designed by students and community members will structure the class. Students will be expected to keep a journal, write response papers, and produce a final project.

Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk

5:15-7:15PM Tu/Th, TBA

By audition first day of class, no experience expected; A practical, hands-on course focusing on the singing, drumming, and dance from West Africa (Ewe Ghana/Togo) and Central African Republic (BaAka).

Instructor: Scott Deveaux

1:00-1:50PM M/W/F, Maury Hall 209

A survey of jazz music from before 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century; important instrumental performers, composers, arrangers, and vocalists. No previous knowledge of music required.

Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk

4:00-4:50PM Tu/Th, Old Cabell Hall 107

Explores music/dance performance in Africa through reading, hands-on workshops, discussion, and audio and video examples. The course covers both 'traditional' and 'popular' styles, through discussion and a performance lab. Prerequisite: Instructor permission.

Instructor: Robert Fatton

2:00-4:30PM M, Halsey Hall 123

Studies the government and politics of sub-Saharan Africa. Includes the colonial experience and the rise of African nationalism; the transition to independence; the rise and fall of African one-party states; the role of the military in African politics; the politics of ethnicity, nation- and state-building; patromonialism and patron-client relations; development problems faced by African regimes, including relations with external actors; and the political future of Southern Africa. Prerequisite: Some background in comparative politics and/or history of Africa; not open to students who have taken PLCP 381.

Instructor: Jalane Schmidt

9:30-10:20AM Tu/Th, McLeod Hall 1004

This course will examine primarily those religions practiced in the Caribbean and Latin America which feature an African-derived pantheon, as well as significant other New World religions (Roman Catholic devotions, Protestant revivalism) which have been deemed exemplars of religious "creolization" among African-descended populations.

Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

12:00-1:45PM Tu/Th, Gibson 242

This course examines women’s religious activities, traditions and spirituality in a number of different African contexts. Drawing on ethnographic, historical, literary, and religious studies scholarship, we will explore a variety of themes and debates that have emerged in the study of gender and religion in Africa. Topics will include gendered images of sacred power; the construction of gender through ritual; sexuality and fertility; and women’s agency in indigenous religious movements, Muslim communities and Christian congregations in Africa.

Cross-listed as AAS 3000

Instructor: Valerie Cooper

3:00-6:00PM Tu, Pavillion VIII 108

This course will study the history, theology, and practices of Pentecostalism, the fastest growing Christian movement in the world, from its origins among poor whites and recently freed African Americans to its phenomenal expansion in places like South America, Asia, and Africa. We will explore Pentecostalism's theological and historical relationship to the Methodist, Holiness, Apostolic, and Charismatic movements, as well as Pentecostal belief in phenomena like speaking in tongues, healings, miracles, and prophecy. During the course of the semester, we will ask how Pentecostalism has come to encompass one in every four Christians worldwide in the space of little over a century. Finally, the course will use race, class, and gender analysis to evaluate the cultural influences and future trajectory of Pentecostalism in the US and elsewhere in the world.

Instructor: Valerie Cooper

1:00-1:50 Tu/Th, Ruffner Hall GOO4C

This course will explore African American religious traditions in their modern and historical contexts by combining an examination of current scholarship and contemporary worship. Over the course of the semester, we will explore the religious life and religious institutions of African Americans from their African antecedents to contemporary figures and movements in the US. While the course will emphasize the growth and spread of Evangelical Christianity among African Americans, it will also consider non-Christian influences-like Islam and African traditional religion-upon black churches and black communities. In considering the wide variety, popularity, economic strength, political leadership, and ubiquity of religious institutions in the African American community, we will ask what role religion plays for black people, and what role African American religious life plays in the broader scheme of American life.

Instructor: Jalane Schmidt

11:00-12:15 Tu/Th, Monroe Hall 118

A history course which examines Latin American and Caribbean religions from the 1400s through the 1830s. We will proceed topically (in rough chronological order), studying religious encounters during the pre-Columbian era, the Spanish conquest and colonial eras, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Latin American independence (1820s), and slave emancipation in the anglophone Caribbean (1830s). The class will focus primarily upon the signature religious episodes, devotions, personalities and institutions of indigenous, African, Afro-creole, and mestizo communities, since these "gente de color" constituted the majority population in the New World during this historical epoch. We will consider issues of historiography?specifically, the problem of interpreting (sometimes hostile) extant archival sources and the use of such primary material in the writing of secondary literature. Students will develop their abilities to evaluate primary sources (in translation), and to identify the interpretive choices which scholars make in the crafting of historical narratives.

Instructor: Tara Tober

9:00-9:50AM M/W, Clark 107

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.

Instructor: Paul Shlossberg

3:30-4:35PM Tu/Th, New Cabell 341

This course investigates the social construction of race through an exploration of white identity, both theoretically and empirically. It includes an investigation of the historical genesis of white identity, its intersection with political movements and organizations, the relation of whiteness to race, ethnicity, class, gender, nation, and how whiteness is understood in popular culture, and the sociological mechanisms by which it is reproduced, negotiated, and contested.

Instructor: Milton Vickerman

2:00-3:15PM M/W, New Cabell 134

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.

Instructor: Milton Vickerman

4:00-5:15PM M/W, New Cabell 216

This course examines contemporary immigration into the United States from the point of view of key theoretical debates and historical circumstances that have shaped current American attitudes toward immigration.

Instructor: David Haberly

11:00-11:50AM M/W/F, New Cabell 430

Anintroduction—in English, with all readings in English—to Brazilian literature, history, and culture; about a third of the lectures and readings focus on Afro-Brazilian history and culture.

Instructor: Lisa Shutt

7:00-9:30PM M, New Cabell 325

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.