Spring 2011

Instructor: Claudrena Harold

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

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: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

Tues/Thurs. 12:30-1:45PM, Gibson Hall 341

Combined with RELA 3000

This seminar 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.

Instructor: Amy Nichols-Belo

Mon/Weds. 2:00-3:15PM, Wilson Hall 215

Health and Healing in Africa examines the historical, social, political, and economic issues that produce poor health outcomes for many Africans. Exploring such topics as HIV/AIDS, maternal/child health, malaria, andmalevolent witchcraft, we will examine local understandings of what it means to be healthy and to be ill. Finally, we will investigate biomedical, 'traditional', and religious healing as practiced in a variety of African contexts. Course content will include ethnographic and historical texts, as well as feature films and documentaries.

Instructor:Clare Terni

Mon/Weds. 3:30-4:45PM, Brooks Hall 103

Combined with ANTH 3500

This class examines a series of African development projects (including large dams in Lesotho and Mozambique, Tanzania's Ujamaa program, and South Africa's One Million Homes initiative). We question the impact of cultural difference on development and vice versa, as well as considering whether or not "development" might be a culture unto itself. We draw on ethnography, contemporary development theory, and critiques of development approaches.

Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira

Tues/Thurs. 12:30-1:45PM, Nau Hall 141

Combined with HILA 3071

Surveys the history of Brazil from early Portuguese colonization in the sixteenth century to Brazilian Independence in 1822. It analyzes the social, political, cultural, and religious underpinnings of colonial Brazil by seeking to integrate Brazilian history into the broader Atlantic World, primarily Africa and the Spanish colonies in the America.

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

Instructor: Marlon Ross

Tues. 6:30-9:00PM, Bryan Hall 310

Combined with ENCR 4500

What does race mean in the late 20th and early 21st century? Given the various ways in which race as a biological “fact” has been discredited, why and how does race continue to have vital significance in politics, economics, education, culture, arts, mass media, and everyday social realities? How has the notion of race shaped, and been shaped by, changing relations to other experiences of identity stemming from sexuality, class, disability, multiculturalism, nationality, and globalism? Using Winston Napier’s text African American Literary Theory: A Reader, supplemented with readings from other disciplines, this course surveys major trends in black literary theory from the 1960s to the present, focusing especially on these movements: the Black Aesthetic, womanism and feminist critique, post-structuralism, Afrocentrism, cultural and postcolonial studies, psychoanalysis, Diaspora and trans-Atlantic studies, and queer theory. Although theoretical writings comprise the heart of the course, discussions will take up several literary works and other kinds of materials (film, music video, architecture, political speech) as applicable case studies. While concentrating on theories of race deriving from African American studies, we’ll also touch on some key texts from Native American, African, Asian American, and Chicano/a studies. Beyond literary theory, the class will take up readings in Birmingham cultural studies, legal theory, vernacular studies, mass media and film studies, architectural critique, and hip hop studies. The goal of the course is to give you a solid grounding in the vocabulary, key figures, concepts, debates, discursive styles, genres, and controversies that have been taken up in the broad sweep of theoretical race studies from the mid-twentieth century to the present, and to nurture your own theorizing about race and its deep cultural impact.

Instructor: K. Ian Grandison

Thurs. 6:30-9:00PM, Bryan Hall 310

Combined with AMST 4500

This course focuses on how geographic knowledge has been shaped by the negotiation of power among social groups. It delineates the notion of "racial geography" using the state of Virginia—in its past and present configurations—as a frame of reference. How have concepts of race shaped the rise of Virginia, as a crown colony and a commonwealth? Assignments include readings; map interpretation; individual and group projects; midterm & final essay.

Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira

Thurs. 3:30-6:00PM, New Cabell Hall 340

Combined with HIAF 4500-1

This reading and discussion seminar problematizes the notion of the “Black Atlantic”/Africa Diaspora/Atlantic History as a conceptual framework to analyze the forced migration of Africans throughout the Atlantic. The class will analyze the development of the concept of the Black Atlantic against the backdrop of work by African-American and Caribbean intellectuals that argued for a pan-Africanist standpoint while analyzing the history of the African diaspora. The class combines readings in theory and methodology with readings dealing with the actual experiences of cultural and social interaction between Africans and Europeans around the Atlantic. It deals with issues such as mestiçagem, the formation of creole societies in Africa, and identity. The class will also draw on examples from the Latin America – mainly Brazil – and Lusophone Africa. Readings include Herman Bennett, “The Subject in the Plot: National Boundaries and the ‘History’ of the Black Atlantic”, African Studies Review, 43 (2000); Charles Piot, “Atlantic Aporias: Africa and Gilroy’s Black Atlantic”. The South Atlantic Quarterly 100:1, Winter; Kristin Mann, “Shifting Paradigms in the Study of the African Diaspora and of Atlantic History and Culture”, Slavery and Abolition, 2001.

Instructor: Claudrena Harold

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

Combined with HIUS 4501-8

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.

It bears mentioning that this course will devote significant attention to the local dimension of Black Power by engaging student activism on UVA’s campus between 1968 and 1984. Significant attention will be given to students’ fight for a Black Studies department at UVA, their massive demonstrations against racial apartheid in South Africa, and their general struggle to make the University a more egalitarian place.

Instructor: Alisha Gaines

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

This course considers the canonical African American literary tradition and popular culture textsthat think through the boundaries of blackness and identity through the organizing trope ofpassing. We will engage texts that representpassingas a liberating performance act, a troubling crime against authenticity, an economic necessity, and/or a stunt of liberal heroics.By the end of the course we will evaluate how our thinking aboutpassinginflects our understanding of supposedly stable categories of identity including gender, class, and sexuality as well as begin to think critically about the relationships between blood and the law, love and politics, opportunity and economics, and acting and being.

Questions to be considered include:What do we make of a literary tradition that supposedly gains coherence around issues of racial belonging but begins by questioning race itself? What work does the highly gendered depictions of the “tragic mulatta” figure (a mixed-race woman undone by her periled existence between two racialized worlds) do for, and to, African American literature? What happens when the color line crosses you? Or in other words, where is agency in this discussion? 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, aren’t we all passing for something?

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

Tues/Thurs. 9:30-10:45AM, New Cabell Hall 335

Combined with ENAM 4845

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.

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: Maurie McInnis and Louis Nelson

Mon./Weds. 2:00-3:15PM, Clark Hall 108

Combined with ARTH 2753 and ARH 2753

“Arts and Cultures of the Slave South” is an undergraduate, interdisciplinary course that covers the American South to the Civil War. While the course centers on the visual arts—architecture, material culture, decorative arts, painting, and sculpture—it is not designed as a regional history of art, but an exploration of the interrelations between history, material and visual cultures, foodways, music and literature in the formation of Southern identities. The course will cover subjects ranging from African American spirituals to creolization and ethnicities in Louisiana, from the plantation architectures of both big house and outbuildings to the narratives of former slaves. In the process, students will be introduced to the interpretive methods central to a wide range of disciplines, from archaeology and anthropology, to art and architectural history, to material culture, literature, and musicology. In addition to two weekly lectures by co-faculty Maurie McInnis and Louis Nelson, students will also attend weekly discussion sections and special events including guest lectures, field trip, a movie night, and samplings of traditional southern foods.

Instructor: K. Ian Grandison

Thurs. 6:30-9:00PM, Bryan Hall 310

Combined with AAS 4500

This course focuses on how geographic knowledge has been shaped by the negotiation of power among social groups. It delineates the notion of "racial geography" using the state of Virginia—in its past and present configurations—as a frame of reference. How have concepts of race shaped the rise of Virginia, as a crown colony and a commonwealth? Assignments include readings; map interpretation; individual and group projects; midterm & final essay.

Instructor: Amy Nichols-Belo

Mon/Weds. 2:00-3:15PM, Wilson Hall 215

Combined with AAS 3500-1

Health and Healing in Africa examines the historical, social, political, and economic issues that produce poor health outcomes for many Africans. Exploring such topics as HIV/AIDS, maternal/child health, malaria, andmalevolent witchcraft, we will examine local understandings of what it means to be healthy and to be ill. Finally, we will investigate biomedical, 'traditional', and religious healing as practiced in a variety of African contexts. Course content will include ethnographic and historical texts, as well as feature films and documentaries.

Instructor: Clare Terni

Mon/Weds. 3:30-4:45PM, Brooks Hall 103

Combined with AAS 3500-2

This class examines a series of African development projects (including large dams in Lesotho and Mozambique, Tanzania's Ujamaa program, and South Africa's One Million Homes initiative). We question the impact of cultural difference on development and vice versa, as well as considering whether or not "development" might be a culture unto itself. We draw on ethnography, contemporary development theory, and critiques of development approaches.

Instructor: Maurie McInnis and Louis Nelson

Mon./Weds. 2:00-3:15PM, Clark Hall 108

Combined with AMST 2753 and ARH 2753

“Arts and Cultures of the Slave South” is an undergraduate, interdisciplinary course that covers the American South to the Civil War. While the course centers on the visual arts—architecture, material culture, decorative arts, painting, and sculpture—it is not designed as a regional history of art, but an exploration of the interrelations between history, material and visual cultures, foodways, music and literature in the formation of Southern identities. The course will cover subjects ranging from African American spirituals to creolization and ethnicities in Louisiana, from the plantation architectures of both big house and outbuildings to the narratives of former slaves. In the process, students will be introduced to the interpretive methods central to a wide range of disciplines, from archaeology and anthropology, to art and architectural history, to material culture, literature, and musicology. In addition to two weekly lectures by co-faculty Maurie McInnis and Louis Nelson, students will also attend weekly discussion sections and special events including guest lectures, field trip, a movie night, and samplings of traditional southern foods.

Instructor: Maurie McInnis and Louis Nelson

Mon./Weds. 2:00-3:15PM, Clark Hall 108

Combined with AMST 2753 and ARH 2753

“Arts and Cultures of the Slave South” is an undergraduate, interdisciplinary course that covers the American South to the Civil War. While the course centers on the visual arts—architecture, material culture, decorative arts, painting, and sculpture—it is not designed as a regional history of art, but an exploration of the interrelations between history, material and visual cultures, foodways, music and literature in the formation of Southern identities. The course will cover subjects ranging from African American spirituals to creolization and ethnicities in Louisiana, from the plantation architectures of both big house and outbuildings to the narratives of former slaves. In the process, students will be introduced to the interpretive methods central to a wide range of disciplines, from archaeology and anthropology, to art and architectural history, to material culture, literature, and musicology. In addition to two weekly lectures by co-faculty Maurie McInnis and Louis Nelson, students will also attend weekly discussion sections and special events including guest lectures, field trip, a movie night, and samplings of traditional southern foods.

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.

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

Tues./Thurs. 12:30-1:45PM, New Cabell Hall 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

Tues./Thurs. 9:30-10:45AM, New Cabell Hall 335

Combined with AAS 4845

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.

Instructor: Marlon Ross

Tues. 6:30-9:00PM, Bryan Hall 310

Combined with AAS 4500

What does race mean in the late 20th and early 21st century? Given the various ways in which race as a biological “fact” has been discredited, why and how does race continue to have vital significance in politics, economics, education, culture, arts, mass media, and everyday social realities? How has the notion of race shaped, and been shaped by, changing relations to other experiences of identity stemming from sexuality, class, disability, multiculturalism, nationality, and globalism? Using Winston Napier’s text African American Literary Theory: A Reader, supplemented with readings from other disciplines, this course surveys major trends in black literary theory from the 1960s to the present, focusing especially on these movements: the Black Aesthetic, womanism and feminist critique, post-structuralism, Afrocentrism, cultural and postcolonial studies, psychoanalysis, Diaspora and trans-Atlantic studies, and queer theory. Although theoretical writings comprise the heart of the course, discussions will take up several literary works and other kinds of materials (film, music video, architecture, political speech) as applicable case studies. While concentrating on theories of race deriving from African American studies, we’ll also touch on some key texts from Native American, African, Asian American, and Chicano/a studies. Beyond literary theory, the class will take up readings in Birmingham cultural studies, legal theory, vernacular studies, mass media and film studies, architectural critique, and hip hop studies. The goal of the course is to give you a solid grounding in the vocabulary, key figures, concepts, debates, discursive styles, genres, and controversies that have been taken up in the broad sweep of theoretical race studies from the mid-twentieth century to the present, and to nurture your own theorizing about race and its deep cultural impact.

Instructor: Kandioura Drame

Tues./Thurs. 3:30-4:45PM, Monroe Hall 110

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: Kandioura Drame

Tues./Thurs. 11:00-12:15PM, Monroe Hall 110

Prerequisite: French 3320

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

Instructor: John Mason

Tues./Thurs. 9:30-10:45AM, Claude Moore Nursing Edu. G010

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 to 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: Joseph C. Miller

Tues/Thurs, 9:30-10:45AM, Ruffner Hall G004B

HIAF 3091 explores “world history” from the perspective of Africa, for advanced undergraduates.

The Department of History at the University of Virginia offers courses placing Africa in broader “Atlantic” frameworks, mostly in the modern era but does 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 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 as well a 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 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” that turn out, upon examination, to celebrate unsustainably high levels of militarization. Additionally, historicizing Africa presents a rich opportunity to consider what, among the many ways of contemplating the past, makes history historical. 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.

HIAF 3091 provides the narrative framework of Africa’s past through reading a current text (Gilbert and Reyolds, Africa in World History) but develops significantly different interpretive emphases; the contrast will reveal 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 also 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

Thurs. 3:30-6:00PM, New Cabell 340

Combined with AAS 4501

This reading and discussion seminar problematizes the notion of the “Black Atlantic”/Africa Diaspora/Atlantic History as a conceptual framework to analyze the forced migration of Africans throughout the Atlantic. The class will analyze the development of the concept of the Black Atlantic against the backdrop of work by African-American and Caribbean intellectuals that argued for a pan-Africanist standpoint while analyzing the history of the African diaspora. The class combines readings in theory and methodology with readings dealing with the actual experiences of cultural and social interaction between Africans and Europeans around the Atlantic. It deals with issues such as mestiçagem, the formation of creole societies in Africa, and identity. The class will also draw on examples from the Latin America – mainly Brazil – and Lusophone Africa. Readings include Herman Bennett, “The Subject in the Plot: National Boundaries and the ‘History’ of the Black Atlantic”, African Studies Review, 43 (2000); Charles Piot, “Atlantic Aporias: Africa and Gilroy’s Black Atlantic”. The South Atlantic Quarterly 100:1, Winter; Kristin Mann, “Shifting Paradigms in the Study of the African Diaspora and of Atlantic History and Culture”, Slavery and Abolition, 2001.

Instructor: Julian Bond

Tues. 3:30-5:30PM, New Cabell Hall 138

This course will examine the origins, philosophies, tactics, events, personalities and consequences of the southern civil rights movement from 1900 to the mid-‘1960s. The movement, largely composed of grass-roots unknowns, was based on a culture of resistance instilled by racially restrictive laws and customs institutionalized by the resistant white South following the demise of Reconstruction. By employing a variety of tactics, at the end of the ‘60s decade, it had won impressive victories against state-sanctioned discrimination. Readings, lectures and videos will be the basis for the final examination. 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%).

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.

Instructor: Scott DeVeaux

Tues./Thurs. 11:00-12:15PM, 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

Tues./Thurs 4:00-4:50, Seminar in Old Cabell Hall107 or School Visit

This course explores performance in Africa through reading, discussion, audio and video examples, hands-on practice, and -- new this semester -- teaching and performing with local school children. The course meets together with MUSI 3690 (African Drumming and Dance Ensemble), but is a full academic course. Students in Music 3090 are automatically part of the UVA African Music and Dance Ensemble. Your role in the Ensemble as learner and performer is crucial to your overall work in the course. This semester, the Community Engagement initiative will involve students participating once a week in an after-school club, teaching and mentoring children from two area schools.

We will explore African music/dance styles – focusing on Ewe music from Ghana and Togo and BaAka music from the Central African Republic, but branching to other forms and genres-- their sociomusical circumstances and processes, as well as performed resistances and responses to the colonial and post/neo-colonial encounter. In addition, we will address the politics and processes involved in translating performance practices from one cultural context to another. Each students’ personal relationship to the material/experience will be integrated into study. Readings, discussions, and written work will focus heavily on topics and issues related to the main music/dance traditions that we are learning to perform this semester, though we may venture beyond those areas from time to time. The course will explore both "traditional" and "popular" styles, leading us to question those categories.

There is an informal audition for this course. No experience is expected, just come to the first evening class meeting (5:15) ready to sing and dance (in groups).

Instructor: Robert Fatton

Mon. 3:30-6:00PM, Pavilion VIII 108

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: Lawrie Balfour

Tues./Thurs. 11:00-12:15PM, Gibson Hall 342

This course aims to introduce you to both the critical and the constructive dimensions of African American political thought. Through our readings and discussions, we will assess the claims that black Americans have made upon the polity, how they have defined themselves, and how they have sought to redefine the basic terms of American public life. Among the themes that we will explore are the relationship between slavery and democracy, the role of historical memory in political life, the political significance of culture, the connections between “race” and “nation,” and the tensions between claims for black autonomy and claims for integration, as well as the meaning of such core political concepts as citizenship, freedom, equality, progress, and justice. As we focus our attention on these issues, we will be mindful of the complex ways in which the concept of race has been constructed and deployed and its interrelationship with other elements of identity such as gender, sexuality, class, and religion. Authors include Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Marlon Riggs, Cathy Cohen, and Toni Morrison.

Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

Tues/Thurs. 12:30-1:45PM, Gibson Hall 242

Combined with AAS 3000

This seminar 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.

Instructor: Valerie Cooper

Thurs. 3:30-6:00PM, New Cabell Hall 242

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

Tues./Thurs. 12:30-1:45PM, Chemistry Bldg. 303

This course will explore themes of religion, race, and relationship to the religious or racial "other" in films from the silent era to the present. It will consider film as a medium and engage students in analysis and discussion of cinematic images, with the goal of developing hermeneutic lenses through which these images can be interpreted. The films selected all deal with issues of race, religion, gender, and relationship, and ask the ultimate question, "How should we treat one another?"

Instructor: Valerie Cooper

Mon./Weds. 1:00-1:50PM, Gibson Hall 211

Why are churches still segregated when every other American institution has made relatively successful efforts at integration? RELG 2800, “African American Religious History” will explain the history of the color line that still separates US churches. This course explores African American religious traditions by combining an examination of current scholarship and contemporary worship. 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 religions 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, what role does religion play for black people? Why, after hundreds of years, is 11 am on Sunday morning still the most segregated hour of the week in the US?

Instructor: Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl

Tues./Thurs. 11:00-12:15PM, Minor Hall 125

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: Milton Vickerman

Mon./Weds. 2:00-3:15PM, New Cabell Hall 122

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.