Fall 2009
African-American and African Studies Program
AAS 1010 - Introduction to African-American and African Studies (4)
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
12:30-1:45PM Tu/Th, Minor Hall 125
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.
Required Discussion Section
AAS 2700 - Festivals of the Americas (3)
Instructor: Jalane Schmidt
9:30-10:45AM Tu/Th, McLeod Hall 1004
By reading case studies of various religious festivals in locations throughout the Caribbean and South, Central and North America, as well as theoretical literature drawn from social anthropology and religious studies, students will become familiar with significant features of contemporary religious life in the Americas, as well as with scholarly accounts of religious and cultural change. Students will become more critical readers of ethnographic and historical sources, as well as theories from the Study of Religion (Jonathan Z. Smith, Ronald Grimes, Lawrence Sullivan), and will increase their ability to theorize about ritual, festivity, sacred time, ritual space and ethnicity
Required Discussion Section
Cross-listed as RELG 2700
AAS 3157 - Caribbean Perspectives (3)
Instructor: Yarimar Bonilla
3:30-6:00PM W, Monroe Hall 116
Breaking with popular constructions of the region as a timeless tropical paradise, this course will re-define the Caribbean as the birthplace of modern forms of capitalism, globalization, and trans-nationalism. We will survey the founding moments of Caribbean history, including the imposition of slavery, the rise of plantation economies, and the development of global networks of goods and peoples. We will then examine the various forms of colonial and imperial power that have operated in the region during the latter part of the twentieth century and the lasting legacies of inequality and hierarchy that persist in contemporary Caribbean societies. Lastly, we will revisit the idea of the Caribbean as a tourist heaven and question popular images of the region as a site of tropical fantasy.
Cross-listed as ANTH 3157
AAS 3200 - Martin, Malcolm, and America (3)
Instructor: Mark Hadley
12:00-12:50PM M/W/F, New Cabell Hall 215
An intensive examination of African-American social criticism centered upon, but not limited to, the life and thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. We will come to grips with the American legacy of racial hatred and oppression systematized in the institutions of antebellum chattel slavery and post-bellum racial segregation and analyze the array of critical responses to, and social struggles against, this legacy. We will pay particular attention to the religious dimensions of these various types of social criticism.
Cross-listed as RELG 3200
AAS 3500 - Kinfolks, Families, and Relating in the African Diaspora
Instructor: Todne Thomas
2:00-3:15PM Tu/Th, New Cabell Hall 234
This class is designed to trace the changing contours of New World African family affiliations across time and space. In doing so, we will undertake some of the difficult questions surrounding Black family lives and histories. How are the self-definition and social production of Black family ties impacted by economic and political forces as well as academic depictions of Black family realities? What oral, scientific, and religious technologies are used by the members of the Black Atlantic to (re)produce family genealogies? What are the impacts of unearthing “roots” and diasporic connections on African American, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Latino identity formation? Course materials include ethnographies and personal narratives representing various dimensions of Black family experiences. Documentaries and other visual media will also be assigned and used for course instruction.
AAS 3500 - Race, Law, and War
Instructor: Herbert "Tim" Lovelace
3:30-4:45PM Tu/Th, New Cabell Hall 324
AAS 4070 - Directed Reading and Research (3)
Similar in format to AAS 401, but meant to be equivalent to twice as much work (6 credits), and taken over a full year. Students in the DMP enroll under these numbers for thesis writing.
AAS 4500 - Advanced Studies in Literary Criticism: Race, Space and Culture (3)
Instructor: Marlon Ross, Ian Grandison
7:00-9:30PM Tu, Bryan Hall 332
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., National Geographic documentary, Indian reservations, burial grounds, suburban homes, gay bars, national monuments); and through local site visits (Monticello, Vinegar Hill). Requirements include a midterm and final exam, one site visit response paper, and a major team research project and presentation.
Cross-listed as ENCR 4500
AAS 4500 - Fictions of Black Identity (3)
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
11:00-12:15PM Tu/Th, Bryan Hall 332
This advanced undergraduate seminar will explore the dual meaning of its title “Fictions of Black Identity.” The first implication suggests the literary inventions (novels, essays, critical works) that address the meanings of blackness in an American context. The second meaning is heavily invested in the first: that Black identity is a fiction, not necessarily in the sense of falsity, but in its highly mediated, flexible, and variable condition. Questions to consider include: how does one make and measure Black identity? Can one be phenotypically White and still be Black? What is the value of racial masquerade? What does it mean to be legitimately Black? Readings include, but are not limited to, Percival Everett’s Erasure, Rebecca Walker’s Black, White, and Jewish, Paul Beatty’s White Boy Shuffle, and a range of critical essays. Mandatory assignments include critical essays, leading class discussion, midterm and final exams. This class is restricted to online waitlist and/or instructor permission. It is designed for students majoring in English, African American Studies, and/or American Studies.
Cross-listed as ENAM 4500
AAS 4570 - Advanced Research Seminar in African-American and African Studies: Ethnicity and Gender in Africa
Instructor: John Willis
3:30-6:00 Tu, New Cabell Hall 118
Reading, class discussion, and research on a special topic in African-American and African Studies culminatiing in the composition of a research paper. Topics change from term to term, and vary with the instructor. Primarily for fourth-year students but open to others.
AAS 4993 - Independent Study (1-3)
Allows students to work on an individual research project. Students must propose a topic to an appropriate faculty member, submit a written proposal for approval, prepare an extensive annotated bibliography on relevant readings comparable to the reading list of a regular upper-level course, and complete a research paper of at least 20 pages.
AAS 5528 - Topics in Race Theory: Race in the 2008 Election(3)
Instructor: Wende Marshall
6:30-9:00PM M, Brooks Hall 103A
This course examines theories and practices of race and otherness, in order to analyze and interpret constructions, deconstructions and reconstructions of race from the late 18th to the 21st centuries. The focus varies from year to year, and may include race, progress and the West, gender, race and power,and whitesupremacy.'The consistent theme is that race is neither a biological nor a cultural category, but a method and theory of social organization, an alibi for inequality, and a strategy for resistance. Cross listed as AAS 528. Prerequisite: ANTH 101, 301, or other introductory or middle-level social science or humanities course
Cross-listed as ANTH 5528
AAS 5891 - South Atlantic History (3)
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
3:30-6:00PM Th, New Cabell Hall 122
Surveys the history of African and Africa-descendent peoples throughout the Atlantic by combining lectures, discussion sections and movies. It moves away from the prevailing North America-centric paradigm in studies of the African Diaspora to explore the forced migration of Africans in regions such as Angola, Brazil, Gold Coast, Kongo, Caribbean, and Cuba. The first section lays out the groundwork to understand the development of the African Diaspora by focusing on Africa before and after its interactions with Europeans. The second section centers on Latin America and the Caribbean, where almost eighty percent of Africans forced to leave Africa wound up as slaves. The last section deals with North America, tracing the process of establishment of enslaved labor force in the seventeenth century and exploring nineteenth and twentieth centuries Diasporic connections between the United States, Haiti, and Liberia. The class devotes significant attention to issues such as community formation in Africa, religion in Africa and the Diaspora, slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, back-to-Africa movement by Afro-Brazilians and African-Americans, origins of pan-Africanist movement, and resistance to slave labor in Africa and in the Americas.
Cross-listed as HIST 5891
American Studies Program
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 2156 - Peoples and Cultures of Africa
Instructor: Jason Hickel
10:00-10:50AM, M/W/F, Rouss Hall 410
ANTH 3157 - Caribbean Perspectives (3)
Instructor: Yarimar Bonilla
3:30-6:00PM W, Monroe Hall 116
Breaking with popular constructions of the region as a timeless tropical paradise, this course will re-define the Caribbean as the birthplace of modern forms of capitalism, globalization, and trans-nationalism. We will survey the founding moments of Caribbean history, including the imposition of slavery, the rise of plantation economies, and the development of global networks of goods and peoples. We will then examine the various forms of colonial and imperial power that have operated in the region during the latter part of the twentieth century and the lasting legacies of inequality and hierarchy that persist in contemporary Caribbean societies. Lastly, we will revisit the idea of the Caribbean as a tourist heaven and question popular images of the region as a site of tropical fantasy.
Cross-listed as AAS 3157
ANTH 3880 - African Archeology (3)
Instructor: Adria LaViolette
11:00-11:50AM M/W/F, New Cabell Hall 138
This course surveys the archaeological knowledge currently available about the African continent, with particular emphasis on the Late Stone Age, when fully modern humans dominate the cultural landscape, and periods thereafter through the archaeology of the colonial period. The material includes the great social, economic, and cultural transformations in African history known primarily through archaeology, and the most important archaeological sites and discoveries on the continent. Throughout the course a theme will be the politics of the past, and the changing role of the practice of archaeology in Africa.
ANTH 5528 - Topics in Race Theory: Race in the 2008 Election (3)
Instructor: Wende Marshall
6:30-9:00PM M, Brooks Hall 103A
This course examines theories and practices of race and otherness, in order to analyze and interpret constructions, deconstructions and reconstructions of race from the late 18th to the 21st centuries. The focus varies from year to year, and may include race, progress and the West, gender, race and power,and whitesupremacy.'The consistent theme is that race is neither a biological nor a cultural category, but a method and theory of social organization, an alibi for inequality, and a strategy for resistance. Cross listed as AAS 528. Prerequisite: ANTH 101, 301, or other introductory or middle-level social science or humanities course.
Cross-listed as AAS 5528
Department of Art History
Department of Drama
DRAM 3070 - African American Theatre (3)
Instructor: Theresa Davis
2:00-3:15PM Tu/Th, Drama Ed. Bldg. 217
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 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.
Department of English
ENAM 3130 - African-American Survey I (3)
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
2:00-3:15PM Tu/Th, Maury Hall 110
This course surveys pivotal moments and texts in the history of African-American letters, from Briton Hammon's Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings (1860) to W. E. B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903)Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition (1901). Working our way through a variety of genres (elegy, drama, the captivity narrative, the slave narrative, the essay, public oratory, speeches, and novels), we will explore a number of matters pertinent to literary studies in general, as well as those with specific implications for African-American writing and writers. We will consider the circumstances of textual production and reception, ideas and ideologies of literary history and culture, aesthetics, authorship and audience. We will focus our attention immediately on the emergence of African-American writing under the regime of slavery and the questions it poses about "race," "authorship," "subjectivity," "self-mastery," and "freedom." We will consider the material and social conditions under which our selected texts were edited, published, marketed, and "authenticated," lingering especially on the role white abolitionists and editors played in the production and mediation of these texts for various reading publics. Our ultimate aim is to situate our selections within the broadest possible contexts of their time and ours. Other required texts include Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Frances Harper's Iola Leroy, William Wells Brown's Clotelle, Harriet Wilson's Our Nig and Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition.
ENAM 3510 - Reading the Black College Campus
Instructor: Ian Grandison
12:30-1:45PM Tu/Th, Cabell 132
ENAM 3559 - Cross-Cultures of Modern Harlem
Instructor: Sandhya Shukla
9:30-10:45 Tu/Th, New Cabell Hall 338
This course explores the cultural production, intellectual history and political movements that construct the globality of Harlem. Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, we cover the development of various ethnic and racial neighborhoods arrayed across regions of the area—Black Harlem, Jewish Harlem, Italian Harlem and Spanish Harlem—and the conflicts and intimacies inherent in their transformations over time. We inquire into the representation and life of Harlem through the lens of the navigation and contestation of difference. Considering migrancy, diaspora, nationalism, race and ethnicity, and class formation in comparative perspective brings the global into the local and effectively reimagines how “minoritized space” is made both materially and symbolically. Materials to be discussed include works by Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, James Weldon Johnson, Piri Thomas, Yuri Kochiyama, Leroi Jones, Irving Horowitz, Gordon Parks Jr., Joe Cuba, Jacob Lawrence, and others.
ENAM 4500 - Fictions of Black Identity (3)
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
11:00-12:15PM Tu/Th, Bryan Hall 332
This advanced undergraduate seminar will explore the dual meaning of its title “Fictions of Black Identity.” The first implication suggests the literary inventions (novels, essays, critical works) that address the meanings of blackness in an American context. The second meaning is heavily invested in the first: that Black identity is a fiction, not necessarily in the sense of falsity, but in its highly mediated, flexible, and variable condition. Questions to consider include: how does one make and measure Black identity? Can one be phenotypically White and still be Black? What is the value of racial masquerade? What does it mean to be legitimately Black? Readings include, but are not limited to, Percival Everett’s Erasure, Rebecca Walker’s Black, White, and Jewish, Paul Beatty’s White Boy Shuffle, and a range of critical essays. Mandatory assignments include critical essays, leading class discussion, midterm and final exams. This class is restricted to online waitlist and/or instructor permission. It is designed for students majoring in English, African American Studies, and/or American Studies.
Cross-listed as AAS 4500
ENAM 4814 - African-American Women Writers (3)
Instructor: Angela Davis
9:30-10:45AM Tu/Th, Pavilion VIII 103
We will read several novels and short stories by African American women, examining in particular how the authors portray black women as individuals and in the context of American society. This course requires active class participation, two written responses to readings (each 2 to 3 double spaced typed pages long) and a formal essay (12 to 15 pages long). The reading list is: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls; Toni Morrison, Sula, and Tar Baby; Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble; Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones; Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place.
Prerequisite: The course is first offered to fourth year majors in English, Women's Studies and Afro-American and African Studies.
ENCR 4500 - Advanced Studies in Literary Criticism: Race, Space and Culture (3)
Instructor: Marlon Ross, Ian Grandison
7:00-9:30PM Tu, Bryan Hall 332
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., National Geographic documentary, Indian reservations, burial grounds, suburban homes, gay bars, national monuments); and through local site visits (Monticello, Vinegar Hill). Requirements include a midterm and final exam, one site visit response paper, and a major team research project and presentation.
Cross-listed as AAS 4500
ENLT 2547 - Black Writers in America, section 0002: Black Women Writers (3)
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
9:30-10:45AM Tu/Th, Cabell Hall B029
This seminar uses Black women’s writings from mid-century to the present to introduce new English majors to important concepts in literary analysis. To better understand genre, themes, and assorted literary conventions, we will focus closely on a range of literary styles. We will also consider patterns of representation established in the 1950s and watch how they develop, disintegrate, or evolve into the present day. Do certain issues or themes remain important in Black women’s writing of the last fifty years? How has the literature adapted in response to specific cultural or historical moments.
Restricted to 1st and 2nd Year Students
ENLT 2547 - Black Writers in America, section 0003: Black Women Writers (3)
Instructor: Camilla Amirati
2:00-3:15PM M/W, Cabell Hall 424
Restricted to 1st and 2nd Year Students
ENMC 4500 - African-American Drama
Instructor: Lotta Lofgren
9:30-10:45AM T/Th, Bryan 330
A survey of African-American drama from the 1950's to the present. Along the way, we will place the drama in relation to established norms, investigating the motives and methods of the playwrights for carving out new ground. We will examine the shared and divergent concerns of male and female playwrights, their sense of audience, the dilema of writing as an idividual and as a member of a group silenced too long, their relationship to the past, the present, and the future. We will also examine the changing definitions of the black aesthetic. We will read works by James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Adrienne Kennedy, Amiri Baraka, Ntozake Shange, Augsut Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, and others.
Department of French Language & Literature
FREN 4743 - Africa in Cinema (3)
Instructor: Kandioura Drame
11:00-12:15PM Tu/Th, New Cabell Hall 242
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: French 332 and French 344 or another 300-level course in French
Department of History
HIAF 2001 - Early African History (4)
Instructor: Joseph Miller
9:30-10:45AM Tu/Th, Claude Moore Nursing Edu. G120
Studies the history of African civilizations from the iron age through the era of the slave trade, ca. 1800. Emphasizes the search for the themes of social, political, economic, and intellectual history which present African civilizations on their own terms.
Required Discussion Section
HIAF 3021 - History of Southern Africa (4)
Instructor: John Mason
12:30-1:45PM Tu/Th, Claude Moore Nursing Edu. G120
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.
HIAF 4511 - Colloquium in African History: Race & Culture in S. Africa & the US (4)
Instructor: John Mason
3:30-4:45PM Tu/Th, New Cabell Hall 319
The major colloquium is a small class (not more than 15 students) intended primarily but not exclusively for history majors who have completed two or more courses relevant to the topic of the colloquium. Colloquia are most frequently offered in areas of history where access to source materials or linguistic demands make seminars especially difficult. Students in colloquia prepare about 25 pages of written work distributed among various assignments. Some restrictions and prerequisites apply to enrollment. See a history advisor or the director of undergraduate studies.
HIAF 4993 - Independent Study in African History (1-3)
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member, any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Open to majors or non-majors
HILA 3111 - Public Life in Modern Latin America (3)
Instructor: Herbert Braun
8:00-9:15AM Tu/Th, New Cabell Hall 430
How do Latin Americans navigate their ways, collectively and also individually, through their hierarchical social orders? Why is there so often so much stability and order to their societies? Surveys inform us that Latin Americans are among the happiest people in the world? Why might this be? Why do so many Latin Americans across time appear to be so proud of their nations? Why do they look at one another so often? Why is there so little hatred in Latin America? Why do poor people in Latin America seem to know more about rich people than rich people know about them? Why do traditions matter so? Why are there so many good novelists there? These and other questions, answerable and not, about life and the human condition in Latin America are what will be about in this course.
HIST 5891 - South Atlantic History (3)
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
3:30-6:00PM Th, New Cabell Hall 122
Surveys the history of African and Africa-descendent peoples throughout the Atlantic by combining lectures, discussion sections and movies. It moves away from the prevailing North America-centric paradigm in studies of the African Diaspora to explore the forced migration of Africans in regions such as Angola, Brazil, Gold Coast, Kongo, Caribbean, and Cuba. The first section lays out the groundwork to understand the development of the African Diaspora by focusing on Africa before and after its interactions with Europeans. The second section centers on Latin America and the Caribbean, where almost eighty percent of Africans forced to leave Africa wound up as slaves. The last section deals with North America, tracing the process of establishment of enslaved labor force in the seventeenth century and exploring nineteenth and twentieth centuries Diasporic connections between the United States, Haiti, and Liberia. The class devotes significant attention to issues such as community formation in Africa, religion in Africa and the Diaspora, slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, back-to-Africa movement by Afro-Brazilians and African-Americans, origins of pan-Africanist movement, and resistance to slave labor in Africa and in the Americas.
Cross-listed as AAS 5891
HIUS 3651 - Afro-American History to 1865 (3)
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
2:00-2:50PM M/W, Claude Moore Nursing Edu. G120
This course surveys the major political, cultural, social, and intellectual developments taking place in African American history from the beginning of the Atlantic Slave Trade to the end of the American Civil War. Specific attention will be given to the formation and evolution of slave communities in the American South, the complex ways whites and blacks grappled with the “slavery question”, and the northern roots of Jim Crow America. Through an analysis of slave narratives and political tracts, students will also become familiar with various thinkers in the African American intellectual tradition.
Required Discussion Section
HIUS 3671 - History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)
Instructor: Julian Bond
3:30-5:30PM Tu, Wilson Hall 301
This lecture course examines the history, philosophies, tactics, events and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward.
The Southern movement - variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement - was a black-led, interracial mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation by the mid-60s.
Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping and occasionally complimentary phases - lobbying, litigation and protest.
In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights.
In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation and the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools.
The last phase, lasting a decade from '54 through '65, was a decade of protests - boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations - as well as grass-roots organizing campaigns that laid the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s.
Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength and followers from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation. The movement's well-known and lesser-known proponents and their strategies will be examined.
Required Discussion Section
HIUS 4591: Virtual Vinegar Hill II: Visualizing an African American Memoryscape (3)
Instructor: Scot French and Bill Ferster
3:30-6:00PM W, New Cabell Hall 242
In the 1960s, Charlottesville's Vinegar Hill neighborhood -- a center of African American business activity and community life for nearly a century
-- was declared "blighted" by local authorities and demolished under the federally funded Urban Renewal program. Project boosters hailed the redevelopment project, coupled with the opening of a modern public housing complex several blocks away, as a much-needed upgrade to the downtown area.
Yet, for Charlottesville's African American citizens, the project produced a profound sense of rupture and loss that lingers to this day. Vinegar Hill, as a "site of memory," has come to symbolize the demise of African American-owned businesses; the disintegration of African American community life; and the erasure of African American history from Charlottesville's commemorative landscape.
Building on the collaborative efforts of University students, faculty, and participating community groups, this class will explore the possibilities for visualizing the Vinegar Hill "memoryscape" through a state-of-the-art interactive website. Students will work with photographs, fire insurance maps, newspapers, city directories, census returns, oral histories, and a variety of public records related to the urban renewal/public housing project. What might the thoughtful application of digital technologies to these historical texts and statistical data reveal? What questions might we ask that would shed new light on this neighborhood and the social forces that led to its demise? Prior experience with humanities computing is not required.
Prospective readings include selected chapters from: James Saunders and Renae Shackelford, Urban Renewal and the End of Black Culture in Charlottesville, Virginia: An Oral History of Vinegar Hill; W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory; David J. Staley, Computers, Visualization, and History: How New Technology Will Transform Our Understanding of the Past, and Benjamin J. Fry, Computational Information Design.
Grading will be based on weekly reading responses/class participation (30 percent); a 7-10-page research report and/or documentary video script based on primary and secondary sources (35 percent); and the development and presentation of a web-based "visualization" in consultation with fellow students and the instructors (35 percent).
Media Studies
MDST 3559 - Race & the Media (1- 4)
Instructor: Staff
1:00-1:50PM M/W/F, Clark Hall 102
Department of Music
MUEN 3690 - African Drumming and Dance Ensemble (2)
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
5:15-7:15PM Tu/Th, Old Cabell Hall 107
A practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (BaAka pygmies), with the intention of performing during and at the end of the semester. Though no previous experience with music or dance is required, we give special attention to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and a polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, and faithful attendance are required of each class member. The course is repeatable for credit, providing experienced students the opportunity to develop within an ongoing U.Va. African Music and Dance Ensemble. Admission is by informal audition during the first class meeting.
Department of Politics
PLAP 3500 - Special Topics in American Politics: Race and Gender in US Politics (3)
Instructor: Lynn Sanders
1:00-1:50PM M/W, Gilmer Hall 190
PLAP 4810 - Class, Race, and the Environment (3)
Instructor: Vivian Thompson
1:00-3:30PM Tu, Brown Reading Room
PLCP 2120 - Politics of Developing Areas(3)
Instructor: Robert Fatton/ David Waldner
9:00-9:50AM M/W, Wilson Hall 402
Surveys patterns of government and politics in non-Western political systems. Topics include political elites, sources of political power, national integration, economic development, and foreign penetration.
PLCP 5840 - Gender Politics in Africa (3)
Instructor: Denise Walsh
2:00-3:15PM Tu/Th, Minor Hall 130
This course begins with the highly contested concepts of gender and feminism in Africa. We then turn to war and militarism, the basis of modern, gendered African nations and states. With the rise of African women’s movements, democratization and the spread of a human rights culture, African women won a greater role in politics, the third theme of the course. Their success increased hopes that the state would attack sexism. Those hopes have yet to be fulfilled as our investigation of some of the region’s most pressing problems, such as HIV/AIDS and limited economic development indicate.
Cross-listed as SWAG 5840
PLPT 3200 - African American Political Thought (3)
Instructor: Katherine (Lawrie) Balfour
11:00-12:15 Tu/Th, New Cabell Hall 424
This course examines 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.
Department of Psychology
PSYC 4870 - The Minority Family: A Psychological Inquiry
Instructor: Melvin Wilson
9:00-11:30AM Tu, Gilmer Hall B001
Examines the current state of research on minority families, focusing on the black family. Emphasizes comparing "deficit" and "strength" research pardigms.
Prerequisite: PSYC 306 and at least on course from each of the following groups: PSYC 210, 215, or 230, and PSYC 240, 250 or 260, and students in the African-American and African studies or studies in women and gender programs.
Enrollment Restrictions: 4th-year Psychology majors/minor
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 2750 - Introduction to African Religions(3)
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
1:00-1:50PM M/W, Gilmer Hall 141
An introductory survey of African religions. The course concentrates on African indigenous religions, but Islam and Christianity are also discussed. Topics include African mythologies and cosmologies, as well as rituals, artistic traditions and spiritualities. We consider the colonial impact on African religious cultures and the dynamics of ongoing religious change in the sub-Sahara.
Required Discussion Section
RELA 3351 - African Diaspora Religions (3)
Instructor: Jalane Schmidt
2:00-3:15PM Tu/Th, New Cabell Hall B020
The seminar will examine the changes in ethnographic accounts of African diaspora religions, with particular attention given to how different research paradigms illuminate these Caribbean and Latin American religions and the questions of religion, race, nation, and modernity. Practitioners of these religions are conventionally regarded as atavistically maintaining a “traditional” world-view. But this class will evaluate how devotees of African diaspora religions are continually innovating their religious practices as they navigate modernity. While learning about the specificities of African diaspora religions, students will also study theoretical changes in the field of cultural anthropology vis-à-vis the investigation of African-descended communities, material religion, ritual performance, and the effects of national politics and transnational migration patterns upon religious practice.
Written requirements include a 20-page seminar paper which meets the Second Writing Requirement.
RELG 2700 - Festivals of the Americas (3)
Instructor: Jalane Schmidt
9:30-10:45AM Tu/Th, McLeod Hall 1004
By reading case studies of various religious festivals in locations throughout the Caribbean and South, Central and North America, as well as theoretical literature drawn from social anthropology and religious studies, students will become familiar with significant features of contemporary religious life in the Americas, as well as with scholarly accounts of religious and cultural change. Students will become more critical readers of ethnographic and historical sources, as well as theories from the Study of Religion (Jonathan Z. Smith, Ronald Grimes, Lawrence Sullivan), and will increase their ability to theorize about ritual, festivity, sacred time, ritual space and ethnicity
Required Discussion Section
Cross-listed as AAS 2700
RELG 3200 - Martin, Malcolm, and America (3)
Instructor: Mark Hadley
12:00-12:50PM M/W/F, New Cabell Hall 215
An intensive examination of African-American social criticism centered upon, but not limited to, the life and thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. We will come to grips with the American legacy of racial hatred and oppression systematized in the institutions of antebellum chattel slavery and post-bellum racial segregation and analyze the array of critical responses to, and social struggles against, this legacy. We will pay particular attention to the religious dimensions of these various types of social criticism
Cross-listed as AAS 3200
RELG 3351 - African Diaspora Religions
Instructor: Jalane Schmidt
The seminar will examine the changes in ethnographic accounts of African diaspora religions, with particular attention given to how different research paradigms illuminate these Caribbean and Latin American religions and the questions of religion, race, nation, and modernity. Practitioners of these religions are conventionally regarded as atavistically maintaining a “traditional” world-view. But this class will evaluate how devotees of African diaspora religions are continually innovating their religious practices as they navigate modernity. While learning about the specificities of African diaspora religions, students will also study theoretical changes in the field of cultural anthropology vis-à-vis the investigation of African-descended communities, material religion, ritual performance, and the effects of national politics and transnational migration patterns upon religious practice.
Written requirements include a 20-page seminar paper which meets the 2^nd Writing Requirement.
Department of Sociology
SOC 3410 - Race and Ethnic Relations (3)
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
2:00-3:15 M/W, New Cabell Hall 316
Introduces the study of race and ethnic relations, including the social and economic conditions promoting prejudice, racism, discrimination, and segregation. Examines contemporary American conditions, and historical and international materials.
SOC 4420 - Sociology of Inequality (3)
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
4:00-5:15 M/W, New Cabell Hall 123
A survey of basic theories and methods used to analyze structures of social inequality. Includes comparative analysis of the inequalities of power and privilege, both their causes and their consequences for social conflict and social change.
Prerequisite: Six credits of sociology or permission of instructor
Studies in Women and Gender
SWAG 5840 - Gender Politics in Africa (3)
Instructor: Denise Walsh
2:00-3:15PM Tu/Th, Minor Hall 130
This course begins with the highly contested concepts of gender and feminism in Africa. We then turn to war and militarism, the basis of modern, gendered African nations and states. With the rise of African women’s movements, democratization and the spread of a human rights culture, African women won a greater role in politics, the third theme of the course. Their success increased hopes that the state would attack sexism. Those hopes have yet to be fulfilled as our investigation of some of the region’s most pressing problems, such as HIV/AIDS and limited economic development indicate.
Cross-listed as PLCP 5840
Spring 2009
African-American and African Studies Program
AAS 102 - Crosscurrents in the African Diaspora (4)
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
1230-1345 TR, WIL 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.
AAS 215 - Culture and World Politics (3)
Instructor: Maurice Apprey
1530-1800 T, CAB B026
AAS 220 - African Women Writers (3)
Instructor: Z'etoile Imma
1100-1215 TR, CAB 224
AAS 308 - Fugitive Slaves in a Global Perspective (3)
Instructor: Lydia Wilson
1400-1515 TR, CAB B026
This course surveys anthropological, historical, and archaeological approaches to the study of fugitive slaves, also known as maroons. The course considers the importance of maroon studies in highlighting Africans' resistance to enslavement in the Americas and explores themes taken up in more recent research, such as community formation. Students will examine the public interpretation of maroon history, review research on fugitive slaves in a variety of world regions, and consider the continued challenges some descendant communities have faced.
AAS 351 - The Politics of Development in Africa (3)
Instructor: Kristin Phillips
1400-1515 MW, WIL 215
Since the mid-twentieth century "development" has served as the dominant paradigm (as well as the justification) for international intervention into the political, economic, and social affairs of African communities and states. In this course we will draw on anthropological theories, ethnographies of development, and critiques of development to explore the history and politics of these interventions. We will begin by examining the kinds of interventions that foreshadowed development - trade, colonialism, missionization. We will then trace the life history of the development project in post-colonial Africa through its diverse agents and various incarnations: from its inception, through structural adjustment programs, democratization and the post-development critique, to the emergence of neoliberalism as development's governing philosophy. Throughout, we will draw on ethnographies of development in Africa to gain a deeper understanding of how people living in Africa experience their economic, political, and social positions in today's world and how international interventions have shaped these experiences, for better and for worse.
AAS 366 - African American History Since 1865 (3)
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
1530-1620 TR, WIL 301
This course surveys the major political, economic, and cultural developments in black America from the end of the Civil War to the present. Specifically focusing on the complex character of black life in the United States, students will examine African Americans’ protracted struggle to build strong families and communities, create vibrant and socially meaningful artistic productions, and confront what philosopher Cornel West refers to as the “pervasive evil of unjustified suffering and unnecessary social misery in our world.” Exploring the political and philosophical concerns pursued by activists and intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Ralph Ellison, Angela Davis, Amiri Barka, Toni Cade Bambara, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, this class critically engages black Americans’ complex views on what it means to be American, modern, and human. Organizations and movements that will be discussed include but are not limited to the Garvey Movement, SNCC, the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Cultural expressions and movements that will be explored include but are not limited to the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, 1960s jazz and soul, funk, and hip-hop.
Cross-listed as HIUS 366
AAS 382 - Black Protest Narrative (3)
Instructor: Marlon Ross
1400-1515 TR, BRN 330
This course explores the relation between modern racial protest and African American narrative art (fiction, autobiography, film, narrative poetry) from the mid-1930s to the early 1970s, focusing on the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights movement, and the emergence of Black Power. As well as examining the social, political, and economic contexts of protest narratives, we’ll probe their aesthetic, formal, and ideological structures, and assess how protest writers represent controversial topics of the time, such as lynching, segregation, sharecropping, disenfranchisement, anti-Semitism, unemployment, migration, urbanization, religion, sexuality, war and military service, strikebreaking, cross-racial coalitions, and the role of the individual in social change. We start with the most famous protest narrative, Richard Wright’s Native Son, then study other narratives, many of which challenge Wright’s forms and ideas. Other writers include Angelo Herndon, William Attaway, Ann Petry, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Alice Walker, and Bobby Seale, as well as pertinent readings in history, literary criticism, journalism, and social science. Requirements include heavy reading schedule. midterm, final exam, and reading journal.
Cross-listed as ENAM 382
AAS 401 - Independent Study (1-3)
Allows students to work on an individual research project. Students must propose a topic to an appropriate faculty member, submit a written proposal for approval, prepare an extensive annotated bibliography on relevant readings comparable to the reading list of a regular upper-level course, and complete a research paper of at least 20 pages.
AAS 406A - From Gold Coast to Reparations: A Social History of American Slavery(3)
Instructor: Deirdre Cooper Owens
1500-1830 T, CAB 130
This course will survey African slavery in the Americas broadly (16th century – 19th century) and the U.S. South during both the colonial and antebellum eras. In addition to centralizing the market costs of slavery and exploring the “world the slaves made,” we will also examine the little-known world of slavery among native peoples. Lastly, we will analyze both the impact and legacy of slavery on contemporary American society.
AAS 406B - Ethnicity and Religion in Nigeria and South Africa (3)
Instructor: John Willis
1530-1800 R, CAB 334
This course explores the diversity of gendered and ethnic identities in sub-Saharan African societies. Drawing from various moments in South Africa’s and Nigeria’s history, it examines how these identities have been historically articulated in words and action. It considers the cultural symbols and practices from which individuals and groups have drawn to define gender and ethnic norms. In many respects, these countries have very different histories reflecting alternative visions of Africa. South Africa has long been known as a multi-racial society, a magnet of European settlement, an apartheid state, and the most westernized and mineral-rich African nation. Conversely, Nigeria has developed a reputation as a mono-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, a repellant to European settlement, a military state fraught with ethnic conflicts, and as Africa’s most corrupt and human-resource rich nation. Students will examine some of the historical factors that have contributed to the development of these nations and the images of them that circulate both on the continent and in Europe and the United States. The course asks several questions: Does the use of gender and ethnicity as categories of analysis allow students to see more points of similarity than difference between the two nations? How have notions of gender become associated with ethnic and national identities? What have been some of the social, political, and economic implications of an individual’s location as a gendered or ethnic being?
AAS 451 - Directed Reading and Research for DMP (3)
Independent Study
Similar in format to AAS 401, but meant to be equivalent to twice as much work (6 credits), and taken over a full year. Students in the DMP enroll under these numbers for thesis writing.
AAS 452 - Thesis for DMP (3)
Meeting time to be determined by instructor and student
American Studies Program
AMST 201 - Arts and Cultures of the Slave South (3)
Instructor: Maurie McInnis and Louis Nelson
1530-1645 MW, CLK 107
"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 trips, movie nights, and demonstrations and samplings of traditional southern foods.
Cross-listed as ARTH 263 and CCFA 202
AMST 201 - Rural Poverty in Our Time (3)
Instructor: Grace Hale
1530-1710 T, MIN 125
This course will explore the history of non-urban poverty in the American South from the 1930s to the present. Weaving together the social histories of poor people, the political history of poverty policies, and the cultural history of representations of poverty, the course follows historical cycles of attention and neglect: rural poverty during the Great Depression, rural poverty from the war on poverty to the Reagan Revolution, and rural poverty in the age of Katrina, the present. In each section, we will examine the relationship between representations (imagining poverty), policies (alleviating poverty), and results (the effects of those representations and policies in the economic, political, and psychological status of poor people).
Cross-listed as HIUS 360
AMST 401A-1 - American Film: Los Angeles in Hollywood (3)
Instructor: Eric Lott
1700-1930 R, BRN 310
Not exactly a conventional film course, this one will use Hollywood cinema as the centerpiece of an inquiry into the cultural history and imaginary geography of Los Angeles. In addition to cultural historians and geographers such as Mike Davis, Sue Ruddick, and Eric Avila, we’ll read theorists of the so-called culture industry (e.g., Theodor Adorno), social commentators and gossips on L.A. and Hollywood (e.g., Carey McWilliams, Chester Himes, John Gregory Dunne, Kenneth Anger), and such novels as Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust (1939), Budd Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run? (1941), and Michael Tolkin’s The Player (1988). Plus, of course, the films, all of them about Los Angeles or Hollywood itself: e.g., King Vidor’s Show People (1928), Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels (1941), Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944), Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep (1946), Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), Stanley Donnen/Gene Kelly’s Singin in the Rain (1952), Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors (1960), Mark Robson’s Valley of the Dolls (1968), Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadass Song (1971), Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), Hal Ashby’s Shampoo (1975), Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1977), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984), William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Luis Valdez’s La Bamba (1987), John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood (1991), Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down (1993), Robert Altman’s Short Cuts (1993), Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994), Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994), Carl Franklin’s Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), F. Gary Gray’s Set It Off (1997), Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997), Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Big Lebowski (1998), Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001), Lisa Cholodenko’s Laurel Canyon (2002), Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator (2004).
Cross-listed as ENLT 255-2
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 291A - People, Culture and Environments of Africa (3)
Instructor: Matthew Powlowicz
1000-1050 MWF, CAB 123
Humans and the natural environment engage in a complex interaction. Humans transform their surroundings even as those surroundings shape the societies and cultural institutions they create. This course pursues both the question of how this interaction has proceeded in different places and among different peoples in Africa, and the cultural significances given to the environment so that we might better understand why it proceeded in that way. Drawing on evidence from ethnography, archaeology, ethnohistory and folklore we will examine how nature becomes entangled with political power and social ranking, with memory and group identity, and the consequences for the environment, and for the people who live there, which result.
ANTH 291B - Religion and Relationships: Caribbean Perspectives (3)
Instructor: Todne Thomas
0900-0950 MWF, CAB 324
This course analyzes the constitution and reproduction of Caribbean religious communities within the social contexts of enslavement, emancipation, postcolonialism, and transnationalism. Assigned readings survey ethnographies of Christianity, Hinduism, and Afro-Caribbean traditions like Rastafarianism, Vodun, and Candomble'. Course discussions and themes consider the contours of Caribbean religious groups as well as means by which ritual, religious ideologies, and kinship discourses enmesh practitioners in religious networks.
ANTH 554A - Africa and Social Theory (3)
Instructor: Sasha Newell
1530-1800 W, CAB B028
The encounter between Europe and Africa has produced some of the most important social theory and some of the most problematic misrepresentations. This course tracks the social imaginary of Africa in relationship to the development of theoretical frameworks through which Africa is represented. If the concept of the fetish was born out of cross-cultural misunderstandings between Europe and Africa, to what extent is Africa itself a fetish through which the European self is produced? Exploring the anthropology of exchange, bodies and persons, kinship, witchcraft, and colonialism in Africa, we investigate the implications for collective representations of Africa. At the same time we consider Africa's symbolic role within theories of modernity, race, economy, and religion through which Europe sets itself apart in the global hierarchy. This class thus explores the ambiguous zone between the 'real', the imaginary, and the theory of Africa, and the way each has fed into the construction of the other.
This class will fulfill the second writing requirement.
SWAH 102 - Introduction to Swahili II (3)
Instructor: Michael Wairungu
0900-0950 MWF, CAB 224
1100-1150 MWF, MIN 130
This is the second part of a two-semester beginning Swahili course. It will focus on developing the already acquired Swahili listening, speaking, reading and writing skills so as to understand basic Swahili, and actively participate in day-to-day Swahili cultural activities. Enrollment in this course is subject to Instructor's Permission as the student is required to have completed SWAH 101 at UVa. Upon completion of this course, students will be expected to demonstrate evidence of the acquisition of: a) basic skills in performing day-to-day interactions such as greetings, interpersonal conversations, and comprehension in Swahili; b) use of simple but fairly communicative grammatical constructions; c) appreciation of basic cultural practices of the Swahili-speaking people. Class meetings shall be supplemented by technology sessions where deemed appropriate.
Department of Art History
ARTH 263 - Arts and Cultures of the Slave South (4)
Instructor: Maurie McInnis and Louis Nelson
1530-1645 MW, CLK 107
"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 trips, movie nights, and demonstrations and samplings of traditional southern foods.
Cross-Listed as AMST 201 and CCFA 202
Department of Drama
DRAM 307 - African American Theatre (3)
Instructor: Theresa Davis
1400-1515 TR, DRM 217
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 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.
Department of English
CPLT 342 - Contemporary Drama (3)
Instructor: Lotta Löfgren
1530-1645 TR, BRN 334
This is the second half of a two-semester course on modern and contemporary American and European drama (with a few forays into other regions), covering post-Absurdism to the present. The first half is not a prerequisite. We will examine postwar quests for dramatic and theatrical structures relevant to a socially and morally chaotic world. From a study of reactions to the Theatre of the Absurd, we move to an investigation of contemporary drama, celebrating the success of women and minority playwrights in our own period. These playwrights, earlier deprived of a voice, have transformed theater of the past fifty years. We will read plays by Ntozake Shange, Tom Stoppard, Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, Tony Kushner, Sam Shepard, Caryl Churchill, Suzan-Lori Parks, and others.
Course requirements: two short papers, a long paper or a project (one option is to write your own play), a final exam.
Cross-listed as ENGN 342
ENAM 314 - African American Literature (3)
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
0930-1045 TR, CAB 118
A continuation of ENAM 313, 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.
ENAM 382 - Black Protest Narrative (3)
Instructor: Marlon Ross
1400-1515 TR, BRN 330
This course explores the relation between modern racial protest and African American narrative art (fiction, autobiography, film, narrative poetry) from the mid-1930s to the early 1970s, focusing on the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights movement, and the emergence of Black Power. As well as examining the social, political, and economic contexts of protest narratives, we’ll probe their aesthetic, formal, and ideological structures, and assess how protest writers represent controversial topics of the time, such as lynching, segregation, sharecropping, disenfranchisement, anti-Semitism, unemployment, migration, urbanization, religion, sexuality, war and military service, strikebreaking, cross-racial coalitions, and the role of the individual in social change. We start with the most famous protest narrative, Richard Wright’s Native Son, then study other narratives, many of which challenge Wright’s forms and ideas. Other writers include Angelo Herndon, William Attaway, Ann Petry, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Alice Walker, and Bobby Seale, as well as pertinent readings in history, literary criticism, journalism, and social science. Requirements include heavy reading schedule. midterm, final exam, and reading journal.
ENAM 482C -African-American Speculative Fiction (3)
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
1100-1215 TR, CAB 335
This class focuses on a genre of African American literature that is best described as "speculative." While all literature can be said to "speculate" about different topics, themes or events, the literary offerings in this class will venture into imagined worlds of horror, science fiction, fantasy as crafted by African American authors. Writers include Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, Tananarive Due and others. We will use these primary texts and other sources from film and television to question the racial markings and motives of "mainstream" speculative literatures and to consider the implications of the genre for African American literature and culture.
ENGN 342 - Contemporary Drama (3)
Instructor: Lotta Löfgren
1530-1645 TR, MRY 113
This is the second half of a two-semester course on modern and contemporary American and European drama (with a few forays into other regions), covering post-Absurdism to the present. The first half is not a prerequisite. We will examine postwar quests for dramatic and theatrical structures relevant to a socially and morally chaotic world. From a study of reactions to the Theatre of the Absurd, we move to an investigation of contemporary drama, celebrating the success of women and minority playwrights in our own period. These playwrights, earlier deprived of a voice, have transformed theater of the past fifty years. We will read plays by Ntozake Shange, Tom Stoppard, Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, Tony Kushner, Sam Shepard, Caryl Churchill, Suzan-Lori Parks, and others.
Course requirements: two short papers, a long paper or a project (one option is to write your own play), a final exam.
cross-listed as CLPT 342
ENGN 482B - Ethnic American Drama (3)
Instructor: Lotta Löfgren
1230-1345 TR, BRN 330
This seminar celebrates the richness, diversity, passion, and sophistication of contemporary ethnic American drama. We will read plays by African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American dramatists. We will examine their shared concerns and their cultural particularities, and explore how all groups negotiate traditional dramatic forms and even fundamental definitions of theater to express their own visions. Our work with these plays will challenge old methods of interpretation and our own cultural assumptions. We will try to understand how these plays are and are not uniquely American by examining the plays themselves and reading a selection of theoretical works. We will explore some of the political challenges to and ramifications of ethnic American drama. We will read plays by David Henry Hwang, Ntozake Shange, Thomson Highway, Maria Irene Fornes, Suzan-Lori Parks, Wakako Yamauchi, Cherrie Moraga, William Yellow Robe, and others.
Cross-listed as ENMC 482B
ENLT 247 - Black Writers and Black Music(3)
Instructor: Eric Nunn
1530-1645 MW, BRN 312
This course traces the interrelations of twentieth-century African American literary and musical histories from W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk through the Negro Renaissance of the 1920s and the Black Arts movement of the 1960s to the present day.
ENLT 247- Black Writers and the Media (3)
Instructor: Benjamin Fagan
1700-1850 TR, BRN 312
Restricted to 1st and 2nd year students.
In this course students will examine a key trope that permeates African American literature: media. We will approach this term in two senses. On the one hand, we will look at how texts appear in diverse mediums, be they newspapers, anthologies, audio recordings, or television coverage. On the other hand, students will read key works that place the problem of media representation at the center of their projects. Students will spend a significant amount of time with each selected text, allowing them to develop critical close reading skills. Moreover, by examining one work in multiple mediums they will be able to investigate how form and presentation inflect a text's meaning. We will read texts ranging from 18th century poetry to 21st century oratory. We will read canonical authors such as Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, and Ralph Ellison, and also consider the works of lesser-known writers such as Martin Delany and Francis Ellen Watkins.
ENLT 255-2 - American Film: Los Angeles in Hollywood (3)
Instructor: Eric Lott
1700-1930 R, BRN 310
Not exactly a conventional film course, this one will use Hollywood cinema as the centerpiece of an inquiry into the cultural history and imaginary geography of Los Angeles. In addition to cultural historians and geographers such as Mike Davis, Sue Ruddick, and Eric Avila, we’ll read theorists of the so-called culture industry (e.g., Theodor Adorno), social commentators and gossips on L.A. and Hollywood (e.g., Carey McWilliams, Chester Himes, John Gregory Dunne, Kenneth Anger), and such novels as Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust (1939), Budd Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run? (1941), and Michael Tolkin’s The Player (1988). Plus, of course, the films, all of them about Los Angeles or Hollywood itself: e.g., King Vidor’s Show People (1928), Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels (1941), Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944), Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep (1946), Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), Stanley Donnen/Gene Kelly’s Singin in the Rain (1952), Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors (1960), Mark Robson’s Valley of the Dolls (1968), Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadass Song (1971), Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), Hal Ashby’s Shampoo (1975), Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1977), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984), William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Luis Valdez’s La Bamba (1987), John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood (1991), Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down (1993), Robert Altman’s Short Cuts (1993), Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994), Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994), Carl Franklin’s Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), F. Gary Gray’s Set It Off (1997), Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997), Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Big Lebowski (1998), Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001), Lisa Cholodenko’s Laurel Canyon (2002), Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator (2004).
Cross-listed as AMST 401-A1
Department of French Language & Literature
FREN 346 - African Literatures and Cultures (3)
Instructor: Kandioura Drame
1000-1050 MWF, CAB 236
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.
Prerequisite: French 332
FREN 411 - Francophone Literature of Africa (3)
Instructor: Kandioura Drame
1200-1250 MWF, CAB 424
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.
Department of History
HIAF 202 - Modern African History (4)
Instructor: John E. Mason
0930-1045 TR, CMN G010
This course 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 contemporary condition, both good and bad. 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 concentrate on three regions: West Africa, especially Nigeria; Central Africa, especially the Congo and Rwanda; and southern Africa, especially South Africa. We 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 202 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
HIAF 401A - History Seminar - Modern African Conflict, Decolonization to the Present (4)
Instructor: John P. Cann
1530-1800 M, RAN 212
This seminar investigates the conduct of selected wars following the British, French, and Belgian decolonizations in Africa. Students will begin by developing an appreciation of the small war theorists and African culture to provide a framework for the understanding and analysis of this genre of conflict in both its military dimension and its broader socio-cultural context. The seminar will then consider the case studies of Biafra (1967-1970), the Portuguese Colonial War (1961-1974) and its aftermath, including the South African Border War (1966-1989), the Rhodesian Front War (1962-1980), and RENAMO in Mozambique (1976-1992) before proceeding to a selection of subsequent and often continuing conflicts, such as, Senegal (1982-2004), Algeria (1954-1962 and 1992-present), Chad (1978-1987), Sudan (1955-1972 and 1983-2005), Uganda (1987-2005), Sierra Leone (1991-2002), and the US involvement in Somalia (1992-1994). It will examine both internal factors, such as, tribal animosities, water and property rights, child soldiers, and religious tension, and external ones, such as, the role of NGOs, military companies, peacekeepers, former colonial powers, and neighboring states, in each of the contests. Readings are drawn from published materials with no more than 250 pages per week. Grading is based on class participation (50%) and on a research paper (50%) of approximately 20 pages on a relatively modern African conflict of the student’s choice that analyzes its causes, its participants and their motivations, its conduct, and the outcome based on the themes developed in seminar.
HIAF 404 - Independent Study in African History (3)
(Topic to be determined by instructor and student)
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes.
Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HILA 202 - Modern Latin America (3)
Instructor: Brian P. Owensby
0930-1045 TR, RFB G004B
This course will explore the historiesof Latin America from the wars of independence between 1808-1830 to the present day. Emphasis will be on understanding the relationship between large economic structures and the lives of historical actorsin political, social, and cultural terms and in global context. Wewill read primary and secondary sources. I will lecture once a weekand we will have a semi-socratic discussion of the readings once aweek. I will ask you to write two interpretive essays, one roughly atmid-term and the other at the end of the semester.
Enrollment will belimited to 60.
HILA 402A - History Colloquium - Mestijaze and Race Mixing in Latin American History (4)
Instructor: Brian P. Owensby
1300-1530 T, RFN 227A
This colloquium will delve into the history of how Indigneous People, Europeans, and Africans met in the crucible of conquest and created anovel social order from the biological and cultural mixing thatcharged by the crossed circuits of desire, misunderstanding, violence,and accident. We will discuss “mestizaje”—cultural and biological mixing—the role of intermediaries, race, and race relations, from the16th- to the 21st centuries. We will read a broad range of books. Students will write interpretive essays aimed at problematizing conventional “racial” thinking.
Enrollment will be limited to 12 motivated students.
HIUS 360 - Rural Poverty in Our Times (3)
Instructor: Grace Hale
1530-1710 T, MIN 125
This course will explore the history of non-urban poverty in the American South from the 1930s to the present. Weaving together the social histories of poor people, the political history of poverty policies, and the cultural history of representations of poverty, the course follows historical cycles of attention and neglect: rural poverty during the Great Depression, rural poverty from the war on poverty to the Reagan Revolution, and rural poverty in the age of Katrina, the present. In each section, we will examine the relationship between representations (imagining poverty), policies (alleviating poverty), and results (the effects of those representations and policies in the economic, political, and psychological status of poor people).
Cross-listed as AMST 201
HIUS 366 - African American History from the Civil War to the Present (3)
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
1530-1620 TR, WIL 301
This course surveys the major political, economic, and cultural developments in black America from the end of the Civil War to the present. Specifically focusing on the complex character of black life in the United States, students will examine African Americans’ protracted struggle to build strong families and communities, create vibrant and socially meaningful artistic productions, and confront what philosopher Cornel West refers to as the “pervasive evil of unjustified suffering and unnecessary social misery in our world.” Exploring the political and philosophical concerns pursued by activists and intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Ralph Ellison, Angela Davis, Amiri Barka, Toni Cade Bambara, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, this class critically engages black Americans’ complex views on what it means to be American, modern, and human. Organizations and movements that will be discussed include but are not limited to the Garvey Movement, SNCC, the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Cultural expressions and movements that will be explored include but are not limited to the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, 1960s jazz and soul, funk, and hip-hop.
Cross-listed as AAS 366
HIUS 367 - History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)
Instructor: Julian Bond
1530-1730 T, CLK 107
This lecture course examines the history, philosophies, tactics, events and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward.
The Southern movement - variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement - was a black-led, interracial mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation by the mid-60s.
Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping and occasionally complimentary phases - lobbying, litigation and protest.
In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights.
In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation and the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools.
The last phase, lasting a decade from '54 through '65, was a decade of protests - boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations - as well as grass-roots organizing campaigns that laid the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s.
Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength and followers from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation. The movement's well-known and lesser-known proponents and their strategies will be examined.
Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five- to seven-page papers.
Texts:
Wilkins, Roy, with Tom Matthews, Standing Fast, Da Capo Press
Forman James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, University of Washington Press
Bond, Julian and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, Thompson Learning
Videos:
"Eyes on the Prize - America's Civil Rights Years, 1954 - 1965", # 1 to 6 "America the at the Racial Cross words, 1965 - 1985", # 1 and 2; PBS Video, Blackside Inc., Boston
"The Road to Brown", William Elwood, Producer, California Newsreel
HIUS 403 - Virtual Vinegar Hill: Visualizing an African American Memoryscape (4)
Instructor: Scot French and Bill Ferster
1530-1800 W, CAB 118
In the 1960s, Charlottesville's Vinegar Hill neighborhood -- an African American residential-business district born of late-19th and early-20th century black enterprise -- was declared "blighted" by local authorities and demolished under the federally funded Urban Renewal program. Civic leaders and project boosters hailed the demolition/redevelopment project, coupled with the opening of modern public housing complexes for those forcibly displaced, as a much-needed facelift for the downtown area. Yet, for Charlottesville's African American citizens, the project produced a profound sense of loss that lingers to this day. Vinegar Hill, as a site of memory, has come to symbolize the displacement of the African American working and business classes; the destructive impact of urban renewal/gentrification on African American community life; and the erasure of African American history from Charlottesville's commemorative landscape.
Building on the collaborative efforts of University researchers and local community groups, this class will explore the possibilities for visualizing the Vinegar Hill "memoryscape" through a state-of-the-art interactive website. Hundreds of historical photographs, maps, and household surveys have been scanned and entered into a database, thanks to the previous efforts of U.Va. faculty and student researchers. Likewise, newspaper articles on the topic have been indexed, and some audio- and video-taped oral histories are available for inclusion. At this stage of the project, with so much of the scanning and transcription completed, the digital component of the class will focus on the application of new visualization technologies and the prospects for advancing scholarship through the careful framing of historical problems or questions. What might the thoughtful application of visualization technologies to this data reveal? Prior experience with humanities computing is helpful, but not required.
Prospective readings include selections from: J. Douglas Smith, Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia; James Saunders and Renae Shackelford, Urban Renewal and the End of Black Culture in Charlottesville, Virginia: An Oral History of Vinegar Hill; Ann Kelly Knowles, Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History; and David J. Staley, Computers, Visualization, and History: How New Technology Will Transform Our Understanding of the Past.
Each student will complete a 12-15-page research paper in preparation for a "visualization" to be developed in consultation with the instructors.
Grading will be based on reading responses/class participation (30 percent); a 12-15-page research paper (35 percent), and the development and public presentation of the visualization (35 percent).
Media Studies
Department of Music
MUSI 212 – History of Jazz Music (4)
Instructor: Scott DeVeaux
1100-1150 MWF, MRY 209
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.
MUEN 369 – African Music and Dance Ensemble (2)
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
1715-1915 TR, MRY 110
Hands-on course featuring drumming, dancing and singing from Ghana (Ewe) and from the Central African Republic. Public performance is expected. A guest artist will join us in residence for the final week of class and performance.
Prerequisite: Instructor permission by audition.
Note: Because the subject matter changes each semester, courses numbered MUEN 360-369 may be repeated for credit, but no more than eight performance credits may be applied toward the baccalaureate degree in the College.
MUSI 212 - History of Jazz (4)
Instructor: Scott Deveaux
1200-1250 MWF, WIL 301
Survey of jazz music from before 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century; important instrumental performers, composers, arrangers, and vocalists.
MUSI 309 - Performance in Africa (4)
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
1600-1650 TR, MRY 110
An undergraduate seminar focusing on the cultural contexts and issues surrounding African music and dance.
There is also a practical component, which requires participation in the African Music and Dance Ensemble as part of the credit for Musi 369.
Admission by informal audition during first class meeting.
Department of Politics
PLAP 524B - Policy and Politics Inequality (3)
Instructor: Vesla Weaver
1900-2130 R, CAB B020
PLCP 581 - Government and Politics of Sub-Saharan Africa (3)
Instructor: Robert Fatton
1400-1630 M, CAB 320
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.
Department of Psychology
(No courses offered for Spring 2009)
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 285 - Afro-Creole Religions of the Americas (3)
Instructor: Jalane Schmidt
1230-1345 TR, CAB 311
A lecture course with weekly discussion section meetings which surveys African-derived religions in Latin American and the Caribbean, such as Cuban Santeria, Brazilian Candomble, and Jamaican Rastafarianism. A reading of contemporary ethnographic sources is supplemented by the screening of documentary films.
RELA 390 - Islam in Africa (3)
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
1300-1350 MW, CAB 311
This course offers an historical and topical introduction to Islam in Africa. After a brief overview of the central features of the Muslim faith, our chronological survey begins with the introduction of Islam to North Africa in the 7th century. We will trace the transmission of Islam via traders, clerics, and jihads to West Africa. We shall consider the medieval Muslim kingdoms; the development of Islamic scholarship and the reform tradition; the growth of Sufi brotherhoods; and the impact of colonization and de-colonization upon Islam. Our overview of the history of Islam in East Africa will cover: the early Arab and Asian mercantile settlements; the flowering of classical Swahili courtly culture; the Omani sultanates and present-day Swahili society as well as recent "Islamist" movements in the Sudan and other parts of the East African interior.
Readings and classroom discussions provide a more in-depth exploration of topics encountered in our historical survey. Through the use of ethnographical and literary materials, we will explore questions such as the translation and transmission of the Qur'an, indigenization and religious pluralism; the role of women in African Islam; and African Islamic spirituality. Midterm, final, short paper, participation in discussion.
RELA 410 - Yoruba Religions (3)
Instructor: Benjamin Ray
0930-1045 TR, CAB 210
An in depth study of Yoruba religion through its oral traditions, ritual performances, traditional art, independent churches, and its representation in literature. The course will cover the following subjects: Ifa divination; sacred kingship; the orisha; the concept of supreme being; plays by Ijimere, Soyinka, and Osofisan; Yoruba art and aesthetics; concepts of personal destiny, final judgment, and rebirth.
RELC 523 - Pentecostalism (3)
Instructor: Valerie Cooper
1530-1800 T, CAB 330
This course will study the history, practices, and theology, 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. The course 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, healing, miracles, and prophecy. Finally, the course will use race, class, and gender analysis to evaluate the cultural influences of Pentecostalism in the US and elsewhere in the world.
Department of Sociology
SOC 341 - Race and Ethnic Relations (3)
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
1400-1515 MW, WIL 216
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.
Studies in Women and Gender
SWAG 224 - Black Femininities and Masculinities in the U.S. Media (3)
Instructor: Lisa Shutt
1700-1930 TR, CLK G004
Restricted to first and second year students.
In weekly readings, writing and discussions we will explore the nature of the institution in which we all reside: the university. In order to focus on the role of gender and women as a central issue, we will learn how the American university was formed, how it developed over time and how it functions today. Some of the books we will read, in whole or in part: In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Higher Education in America (Barbara Solomon); The Making of the Modern University (Julie Reuben); Transforming Knowledge (Elizabeth Minnich); The Lecherous Professor (Deitz and Weiner); Exiles and Communities: Teaching in the Patriarchal Wilderness (Joanne Pagano); and The Blue Angel (Francine Prose).
SWAG 237 - Feminism in America, 1910 – Present (3)
Instructor: Cori Field
1100-1215 TR, MIN 130
This course will explore the history of feminism in America from the 1910s to the present day. We will examine the various philosophies and strategies of people who have allied themselves with the feminist movement as well as those who have opposed it. We will ask how activists imagined sexual equality and what reforms—political, legal, economic, cultural, or psychological—they proposed. We will explore the connections between feminism and other movements including avant-garde modernism, labor organizing, black civil rights, pacifism, gay rights, and immigration reform. By focusing on differences among women, we will debate whether there ever was—or could be—a woman’s rights movement that spoke to all women.
Most of the assigned readings are primary documents. While I will provide short lectures introducing those documents, the majority of our class-time will be spent discussing and interpreting primary sources as a group.
This course meets the Second Writing Requirement.
Fall 2008
African-American and African Studies Program
AAS 101 – African American & African Studies I (4)
Instructor: Karen Fields
1230-1345 TR, MIN 125
AAS 101 is a team-taught lecture that explores the history and culture of Africans in Africa and people of African descent in the Americas. The class begins by analyzing issues such as the formation of agricultural/sedentary communities, food transformation, and technological innovations in Africa prior to the contacts with European. We will then examine the social and economical dimensions of African contacts with
Europeans during the slave trade era. The class will also cover the African Diaspora in the Americas, emphasizing the African Diaspora to regions outside North America.
AAS 307 -- Africa and Africans in the US Media (3)
Instructor: Lisa Shutt
1530-1800 M, COC 115
AAS 357 -- Caribbean Perspectives (3)
Instructor: Yarimar Bonilla
1530-1800 W, CAU 116
AAS 401 – Independent Study (1-3)
Topic to be determined by the instructor and the student
AAS 405A – Fictions of Black Identity (3)
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
1100-1215 TR, CAB 335
This combined graduate and advanced undergraduate seminar will explore the dual meaning of its title “Fictions of Black Identity.” The first implication suggests the literary inventions (novels, essays, critical works) that address the meanings of blackness in an American context. The second meaning is heavily invested in the first: that Black identity is a fiction, not necessarily in the sense of falsity, but in its highly mediated, flexible, and variable condition. Questions to consider include: how does one make and measure Black identity? Can one be phenotypically White and still be Black? What is the value of racial masquerade? What does it mean to be legitimately Black? Readings include, but are not limited to, McBride’s The Color of Water, Walker’s Black, White, and Jewish, Beatty’s White Boy Shuffle, and a range of critical essays. Mandatory assignments include weekly response papers, comparative essays, leading class discussion, midterm and final exams. This class is restricted to instructor permission. It is designed for advanced undergraduates in English, African American Studies, and American Studies.
Cross-listed as ENAM 481F
AAS 405B – Critical Race Theory (3)
Instructor: Marlon Ross
1530-1800 T, WIL 141A
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, 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, 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, psychoanalysis, gender and queer theory, hip hop, incarceration, and postcolonial and diaspora studies. Although theoretical writings comprise the heart of the course, discussions will revolve around several artistic works as applicable case studies: Percival Everett’s 2005 novel Wounded, Spike Lee’s 2000 film Bamboozled, and Suzan-Lori Parks’ 1994 The America Play. Requirements include several short critical response essays, one class discussion presentation, and a term research paper.
Cross-listed as ENCR 481
AAS 405C- African American Survey (3)
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
1400-1515 TR, BRN 328
This course surveys pivotal moments and texts in the history of African-American letters, from Briton Hammon’s Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings (1860) to W.E.B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903) Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (1901). Working our way through a variety of genres (elegy, drama, the captivity narrative, the slave narrative, the essay, public oratory, speeches, and novels), we will explore a number of matters pertinent to literary studies in general, as well as those with specific implications for African-American writing and writers. We will consider the circumstances of textual production and reception, ideas and ideologies of literary history and culture, aesthetics, authorship and audience. We will focus our attention immediately on the emergence of African-American writing under the regime of slavery and the questions it poses about “race,” “authorship”, “subjectivity”, “self-mastery”, and “freedom.” We will consider the material and social conditions under which our selected texts were edited, published, marketed, and “authenticated,” lingering especially on the role white abolitionists and editors played in the production and mediation of these texts for various reading publics. Our ultimate aim is to situate our selections within the broadest possible contexts of their time and ours. Other required texts include Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy, William Wells Brown’s Clotelle, Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig and Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition. Restricted to 2nd and 3rd years.
Cross-listed as ENAM 313
AAS 405D Black Power
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
15:30-18:00 R, CAB 242
Tracing black women and men’s quest for political, economic, and cultural power from the Depression Years to the present, this seminar examines African Americans’ collective efforts to eradicate what philosopher Cornel West refers to as the “pervasive evil of unjustified suffering and unnecessary social misery in our world.” Significant attention will be given to black intellectuals and activists’ debates over the best way to deal with the economic consequences of white supremacy and global capitalism, the usefulness of armed self-defense as a weapon in the fight against racial injustice, and the problem of sexism within the black liberation movement. To better understand the diversity and breadth of black oppositional activity in the twentieth-century, students will examine the protest activities of a number of black leaders, cultural artists, and movement organizations. Organizations and activists to be examined include but are not limited to W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson and the Council of African Affairs, Ella Baker and SNCC, Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, Angela Davis and the American Communist Party, Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts Movement, Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party, Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Toni Cade Bambara, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and the more recent Black Radical Congress. Over the course of the semester, students will be introduced to the research methods and techniques used by historians. We will not only explore historians’ use of oral and written texts, but will also reflect on the ways in which scholars’ theoretical and political viewpoints inform their interpretation of primary sources. Students will have the opportunity to further develop their historical skills through a series of assignments designed to assist them in identifying research topics and questions; interpreting primary texts; and substantiating arguments with historical evidence.
AAS 451 – Directed Research for DMP (3)
Meeting time to be determined by instructor and student
AAS 452 – Thesis for DMP (3)
Meeting time to be determined by instructor and student
American Studies Program
AMST 201 - The Global South (3)
Instructor: Eric Lott
1400-1515 TR, CAB 324
Following the lead of the “new southern studies,” this course will introduce you to the practice of American Studies by remapping the South from cotton belt to sun belt and beyond. We’ll consider the region in three conceptual frames: as a sub-national section with a distinctive, historically changing political economy (antebellum chattel slavery, postbellum debt peonage, post-Fordist neoliberalism) and cultural history; as the northern part of a hemispheric South that includes the Caribbean and Latin America; and as a key component in what has come to be called the global South—that low-wage losing player in today’s international division of labor, perhaps best keynoted by that Bastard Out of Arkansas, Wal-Mart. This is all obviously a tall order, and we’ll only be able to chart certain genealogies of cultural-political thought and struggle. But among other things, I’d like to take up the idea of southern exceptionalism or what used to be called the “mind” of the South and certain of its cultural expressions (e.g., the plantation romance, the slave narrative, the rape-lynching nexus, Faulkner, Hurston, the blues, Deliverance, Dorothy Allison, Outkast); the U.S. South’s various and extensive cultural-political relations with its southern neighbors (e.g., the Mexican War, Jose Marti and the “Spanish-American War,” U.S. military involvement in Haiti, post-Cuban Revolution Havana and Miami, Russell Banks’s Continental Drift, Faulkner’s influence on Gabriel Garcia Marquez, V.S. Naipaul’s A Turn in the South, the invention of the Caribbean steel drum out of U.S. oil drums, reggae’s transformation of American R&B, Derek Walcott’s Arkansas Testament); and the place and role of the U.S. South in a global North-South divide (e.g., African agricultural practices in slave-owning South Carolina, Richard Wright’s reporting in The Color Curtain on the 1955 Bandung conference of non-aligned nations, post-1965 Asian immigration to states like Virginia, Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala, “Toyotization” in North Carolina auto plants, the sweated labor behind and cultural influence of Wal-Mart).
AMST 401– The Landscapes of Slavery (3)
Instructor: Maurie McInnis
1300-1530 R, FHL 215
From January to April 2007, a major exhibition, "The Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art," will be at the University of Virginia Art Museum featuring more than 80 works by more than 50 artists spanning 1800 to the present. Artists include: Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, Thomas Hart Benton, William Johnson, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Carrie Mae Weems, Joyce Scott, Romare Bearden, Juan Logan, and Kara Walker, among others. Working closely with the works in the exhibition, this class will examine the visual depictions of the plantation South in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and tackle questions of politics, protest, memory, nostalgia, and identity. In addition to examining the work of painters who tackled the subject, this class will also look at how the region was portrayed in the popular press, in novels, and in film. Students will do their research projects on works in the exhibition.This class fulfills the second writing assignment.
Cross-listed as ARTH 491
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 319 – Urban Africa and Popular Culture (3)
Instructor: Sasha Newell
1400-1515 MW, MIN 130
In this course, we explore the cultural transformations and continuities produced by the emergence of African cities during and after colonialism. Tracing anthropological debates around African urban centers from the 1940s until the present, we will consider the efflorescence of new cultural forms of music, art, dress, and film in conjunction with new sources of identity such as slang, nationality, religion, ethnicity, consumption, and migration. Attention will be given to local efforts at attaining 'modernity' as well as perceived "loss of culture" and movements to preserve 'tradition'. Theoretical issues to be discussed: mimesis, modernity and 'hybrid' identities; urban social integration and the production of ethnicity; colonialism, class, and resistance; capitalism and economy; transformations in kinship, gender and sexuality.
ANTH 388 African Archaeology (3)
Instructor: Adria Laviolette
1100-1150 MWF, CAB 338
This course surveys the archaeological knowledge currently available about the African continent. The emphasis will be on the Late Stone Age, when fully modern humans dominate the cultural landscape, and the subsequent Iron Age, but will also briefly cover pre-modern humans and the archaeology of the colonial period. The material includes the great social, economic, and cultural transformations in African history known primarily through archaeology, and the most important archaeological sites and discoveries on the continent. Throughout the course a theme will be the politics of the past, and the changing role of the practice of archaeology in Africa.
Department of Art History
ART 264 - African American Art (4)
Instructor: Carmenita Higginbotham
1100-1215 TR, CAM 160
(No course description available)
Department of Drama
(No courses offered for Fall 2008)
Department of English
ENAM 313- African American Survey (3)
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
1400-1515 TR, BRN 328
This course surveys pivotal moments and texts in the history of African-American letters, from Briton Hammon’s Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings (1860) to W.E.B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903) Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (1901). Working our way through a variety of genres (elegy, drama, the captivity narrative, the slave narrative, the essay, public oratory, speeches, and novels), we will explore a number of matters pertinent to literary studies in general, as well as those with specific implications for African-American writing and writers. We will consider the circumstances of textual production and reception, ideas and ideologies of literary history and culture, aesthetics, authorship and audience. We will focus our attention immediately on the emergence of African-American writing under the regime of slavery and the questions it poses about “race,” “authorship”, “subjectivity”, “self-mastery”, and “freedom.” We will consider the material and social conditions under which our selected texts were edited, published, marketed, and “authenticated,” lingering especially on the role white abolitionists and editors played in the production and mediation of these texts for various reading publics. Our ultimate aim is to situate our selections within the broadest possible contexts of their time and ours. Other required texts include Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy, William Wells Brown’s Clotelle, Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig and Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition. Restricted to 2nd and 3rd years.
Cross-listed as AAS 405C
ENAM 481E – African-American Women Writers (3)
Instructor: Angela Davis
1530-1645 MW, BRN 328
We will read several novels and short stories by African American women, examining in particular how the authors portray black women as individuals and in the context of American society. This course requires active class participation, two written responses to readings (each 2 to 3 double spaced typed pages long) and a formal essay (12 to 15 pages long). The reading list is: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls; Toni Morrison, Sula, and Tar Baby; Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble; Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones; Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place.
Prerequisite: The course is first offered to fourth year majors in English, Women's Studies and African-American and African Studies.
ENAM 481F – Fictions of Black Identity (3)
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
1100-1215 TR, CAB 335
This combined graduate and advanced undergraduate seminar will explore the dual meaning of its title “Fictions of Black Identity.” The first implication suggests the literary inventions (novels, essays, critical works) that address the meanings of blackness in an American context. The second meaning is heavily invested in the first: that Black identity is a fiction, not necessarily in the sense of falsity, but in its highly mediated, flexible, and variable condition. Questions to consider include: how does one make and measure Black identity? Can one be phenotypically White and still be Black? What is the value of racial masquerade? What does it mean to be legitimately Black? Readings include, but are not limited to, McBride’s The Color of Water, Walker’s Black, White, and Jewish, Beatty’s White Boy Shuffle, and a range of critical essays. Mandatory assignments include weekly response papers, comparative essays, leading class discussion, midterm and final exams. This class is restricted to instructor permission. It is designed for advanced undergraduates in English, African American Studies, and American Studies.
Cross-listed as AAS 405A
ENLT 247 (0001) - Black Writers In America (3)
Instructor: Scott Selisker
1700-1815 TR, BRN 312
Restricted to 1st and 2nd Year Students
This course will survey some representative highlights of the rich tradition of African American literature, with an emphasis on the major works, debates, and historical contexts of the twentieth century. We will learn how to read in and around the literary dimensions of these important American works, considering artistic movements, generic conventions, issues of interpretation, and the different formal concerns that confront fiction, poetry, autobiography, oratory, drama, and the essay. Our readings will prompt us to think in sophisticated ways about race, identity, representation, and community. Our work in the course will equip you with tools for reading further, in the African American and other literary traditions. The syllabus will likely include works by: Douglass, Du Bois, Washington, Chesnutt, Hughes, Hurston, Ellison, Baldwin, Hansberry, King, Malcolm X, Brooks, and Morrison. Course requirements: active engagement with the materials and your peers, occasional response papers, three critical essays (5-7 pp.), an informal presentation, and a final exam.
ENLT 247 (0002) – Black Women Writers (3)
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
930-1045 TR, Location: TBA
Restricted to 1st and 2nd Year Students
(No course description available.)
ENLT 247 (0003) – Black Migration (3)
Instructor: Sonya Donaldson
1400-1515, BRN 332
Restricted to 1st and 2nd Year Students
(No course description available.)
Department of French Language & Literature
FREN 348 – Literature and Culture of North Africa (3)
Instructor: Majida Bargach
1200-1250 MWF, CAB 330
Prerequisite: French 332
La situation géographique des pays d’Afrique du Nord fait de cet ensemble un carrefour d’influences diverses depuis l’antiquité. Bordé au sud par le Sahara, à l’ouest par l’océan atlantique, au nord par la mer méditerranée, il est rattaché à l’Asie à son extrémité nord-est par l’isthme de Suez.
Les cultures et populations nord-africaines reflètent cette diversité d’influences qui n’ont jamais cessé de les irriguer depuis les premières invasions à la colonisation et jusqu’aux effets récents de la mondialisation.
Nous aborderons les cultures de l’Afrique du Nord à travers des œuvres littéraires francophones qui nous mèneront de l’Egypte au Maroc, de l’histoire coloniale aux données actuelles, des religions à l’art.
Books TBA
FREN 411 - Francophone Literature of Africa (3)
Instructor: Kandioura Drame
1530-1645 TR, CAB 225
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.
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
- Fatou Diome. La Préférence nationale
- Assia Djebar. Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (See Toolkit).
- Boudjédra, Rachid. L'Escargot entêté
FREN 443– Africa in Cinema (3)
Instructor: Kandioura Drame
1230-1345 TR, CAB 242
This course is a study of the representation of Africa in American, Western European and African films. It deals with the representations of African cultures by filmmakers from different cultural backgrounds and studies the ways in which their perspectives on Africa are often informed by their own social and ideological positions as well as the demands of exoticism. It also examines the constructions of the African as the other and the kinds of responses such constructions have elicited from Africa’s filmmakers. These filmic inventions are analyzed through a selection of French, British, American, and African films by such directors as John Huston, S. Pollack, J-J Annaud, M. Radford, Ngangura Mweze, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Souleymane Cisse, Gaston Kabore, Amadou Seck, Dani Kouyate, Brian Tilley, Jean-Marie Teno on a variety of subjects relative to the image of Africa in cinema.
The final grade will be based on one mid-semester paper (select a film by an African filmmaker and provide a sequential reconstruction of the story based on the methods of P. S. Vieyra and of F. Boughedir ), a final paper (7-10 pages), an oral presentation and contributions to discussions. Each oral presentation should contribute to the mid-semester paper and to the final research paper. The final paper should be analytical, well documented and written in clear, grammatical French using correct film terminology supplied with the syllabus.
Required reading list (on reserve, see Toolkit for FREN 443):
- Ferid Boughedir, Le cinéma africain de A a Z
(Specific selections of the following works will be announced weekly.) - Kenneth W. Harrow, Matatu- With Open Eyes: Women and African Cinema
- Gardies, André, Cinéma d’Afrique Noire Francophone : l’espace-miroir
- Vieyra, P. S, Le cinéma africain
- Sembène Ousmane, Cinéaste
- Ukadike, F. N., Black African Cinema
- Research in African Literatures - Special Issue: African Cinema./ Vol. 26, No.3, Fall 1995.
- Diawara, Manthia, African Cinema
Department of History
HIAF 201 - Early African History through the Era of the Slave Trade (4)
Instructor: Joseph C. Miller
930-1045 TR, MRY 104
From the mists of the once-dark continent’s unwritten past Early African History draws out Africans’ distinctive strategies and achievements in culture, politics, and economics. Starting broadly at the dawn of history and continuing in detail from the millennium before the Present Era, HIAF 201 follows the sometimes-surprising ways in which village elders, women, merchants, kings, cattle lords, and ordinary farmers pursued meaningful lives without the technologies that modern Americans take for granted. The last third of the course examines the ironic interplay of tragedy and ambition in a continent increasingly trapped in exiling its own people in slavery to Europeans, until the Atlantic slave trade began to wind down after about 1800. (A second semester of modern African history, HIAF 202, taught in spring semester, follows subsequent events down through twentieth-century colonialism and the post-1960 era of independence and impoverishment.)
HIAF 201 is a introductory lower-division survey. The instructor presents the major themes of the early history of the continent in lectures twice each week. Students meet additionally in discussion sections for reviews of readings, map quizzes, and preparation for written assignments. Requirements include weekly short map quizzes, short written responses to each class, a short paper reacting to assigned readings, and a take-home final exercise. The course belongs to the Afro-American and African Studies curriculum, qualifies for the new minor in African Studies, meets the “non-western/non-modern” requirement for the major in History, counts as an adjunct course for Studies in Women and Gender, and qualifies for the College “non-western perspectives” area requirement.
After an opening consideration of Mistaking Africa (Keim) in modern American culture, readings revolve around weekly assignments in texts of varying perspectives (Reader, Africa: A Biography of the Continent, and Newman, Peopling of Africa – subject to revision upon availability of a superior alternative). Other chapters and professional articles introduce the distinctive methodologies of doing history without written sources (including the famous Mande oral epic Sundiata), highlight interpretive (“historiographical”) issues, and consider concepts relevant to understanding early Africa.
No formula determines final marks for HIAF 201. Students are graded according to their “highest consistent performance” in all aspects of the course, including attendance at lectures and participation in discussions, with ample allowance made for the unfamiliarity of the subject matter early in the term; options allow students to devise personal combinations of graded work that allow each one to take advantage of specialized abilities and accommodate other academic commitments.
HIAF 201 presumes no prior knowledge of Africa or experience with the study of history. However, consistent application and preparation are expected, particularly early in the term, since the subject is new to nearly everyone in the course. Students in all four years of their undergraduate careers and in all colleges of the University complete HIAF 201 with success. Most find it a challenging and rewarding opportunity to discover a once-neglected story of Africa and its place in world history and to examine assumptions that modern Americans – themselves included – make that they did not know they held.
jcm (2/08)
HIAF 302 - History of Southern Africa (3)
Instructor: John Mason
1230-1345 TR, RSH 410
HIAF 302 is a lecture and discussion course on the history of southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The emphasis is on South Africa. HIAF 302 begins with a look at the precolonial African societies of the region, before moving on to a study of conquest, colonialism, the rise and fall of apartheid, and the recent rebirth of African independence.
By the end of the nineteenth century, all of the African peoples of southern Africa had been conquered by European powers and incorporated into Dutch, British, Portuguese, and German colonial empires. Conquest had not come easily. Every society in the region resisted European domination fiercely, sometimes for many decades before being finally defeated. Colonialism and African responses to it dramatically reshaped societies in southern African, transforming political and economic systems, gender and class relations, even religious beliefs.
Resistance to colonialism assumed new forms in the twentieth century, as Africans began to bridge ethnic divisions to create multi-ethnic trade unions, churches, political parties, and liberation movements. Particularly in South Africa, African nationalism was influenced by nonracialism, uniting blacks and progressive whites in the ultimately successful struggle against apartheid.
Course materials include biographies, memoirs, fiction, music, and films, as well as academic studies. Students will write two five to seven page essays and write two blue book exams, a mid-term and a final.
HIAF 402A - History Colloquium - “Color and Culture in South Africa and the United States” (4)
Instructor: John Mason
1700-1815 TR, BRN 310
HIAF 402 is a small, research-oriented course that explores the histories of South Africa and the United States in comparative perspective.
South Africa and the American South are cousins: instantly recognizable as members of the same family, but with distinctively different personalities. Both countries owe much of their early economic development to slavery. In both complex systems of racial domination shaped society for generations before and after the emancipation of the slaves. And in both the interracial struggle against racial domination gave rise to some of the most important people and events in their histories.
At the same time, the differences between the two countries cannot be ignored. In South Africa blacks constitute the overwhelming majority of the population, and the descendants of European immigrants are a small minority. In the United States, of course, the reverse is true. Both white supremacy and the struggle against it were more violent in South Africa than in the United States. And, since 1994, a democratic political system has ensured that black South Africans have enjoyed a degree of political power that black Americans have never experienced.
The course holds the similarities and differences between the two countries in a creative tension. Through biography, autobiography, music, film, and scholarship, we will look at the ways in which race shaped the lives of South Africans and Americans, both black and white.
HIAF 402 is designed primarily, but not exclusively, for history majors and fulfills the history department's seminar/colloquium requirement. Students enrolling in the course should have taken at least one course in African history, preferably South Africa, and two courses in American history.
HIAF 404 - Independent Study in African History (3)
(Topic to be determined by instructor and student)
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HILA 201 - Colonial Latin America (3)
Instructor: Brian P. Owensby
930-1045 TR, MRY 115
This course will explore major developments and issues in the study of Latin American history, including Indigenous societies on the eve of Spanish conquest, the struggles over the shape of a conquest society, the emergence of a distinctive world culture up to the 18th century, and the pressures and disputes that led to wars of national independence in the early 19th century. We will seek to understand the dynamics of the colonial relationship in a global historical context.
HILA 311 - Public Life in Latin America (3)
Instructor: Herbert Braun
800-915 TR, CAB 430
How do Latin Americans navigate their ways, collectively and also individually, through their hierarchical social orders? Why is there so often so much stability and order to their societies? Surveys inform us that Latin Americans are among the happiest people in the world? Why might this be? Why do so many Latin Americans across time appear to be so proud of their nations? Why do they look at one another so often? Why is there so little hatred in Latin America? Why do poor people in Latin America seem to know more about rich people than rich people know about them? Why do traditions matter so? Why are there so many good novelists there? These and other questions, answerable and not, about life and the human condition in Latin America are what will be about in this course.
Probable Texts:
- Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries
- Carlos Fuentes, The Campaign, UVa Printing Services Packet
- Domingo F. Sarmiento, Facundo or, Civilization and Barbarism
- Daniel Levine, Vale of Tears: Revisiting the Canudos Massacre in Northeastern Brazil, 1893-1897
- Carlos Fuentes, The Good Conscience
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Mario Vargas Llosa, The Feast of the Goat
- Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies
- Herbert Braun, Our Guerrillas, Our Sidewalks: A Journey into the Violence of Colombia, 2nd ediition
- David Goldstein, The Spectacular City: Violence and Performance in Urban Bolivia
Grading:
One journal, submitted as a work in progress during any day between November 1 and November 7, worth 30% of the grade, written continuously on Word, and sent as an email attachment. In the subject of the email message write “HILA311 Journal.”
Twenty page final essay on historical patterns in Latin America, worth 40% of the grade. This final essay will emerge organically from the journal. Hard copy.
Class participation, according to a structured format, worth 30% of the grade.
HIST 215 - US-Latin American Relations in the 20th Century (3)
Instructor: Gerald Haines
1600-1650 MW, WIL 301
At the end of the 19th century most of Latin America was controlled by oligarchy elites, was economically poor, illiterate, and suffered from a vast inferiority complex. The United States was a far off secondary power. By the end of the 20th century much had ch9anged, democracy flourished, economic optimism was everywhere, and the United States was a close giant and major economic power. This course will examine US policies toward and relations with Latin America during the 20th century. Although it will incorporate Latin American attitudes and views, it will focus primarily on the role the United States played. The emphasis is on US policy and attitudes and Washington’s response to Latin American developments. It will illustrate how US policymakers perceived Latin America, American security concerns, the expansion of corporate capitalism, economic development programs, and efforts to contain communist expansion and promote democracy in the hemisphere. In addition to detailing the impact of World War I and World war II and the Cold war on inter-American relations, the course will examine the use of US military interventions and CIA covert action programs to further US objectives in the hemisphere, especially in Mexico, Haiti, Guatemala, Panama, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Chile, and Nicaragua. It will also examine cultural efforts and images and changing political ideologies and migration patterns and how these changed over time as Washington policymakers attempted to create and maintain a US dominated hemisphere.
Requirements:
Mid Term Examination 30%; Research Paper 20%; Final Examination 40%; Course Participation 10%
Required Reading:
- Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States: A History of US Policy Toward Latin America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).
- Robert H. Holden and Eric Zolov, eds., Latin America and the United States: A Documentary History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
- Nick Cullather, Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954 (Palto Alto, CA: Stanford University press, 1999).
HIUS 323 - Rise and Fall of the Slave South (3)
Instructor: TBA
1300-1350 MW, RFN G004A
This course will explore the emergence and destruction of the most powerful slave society of the modern world: the American South. It will begin with the sixteenth century and extend through the Civil War and Reconstruction. We will examine the lives of slaves and slaveowners, small farmers and large planters, men and women, soldiers and civilians.
Requirements include substantial research in primary documents in Alderman Library. Research topics are broad and require students willing to tackle open-ended assignments. Readings will be diverse, including original documents, materials on the Web, fiction, and secondary accounts. Energetic participation in a weekly discussion section is a central part of the course.
HIUS 329 - Virginia 1865-Present (3)
Instructor: George Gilliam
1230-1345 TR, GIL 141
History is the study of change over time. This course will examine change in Virginia from about 1861 to the present. The course will especially follow six main topics: (a) the role of Reconstruction in configuring Virginia’s racial and political divisions; (b) changing notions of who should vote, and how much each vote should count; (c) the role of debt and the resolution of the conflict between Funders and Readjusters in constructing Virginia’s “pay-as-you-go” philosophy; (d)Virginia’s struggles with race (e) economic, social and cultural change in post-World War II Virginia; and (f) the shift in control of Virginia from the rural machine politics of Harry F. Byrd to the suburban politics of modern Virginia.
Readings will average approximately 100 pages per week, and will be drawn from both primary documents and secondary material. Among the readings will be selections from: Ronald L. Heinemann et al., Old Dominion/New Commonwealth: A History of Virginia, 1607-2007; Jane Dailey, Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Post-emancipation Virginia; and J. Douglas Smith, Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia. The class meets twice per week. Approximately half of each class will be spent in lecture and half in a class discussion. There will be a short answer mid-term exam, one 5-7 page paper involving the use of primary source materials, one group project, and a final examination requiring one short and one long essay.
HIUS 347 - American Labor (3)
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
1230-1345 TR, CAB 316
This course examines the cultural lives, labor struggles, and political activities of the American working class from the end of Reconstruction to the present. Students will analyze how working women and men both shaped and were shaped by the nation’s transformation into the world’s largest industrial power, the social upheavals of the World War I era, the economic hardships brought about by the Great Depression, the social policies of the New Deal, the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, and continuing debates over the meanings of work, citizenship, and democracy. Significant attention will be given to the organizations and political movements workers created to advance their economic interests. How those movements have dealt with the complex racial, ethnic, and gender divisions within the American working class will receive significant attention. Since working-class history is about more than the struggle of laboring people to improve their material condition, this course will also focus on other topics, such as workers’ leisure activities, customs and thoughts, and religious beliefs.
Film, music, books, and articles will be the texts for this course. Students’ grades will be based on class participation, two exams, three quizzes, and two book reviews.
HIUS 365 - African American History through Reconstruction (3)
Instructor: Reginald Butler
1300-1350 MWF , CAB 325
This lecture course is part of a year-long survey of the African American experience in British Colonial North America and the United States. This segment (HIUS 365) covers the period from the beginnings of the trans-Atlantic slave trade through Reconstruction. It will relate the African American experience to the broader experience of Africans in the Diaspora, as well as larger themes and concepts (the rise of capitalism and the nation-state, European expansion, slavery and the slave trade in Africa, the development of racial ideologies, etc.) in world history. We will examine some of the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities, paying particular attention to how African Americans themselves shaped their experiences. Discussion sections will devote considerable attention to primary sources, with a focus on the intersection of the "local" and the "global." In addition, we will explore the relevance of the African American past to contemporary social and political debates, such as immigration, affirmative action, and reparations.
HIUS 367 – The History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)
Instructor: Julian Bond
1530-1730 T, WIL 402
This course examines the origins, philosophies, tactics, events, personalities and consequences of the southern civil rights movement from 1900 to the mid-‘1960s. 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.
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.
HIUS 401B / AAS 401 - History Seminar, Black Power (4)
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
1530-1800 R, CAB 242
Tracing black women and men’s quest for political, economic, and cultural power from the 1960s to the present, this seminar examines African Americans’ collective efforts to eradicate what philosopher Cornel West refers to as the “pervasive evil of unjustified suffering and unnecessary social misery in our world.” Significant attention will be given to black intellectuals and activists’ debates over the best way to deal with the economic consequences of white supremacy and global capitalism, the usefulness of armed self-defense as a weapon in the fight against racial injustice, and the problem of sexism within the black liberation movement. To better understand the diversity and breadth of black oppositional activity in the twentieth-century, students will examine the protest activities of a number of black leaders, cultural artists, and movement organizations. Organizations and activists to be examined include but are not limited to W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, Angela Davis and the American Communist Party, Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts Movement, Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party, Toni Cade Bambara, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and the more recent Black Radical Congress. Toward the end of the course, we will examine the question of whether economic, political, and cultural empowerment is a reality or possibility for blacks in 21st century America.
Film, music, books, and articles will be the texts for this course. Students’ grades will be based on class participation, three quizzes, two book reviews, and a final paper.
Cross-listed as AAS 405D
HIUS 401H - History Seminar, Black Leadership and Oral History (4)
Instructor: Phyllis Leffler
1300-1530 W, WIL 141A
This research seminar will use the website for the Explorations in Black Leadership project (https://blackleadership.virginia.edu/) as a springboard for analysis of the utility of oral history as a meaningful source of historical information. Each student will select one or more people from the website, and will evaluate individual responses to questions asked against other sources of information. This will require substantial research into biographical and autobiographical writings, interviews, speeches, newspaper articles, policy initiatives in the public or private sector, and relevant contextual secondary source literature. The final research paper will place the individuals studied in regional and historical context, in an effort to explore the major factors that gave rise to leadership.
Group readings include selected materials from:
- Adetayo Alabi, Telling Our Stories: Continuities and Divergences in Black Autobiographies
- Vincent Harding, Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement
- Lea Williams, Servants of the People: The 1960s Legacy of African American Leadership
- Ronald Walters and Robert Smith, African American Leadership
- Jacob Gordon, Black Leadership for Social Change
- Adam Faircough, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000
- Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality
This seminar will require regular submissions of materials during the course of the term, including a project design, bibliography, secondary source paper, and first and second drafts. Grades will be based on individual components of the paper, submitted sequentially, as well as on the final draft
HIUS 403A - African American Culture to 1865 (4)
Instructor: Reginald Butler
1530-1800 T, CAB 130
This reading seminar examines how African American cultures and societies developed in the north and south. How did forcibly transported Africans respond to the different agricultural economies, the conditions of enslavement, and European and native American cultures that they encountered during the colonial period? The course will begin in the early period during which large numbers of Africans arrived in British North America. It will then shift its focus to mature African American communities in which the vast majority of persons were American born. We will examine issues of African ethnicity and geography; family and kinship; religious practice; and diverse forms of aesthetic expression. Readings may include selections from: Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery; Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective; Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves; W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail; Anthony E. Kaye, Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South; Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market; and Dylan Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South.
HIUS 824 - Topics in Modern Southern History (3)
Instructor: Grace Hale
1300-1530 T, RFN 227A
This research seminar focuses on the history of the US South from 1890 to the present through readings, discussions, and completing article-length research papers. Topics of emphasis include the transnational US South, the cultural history of the US South, the intersection of African American history and Southern history, and the new Southern labor history.
Media Studies
MDST 412 – Cyberspace, Race, Ethnicity (3)
Instructor: David Golumbia
930-1045 TR, CLM 322A
(No course description available.)
Department of Music
MUSI 212 – History of Jazz Music (4)
Instructor: Scott DeVeaux
1100-1150 MWF, MRY 209
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.
MUEN 369 – African Music and Dance Ensemble (2)
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
1715-1915 TR, OCH 107
Practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (BaAka pygmies). No previous experience with music or dance is necessary. Special attention is given to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and a polymetric sensibility. (S)
Prerequisite: Instructor permission by audition.
Note: Because the subject matter changes each semester, courses numbered MUEN 360-369 may be repeated for credit, but no more than eight performance credits may be applied toward the baccalaureate degree in the College.
Department of Politics
PLAP 324 - Race, Gender American Politics (3)
Instructor: Lynn Sanders
1100-1215 TR, Location: TBA
Examines the process of communicating politics from multiple angles, including the rhetoric of political leaders, campaign communications, political discussion with friends and acquaintances, political representation in the mass media, and growing forms of alternative personal media.
PLAP 424A – Race, Ethnic and Immigration (3)
Instructor: Vesla Weaver
930-1045 TR, CAB 241
(No course description available.)
PLAP 524A – Race Gender Amer Pol (3)
Instructor: Lynn Sanders
1400-1630 W, WIL 215
(No course description available.)
PLCP 212 – Politics Of Developing Areas (3)
Instructor: Robert Fatton
900-950 MW, WIL 402
Surveys patterns of government and politics in non-Western political systems. Topics include political elites, sources of political power, national integration, economic development, and foreign penetration.
Department of Psychology
PSYC 487 – The Minority Family (3)
Instructor: Melvin Wilson
9-11:30 T, GIL 225
Examines the current state of research on minority families, focusing on the black family. Emphasizes comparing “deficit” and “strength” research paradigms.
Enrollment Restrictions: 4th-year Psychology majors/minors
If course is full through ISIS: Please use the online waiting. Do not email the professor.
Format: Seminar.
No. and type of exams: TBA
Papers or projects: TBA
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 389 - Christianity in Africa (3)
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
1200-1250 MW, CAB 311
This course examines the history of Christianity in Africa from its roots in Egypt and the Maghrib in the 2nd c. CE, to contemporary times when nearly half the continent's population claims adherence to the faith. Our historical overview will cover the flowering of medieval Ethiopian Christianity, 16th- and 17th- century Kongolese Christianity, European missions during the colonial period, the subsequent growth of independent churches, the emergence of African Christian theology, and the recent examples of charismatic and Pentecostal “mega-churches.” We will consider the relationship between colonialism and evangelism; assess efforts in translation and inculturation of the gospel; reflect on the role of healing, prophesy and spirit-possession in conversion, and explore a variety of ways of understanding religious change across the continent. We will attempt both to position the Christian movement within the wider context of African religious history, and to understand Africa's place in the larger course of Christian history.
Cross-listed as RELC 389
RELC 318 - American Evangelicalism (3)
Instructor: Pam Cochran
1100-1215 TR, HAL 123
Evangelical Protestantism has played a vital role in shaping American history, culture and religion. It is estimated that some 25-35% of the American population (c. 70-100 million) today identifies with this movement. Far from being a monolithic entity, however, the religious, ideological, and social allegiances of evangelicalism are quite diverse. In addition, evangelicals maintain a somewhat paradoxical relationship with American society, functioning simultaneously as a politically powerful interest group (insiders) and as cultural antagonists (outsiders). This course is designed to introduce students to the history of evangelicalism, its characteristic religious patterns, and its ongoing negotiations with contemporary American culture.
RELG 270 - Festivals of the Americas (3)
Instructor: Jalane Schmidt
1230-1345 TR, PV8 103
By reading case studies of various religious festivals in locations throughout the Caribbean and South, Central and North America, as well as theoretical literature drawn from social anthropology and religious studies, students will become familiar with significant features of contemporary religious life in the Americas, as well as with scholarly accounts of religious synthesis and cultural change. Students will become more critical readers of ethnographic and historical sources, as well as theories from the Study of Religion, and will increase their ability to theorize about ritual, festivity, sacred time, ritual space and ethnicity.
RELG 320 - Martin, Malcolm, and America (3)
Instructor: Mark Hadley
1400-1450 MWF, HAL 123
An intensive examination of African-American social criticism centered upon, but not limited to, the life and thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. We will come to grips with the American legacy of racial hatred and oppression systematized in the institutions of antebellum chattel slavery and post-bellum racial segregation and analyze the array of critical responses to, and social struggles against, this legacy. We will pay particular attention to the religious dimensions of these various forms of social criticism. The course requirements include engaged participation, three short essays, a mid-term and a final examination.
Department of Sociology
SOC 306 – Critical Perspect On Whiteness (3)
Instructor: Matthew Hughey
930-1045 TR, CAB 338
(No course description available.)
SOC 487 – Immigration (3)
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
1400-1515 MW, CAB B029
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.
Studies in Women and Gender
SWAG 236—Women’s Rights in America (3)
Instructor: Cori Field
11-11:50 MWF, MIN 130
We will examine the philosophy and strategy of women’s rights activists in the United States from the Declaration of Independence in 1776 to the winning of woman suffrage in 1920. We will explore how the American ideals of freedom and equality were complicated by sexual/gender differences. We will ask how activists imagined sexual equality and what reforms—political, legal, economic, cultural, or psychological—they proposed. Finally, by focusing on differences among women, we will debate whether there ever was—or could be—a woman’s rights movement that spoke to all women.
Most of the assigned readings are primary documents. While I will provide short lectures introducing these documents, the majority of our class-time will be spent discussing and interpreting primary sources as a group.
Spring 2008
African American and African Studies
AAS 102 – Crosscurents in the African Diaspora (4)
Instructors: Marlon Ross and Ian Grandison
1230-1345 TR
MIN 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, sociology, geography, mapping, and spatial analysis, 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.
AAS 307 – History of Brazil (3)
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
12:30-1:45 TR
CAB 337
This class surveys the History of Brazil from early Portuguese colonization in the sixteenth century to Brazilian Independence in 1822. It places the onset of the colonization of Brazil against the backdrop of the broader Portuguese empire between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. It devotes significant attention to the establishment and growth of indigenous slavery and the transition to African slavery, dwelling on the intellectual and religious debates that the establishment of slavery brought about in the colony and the metropolis. 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 Americas. In addition to lectures and discussions, several movies on colonial Brazil will be shown.
(This course is cross-listed with HILA 307)
AAS 351 - African Diaspora Religions (3)
Jalane Schmidt
930-1045 TR
HAL 123
The seminar will feature close readings of ethnographic literature about African diaspora religions, and require students to write a seminar-length final paper. Often deemed emblematic of these groups' ethnic identities, the religious practices of African-descended populations in Latin America and the Caribbean are a frequent site of inquiry for cultural anthropologists. We will examine the often-polemical "African retention" vs. "creolization" debate as this relates to changing theoretical paradigms in anthropology and to African-descended populations' shifting political fortunes, activism, and cultural cachet. We will attend to changing conceptions of "race," "religion," and "nation" in the treatment of these religions by legal institutions, as well as how officials from the tourism industry and government ministries have influenced processes of "folkloricization."
(This course is cross-listed as RELA 351)
AAS 401 – Independent Study (1-3)
Topic to be determined by the instructor and the student
AAS 402 – Africa and the Black Atlantic (3)
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
1530-1800 R
CAB 236
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.
(Cross-listed as HIAF 401A)
AAS 406A – Gendered Experiences in Africa and its Diaspora (3)
Instructor: Edwina Ashie-Nikoi
1530 -1800 M
BRN 310
This seminar explores the interconnections between gender and history in Africa and its Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean. The course will pay particular attention to the experiences of women of the African Diaspora, but will also explore the experience of men and their articulations of masculinity, and will examine how gendered readings could challenge our understandings and assumptions about historical events in the Diaspora. Readings for the course will be multidisciplinary, and include novels and auto/biographies such as The History of Mary Prince, the only biography of an enslaved woman in the Caribbean. The seminar proceeds from the theoretical perspective that gender is a critical and indispensable category of historical analysis that interlocks with race, class, and other factors. The course will culminate in a 17-25 page research paper.
AAS 406 B – Racial Geographies of Virginia (3)
Instructor: Ian Grandison
1830-2100 T
BRN 332
Traditionally, geography is a scientific discipline devoted to studying and recording, through the supposedly neutral lens of empirical observation, the distribution of features or "resources" (minerals, soils, terrain, drainage, vegetation, wildlife, climate, tribes, clans, kingdoms, nations, "races") that exist at, below, or above the earth's surface. In the popular imagination, geography is often seen as the hobby of people who like to know what and where things are in the world, whether for the love of trivia or for the leisure of touristic adventure. An experimental seminar, this course resonates with "critical geography," which challenges both academic and popular assumptions about geography. Informed and inspired by cultural critique in the humanities, critical geography is a new area of inquiry that interrogates the presumed empirical neutrality of the discipline by focusing on how geographic knowledge has been shaped by the messy negotiation of power among social groups. Critical geography rejects theories of environmental determinism whereby the temperament and social progress of the world's peoples are seen as wholly determined by regional climates and ranked on a scale from primitive to civilized. Thus, racial geography acknowledges the ways in which human groups, arbitrarily distinguished through race, have been among the resources catalogued by geography for the purpose of exploitation. This seminar will serve as a forum for participants to collaborate on delineating the scope of the notion of "racial geography" using the state of Virginia-in any or all of its past or present configurations-as a frame of reference. How has the formation of race helped to give rise to the idea of Virginia, first as a crown colony, then as a commonwealth? How has the emergence of Virginia with its shifting territorial boundaries (from colonization to birthplace of North American slavery, from capital of the confederacy to headquarters of massive resistance against desegregation) been geographically constructed through the notion of race (enterprising settlers, indentured servants, savage vs. friendly natives, chattel slaves, immigrant aliens)? The seminar is conducted through a variety of short, intensive readings; map interpretation workshops; informal individual and group exercises; and field trips. Graded requirements include a midterm exam and a final critical essay (3750 to 5000 words).
AAS 406C – Black Power and the Civil Rights Movement
Instructor: Julian Hayter
1530-1800T
CAB 432
This seminar explores the relationship between the American civil rights movement and the black power movement. Recently, a number of scholars have started to expand the traditional chronology of the two movements by searching for their ideological and social origins. In their search, these historians insist that the noncompliant ideology found in the black power movement (e.g., armed resistance, black nationalism, communism, & socialism) and the black populism commonly associated with the civil rights movement, both pre-date WWII. Scholars have also found that these supposedly distinct forms of activism were combined in various times and places, suggesting that the black power movement may not have been a complete refutation of civil rights activism. We will interrogate this supposed binary through class discussion and readings. We will consider how civil rights activists used measures commonly associated with black power ideology, and we will explore how the marriage of these allegedly dissimilar movements informed the construction of black power politics during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Readings, class discussion, and research will culminate into a 17-20-page paper.
AAS 406D – Blood Diamonds, Black Gold and Joe: The History of African Commodities
Instructor: Todd Cleveland
1530-1800R
CAB 234
Africa is playing an increasingly important role in furnishing three of the world’s most coveted commodities: diamonds, oil and coffee. Each of these items also has a long history on the continent, dating back to the colonial era and, in the case of coffee, even earlier. In this course, we will explore and compare the histories of these commodities, focusing on the labor forces involved in production, the political economies in which production took place and the ways these commodities shaped (and continue to shape) contemporary developments on the continent. We will pay close attention to the relationships between commodities and the major political, social and economic changes on the continent, such as the onset and conclusion of
European colonialism, and the ways that the production of these commodities has both hastened and delayed these developments. The course’s geographic scope will take us across the continent, from “Cape Town to Cairo,” while temporally we will pay special attention to changes over time related to commodity importance and production and will also historicize contemporary commodity phenomena such as “blood diamonds,” “Dutch Disease” and “neo-colonialism,” thereby connecting contemporary African society with the African past. There will be a variety of assignments, culminating in a 17-20-page paper.
AAS 451 – Directed Research for DMP (3)
Meeting time to be determined by instructor and student
AAS 452 – Thesis for DMP (3)
Meeting time to be determined by instructor and student
AAS 528 – Topics in Race Theory: White Supremacy
Instructor: Wende Marshall
1900-2130W
CAU 116
Who is "white"? What is white supremacy? What is the relationship between white supremacy and globalization, whiteness and class power? If "race" is a "social construct," is it also an alibi for white supremacy? How and where is white supremacy deployed in the U.S. and the world? Is the white supremacy manifest by low wealth "whites" a product of hegemony, or false consciousness? If the discourse on non-whites centers on pathological behaviors, what might we construe as (im)proper white behavior? These questions will guide our explorations into the practices and ideologies, structures and discourses of whiteness in post-Reconstruction U.S. and elsewhere. Course Meets: Second Writing Requirement.
(Cross-listed as ANTH 528)
American Studies
AMST 401 – The Landscapes of Slavery (3)
Instructor: Maurie McInnis
1300-1530 R
FHL 215
From January to April 2007, a major exhibition, "The Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art," will be at the University of Virginia Art Museum featuring more than 80 works by more than 50 artists spanning 1800 to the present. Artists include: Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, Thomas Hart Benton, William Johnson, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Carrie Mae Weems, Joyce Scott, Romare Bearden, Juan Logan, and Kara Walker, among others. Working closely with the works in the exhibition, this class will examine the visual depictions of the plantation South in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and tackle questions of politics, protest, memory, nostalgia, and identity. In addition to examining the work of painters who tackled the subject, this class will also look at how the region was portrayed in the popular press, in novels, and in film. Students will do their research projects on works in the exhibition.This class fulfills the second writing assignment.
(Cross-listed as ARTH 491)
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 256 - Peoples and Cultures of Africa (3)
Instructor: Njoki Osotsi
1400-1515 MW
CAB 119
The course surveys topics in modern Africa, through a variety of readings, films, and music. Historical developments over the last 500 years will be given, including how these historic processes have determined and continue to shape contemporary life in Africa. The effects of Western narratives of Africa and African peoples will be studied, as well as how international aspects of African conflicts, including the DRC and Sierra Leone have affected African cultures. The course will also analyze current cultural issues including religion and cosmology, politics, marriage, family life, and female circumcision, to show the complexity, diversity, and richness of lives and societies in Africa. This is a lecture and discussion course.
ANTH 304 – France in North Africa and North Africa in France (3)
Instructor: Anna Lim
1530-1800 T
CAB 319
This course traces the complex and often controversial relationship between France and North Africa, exploring both French "presence" in North Africa under colonialism, and the later North African "presence" in France through what is generally referred to as "post-colonial migrations." We will interrogate the meaning of "decolonization" and the subsequent construction of mutually exclusive categories "French" and "North African," and ask how the colonial past and the relationship between North Africa and France are conceived by both North Africans and the French. We will pay particular attention to the case of Algeria, which, under colonialism, was considered part of French national territory and where French nationality had been extended to all native-born inhabitants. We will also look at how the ideological construction of a secular France and a Muslim North Africa factored into issues of citizenship under colonialism, and continue to play out in framing the current debates over immigration. This course will combine lecture and seminar formats.
(Cross-listed as MESA 304)
ANTH 401C – Contemporary African Societies
Instructor: Adria LaViolette
1700-1930T
CAB 325
This seminar engages the human landscape of modern Africa, through the close reading of a selection of monographs and African feature films from diverse cultural and geographical areas. The texts are drawn from fiction, ethnography, life history, and social history, and are taught against a backdrop of economic strategies, forms of social organization, and challenges facing modern African women and men. We will discuss urban and rural transformations, the elite and poor, and the forces that draw them together; transnational migration; and belief systems. How relationships between men and women are contextualized and negotiated is a theme found throughout the readings and films, as well as the struggle of people in different circumstances to build new relationships with older beliefs and practices, and with new forms of government. Meets second writing requirement if you submit a draft of your paper for comments prior to your final submission.
ANTH 528 – Topics in Race Theory: White Supremacy
Instructor: Wende Marshall
1900-2130W
CAU 116
Who is "white"? What is white supremacy? What is the relationship between white supremacy and globalization, whiteness and class power? If "race" is a "social construct," is it also an alibi for white supremacy? How and where is white supremacy deployed in the U.S. and the world? Is the white supremacy manifest by low wealth "whites" a product of hegemony, or false consciousness? If the discourse on non-whites centers on pathological behaviors, what might we construe as (im)proper white behavior? These questions will guide our explorations into the practices and ideologies, structures and discourses of whiteness in post-Reconstruction U.S. and elsewhere. Course Meets: Second Writing Requirement.
(Cross-listed as AAS 528)
Department of Art History
ARTH 263 – Arts and Cultures of the Slave South
Instructors: Maurie McInnis and Louis Nelson
1530-1645 W
CLRK 108
“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 trips, movie nights, and demonstrations and samplings of traditional southern foods.
(Cross-listed as CCFA 202)
Department of Drama
DRAM 307- African American Theatre
Instructor: Theresa Davis
1400-1515 TR
DRM 217
Course description unavailable
Department of English
ENAM 314 African-American Literature II (3)
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
9:30-10:45
CAB 323
Course description unavailable
ENAM 481A – African American Women Writers (3)
1530-1645 MW
BRN 332
Instructor: Angela Davis
We will read several novels and short stories by African American women, examining in particular how the authors portray black women as individuals and in the context of American society. This course requires active class participation, two written responses to readings (each 2 to 3 double spaced typed pages long) and a formal essay (12 to 15 pages long). The reading list is: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls; Toni Morrison, Sula, and Tar Baby; Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble; Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones; Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place. Restricted to English, African-American Studies, and Women's Studies Majors
ENAM 482B – African-American Speculative Fiction (3)
1100-1215 TR
CAB 335
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
Course description unavailable
ENAM 482 C – Dubois’ Souls of Black Folks (3)
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
1400-1515 TR
BRN 328
This course is devoted entirely to W.E. B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903)--its reception history, its encyclopedic roots and sources, its surrounding contexts, as well as the depth of its influence on African-American literature and intellectual history. We will consider the book’s structuring metaphors and concepts ¬ “souls,” “folk,” “veil,” and “double-consciousness” ¬ and pursue the various manifestations of DuBois’s most famous aphorism: “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” We will also address matters concerning the construction of black masculinity in the post-Emancipation South, the psychological complexities of identity, theories of race, and the poetics and politics of mourning. Texts will include the following essays by DuBois: “What is the Negro Problem?” “The Conservation of Races,” “The Concept of Race,” “The Negro as He Really Is” (with accompanying photographic illustrations), and “Phillis Wheatley and Africam American Culture.” Other selections include Goethe’s Faust, Negro spirituals (what DuBois termed “the sorrow songs”), Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (selections), Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” Emerson’s “Fate” and “The Transcendentalist,” Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil,” William James’s The Principles of Psychology (excerpts), Thomas Dixon’s The Leopard’s Spots, Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery, Pauline Hopkins’s Of One Blood, Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” Anna Julia Cooper’s A Voice from the South, and Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition, as well as DuBois’s correspondence with William James, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Jessie Fauset, and others. Near the end of the course, we will briefly address the international dimension of DuBois’s work and influence, particularly the Pan-African connection.
ENLT 247 – Black Writers in America (3)
Instructor: Rosemary Millar
930-1045 TR
TBA
This course surveys pivotal moments and texts in the history of Black prose. We will examine both canonical and non-canonical texts and a variety of genres-spiritual autobiographies, speeches, short stories, and novels. We will explore a number of themes including the uses of folk/oral tradition, heroism, alienation, class, gender and colour consciousness. Possible texts include Maria S Stewart’s “Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality”; Richard Wright’s Uncle Tom’s Children; Paule Marshall Praise Song for the Widow. We will also examine the relation between the black vernacular tradition and the black formal text as well as political, cultural and critical issues of the writers’ time and our own. To continue to hone our reading and writing skills, active class participation, presentations and three essays (5-7 pages) are required. A final exam is also required. Restricted to first and second-year students.
ENMC 482C - Contemporary African-American Drama (3)
Instructor: Lotta Löfgren
1230-1345 TR
CAB 331
We will survey African-American drama from the 1950's to the present. Along the way, we will place the drama in relation to established norms, investigating the motives and methods of the playwrights for carving out new ground. We will examine the shared and divergent concerns of male and female playwrights, their sense of audience, the dilemma of writing as an individual and as a member of a group silenced too long, their relationship to the past, the present, and the future. We will also examine the changing definitions of the black aesthetic. We will read works by James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Adrienne Kennedy, Amiri Baraka, Ntozake Shange, August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, and others.
Department of French Language and Literature
FREN 345 - Topics in Cultural Studies: Haitian Voices
Instructor: Stephanie Hopwood
1400-1515 TR
CHM 260
On January 1, 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines renamed Saint Domingue as the newly independent nation of Ayiti, the name taken from the Taino word for “land of mountains.” Thus Haiti, at the time the world’s richest colony, became the world’s first Black Republic. Less than three years after independence, however, Haiti’s first emperor for life was ambushed and assassinated, setting into motion a domino-effect of national catastrophes that would endure for over two centuries and render the once wealthy island the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.
Taking into account Haiti’s rich, complicated, and largely tragic history, we will examine the Haitian novel from 1944 to 1992, focusing on such themes as national identity, the intersection of memory and dictatorship, (de)zombification, and exile. Readings will include novels by Jacques Roumain (Gouverneurs de la rosée), Jacques Stephen Alexis (Compère Général Soleil), Marie Vieux-Chauvet (Amour, Colère, et Folie), René Depestre (Le Mât de Cocagne), and Dany LaFerrière (Le Goût des jeunes filles). Course requirements will consist of several short papers, a mid-term, a final exam, and active participation.
FREN 346 – African Literatures and Culures (3)
Instructor: Kandioura Dramé
10-1050 MWF
CLM 322A
Prerequisite: French 332
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
Mouloud Mammeri - Poèmes Kabyles anciens
FREN 570 – Francophone Literature of Africa (3)
Instructor: Kandioura Drame
1530-1800M
WIL 414B
Survey of 20th century Francophone literature of Africa. Colonial literature and Assimilation; Negritude, Nationalism and Identity; Postcolonial literature; Feminism; Literature and Censorship; Language and Literature; Theatre and ritual performance; and Oral literature as a major intertext will all be examined through novels, poems, and plays by contemporary African writers in French. Authors will include Senghor, B. Diop, C. Beyala, M. Beti, A. Laabi, Djebar, Mimouni, Utamsi, Werewere Liking, Rabemanjara, and Ken Bugul. Weekly response papers, brief mid-semester oral presentations and bibliographies of the selected research subjects and a research paper (F570: 12-15 pages; F870: 20-25 pages) are required.
Required Reading:
Mongo Beti – Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba
Bernard Dadié- Béatrice du Congo
Sony Labou Tansi- La Parenthèse de sang suivi de Je soussigné cardiaque
Assia Djebar- Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement
Driss Chraibi- L’Homme du livre
Alain Mabanckou- Memoire de porc-epic
Calixte Beyala- Comment cuisiner son mari à l’Africaine
Fatou Diome – Le Ventre de l’Atlantique
Ousmane Sembène- Guelwaar
Michel Hauser- Littératures francophones: III. Afrique noire, Océan indien.
Jacques Noiray- Littératures francophones: I. Le Maghreb.
Department of History
HIAF 202 – Modern African History
Instructor: John Mason
1700-1815 TR
CAB 311
This course 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 contemporary condition, both good and bad. 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 concentrate on three regions: West Africa, especially Nigeria; Central Africa, especially the Congo and Rwanda; and southern Africa, especially South Africa. We 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 202 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.
HIAF 389 – Africa and World History
Instructor: Joseph Miller
930-1045 TR
WIL 216
HIAF 389 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 ha not routinely considered Africa’s place in the long-term history of the human race – even though genetic and other evidence establishes that all modern humans descended from ancestors living 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, philosopher of the modern discipline of history, specifically excluded Africa from his schema of universal history as the continent lacking.
HIAF 389 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 challenges and changes in the broader story of human history throughout the world; and (3) to look afresh at the familiar narrative of world “civilizations” in terms derived from African perspectives, strategies, and experiences. 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.
HIAF 389 will provide the usual narrative framework of Africa’s past through reading a current text (John Reader, Africa: A Biography) but will develop significantly different interpretive emphases; the critical contrast will reveal the assumptions underlying the way that historians think – or should think, since so few of them actually do. We will also read a world-history text (Armesto, The World: A History) and attempt to bring the two approaches together with the argument to be developed in the course. We will also read more technical articles on concepts and processes integral to understanding Africa and history. You need not have taken either HIAF 201 or 202 (Introductions to early and modern Africa), but if you have not you will need to take responsibility for grasping the basic narrative from which the course will build.
Students will write short analytical “take-home points” at the end 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. The final exercise will be a take-home essay responding to a single question: “How do you now, having spent a semester looking at global history in the context of Africa’s past, and vice versa, see the similarities and the differences between Africans’ experiences and those of other people elsewhere around the globe?”
Student writing will be considered intensely and analytically.
HIAF 401A – Africa and the Black Atlantic (3)
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
1530-1800 R
CAB 236
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.
(Cross-listed as AAS 402)
HIAF 404 – Independent Study in African History (1-3)
Topic to be determined by instructor and student
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HILA 307 – History of Brazil (3)
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
12:30-1:45 TR
CAB 337
This class surveys the History of Brazil from early Portuguese colonization in the sixteenth century to Brazilian Independence in 1822. It places the onset of the colonization of Brazil against the backdrop of the broader Portuguese empire between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. It devotes significant attention to the establishment and growth of indigenous slavery and the transition to African slavery, dwelling on the intellectual and religious debates that the establishment of slavery brought about in the colony and the metropolis. 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 Americas. In addition to lectures and discussions, several movies on colonial Brazil will be shown.
(This course is cross-listed with AAS 307)
HILA 402A: Globalization in Latin American (4)
Instructor: Brian Owensby
R 13:00-15:30
PV8 108
In this advanced undergraduate colloquium we will explore the idea of “globalization” from the perspective of Latin America’s 500-year history of engagement with global phenomena. While globalization has become a buzzword in recent years, it has a long history in Latin America, from Spain’s 16th-century “conquest” of indigenous America, to the slave trade to places such as Brazil and Cuba, to the trans-Atlantic intellectual exchanges of the late 18th century, to the effects on Indian villages as Latin American countries began to participate in the international economy as providers of raw materials and commodities in the 19th century, to the rebellion of the Zapatistas in southern Mexico in the 1990s against NAFTA. Through a wide variety of texts and films we will seek a critical perspective on globalization as a broad historical process that must be understood in relation to local histories and happenings. The course will satisfy the second writing requirement. Enrollment will be limited to 12.
HILA 402B: Latin American In Quest of Identity (4)
Instructor: Herbert Braun
T 13:000-15:30
PV8 103
In Latin America the search for identity has been a plural endeavor. Latin Americans have asked, “Who are we? Rarely have they asked, “Who am I? “Who are we? What kind of a people are we? What kind of a civilization? What is our destiny? What are the causes of our backwardness? What lies in our future? These thoughts run through the writings of almost all of Latin America’s great thinkers.
The course will be divided into two parts: In the first eight weeks we will read together from the writings of some of those great thinkers, including Bolívar, Sarmiento, Andrés Bello, José María Luis Mora, Lucas Alamán, Alcides Arguedas, Francisco Bulnes, José Ingenieros, José Enrique Rodó, José Martí, José Carlos Mariátegui, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, Edmundo O’Gorman, Leopoldo Zea, Octavio Paz.
Students in this course will write a final interpretive essay on this quest for identity based on our readings of historical and contemporary writers. This essay will be between twenty and thirty pages in length.
HILA 404: Independent Study in Latin American History (1-3)
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member, any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings.
HIST 213 – World History of Slavery
Instructor: Joseph Miller
1900-2130 M
PAV 8, 108
HIST 213 takes a seemingly well-known subject – slavery – and considers the many academic disciplines through which scholars, and others, have approached this ubiquitous human condition. There are many ways to write about the past beyond history itself. Considering these varying perspectives on a seemingly single topic will allow students to enrich their understandings of a subject of continuing and often emotional interest, while also giving Second-Years substantial and considered insight into the epistemologies underlying their options in the University’s departments of anthropology, arts, economics, history, literature(s), political economy, psychology, and sociology – among others – as they face the College requirement to select (and declare) their major subjects.
Although most Americans, when they hear the word “slavery”, think only of cotton fields in antebellum Mississippi, slaving has been a recurrently prominent feature of human history for thousands of years, in every part of the world, and in many different forms, few of them remotely like the Mississippi Delta in the 1840s. The course secondarily sketches the outline of this long, varied, and not always tragic history.
Slavery is also a subject of ongoing, very contemporary, often emotional political concern. The “hot-button” quality of the subject, and its frequent confusion with race and even with gender, make it difficult to discuss intelligently (as distinct from passionately). All the greater the need, then, to develop a clear-headed sense of how one thinks about it in alternative ways.
The instructor is a historian with broad familiarity with other academic disciplines and substantial experience studying slavery, world-wide. The course will feature readings representative of the various approaches to several instances of slavery. Class sessions will center on discussion of the issues they raise. We will begin with a seemingly innocuous sketch of the history of the “institution” and consider the implications both of what the author has written and also – and more importantly – how the author has written it. In succeeding weeks, we will read and critically analyse works written from other disciplinary perspectives, not so much to fill out the narrative of slavery in world history as to understand the implications of writing as – for example – an economist, as distinct from as a literary critic, as distinct from as a historian.
Course requirements will center on short, weekly position papers focused on assessing the works read and considering the epistemological implications of each. In lieu of a final examination, students will submit a slightly longer essay assessing the strengths (and limitations) of one of the disciplines considered during the term. All student writing will be considered intensely and analytically, based on a set of “writing tips” focused on clarity and coherence of argumentation. Final grades will reflect students’ “highest consistent performance”; no mechanical formula will apply.
HIUS 100A – Family and Community in African-American History
Instructors: Reginald Butler and Scot French
1300-1530 T
WIL 141A
This seminar will explore the theme of family and community in African American history, from the Colonial period through the early Civil Rights era. We will devote a portion of each class to a close examination of primary sources and a critical reading of secondary sources, including film. Grades will be based on 6-7 short research/writing assignments and a final presentation. Readings may include selections from Michael P. Johnson and James L. Rourk, Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South; Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925; Brenda Stevenson, Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South; Joshua D. Rothman, Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861; Anthony E. Kaye, Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South; Dylan Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth Century South; Tera Hunter, 'To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War; Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration; and Michele Mitchell, Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction. This course meets the second writing requirement.
HIUS 221 – Gender and Race in US History
Instructor: Cori Field
1100-1215
CAU 112
This course will introduce students to the history of gender and race in the United States. We will seek to answer the following questions: What does it mean to treat gender and race as historically constructed categories? What is the difference between gender history and women's history, between the history of race and the history of racial groups? How does the study of gender and race change the narrative of U.S. history? How does it change our understanding of contemporary issues and problems?
We will focus on three key moments when gender and race proved particularly salient: the establishment of slavery in the colonial South and Puritanism in colonial New England; industrialization and the expansion of white manhood suffrage in the antebellum era; the creation of an American empire and Jim Crow segregation at the turn of the twentieth century.
The readings will be drawn from critical theory, historical monographs, and primary documents. Assignments will include selections from: Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History; Denise Riley, Am I That Name?; Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs; Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers; David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness; Jeanne Boydston, Home and Work; Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract; Barbara Welke, Recasting Liberty; Allison Sneider, Suffragists in an Imperial Age; Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues; Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization; and Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow.
Lectures will provide historical context, but the majority of class-time will be spent discussing the readings. Course requirements will include active participation in class discussion, weekly written responses to the reading, two five page papers, and a take-home final exam. Readings will average 75 pages per week. There are no prerequisites for taking this class.
(Cross-listed with SWAG 220)
HIUS 316: Viewing America 1945 to the Present (3)
Instructor: Brian Balogh
MW 10:00 – 10:50
WIL 402
This course will examine how Americans experienced some of the major events that shaped their lives. We will view what millions of Americans did by watching feature films, news reels, and footage from popular television shows and news broadcasts. We will also read primary and secondary texts that explore among other topics, the domestic impact of World War II, America's reaction to the atomic bomb, the rise of the military-industrial-university complex, the emergence of the Cold War, the culture of anxiety that accompanied it, suburbanization, the "New Class" of experts, the Civil Rights movement, changing gender roles in the work place and at home, the origins and implications of community action and affirmative action, the War in Vietnam, the Great Society, the counterculture, Watergate, the environmental movement, challenges to the authority of expertise, the decline of political parties, structural changes in the economy, the mobilization of interest groups from labor to religious organizations, the emergence of the New Right, the challenge to big government, the end of the Cold war, and the role of the electronic media in politics.
HIUS 324 – The South in the Twentieth Century
Instructor: Grace Hale
1400-1450 MW
WIL 301
This course examines the broad history of the American South in the twentieth century, with special emphasis on racial violence, the creation of segregation, class and gender relations within the region, the cultural and economic interdependence of black and white southerners, and the Civil Right Movement and its aftermath. Sources examined will include film, fiction, and music as well as more traditional historical sources like newspapers and court opinions. Students interested in American Studies, African American Studies, and Gender Studies are also welcome.
Grading: midterm 25%; paper (5-7 pp) 25%; final exam 30%; participation in discussion sections and attendance at film and documentary screenings 20%
HIUS 366 – African-American History from the Civil War to the Present
Instructor: Reginald Butler
1300-1350 MWF
WIL 216
This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in the United States. We will examine some of the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities, paying particular attention to how African Americans themselves shaped their experiences. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the historical implications for contemporary African American lived experiences. Course requirements include written weekly reading responses, a short paper, midterm, and final.
HIUS 367 – History of the Civil Rights Movement
Instructor: Julian Bond
1530-1730 T
WIL 403
This lecture course examines the history, philosophies, tactics, events and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward.
The Southern movement - variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement - was a black-lead, interracial mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation by the mid-60s.
Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping and occasionally complimentary phases - lobbying, litigation and protest.
In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights.
In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation and the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools.
The last phase, lasting a decade from '54 through '65, was a decade of protests - boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations - as well as grass-roots organizing campaigns that laid the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s.
Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength and followers from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation. The movement's well-known and lesser-known proponents and their strategies will be examined.
Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five- to seven-page papers.
Texts:
• Wilkins, Roy, with Tom Matthews, Standing Fast, Da Capo Press
• Forman James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, University of Washington Press
• Bond, Julian and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, Thompson Learning
Videos:
• "Eyes on the Prize - America's Civil Rights Years, 1954 - 1965", # 1 to 6
• "America the at the Racial Crossroads, 1965 - 1985," # 1 and 2; PBS Video, Blackside Inc., Boston
• "The Road to Brown," William Elwood, Producer, California Newsreel
HIUS 401H – History Seminar:
Reconstructing the South, 1862-1877 (4)
1530-1800 W
RFN 227B
Instructor: Keith Harris
This course is a seminar in which students will analyze political and social issues in the southern United States beginning with the period of wartime reconstruction through the so-called Compromise of 1877. We will primarily examine how Reconstruction politics overlapped with individuals’ public and private lives and investigate how people negotiated and shaped political and personal relationships in an era of uncertainty. Students will analyze several works of scholarship as well as produce an original research paper of substantial length.
HIUS 403B– African American Culture to 1865
1300-1530 T
CAB 241
Instructor: Reginald D. Butler
This course will examine how African American cultures and societies developed in the north and south. How did forcibly transported Africans respond to the different agricultural economies, the conditions of enslavement, and European and native American cultures that they encountered during the colonial period? The course will begin in the early period during which large numbers of Africans arrived in British North America. It will then shift its focus to mature African American communities in which the vast majority of persons were American born. We will examine issues of African ethnicity and geography; family and kinship; religious practice; and diverse forms of aesthetic expression. Readings may include selections from: Johannes M. Postma, The Atlantic Slave Trade; Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective; Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves; W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail; Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860; Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market; and Dylan Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South.
Department of Music
MUEN 369 African Drumming and Dance Ensemble (2)
1715-1915 TR
OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
This is a practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (BaAka pygmies, Bagandou farmers), with the intention of performing during and at the end of the semester. These traditions include drumming, dancing, and singing, all students are expected to try all aspects, even if they then specialize only in a given medium for performance. We will give special attention to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and a polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, and faithful attendance are required of each class member. No experience is required, but there is an informal audition (first class meeting) prior to final enrollment.
MUSI 207 - Roots Music in America (3)
Instructor: Richard Will
MW 11:00 – 11:50
WIL 301
According to mainstream media, "roots music" like gospel, blues, country, folk, and bluegrass nourishes more popular genres such as rock and hip-hop, while also expressing the emotional and social concerns of (mainly) rural African-American and White American communities. We will examine both claims by studying the origins and development of roots genres and the way they are depicted in films, criticism, politics, and elsewhere.
MUSI 208 - African American Gospel Music (3)
Instructor: Melvin Butler
13-13:50 MW
MIN 125
No description available.
MUSI 309 Performance in Africa (4)
Instructor: Michelle Kisuluk
1545-1700 TR
OCH 107
This course explores performance in Africa through reading, discussion, audio and video examples, and hands-on practice. The course meets with Music 369 (African Drumming and Dance Ensemble) as a "lab", but is a full academic course.* Students in Music 309 are automatically part of the current semester's UVA African Drumming and Dance Ensemble (by audition). Your role in the Ensemble as learner and performer is crucial to your overall work in the course (also see description for Music 369). We will explore African music/dance styles, 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. 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. The course will explore both "traditional" and "popular" styles, leading us to question those categories.
MUSI 426 – Music and Religious Experience in the U.S.
Instructor: Melvin Butler
1530-1645
OCH 107
MUSI426 is primarily a reading seminar in which we will explore the role of musical practice in religious communities in the United States. We will highlight the complex relation between musical style and transcendent experience, while paying special attention to the ways in which the "religious" and the "secular" are musically and socially constructed in American society. Jon Michael Spencer’s work on theomusicology will be a significant resource, along with books and articles by Judith Becker, Philip Bohlman, Horace Boyer, Guthrie Ramsey, Teresa Reed, Jeffery Summit, and other ethnomusicologists. Audio and video recordings, in addition to selected assigned readings, will fuel our class discussions. Throughout the semester, students will develop final projects built around ethnographic field research.
*Course satisifes Second Writing Requirement.
Department of Politics
PLAP 382: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights (3)
Instructor: David Klein
MW 13:00 – 13:50
WIL 301
Studies judicial construction and interpretation of civil rights and liberties reflected by Supreme Court decisions. Includes line-drawing between rights and obligations.
PLAP 481: Class, Race and the Environment (3)
Instructor: Paul Martin
1530-1800 W
CAB 123
Course description unavailable
PLCP 581: Government and Politics of Sub-Saharan Africa (3)
Instructor: Robert Fatton
M 13:00 – 15:30
CAB 236
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.
PLIR 325 – International Relations of Africa (3)
1530-1800 W
CAB 340
Instructor: TBA
Course description unavailable
Department of Psychology
PSYC 487 – Minority Family
9-11:30 M
GIL B001
Instructor: Melvin Wilson
Examines the current state of research on minority families, focusing on the black family. Emphasizes comparing “deficit” and “strength” research paradigms.
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 285 Afro-Creole Religions (3)
1530-1645 TR
GIL 141
Instructor: Jalane Schmidt
Course description unavailable
RELA 300 Women and Religion in Africa (3)
1530-1800 W
MRY 110
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
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, Christian congregations and Muslim communities in Africa. Requirements: 1) active class participation; 2) several short written assignments; 3) two exams.
RELG 285 African Diaspora Religions (3)
930-1045 TR
HAL 123
Instructor: Jalane Schmidt
The seminar will feature close readings of ethnographic literature about African diaspora religions, and require students to write a seminar-length final paper. Often deemed emblematic of these groups' ethnic identities, the religious practices of African-descended populations in Latin America and the Caribbean are a frequent site of inquiry for cultural anthropologists. We will examine the often-polemical "African retention" vs. "creolization" debate as this relates to changing theoretical paradigms in anthropology and to African-descended populations' shifting political fortunes, activism, and cultural cachet. We will attend to changing conceptions of "race," "religion," and "nation" in the treatment of these religions by legal institutions, as well as how officials from the tourism industry and government ministries have influenced processes of "folkloricization."
RELC 523 Pentecostalism (3)
1530-1800 R
PV8 108
Instructor: Valerie Cooper
This course will study the history, practices, theology, and praxis 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. The course will explore Pentecostalism’s theological and historical relationship to the Holiness, Apostolic, and Charismatic movements, as well as Pentecostal belief in phenomena like speaking in tongues, healing, miracles, and prophecy. Finally, the course will use race, class, and gender analysis to evaluate the cultural influences of Pentecostalism in the US and elsewhere in the world.
Department of Sociology
SOC 341 – Race and Ethnic Relations (3)
MW 1400-1515
CAB 341
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
Introduces the study of race and ethnic relations, including the social and economic conditions promoting prejudice, racism, discrimination, and segregation. Examines contemporary American conditions, and historical and international materials
SOC 442 – Sociology of Inequality (3)
MW 1600-1715
COC 115
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
Surveys basic theories and methods used to analyze structures of social inequality. Includes comparative analysis of the inequalities of power and privilege, and their causes and consequences for social conflict and social change.
Studies in Women and Gender
SWAG 220 – Gender and Race in US History
Instructor: Cori Field
1100-1215
CAU 112
This course will introduce students to the history of gender and race in the United States. We will seek to answer the following questions: What does it mean to treat gender and race as historically constructed categories? What is the difference between gender history and women's history, between the history of race and the history of racial groups? How does the study of gender and race change the narrative of U.S. history? How does it change our understanding of contemporary issues and problems?
We will focus on three key moments when gender and race proved particularly salient: the establishment of slavery in the colonial South and Puritanism in colonial New England; industrialization and the expansion of white manhood suffrage in the antebellum era; the creation of an American empire and Jim Crow segregation at the turn of the twentieth century.
The readings will be drawn from critical theory, historical monographs, and primary documents. Assignments will include selections from: Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History; Denise Riley, Am I That Name?; Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs; Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers; David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness; Jeanne Boydston, Home and Work; Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract; Barbara Welke, Recasting Liberty; Allison Sneider, Suffragists in an Imperial Age; Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues; Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization; and Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow.
Lectures will provide historical context, but the majority of class-time will be spent discussing the readings. Course requirements will include active participation in class discussion, weekly written responses to the reading, two five page papers, and a take-home final exam. Readings will average 75 pages per week. There are no prerequisites for taking this class.
(Cross-listed with HIUS 221)
SWAG 222 – Political History of Housework
Instructor: Vanessa May
10:00-11:15 T R
WIL 140
Does housework have a history? What is that history and how has it shaped women’s role in American politics and society? Does housework count as “work” equal to the paid labor performed by men? What about the housework performed by paid domestics, often women of color? Is housework a political issue? Women have been the designated caretakers, paid and unpaid, of American homes and families for generations. The role of homemaker has also been central to women’s political identities from Hillary Clinton’s infamous statement that she would not stay “home and bake cookies” to Phyllis Schlafly’s carefully crafted image as just another homemaker. This course will trace the history of housework in the home, economy, culture, and politics of America. We will look at how housework has changed over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, how women have used the role of homemaker to gain entry to American politics, and the lives and choices of the immigrants and women of color who performed paid housework for middle-class and wealthy families. Finally, students will look at the political challenge that housework still presents today, from the poor working conditions of the often undocumented immigrants who perform our paid domestic labor to the “second shift” worked daily by women who work outside the home to the current cultural debate about whether middle-class mothers should stay home with their children or go to work.
Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese
POTR 427 - Afro-Brazilian Civilization (3)
Instructor: David Haberly
MWF 11:00 – 11:50
CAB 134
A general introduction, in English, to the literature and culture of Brazil from 1500 to the present, with special emphasis upon the role of Afro-Brazilians in the creation of that literature and culture. No knowledge of Portuguese is required, and lectures and readings will be in English. The course includes discussions of the nation's social and historical development, but these topics will be presented through readings in the major works of Brazilian literature, including the works of important Afro-Brazilian authors.
Fall 2007
African-American and African Studies
AAS 100 – Leadership in Black Ethnic Communities (3)
1530-1800 R
CAB 330
Instructor: Leonard Perry
This course will provide an intellectual and social context (with field work) for the examination of leadership theory and its application for Black community development and leadership in African-American communities.
The Course will pursue a culturally specific perspective in the exploration of the various topics ofleadership and use an instructional framework that emphasizes experiential learning.
An analysis of African-centered leadership from historical and contemporary, domestic and international perspectives will provide an additional backdrop for gaining knowledge and understanding of leadership and its relationship to the African Diaspora and its communities.
AAS 101 – African American and African Studies I (3)
12:30-1:45 TR
WIL 301
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
AAS 101 is a team-taught lecture that explores the history and culture of Africans in Africa and people of African descent in the Americas. The class begins by analyzing issues such as the formation of agricultural/sedentary communities, food transformation, and technological innovations in Africa prior to the contacts with European. We will then examine the social and economical dimensions of African contacts with Europeans during the slave trade era. The class will also cover the African Diaspora in the Americas, emphasizing the African Diaspora to regions outside North America. Students will read the following: Herbert Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge, 2001; Robin Law and Paul Lovejoy (eds.), The Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua: his Passage from Slavery to Freedom in Africa and America. Princeton, Markus Wiener Publishers, 2003; Randy J. Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth Century Atlantic Odyssey. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2004; Michael L. Conniff and Thomas J. Davis, Africans in the Americas: A History of the Black Diaspora. Blackburn Press, 2002; George Reid Andrews, Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000. Oxford, 2004. Grading for the class will consist of the following: Participation/Discussion; Short Response Papers; Midterm Exam; Short Writing Assignment; Final Exam.
AAS 215 Culture and World Politics (4 with discussion)
1530-1800 (1800-1850 Disc) R
CLK 101
Instructor: Maurice Apprey
This course explores the role of culture in international politics. While cultural factors have long influenced the pattern of international relations, many people believe that religious, ethnic and other cultural factors have become increasingly important in the post Cold War era. These "identity" issues raise new questions about the role of national sovereignty, the prospects for democracy throughout the world, and the future of international interactions. Correlatively what experiences can today’s students bring to these discussions, given their own ethnic, national or religious identities
The course, then, will focus on several broad themes that are structured around the pivot of identity and Otherness but we will use multiple cultural, national, international and historical contexts to engage those central issues in the first instance. These in turn will feed our imagination in the EDLF laboratory course for investigating issues of identity and difference at the personal and relational levels with peers at this university. At length, we begin with broader themes and invariably end with discussions on how we situate ourselves in these complex and changing times.
• What kinds of arguments have dominated international discussions of the post Cold War international system? How have these changed in the wake of September 11?
• What kinds of assumptions structure national self-images? Images of others?
• How do "identity politics" – religion, ethnicity and nationalism – affect international relations?
• What are the roots of the tensions between “Islam” and the “West”?
• Are “democracy" and “human rights” universal concepts? How do Western and non-Western belief systems affect the social bases of political order in various countries?
• What assumptions structure U.S. foreign policy? How different are the perspectives of less powerful groups in the international system?
• What role do non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play in facilitating social problem-solving, conflict resolution and nation-building?
• Manifestations of Identity and Otherness in multiculturalism in the US. What is the residual legacy of Black Nationalism in the US?
• Manifestations of Identity and Otherness: The case of South Africa. What lessons can be learned from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Project?
AAS 250 – The Health of Black Folks (3)
1100-12:15 R
MCL 2014
Instructor: Wende Marshall
"The Health of Black Folks" is a course in medical anthropology which will analyze the relationship between race, class, gender and health, both historically and in the present (with particular attention to the
experience of Native Americans and African Americans). The course is interdisciplinary and in addition to anthropology may offer readings and analysis from sociology, public health and epidemiology, literary
studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies and history. Issues addressed in the course may include: the myth of the biological basis of race; race, health and the environment; black, brown and poor bodies as research subjects for biomedical science; gender, race and reproductive health; and specific epidemics such as cancer or HIV.
(Cross listed under ANTH 250)
AAS 401 – Independent Study (1-3)
Topic to be determined by the instructor and the student
AAS 405A – Black Mater: Migrancy, Maternity and New Social Orders (3)
1300 -1530 W
CAB 331
Instructor: Alwin Jones
This course will introduce students to both historical and emergent debates and discourses regarding the place of the mother figure in the literature and culture of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, especially as related to and through questions of migrancy and power. This study examines writing and cultural expressions in English of the “interstitial Caribbean” from the periods of 1789 to 1863, and 1950 to 2006, with interstitiality implying an overt association by the writers with Caribbeanness. Students will examine the works via a very interdisciplinary approach in this project, engaging not only the literary, but also the historical, sociological, religious, and performative. Our goal is to examine how these writers maneuver in and against the dominant social orders of chattel slavery, the pre/emancipation moment, or post/coloniality, in relation to how they “language” a politicized and political migrant maternity, and identify this mobilized maternity with the imagining of “new” social orders. Some of the writers and texts include but are not limited to: Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative (1789), Mary Prince’s The History of Mary Prince (1831), Martin Delaney’s Blake (1861-63), the poetry and performances of Louise Bennett, Audre Lorde, Linton Johnson’s and Saul Williams, Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven, Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstone, Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother, Audre Lorde’s Zami, and the film Sankofa, as well as other short stories and essays.
AAS 405B – African Women Write the (Post) Colonial (3)
1530-1800 T
CAB B026
Instructor: Z’etoile Imma
Course Description: In this seminar we will explore the diverse expressions of the (post)colonial experience from the myriad of voices that constitutes African women’s writing. Traversing various landscapes through African women’s writings will allow to us insight into their significant yet often overlooked re-formulation of history, experience, identity, and agency. We will focus primarily on the novel and short fiction as the genres of focus. Undoubtedly, questions regarding the (post)colonial, gender, race, class, modernity, space, exile, violence, resistance, war and language will arise. Informed by various theories, we will attempt to define and grapple with these terms. Specifically we will deconstruct the postcolonial as a gendered experience, gather various postulations on “third world feminisms,” learn to recognize significant themes that appear inter-textually, offer our own analysis of the profound work we have collectively examined, and enjoy the company/challenge of our own diverse standpoints.
AAS 451 – Directed Research for DMP (3)
Meeting time to be determined by instructor and student
AAS 452 – Thesis for DMP (3)
Meeting time to be determined by instructor and student
American Studies
AMST 201 (0003) – Race, Identity and American Visual Culture (3)
1230-1345 TR
CAB 323
Instructor: Carmenita Higginbotham
Course description unavailable
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 401D -Contemporary African Societies (3)
1530-1645 MW
CLK 101
Instructor: Adria LaViolette
This course engages the human landscape of modern Africa, through the close reading of a selection of monographs and African feature films from diverse cultural and geographical areas. The main texts are drawn from fiction, ethnography, and social history, and are taught against a backdrop of economic strategies, forms of social organization, and challenges facing modern African women and men. We will discuss urban dwellers and rural farmers, both the elite and poor, and the forces that draw them together; transnational migration; and belief systems. How relationships between men and women are contextualized and negotiated is a theme found throughout the readings and films, as well as the struggle of people in different circumstances to build new relationships with older beliefs and practices, and with new forms of government. Course Satisfies the Second Writing Requirement.
ANTH 589 – Precolonial African Cities and States (3)
1530-1800 T
CAB 336
Instructor: Adria LaViolette
This seminar explores the archaeological and other forms of evidence concerning larger-scale African societies prior to the 16th century A.D. It will focus on the origins and trajectories of these societies, their changing political economies, ideologies, and the nature of their connections to each other, their regional neighbors, and to other parts of the world. Permission of Instructor.
Department of English
ENAM 313 African American Survey (3)
1400-1515 TR
BRN 328
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
This course surveys pivotal moments and texts in the history of African-American letters, from Briton Hammon's Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings (1860) to W. E. B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903)Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition (1901). Working our way through a variety of genres (elegy, drama, the captivity narrative, the slave narrative, the essay, public oratory, speeches, and novels), we will explore a number of matters pertinent to literary studies in general, as well as those with specific implications for African-American writing and writers. We will consider the circumstances of textual production and reception, ideas and ideologies of literary history and culture, aesthetics, authorship and audience. We will focus our attention immediately on the emergence of African-American writing under the regime of slavery and the questions it poses about "race," "authorship," "subjectivity," "self-mastery," and "freedom." We will consider the material and social conditions under which our selected texts were edited, published, marketed, and "authenticated," lingering especially on the role white abolitionists and editors played in the production and mediation of these texts for various reading publics. Our ultimate aim is to situate our selections within the broadest possible contexts of their time and ours. Other required texts include Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Frances Harper's Iola Leroy, William Wells Brown's Clotelle, Harriet Wilson's Our Nig and Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition. Restricted to 2nd and 3rd years.
ENAM 315 American Renaissance (3)
10-10:50 MWF
AST 265
Stephen Railton
This course will look closely at the achievements of the period 1835-1855 in American literature. We'll study canonical masterpieces like Emerson's essays, Thoreau's Walden, Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, Melville's Moby-Dick and Whitman's first edition of Leaves of Grass. We'll also study some of the most popular works of this period: Longfellow's poetry and Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, for instance. We'll also study the beginnings of African American literature in the work of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Wilson. In the twice-weekly lectures and once-weekly discussions, we'll consider each work on its own terms, and in terms of its relationships to the other works and to the preoccupations of the period. During these decades there was, as Emerson said later, "a new consciousness." We'll try to figure out what that means.
ENAM 381 (0001) – Black Protest Narrative (3)
1530-1645 TR
MRY 113
Instructor: Marlon Ross
This course explores the relation between modern racial protest and African American narrative art (fiction, autobiography, film, narrative poetry) from the mid-1930s to the early 1970s, focusing on the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights movement, and the emergence of Black Power. As well as examining the social, political, and economic contexts of protest narratives, we’ll probe their aesthetic, formal, and ideological structures, and assess how protest writers represent controversial topics of the time, such as lynching, segregation, sharecropping, disenfranchisement, anti-Semitism, unemployment, migration, urbanization, religion, sexuality, war and military service, strikebreaking, cross-racial coalitions, and the role of the individual in social change. We start with the most famous protest narrative, Richard Wright’s Native Son , then study other narratives, many of which challenge Wright’s forms and ideas. Other writers include Angelo Herndon, William Attaway, Ann Petry, Chester Himes, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Alice Walker, and Bobby Seale, as well as pertinent readings in history, literary criticism, journalism, and social science. Films include: Native Son (starring Richard Wright), No Way Out (starring Sidney Poitier), and The Education of Sonny Carson . Heavy reading schedule. Midterm, final, and reading journal required.
ENAM 381 (0002) – Reading the Black College Campus (3)
1530-1645 TR
CAB 340
Instructor: Ian Grandison
Have you ever thought about how the monumentality of the signature buildings on the campuses of land-grant colleges and universities in America, resist the aim of the slight “ Cow School ” to belittle the official mission of these institutions? What about how the ubiquitous ivy, cloaking all manner of structures on the campuses of “Ivy League” colleges and universities, signify the high status of these institutions? In this student-centered, sensing, interpreting, and communication course, we consider the ways in which identity politics are implicated spatially in built environments. We focus on college campuses, especially those of HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). We consider how such built environments were shaped by (and shaped) the struggle to democratize education in the United States especially during the Jim Crow Period. Rather than the still predominant approach in architectural and landscape architectural criticism of understanding built-environments art-historically; as collections of artifacts—usually buildings—assessed in relation to rigorously policed canons of accepted types and styles, we foreground the importance of understanding built environments as arenas of cultural conflict and negotiation. Thus, beyond its significance as an outdoor museum of neo-classical buildings, the Lawn is a multi- layered record of the sometimes delicate and sometimes robust negotiation among the individuals and groups connected with it for position and privilege in the social hierarchy. Consider how the Pavilions distinguish those who live in them from those who live in the rooms that stretch like motels between the Pavilions? Better, beyond the discourse associated with it, how does the Lawn distinguish its residents from those who have no other business there except as respectful and admiring passers-by? Understood in this way, built environments become crucial sources in cultural critique. With the help discussions, required field trips, occasional workshops and lectures, and student presentations, we will explore concepts and methods to read built environments by synthesizing knowledge gained from sensing them, studying them through maps and diagrams and through primary and secondary written and oral accounts. Readings will include Anderson ’s Black Education in the South as will as a number excerpts drawn from within and beyond the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, historic preservation, and environmentalism. In addition to studying required readings and preparing for class discussion, you shall complete a mid-term quiz, three group exercises, and a semester journal. All this culminates in a month-long group research project that will be presented in a Final Open House at the end of the semester. You will continue to develop your abilities of critical reading and discussion of textual, graphic, and physical materials. You will be able to practice important interdisciplinary group process skills. When all is said and done, however, you will acquire ideas that will never allow you to experience the spaces around you in quite the same way!
ENAM 481A – African American Women Writers (3)
1530-1645 MW
BRN 332
Instructor: Angela Davis
We will read several novels and short stories by African American women, examining in particular how the authors portray black women as individuals and in the context of American society. This course requires active class participation, two written responses to readings (each 2 to 3 double spaced typed pages long) and a formal essay (12 to 15 pages long). The reading list is: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls; Toni Morrison, Sula, and Tar Baby; Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble; Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones; Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place. Restricted to English, African-American Studies, and Women's Studies Majors
ENAM 481B – Fictions of Black Identity (3)
1100-1215 TR
CAB BO29
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
This combined graduate and advanced undergraduate seminar will explore the dual meaning of its title "Fictions of Black Identity." The first implication suggests the literary inventions (novels, essays, critical works) that address the meanings of blackness in an American context. The second meaning is heavily invested in the first: that Black identity is a fiction, not necessarily in the sense of falsity, but in its highly mediated, flexible, and variable condition. Questions to consider include: how does one make and measure Black identity? Can one be phenotypically White and still be Black? What is the value of racial masquerade? What does it mean to be legitimately Black? Readings include, but are not limited to, McBride's The Color of Water, Walker's Black, White, and Jewish, Beatty's White Boy Shuffle, and a range of critical essays. Mandatory assignments include weekly response papers, comparative essays, leading class discussion, midterm and final exams. This class is restricted to instructor permission. It is designed for advanced undergraduates in English, African American Studies, and American Studies.
ENAM 358 - U.S. Literature and Citizenship
1100-1216 TR
CAB 134
Instructor: Victoria Olwell
How has literary writing shaped conceptions of citizenship? What resources does literature provide for thinking about the kinds of inclusion-and exclusion-that citizenship defines? In this course, we’ll explore how U.S. literature has “imagined” national community, to borrow Benedict Anderson’s famous term. We’ll define citizenship in multiple ways: as formal incorporation in the state, as civic participation, as a form of subjectivity, and as cultural inclusion, to name just a few of the most important. Our major project will be to see how literature not only has been essential to the formation of discourses of citizenship, but also has created modes of citizenship. In part, our course will consider the thematics of citizenship in selected literary texts from the late eighteenth century through the present day. We’ll see how literature has provided a space of conversation where conceptions of national community could be formed and disputed. But, we’ll also see literature as itself a technology of citizenship, one that produces relations among readers and styles of subjectivity that are themselves instances, rather than reflections, of citizenship. Our literary readings will be clustered around several areas of struggle over the terms of citizenship; these include national formation, race, gender, immigration, sexuality, labor, and the security state. Literary readings will likely include Charles Brockden Brown, Weiland; Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette; Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass and other poems; several pieces by Frederick Douglas; Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; short stories by Hawthorne and Melville; women’s suffrage plays, poems, and fiction; The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Audre Lorde, Zami, A New Spelling of My Name, Tony Kushner, Angels in America, and Gish Jen, Mona in the Promised Land. We’ll also read a few pieces of recent theory and criticism.
Course requirements include energetic participation, two short papers, a longer essay, and a final examination.
ENCR 481 A – Race, Space and Culture
1830-2100 T
CAB 130
Instructors: Marlon Ross and Ian Grandison
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., National Geographic documentary, Indian reservations, burial grounds, suburban homes, gay bars, national monuments); and through local site visits (Monticello, Vinegar Hill, Woolen Mills). Requirements include a midterm and final exam, two brief critical essays, one site visit response paper, and a major team research project.
ENLT 247 – Black Women Writers
930-1045 TR
BRN 330
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
This seminar uses Black women's writings from mid-century to the present to introduce new English majors to important concepts in literary analysis. To better understand genre, themes, and assorted literary conventions, we will focus closely on a range of literary styles. We will also consider patterns of representation established in the 1950s and watch how they develop, disintegrate, or evolve into the present day. Do certain issues or themes remain important in Black women's writing of the last fifty years? How has the literature adapted in response to specific cultural or historical moments?
ENLT 247 – Black Writers in America
12-1250 MWF
BRN 332
Instructor: Nathan Ragain
Course description unavailable
ENMC 481C – Cross Cultural Poetries
1400-1515 MW
BRN 330
Intructor: Jahan Ramazani
In this seminar, we will explore the dynamics of cross-cultural influence and exchange in modern and contemporary poetry in English. One of the most prominent features of modern and contemporary poetry is an intensified cross-pollination across boundaries of nation and ethnicity. To frame our work, we will read essays on modern transnationalism, diaspora, mobility, and intercultural affiliation by James Clifford, Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, and Neil Lazarus. We will also pause over Picasso’s appropriation of African art in inventing Cubism. Reading poetry and critical essays, we will then turn to the appropriations by such Euro-modernist poets as Yeats, Eliot, and Pound of East Asian and South Asian cultural forms and genres, asking if these are acts of inventive assimilation or imperial theft. Conversely, we will ask what happens to Euro-modernist texts and forms when African American poets and postcolonial poets from Africa , India , and the Caribbean hybridize them with their indigenous cultural resources. We will consider similar questions with regard to other cross-cultural poetries, including Irish, Native American, Latino, Asian American, and Black British. While tracing cross-cultural mediation within individual poems, we will also ask broad questions about the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of the cross-cultural. Teaching strategies will require active class collaboration, cooperative engagement, and co-leading of discussion. An abstract and a seminar paper will also be required. Our primary texts will be volumes 1 and 2 of The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, third edition.
Department of French Language and Literature
FREN 411 – Francophone Literature of Africa (3)
TR 1530-1645
CAB 216
Instructor: Kandioura Dramé
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.
FREN 443 – Africa in Cinema (3)
TR 1230-1345
CAB 321
Instructor: Kandioura Dramé
This course is a study of the representation of Africa in American, Western European and African films. It deals with the representations of African cultures by filmmakers from different cultural backgrounds and studies the ways in which their perspectives on Africa are often informed by their own social and ideological positions as well as the demands of exoticism. It also examines the constructions of the African as the other and the kinds of responses such constructions have elicited from Africa’s filmmakers. These filmic inventions are analyzed through a selection of French, British, American, and African films by such directors as John Huston, S. Pollack, J-J Annaud, M. Radford, Ngangura Mweze, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Souleymane Cisse, Gaston Kabore, Amadou Seck, Dani Kouyate, Brian Tilley, Jean-Marie Teno on a variety of subjects relative to the image of Africa in cinema. The final grade will be based on one mid-semester paper (select a film by an African filmmaker and provide a sequential reconstruction of the story based on the methods of P. S. Vieyra and of F. Boughedir ), a final paper (7-10 pages), an oral presentation and contributions to discussions. Each oral presentation should contribute to the mid-semester paper and to the final research paper. The final paper should be analytical, well documented and written in clear, grammatical French using correct film terminology supplied with this description.
Reading list (on reserve, see Toolkit for FREN 443)
Required:
Ferid Boughedir: Le cinéma africain de A a Z
(Specific selections of the following works will be announced weekly.)
Kenneth W. Harrow: Matatu- With Open Eyes: Women and African Cinema
Gardies, André: Cinéma d’Afrique Noire Francophone : l’espace-miroir
Vieyra, P. S.: Le cinéma africain
Sembène Ousmane, cinéaste
Ukadike, F. N. Black African Cinema
Research in African Literatures - Special Issue: African Cinema./ Vol. 26, No.3, Fall 1995.
Diawara, Manthia: African Cinema
HIAF 201 – The History of Africa through the Era of the Slave Trade
930-1045 TR
CAB 138
Instructor: Joseph Miller
From the mists of the once-dark continent’s unwritten past Early African History draws out Africans’ distinctive achievements in culture, politics, and economic strategies. Starting broadly at the dawn of history and continuing in detail from the millennium before the Present Era, HIAF 201 follows the sometimes-surprising ways in which village elders, women, merchants, kings, cattle lords, and ordinary farmers pursued meaningful lives without the technologies that modern Americans take for granted. The last third of the course examines the ironic interplay of tragedy and ambition in a continent increasingly trapped in exiling its own people in slavery to Europeans, until the Atlantic slave trade began to wind down after about 1800. (A second semester of modern African history, HIAF 202, taught in spring semester, follows subsequent events down through twentieth-century colonialism and the post-1960 era of independence and impoverishment.)
HIAF 201 is an introductory lower-division survey. The instructor presents the major themes of the early history of the continent in lectures twice each week. Students meet additionally in discussion sections for reviews of readings, map quizzes, and preparation for written assignments. Requirements include weekly short map quizzes, short written responses to each class, a short paper reacting to assigned readings, and a take-home final exercise. The course belongs to the Afro-American and African Studies curriculum, qualifies for the new minor in African Studies, meets the “non-western/non-modern” requirement for the major in History, and qualifies for the College “non-western perspectives” area requirement.
Readings revolve around weekly assignments in texts of varying perspectives (Shillington, History of Africa, and Newman, Peopling of Africa – subject to revision upon availability of a superior alternative). Other chapters and professional articles introduce the distinctive methodologies of doing history without written sources (including the famous Mande oral epic Sundiata), highlight interpretive (“historiographical”) issues, and consider concepts relevant to understanding early Africa.
No formula determines final marks for HIAF 201. Students are graded according to their “highest consistent performance” in all aspects of the course, including attendance at lectures and participation in discussions, with ample allowance made early in the term for the unfamiliarity of the subject matter; options allow students to devise personal combinations of graded work that allow each one to take advantage of specialized abilities and accommodate other academic commitments.
HIAF 201 presumes no prior knowledge of Africa or experience with the study of history. However, consistent application and preparation are expected, particularly early in the term, since the subject is new to nearly everyone in the course. Students in all four years of their undergraduate careers and in all colleges of the University complete HIAF 201 with success. Most find it a challenging and rewarding opportunity to discover a once-neglected story of Africa and its place in world history and to examine assumptions that modern Americans – themselves included – make that they did not know they held
HIAF 302 – History of Southern Africa
TR 0930-1045
CAB 215
Instructor: John E. Mason
HIAF 302 is a lecture and discussion course on the history of southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The emphasis is on South Africa. HIAF 302 begins with a look at the precolonial African societies of the region, before moving on to a study of conquest, colonialism, the rise and fall of apartheid, and the recent rebirth of African independence.
By the end of the nineteenth century, all of the African peoples of southern Africa had been conquered by European powers and incorporated into Dutch, British, Portuguese, and German colonial empires. Conquest had not come easily. Every society in the region resisted European domination fiercely, sometimes for many decades before being finally defeated. Colonialism and African responses to it dramatically reshaped societies in southern African, transforming political and economic systems, gender and class relations, even religious beliefs.
Resistance to colonialism assumed new forms in the twentieth century, as Africans began to bridge ethnic divisions to create multi-ethnic trade unions, churches, political parties, and liberation movements. Particularly in South Africa, African nationalism was influenced by nonracialism, uniting blacks and progressive whites in the ultimately successful struggle against apartheid.
Course materials include biographies, memoirs, fiction, music, and films, as well as academic studies. Students will write two five to seven page essays and write two blue book exams, a mid-term and a final.
HIAF 402 – History Colloquium: Race and Culture in South Africa and the United States (4)
TR 1400-1515
CAB 330
Instructor: John E. Mason
HIAF 402 is a small, research-oriented course that explores the histories of South Africa and the United States in comparative perspective.
South Africa and the American South are cousins: instantly recognizable as members of the same family, but with distinctively different personalities. Both countries owe much of their early economic development to slavery. In both complex systems of racial domination shaped society for generations before and after the emancipation of the slaves. And in both the interracial struggle against racial domination gave rise to some of the most important people and events in their histories.
At the same time, the differences between the two countries cannot be ignored. In South Africa blacks constitute the overwhelming majority of the population, and the descendants of European immigrants are a small minority. In the United States, of course, the reverse is true. Both white supremacy and the struggle against it were more violent in South Africa than in the United States. And, since 1994, a democratic political system has ensured that black South Africans have enjoyed a degree of political power that black Americans have never experienced.
The course holds the similarities and differences between the two countries in a creative tension. Through biography, autobiography, music, film, and scholarship, we will look at the ways in which race shaped the lives of South Africans and Americans, both black and white.
HIAF 402 is designed primarily, but not exclusively, for history majors and fulfills the history department's seminar/colloquium requirement. Students enrolling in the course should have taken at least one course in African history, preferably South Africa, and two courses in American history.
HIAF 404 – Independent Study in African History (1-3)
Topic to be determined by instructor and student
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HILA 401A – History Seminar: Conquest and Convivencia (3)
1300-1530
RAN 212
Instructor: Brian Owensby
This seminar (limited to 12 students) will explore a variety of themes in relation to the world-shaping encounter between European-, indigenous-, and African peoples between the 16th- and 18th- centuries. We will explore the meaning of conquest, violence, and what it meant for such different peoples to relate to each other through religion, law, sex, work, and knowledge. The course will culminate in a research paper exploring broad historiographical or historical themes.
HIST 589 – South Atlantic History
1530-1800 R
CAB 247
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
HIST 589 is a reading and discussion course on Atlantic History. We will focus on the commercial and cultural interconnections between Africa (West and Central Africa) and Latin America (Brazil). The class takes a historiographical approach to such concepts as Atlantic History, African Diaspora and Black Atlantic. We will examine and discuss different historiographies that deal with overlapping issues but not always speak to each other. Reading will include the following titles: Linda Heywood (ed.), Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002; José Curto and Paul Lovejoy (eds.), Enslaving Connections: Changing Cultures of Africa and Brazil during the Era of Slavery. New York, Humanity Books, 2004; Mieko Nishida, Slavery and Identity: Ethnicity, Gender, and Race in Salvador, Brazil, 1808-1888. Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2003; James Sweet. Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770. London, University of North Carolina Press, 2003; Wim Klooster and Alfred Padula (eds.), The Atlantic World: Essays on Slavery, Migration, and Imagination. New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 2005; The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World. Bloomington and Indiana Press, Indiana University Press, 2005; Peter Coclanis (ed.), The Atlantic Economy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Organization, Operation, Practice, and Personnel. Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 2005; Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1993; Paul Lovejoy and David Trotman (eds.), Trans-Atlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora. London, Continuum, 2003; Randy J. Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth Century Atlantic Odyssey. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2004; Robin Law and Paul Lovejoy (eds.), The Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua: his Passage from Slavery to Freedom in Africa and America. Princeton, Markus Wiener Publishers, 2003. Grades will be based on class participation, presentation of the readings, and a final paper.
HIUS 323 – Rise and Fall of the Slave South
0900-0950 MWF
FRN G004B
Instructor: Jaime Martinez
Course description unavailable
HIUS 329 – Virginia History, 1861 - the Present
1230-1345
MRY 115
Instructor: George Gilliam
History is the study of continuities and change over time. This course will examine Virginia history from about 1861 to the present. We will especially consider the following issues:
1. Between the end of the Civil War and the post-civil rights era, which groups have tried to empower which Virginians, at what times, and utilizing which strategies? Which groups have tried to disempower which Virginians, at what times and utilizing which strategies?
2. How have Virginians used racism to weave the political, social, and economic fabric of modern Virginia?
3. How have Virginians dealt with concerns about debt (public and private) and the financing of public infrastructure since the Civil War? What roles have state and federal governments played in dealing with those concerns? What have been the results of the ways Virginians have managed those concerns?
4. In which respects were the political, economic, social and racial landscapes of Virginia during the post-World War II decades similar to, and in which respects dissimilar to, those of the post-Civil War decades?
Readings will average approximately 90 pages per week, and will be drawn from both primary documents and secondary texts (books and journal articles). Classes will involve discussion of the required reading material, as well as presentations of additional material by the instructor and invited guest participants. There will be a map exercise, a multiple choice and short answer mid-term exam, one 5-7 page paper on a topic of the student’s choice, based upon original research in primary source materials, one group project, and a final examination requiring two essays.
HIUS 365 – African American History Through Reconstruction
1300-1350 MWF
CAB 319
Instructor: Reginald D. Butler
This lecture course is part of a year-long survey of the African American experience in British Colonial North America and the United States. This segment (HIUS 365) covers the period from the beginnings of trans-Atlantic slave trade through Reconstruction. We hope to relate the African American experience to the broader experience of Africans in the Diaspora, as well as larger themes and concepts (the rise of capitalism and the nation-state, European expansion, slavery and the slave trade in Africa, the development of racial ideologies, etc.) in world history. We will examine some of the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities, paying particular attention to how African Americans themselves shaped their experiences. We will devote considerable attention to primary sources, with a focus on the intersection of the "local" and the "global." In addition, we will explore the relevance of the African American past to contemporary social and political debates, such as immigration, affirmative action, and reparations.
HIUS 367 – History of the Civil Rights Movement
1530-1730 T
WIL 402
Instructor: Julian Bond
This lecture course examines the history, philosophies, tactics, events and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward.
The Southern movement - variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement - was a black-lead, interracial mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation by the mid-60s.
Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping and occasionally complimentary phases - lobbying, litigation and protest.
In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights.
In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation and the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools.
The last phase, lasting a decade from '54 through '65, was a decade of protests - boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations - as well as grass-roots organizing campaigns that laid the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s.
Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength and followers from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation. The movement's well-known and lesser-known proponents and their strategies will be examined.
Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five- to seven-page papers.
Texts:
• Wilkins, Roy, with Tom Matthews, Standing Fast, Da Capo Press
• Forman James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, University of Washington Press
• Bond, Julian and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, Thompson Learning
Videos:
• "Eyes on the Prize - America's Civil Rights Years, 1954 - 1965", # 1 to 6
• "America the at the Racial Crossroads, 1965 - 1985," # 1 and 2; PBS Video, Blackside Inc., Boston
• "The Road to Brown," William Elwood, Producer, California Newsreel
HIUS 401B – History Seminar: Reconstruction in the North (4)
1530-1800
CAB B028
Instructor: Erik Alexander
This seminar, entitled “Reconstruction in the North”, will ask students to examine closely the change over time in white Northerners’ attitudes towards federal Reconstruction policies, with the rationale that the waning commitment of northern voters to federal Reconstruction programs had a direct relationship with political decisions in Washington. Northern attitudes towards the South were vastly different in 1865 and 1877, and this seminar will ask students to consider what those changes were, and what events helped to cause the changes.
Under this broad umbrella of northern attitudes towards Reconstruction, students will be able to approach this period through a wide range of more specific topics. Potential topics of study include political developments, economic changes, labor movements and social change, white Northerners’ conceptions of race, and the legacy and memory of the Civil War.
The product of the seminar will be a 25-page term paper of original historical research on a topic of the student’s choosing. The seminar will begin with 5 weeks of reading and discussion to help give students a historical context for their paper topics. Students will also be required to submit a 6-8 page research proposal for their term paper topic in week 6, and participate in a peer review of term paper drafts. The seminar paper will be due at the end of the semester. The semester grade will come from class participation and peer review (25%), the research proposal (25%), and the seminar paper (50%).
Likely assigned texts include Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1865-1877 (1988), Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Era of Good Stealings (1993), David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872 (1967), Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901 (2001), and David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001).
HIUS 401D – History Seminar: Free African Americans in the United States, 1787-1865 (4)
1300-1530 M
CAB 242
Instructor: Sarah Maxwell
This course will focus on the lives of free blacks in both the slave states of the south, and the emerging free states of the North in the early republic and antebellum decades. The lives of free blacks differed between the two regions. As slavery became more central to life in the southern states, free people of color found their lives influenced by the relative status of slaves. In the North the decline of slavery bolstered free black numbers, however economic fluctuations and mass immigration had a substantial effect on race relations, circumscribing their opportunities in some arenas while opening up other options. During the first several weeks of the course, students will read and analyze major secondary works, to gain an understanding of the scholarship of free blacks, and to guide students to a paper topic of the proper breadth. The remainder of the semester students will spend researching and writing an original 25-30 page paper on a topic of their own choice, while consulting with their fellow students and the course instructor. Readings may include Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters; David Cohen and Jack Greene, eds. Neither Slave Nor Free; Melvin Ely, Israel on the Appomattox; and James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, In Hope of Liberty
HIUS 403B– African American Culture to 1865
1300-1530 T
CAB 241Instructor: Reginald D. Butler
This course will examine how African American cultures and societies developed in the north and south. How did forcibly transported Africans respond to the different agricultural economies, the conditions of enslavement, and European and native American cultures that they encountered during the colonial period? The course will begin in the early period during which large numbers of Africans arrived in British North America. It will then shift its focus to mature African American communities in which the vast majority of persons were American born. We will examine issues of African ethnicity and geography; family and kinship; religious practice; and diverse forms of aesthetic expression. Readings may include selections from: Johannes M. Postma, The Atlantic Slave Trade; Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective; Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves; W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail; Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860; Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market; and Dylan Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South.
Department of Music
MUEN 369 African Drumming and Dance Ensemble (2)
1715-1915 TR
OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
This is a practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (BaAka pygmies, Bagandou farmers), with the intention of performing during and at the end of the semester. These traditions include drumming, dancing, and singing, all students are expected to try all aspects, even if they then specialize only in a given medium for performance. We will give special attention to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and a polymetric sensibility. Concentration,
practice, and faithful attendance are required of each class member.
MUSI 212 - History of Jazz (3)
1100- 1150 MWF
MRY 209
Instructor: Scott Deveaux
No previous knowledge of music is required. This course meets the Non-western perspectives requirement. This course is a survey of the history of jazz from its beginnings around 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the 20th century. Important instrumental performers, vocalists, composers, and arrangers are listened to and discussed..
MUSI 308 Issues in American Music (3)
3:30-4:45 TR
MRY 104
Instructor: Melvin Butler
Issues in American Music will examine ethnomusicological perspectives on various popular musical genres in the United States, including minstrelsy, blues, jazz, gospel, rhythm-and-blues, and rock-and-roll. Reading, writing, and listening assignments will deal primarily, but not exclusively, with African American contributions to these musical traditions. Class discussions will center on the historical interplay of black and white musical aesthetics, the politics of race and ethnicity, and the role of music in constructing "Americanness."
Department of Politics
PLAP 570 – Racial Politics (3)
9:30-10:45 TR
BRN 324
Instructor: Vesla Weaver
Course description unavailable.
PLCP 212 – Politics of Developing Areas (3)
MW 0900-0950
WIL 301
Instructor: Robert Fatton
Surveys patterns of government and politics in non-Western political systems. Topics include political elites, sources of political power, national integration, economic development, and foreign penetration.
PLCP 524 – Gender Politics in Africa (3)
1530-1800 T
CAB 330
Instructor: Denise Walsh
Comprehensive introduction to gender politics in Africa, including gender transformations under imperial rule, gender and national struggles, gender and culture claims, women’s movements and the gendering of the post-colonial state.
Prerequisite: Some background in comparative politics or at least one social science course in SWAG. Including: gender and the state; feminist perspectives on war and peace, security, international political economy and the politics of development; and women and human rights. No prior knowledge of feminist theory or international relations is assumed or required. Cross-listed as SWAG 432.
The course meets the second writing requirement
PLPT 320: African American Political Thought (3)
1230-1345 TR
CAB 132
Instructor: Lawrie Balfour
Course description unavailable
Department of Psychology
PSYC 405 – Oppression, Empowerment and Social Change
9-11:30 T
GIL B001
Instructor: Melvin Wilson
This course will focus on an analysis of oppression, empowerment and liberation. Also, the course will discuss methods and strategies aimed at its amelioration of oppression in modern American society. Topics to be covered are the definition of oppression, social impact of oppression, including racial, economic, sexual discrimination, alienation, and loss of self-esteem. Moreover, we will talk about the role of privilege in the maintenance of an oppressive society.
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 275 Introdcution to African Religions (3)
1300-1350 MW
PHS 204
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
An introductory survey of African religions. The course concentrates on African traditional religions but Islam and Christianity are also discussed. Topics include indigenous mythologies and cosmologies, sacrifice, initiation, witchcraft, artistic traditions and African religions in the New World.
RELC 409 African Americans and the Bible (3)
1530-1800 W
CAB 230
Instructor: Valerie Cooper
Course description currently unavailable.
RELG 270 Festivals of the Americas (3)
930-1045 TR
CAB BO21
Instructor: Jalane Schmidt
Communities (and even entire nations) throughout the Caribbean, and South, Central and North America celebrate festivals which are rooted in religious devotion, and which serve to mark sacred time and and to assert claims about religious, ethnic, and national identities. The class will read ethnographic accounts and listen to musical recordings of signature religious festivals--such as Saint Patrick's Day in Boston, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Carnival in Brazil, the Day of the Dead in Mexico--in order to study significant features of contemporary religious life in the Americas. Students will develop skills as critical readers of anthropological, historical, and religious studies accounts of religious and cultural change, and increase their ability to theorize about ritual, festivity, and sacred time and space in relation to ethnicity.
RELG 280 African American Religious History (3)
1230-1345 TR
CAB 130
Instructor: Valerie Cooper
This course will explore African American religious traditions in their modern and historical contexts, combining an examination of current scholarship, worship and praxis. This course 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 a few non-Christian influences upon black churches and black communities. In considering the wide variety, popularity, economic strength, 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.
RELG 336 - Religions in the New World: 1400s-1830s (3)
1400-1515 TR
CAB 225
Instructor: Jalane Schmidt
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.
Department of Sociology
SOC 341 – Race and Ethnic Relations (3)
MW 1400-1515
CAB 341
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
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
Studies in Women and Gender
SWAG 224 – Black Feminities and Masculinities in the US Media (3)
1900-2145 R
CAB 325
Instructor: Lisa Shutt
This course will explore U.S. media representations of gendered African-American and African worlds, individuals, and experiences and will address the role the U.S. media has played in creating the popular images and understandings that prevail in this country surrounding categories of blackness and gender.
Focusing largely on the intersection of race, gender and otherness, this class will analyze the ways different media (including feature films, popular television, documentaries, popular fiction, academic writing, and radio, television, and print news media) produce and reproduce cultural categories 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.
How does the media create and perpetuate categories of blackness, whiteness, femininity, masculinity, foreignness, safety, danger? Working toward their own particular projects, students will collect examples each week from various sources (print, television, film, etc.) for discussion. We will concentrate on the particular ways various media produce, display, and disseminate information. Finally, we will ask what responsibilities those who create and circulate information have and whether or not the viewing public shares in any sort of responsibility. Students will assemble a detailed portfolio/research paper.
SWAG 416 – Single Mother to Welfare Queen: Women, Poverty and Public Policy (3)
1600-1830 W
CAU 134
Instructor: V. May
There is a long cultural history connecting women and poverty, from depictions of single immigrant mothers in the 1890s to media images of “welfare queens” in the 1980s. Today, women are more likely to be impoverished than men. This course will examine women and poverty in twentieth-century America. Over the course of the semester we will answer the following questions: How have middle-class people and reformers thought about women in poverty and how have racial and gender expectations colored their analyses? Have reformers’ policies had the effect on poor women that reformers intended? Is there a pragmatic public policy to meet the needs of poor families? This course will look not only at the various policies crafted to reach women in poverty but will also examine the daily experiences of poor women as they and their families struggled to survive. Course readings will include some scholarly treatments of policy initiatives but will emphasize the voices of poor women themselves telling their own stories through memoir.
SWAG 432 – Gender Politics in Africa (3)
1530-1800 T
CAB 330
Instructor: Denise Walsh
Comprehensive introduction to gender politics in Africa, including gender transformations under imperial rule, gender and national struggles, gender and culture claims, women’s movements and the gendering of the post-colonial state.
Prerequisite: Some background in comparative politics or at least one social science course in SWAG. Including: gender and the state; feminist perspectives on war and peace, security, international political economy and the politics of development; and women and human rights. No prior knowledge of feminist theory or international relations is assumed or required. Cross-listed as PLCP 524.
The course meets the second writing requirement.
Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
SPAN 490 – Race in the Americas (3)
1400-1515 MW
CAB 119
Instructor: Ruth Hill
This course explores representations of caste, race, and class by Latin Americans, Spaniards, West Indians, and Latinos, alongside critical race theory and case studies produced in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. The bulk of our readings will consist of poems, essays, dramas, histories, and novels, spanning the early modern period to the twentieth century.
Readings will include:
José Gumilla. Orinoco ilustrado (1, cap. 5);
Benito Feijoo, “Color etiópico” (Teatro crítico, 7, disc. 3)
José Martí, “Madre América” y “Nuestra América”
Jorge Amado, Jubiabá.
José Vasconcelos, Raza cósmica
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera.
Richard Rodriguez, Brown: The Last Discovery of America.
Peter Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America.
Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation.
Rafael Pérez Torres, Mestizaje: Critical Uses of Race in Chicano Culture
Spring 2007
African-American and African Studies
AAS 102 - Crosscurrents of the African Diaspora (4)
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
TR 12:30 – 13:45
WIL 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.
AAS 305 – African Politics, Literature, and Film (3)
Instructor: Andrew Lawrence
T 15:30-1800
WIL 141A
This course analyzes the intersection of the cultural and the political in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa through the media of literature and film. Together with background works discussing African historical and political developments, students will analyze and discuss some of the finest exemplars of world literature and film, including the work of such directors as David Achkar, Souleymane Cisse, Djibril Diop-Mambety, Flora Gomes, Gaston Kabore, Thomas Magotlane, Sembene Ousmane, Cheick Oumar Sissoko, and Jean-Marie Teno; and the work of authors including Chinua Achebe, J.M. Coetzee, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Bessie Head, Dambudzo Marechera, Zakes Mda, Njabulo Ndlebele, Sembene Ousmane, and Ngugi wa Thiongo. Themes include representations of Africa's precolonial and colonial past, negotiations of its present post-colonial realities, state and social power, changing gender relations, and traditions and modernities. Students will also evaluate the ways in which aesthetic approaches describe political themes; that is, the politics of culture as well as the culture of politics.
AAS 307: Afro-Brazilian History (3)
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
TR 12:30-13:45
GIL 141
This class will survey the history of Brazil from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries by highlighting issues related to the Afro-Brazilian population. The largest country in Latin America, Brazil was by far the single largest destination of the slave trade from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. No other country outside Africa has a larger population of African-descendants. The class deals with issues such as the rise of African slavery in sixteenth century Brazil, Brazilian links with West Africa and Central Africa until the mid-nineteenth century, Afro-Brazilian religions, resistance to slavery, and abolitionism. The class takes an approach to Brazilian history that emphasizes Brazil’s deep social, commercial and cultural links with Africa. In addition to lectures, movies/documentaries will be shown. Readings might include the following books: Hendrik Kraay, Afro-Brazilian Culture and Politics: Bahia, 1790s-1990s (NY, 1998); Matthew Restall (ed.), Beyond Black and Red: African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque, 2005); Stuart Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835 (Cambridge, 1988); Alida Metcalf, Go-Betweens and the Colonization of Brazil: 1500-1600 (Austin, 2006); Laura de Mello e Souza, The Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross: Witchcraft, Slavery, and Popular Religion in Colonial Brazil (Austin, 2004); James Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770 (Chapel Hill, 2003); David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1987).
(This course is cross-listed with HIST 307)
AAS 401: Independent Study (1-3)
Topic and requirements to be determined by the instructor and the student
AAS 402: Black Atlantic 1550-1850 (4)
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
R 15:30-18:00
CAB 335
This reading and discussion seminar problematizes the notion of the “Black Atlantic” as a conceptual framework to analyze the forced migration of Africans throughout the Atlantic. The class will place 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. Most of classes focus on the Northern Atlantic, but 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.
(This course is cross-listed as HIST 402A)
AAS 406A: Black Atlantic Representations of Violence (3)
Instructor: Régine Jean-Charles
M 15:30-18:00
MIN108
This course examines the phenomenon of violence in African-American, Caribbean, and African literatures and the development of discourses and the representations of violence throughout these literary histories. As we investigate these representations, we will also study discourses of violence along with some of the major debates surrounding violence in postcolonial contexts. In order to do so we will begin with Paul Gilroy’s concept on the shaping violence of The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. We will then travel through major historical moments in African Caribbean, and African-American literature in order to observe how representations of violence function in these contexts. To complement our conception of violence we will also refer to Hanna Arendt’s On Violence and Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World in order to situate the question of violence in a broader context. By framing our inquiry with Gilroy’s text, we initiate a movement that places emphasis on a network of ideas rather than geographic space. Thus the class is divided into two sections: the first “Moments in Black Atlantic Literatures,” does not chart a literal historic timeline, but rather a thematic one by looking at novels written in or based on particular moments in the histories of the Black Atlantic, in particular ancient times, slavery, colonization and deconolization. The second section, “Currents in Black Atlantic Literatures” is grouped around five categories that explore reappearing currents of significant cultural, social, historical, and political impact: immigration/migrations, sexual violence, state-sponsored violence, war and genocide. Through theoretical reading drawn from the fields of philosophy, trauma studies, feminist theory and postcolonial studies we will explore different ways of representing, reading, framing, and understanding violence in Black Atlantic literatures.
AAS 406B: Racial Geographies of Virginia (3)
Instructor: Ian Grandison
W 15:30-18:00
CAB 432
Even though its boundaries have become more uncertain, several notions still conjure the discipline of geography. Geography, we can reasonably assert, involves the objective investigation of places with the central purpose-albeit unspoken-of cataloging the earth's surface relative to opportunities and constraints for exploitation by humans. How does "race" fit into this project of geography? Does "human geography" or the headings, "demography," "population," "people," or "occupation" (intermingled as they are with such headings as "physical characteristics," "climate," "transport," or "towns") allow for engaging "race" critically as it is engaged in, say, cultural studies? To foreground this issue, in this experimental seminar, I am introducing the idea, "racial geography." Drawing on case-studies from the State of Virginia-including its historical configurations-we will try to develop themes and concepts to elucidate this idea. Consider, for example, the implications of a race-inflected exploration in the popular sub-discipline, urban geography. Quantitative and geometric models of urban distribution or pragmatic theories of urban siteing are of little use in understanding the location of Washington DC. No consideration of the "rank" and "size" of adjacent urban centers or of proximity to deep water for harbors or to gaps in a mountain barrier can explain this city was placed where it was placed at the turn of the nineteenth century. Why did the city, named after the foundingest of the founding fathers, remain a backwater for so long after the federal government relocated there? Chattel slavery was the reason for which urban location theory cannot account. It predetermined the fate of rival cities such as Quaker Philadelphia. It influenced the geography of the Civil War, and it explains why the Chesapeake from time to time still inundates facilities such as the National Archives as it seeks to reclaim its brackish swamps. Requirements of the seminar will include a mid-term exam and a research paper of 15 pages. Students should already have or be ready to develop the facility of interpreting and producing maps and other graphic materials. At the beginning of the semester, students will be asked to explain their motivations for wanting to participate in the seminar.
AAS 406C: Black Power and Revolutionary Politics
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
T 15:30-18:00
CAB 236
Tracing black women and men’s quest for political, economic, and cultural power from the Depression Years to the present, this seminar examines African Americans’ collective efforts to eradicate what philosopher Cornel West refers to as the “pervasive evil of unjustified suffering and unnecessary social misery in our world.” Significant attention will be given to black intellectuals and activists’ debates over the best way to deal with the economic consequences of white supremacy and global capitalism, the usefulness of armed self-defense as a weapon in the fight against racial injustice, and the problem of sexism within the black liberation movement. To better understand the diversity and breadth of black oppositional activity in the twentieth-century, students will examine the protest activities of a number of black leaders, cultural artists, and movement organizations. Organizations and activists to be examined include but are not limited to W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson and the Council of African Affairs, Ella Baker and SNCC, Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, Angela Davis and the American Communist Party, Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts Movement, Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party, Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Toni Cade Bambara, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and the more recent Black Radical Congress. Over the course of the semester, students will be introduced to the research methods and techniques used by historians. We will not only explore historians’ use of oral and written texts, but will also reflect on the ways in which scholars’ theoretical and political viewpoints inform their interpretation of primary sources. Students will have the opportunity to further develop their historical skills through a series of assignments designed to assist them in identifying research topics and questions; interpreting primary texts; and substantiating arguments with historical evidence.
(This course is cross-listed as HIUS 401K)
AAS 406 E - Afro-Brazilian Civilization (3)
Instructor: David Haberly
MWF 11:00-11:50
CAB 320
A general introduction, in English, to the literature and culture of Brazil from 1500 to the present, with special emphasis upon the role of Afro-Brazilians in the creation of that literature and culture. No knowledge of Portuguese is required, and lectures and readings will be in English. The course includes discussions of the nation's social and historical development, but these topics will be presented through readings in the major works of Brazilian literature, including the works of important Afro-Brazilian authors. (Enrollment restricted to participants in Brazil Study Abroad program.
(Cross-listed with POTR 427.)
AAS 451: Directed Research/DMP (3)
AAS 452: Thesis/DMP (3)
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 225: Nationalism, Racism, Culture, Multiculturalism (3)
Instructor: Richard Handler
MW 14:00-15:15
MRY 209
Introductory course in which the concepts of culture, multiculturalism, race, racism, and nationalism are critically examined in terms of how they are used and structure social relations in American society and, by comparison, how they are defined in other cultures throughout the world.
ANTH 388: Archaeology of Africa (3)
Instructor: Adria LaViolette
TR 9:30-10:45
CAB 316
This course surveys the archaeological knowledge currently available about the African continent. The emphasis will be on the Late Stone Age, when fully modern humans dominate the cultural landscape, and the subsequent Iron Age, but will also briefly cover pre-modern humans and the archaeology of the colonial period. We will discuss the great social, economic, and cultural transformations in African history known primarily through archaeology, and the most important archaeological sites and discoveries on the continent.
ANTH 401C: Contemporary African Societies (3)
Instructor: LaViolette
TR 1230-1345
CAB 331
This course engages the human landscape of modern Africa, through the close reading of a selection of monographs and African feature films from diverse cultural and geographical areas. The main texts are drawn from fiction, ethnography, and social history, and are taught against a backdrop of economic strategies, forms of social organization, and challenges facing modern African women and men. We will discuss urban dwellers and rural farmers, both the elite and poor, and the forces that draw them together; transnational migration; and belief systems. How relationships between men and women are contextualized and negotiated is a theme found throughout the readings and films, as well as the struggle of people in different circumstances to build new relationships with older beliefs and practices, and with new forms of government. Meets second writing requirement.
ANTH 528: Topics in Race Theory: White Supremacy (3)
Instructor: Wende Marshall
R 1900-2130
CAB 426
What is "White Supremacy"? Who is 'white"? How does an emphasis on race (i.e. "racism" and "race relations") obscure the relationship between white power and class oppression? What is to be gained by discourses that pathologize "blacks" and render "white" behavior normative? With attention to both discourse and practice the course will explore the meaning and power of whiteness. Satisfies second writing requirement.
Common Courses
CCFA 202: Arts and Cultures of the Slave South (4)
Instructors: Maurie McInnis and Louis Nelson
MW 15:30-16:45
PHS 203
An exploration of the interrelations between history, material and visual cultures, music, and literature in the formation of Southern identities. The course covers subjects ranging from the archaeology of seventeenth-century Virginia and the formation of African American spirituals, to creolization and ethnicities in Louisiana, to the plantation architectures of the big house and outbuildings and the literary traditions of antebellum women. Students are 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. (Y)
CCSS 200: Rural Poverty in Our Time (3)
Instructor: Grace Hale
R 15:30-17:20
WIL 402
This course will use an interdisciplinary format to explore the history of non-urban poverty in the American South from the 1930s to the present. Weaving together the social histories of poor people, the political history of poverty policies, and the history of representations of poverty, the course follows historical cycles of attention and neglect: rural poverty during the Great Depression, rural poverty from the war on poverty to the Reagan Revolution, and rural poverty in the present. In each section, we will examine the relationship between representations (imagining poverty), policies (alleviating poverty), and results (the effects of those representations and policies in the economic, political, and psychological status of poor people).
Department of English
ENAM 314: African American Survey II (3)
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
TR 11:00-12:15
CAB 323
Continuation of ENAM 313, this course begins with the career of Richard Wright and brings the Afro-American literary and performing tradition up to the present day.
ENAM 482D: African-American Speculative Fiction (3)
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
TR 9:30-10:45
BRN 330
No description available.
ENAM 482E: The Harlem Renaissance (3)
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
TR 11:00-12:15
BRN 328
No description available.
ENCR 482 - Race in American Places (3)
Instructor: Ian Grandison
M 15:30-18:00
BRN 334
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 contemporary culture wars, especially as these are circumscribed by the concept 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. How, for example, does the seemingly innocuous story of The Three Little Pigs lead us to assume particular racial attributes of each pig based on the materials—straw, say, versus brick—and architectural styles—hut, say, versus cottage— of the house each builds? Do we identify people as “primitive” or “destitute” because they live in, say, wooden shacks. Do we assume that such people cannot govern themselves and, so, are unworthy of autonomy? We consider how such conflation of race and place are reinforced not only by social custom but also by planning and design policy and practice that define and rigorously maintain separate often unequal racial territories. Have you considered the ways in which such places as Charlottesville’s celebrated Downtown Mall, for example, might be configured or programmed to encourage symbolic ownership by one or other racial group? How the advent of Homeowners’ Associations maintains racial territories against the force of legal desegregation? Does the concurrency of homelessness and home-owners-associations in American society suggest anything about prevailing assumptions about a relationship between our right to privacy and our racial and class identity? We explore such issues through targeted discussion of readings; mandatory visits to places around Charlottesville; informal workshops (mainly to develop the ability to interpret maps, plans, and other graphic representations of places); and in-class presentations. 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 an informal symposium that represents the culmination of the semester.
ENCR 482A: Critical Race Theory (3)
Instructor: Marlon Ross
MW 15:30-16:45
MCL 2008
No description available.
ENGN 482/ENMC482A: African American Drama (3)
Instructor: Lotta Lofgren
TR 12:30 – 13:45
WIL 141B
We will survey African-American drama from the 1950's to the present. We will place the drama in relation to established norms, investigating the motives and methods of the playwrights for carving out new ground. We will examine the shared and divergent concerns of male and female playwrights, their sense of audience, the dilemma of writing as an individual and as a member of a group silenced too long, their relationship to the past, the present, and the future. We will also examine the changing definitions of the black aesthetic. Playwrights include, among others, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Ntozake Shange, August Wilson, and Suzan-Lori Parks.
ENLT 214M: Southern Literature (3)
Instructor: Morgan Myers
TR 9:30-10:45
PHS 205
No description available.
ENLT 255M: Race in American Culture (3)
Instructor: Sylvia Chong
MW 15:30-16:45
CAM 423
No description available.
ENWR 106: Rap as an Art Form (3)
Instructor: Jason Nabi
TR 9:30-10:45
BRN 310
No description available.
ENWR 106: Race in the U.S. (3)
Instructor: Brian Roberts
TR 12:30-13:45
BRN 330
No description available.
ENWR 110: Africa Speaks (3)
Instructor: Z’etoile Imma
MWF 11-11:50
MCL 2007
No description available.
Department of History
HIAF 100: African Encounters with the Others (3)
Instructor: Laura Stokes
T 13:00-15:30
CAB B021
No description available.
HIAF 201: Early African History (4)
TR 9:30-10:45
Instructor: Joseph Miller
RFN G004B
Starting broadly at the dawn of history and continuing in detail from the millennium before the Present Era, HIAF 201 follows the sometimes-surprising ways in which village elders, women, merchants, kings, cattle lords, and ordinary farmers pursued meaningful lives without the technologies that modern Americans take for granted. The last third of the course examines the ironic interplay of tragedy and ambition in a continent increasingly trapped in exiling its own people in slavery to Europeans, until the Atlantic slave trade began to wind down after about 1800. HIAF 201 is a lower-division introductory survey and presumes no prior knowledge of Africa or experience with the study of history. Students in all four years of their undergraduate careers and in all colleges of the University complete HIAF 201 with success. Beyond the Afro-American and African Studies curriculum, the course meets the "non-western/non-modern" requirement for the major in History and qualifies for the College "non-western perspectives" area requirement.
HIAF 404: Independent Study in African History (1-3)
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member, any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings.
HILA 402A: Globalization in Latin American (4)
Instructor: Brian Owensby
R 13:00-15:30
BRN 332
In this advanced undergraduate colloquium we will explore the idea of “globalization” from the perspective of Latin America’s 500-year history of engagement with global phenomena. While globalization has become a buzzword in recent years, it has a long history in Latin America, from Spain’s 16th-century “conquest” of indigenous America, to the slave trade to places such as Brazil and Cuba, to the trans-Atlantic intellectual exchanges of the late 18th century, to the effects on Indian villages as Latin American countries began to participate in the international economy as providers of raw materials and commodities in the 19th century, to the rebellion of the Zapatistas in southern Mexico in the 1990s against NAFTA. Through a wide variety of texts and films we will seek a critical perspective on globalization as a broad historical process that must be understood in relation to local histories and happenings. The course will satisfy the second writing requirement. Enrollment will be limited to 12.
HILA 402B: Latin American In Quest of Identity (4)
Instructor: Herbert Braun
T 15:30-18:00
MCL 2007
In Latin America the search for identity has been a plural endeavor. Latin Americans have asked, “Who are we? Rarely have they asked, “Who am I? “Who are we? What kind of a people are we? What kind of a civilization? What is our destiny? What are the causes of our backwardness? What lies in our future? These thoughts run through the writings of almost all of Latin America’s great thinkers.
The course will be divided into two parts: In the first eight weeks we will read together from the writings of some of those great thinkers, including Bolívar, Sarmiento, Andrés Bello, José María Luis Mora, Lucas Alamán, Alcides Arguedas, Francisco Bulnes, José Ingenieros, José Enrique Rodó, José Martí, José Carlos Mariátegui, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, Edmundo O’Gorman, Leopoldo Zea, Octavio Paz.
Students in this course will write a final interpretive essay on this quest for identity based on our readings of historical and contemporary writers. This essay will be between twenty and thirty pages in length.
HILA 404: Independent Study in Latin American History (1-3)
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member, any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings.
HIST 307: Afro-Brazilian History (3)
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
TR 12:30-13:45
GIL 141
This course is cross-listed as AAS 307. See description in the AAS section, above.
HIST 402A: Black Atlantic 1550-1850 (4)
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
R 15:30-18:00
CAB 335
This course is cross-listed as AAS 402. See description in the AAS section, above.
HIUS 309 - Civil War and Reconstruction (3)
Prof. Gary Gallagher
TR 8:00 – 9:15
WIL 301
This course explores the era of the American Civil War with emphasis on the period 1861-1865. It combines lectures, readings, films, and class discussion to address such questions as why the war came, why the North won (or the Confederacy lost), how the war affected various elements of society, what was left unresolved at the end of the fighting, and how subsequent generations of Americans understood the conflict's meanings. Although this is not a course on Civil War battles and generals, about 50 per cent of the time in class will be devoted to military affairs, and we will make a special effort to tie events on the battlefield to life behind the lines. The course will be organized in two lecture meetings a week. Grades will be based on two geography quizzes (each 5% of the course grade), two take-home examinations (each 35% of the course grade), and a 7-page paper that integrates material from the lectures, readings, and films (20% of the course grade). Note: This course does not satisfy the second writing requirement. Required Books (some substitutions may be made): Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy; John Q. Anderson, ed., Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868; Ira Berlin and others, eds., Free at Last; Jean Berlin, ed., Letters of a Civil War Nurse; Andrew Delbanco, ed., The Portable Abraham Lincoln; A. J. L. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 186; Glenn Linden and Thomas Pressly, eds., Voices from the House Divided; Frank Wilkeson, Turned Inside Out: Recollections of a Private Soldier.
HIUS 316: Viewing America 1945 to the Present (3)
Instructor: Brian Balogh
MW 10:00 – 10:50
GIL 150
This course will examine how Americans experienced some of the major events that shaped their lives. We will view what millions of Americans did by watching feature films, news reels, and footage from popular television shows and news broadcasts. We will also read primary and secondary texts that explore among other topics, the domestic impact of World War II, America's reaction to the atomic bomb, the rise of the military-industrial-university complex, the emergence of the Cold War, the culture of anxiety that accompanied it, suburbanization, the "New Class" of experts, the Civil Rights movement, changing gender roles in the work place and at home, the origins and implications of community action and affirmative action, the War in Vietnam, the Great Society, the counterculture, Watergate, the environmental movement, challenges to the authority of expertise, the decline of political parties, structural changes in the economy, the mobilization of interest groups from labor to religious organizations, the emergence of the New Right, the challenge to big government, the end of the Cold war, and the role of the electronic media in politics.
HIUS 324 - 20th Century South (3)
Instructor: Lori Schuyler
MW 9:00 – 9:50
RFN G004A
This course will explore the social, cultural, political, and economic history of the South in the twentieth century. Major themes of the course will include the rise and fall of legalized segregation, the development of a viable Republican party in the region, the role of southern reformers and activists, and the importance of historical memory. We will examine major events in the region from the perspectives of black southerners and white southerners, men and women, sharecroppers and landowners, Republicans and Democrats, moderates and activists. Readings for the course may include: W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; Grace Lumpkin, To Make My Bread, Christopher MacGregor Scribner, Renewing Birmingham: Federal Funding and the Promise of Change, 1929-1979; Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi.
HIUS 350: Work, Poverty and Welfare: 20th Century U.S. Social Policy (3)
Instructor: Guian McKee
TR 15:30-16:45
CAB 345
This course will examine the historical relationship between work, poverty, and the development of social policy in the United States during the twentieth century. Particular emphasis will be placed on the changing structure of the American workplace, shifts in societal conceptions about the place of the state in American life, and alterations in both the nature of poverty and perceptions of the poor in the United States. We will focus, however, on the interaction of these issues with social policy, broadly defined, as well as the role of race, gender, and political economy in defining these important dimensions of twentieth century American life. As a result, the course will approach the history of American social policy from the “ground up” and from the “top down”: we will study both the development of broad public policy structures and the experiences of Americans (both elites and non-elites) who determined the course of such policies and lived with their results. Students will engage in detailed historical explorations of maternalist welfare policies, progressivism, labor organizing, workplace reform, Social Security, AFDC (welfare), economic planning, public housing, urban renewal, employment policy, job training, the War on Poverty, Medicare and Medicaid, the welfare rights movement, and the reaction against the welfare state. The course will conclude with an examination of critical social policy developments in the last fifteen years, including the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, the failure of the Clinton health care plan, and recent proposals for social security and Medicare reform.
While primarily a lecture course, this class will provide extensive opportunities for student discussion of assigned readings and other materials. Course requirements will include a research paper of approximately 10 pages, a mid-term and final, regular attendance, and active participation in class discussions. The weekly reading will average 150 pages. Texts may include Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America; Theda Skocpol, Social Policy in the United States: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective; Jennifer Klein, For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State; Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White; David Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America, as well as scholarly articles, primary sources, films, and other historical material.
HIUS 362: Women in America, 1869 to the Present
Instructor: Ann Lane
MW 11:00-11:50
MIN 125
This course will examine women's activities and consciousness from the last half of the nineteenth century to the present. We will pay special attention to how social and economic changes that accompanied industrialization and urbanization influenced women's lives and to the importance of race and class as categories for understanding women's experiences. The topics we will examine will include domestic and family roles, economic contributions, reproductive experience, and public activities. Reading will average about 200 pages per week.
Some of the required books for this course will be:
Dorothy Richardson, The Long Day
Beth Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat
Ann Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi
Mary Odem, Delinquent Daughters
Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are
There will also be a packet of articles that will be part of the required reading for the course. There will be one midterm, one five to eight page paper, and a final examination. Each week we will have two lectures and one required discussion section.
HIUS 366 – African American History Since 1860 (3)
Instructor: Reginald Butler
MWF 13:00-13:50
CAB 316
This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in the United States. We will examine some of the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities, paying particular attention to how African Americans themselves shaped their experiences. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the historical implications for contemporary African American lived experiences.
Course requirements include written weekly reading responses, a short paper, midterm, and final.
Texts may include:
Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction;
Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind; Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow;
Steven Hahn, Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration,
Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw;
Tera Hunter, To 'Joy My Freedom;
Richard Wright, Black Boy.
HIUS 367 - History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)
Instructor: Julian Bond
T 15:30-17:30
WIL 402
This lecture course examines the history, philosophies, tactics, events and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward. The Southern movement - variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement - was a black-lead, interracial mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation by the mid-60s. Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping and occasionally complimentary phases - lobbying, litigation and protest. In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights. In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation and the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools. The last phase, lasting a decade from '54 through '65, was a decade of protests - boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations - as well as grass-roots organizing campaigns that laid the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s. Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength and followers from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation. The movement's well-known and lesser-known proponents and their strategies will be examined. Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five- to seven-page papers.
Texts and videos:
Roy Wilkins (with Tom Matthews), Standing Fast; James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries; Julian Bond and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, "Eyes on the Prize - America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965", # 1 to 6; "America at the Racial Crossroads, 1965 - 1985,” # 1 and 2; "The Road to Brown.”
HIUS 401C: Free Blacks in Urban and Rural America, 1776-1865 (4)
Instructor: Reginald Butler
T 13:00 – 15:30
CAB 242
American independence from Great Britain produced a revolutionary change in African American life. Condemned to perpetual, hereditary slavery by more than a century of British-American law and custom, African Americans seized the moment to challenge their subordinate place in American society and recast themselves as free and equal citizens. Sympathetic whites, moved by trans-Atlantic currents both secular and spiritual, took their first, cautious steps toward ending the African slave trade and gradually abolishing slavery. In the North and West, the slow death of slavery by court decree, legislative act, and constitutional provision gave rise to "coloured" enclaves in urban areas such as Boston, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. In the South, liberalized manumission laws produced substantial populations of "free blacks" or "free persons of color" in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans. The rapid growth of these quasi-free communities (with their rural counterparts), coupled with growing restiveness among the slaves (as evidenced by the Haitian Revolution and, closer to home, the widely publicized slave conspiracies led by Gabriel, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner), produced a repressive, frequently violent white backlash with the openly stated aim of free black colonization or removal. How did "free black" urban and rural enclaves - like the much-celebrated "maroons" of Jamaica and "quilombos" of Brazil - defend themselves against the hostile forces arrayed against them? What strategies did they employ to preserve their fragile hold on freedom and forestall their deportation and dispersal?
Students in this course will conduct original archival research and write a major paper on the theme of "Free Black Life in Urban and Rural America." Possible research topics include:
• Education/literacy
• Apprenticeship
• Property ownership
• Geographic mobility/migration
• Free Blacks as slave holders
• The Canadian experience
• Institution-building (churches, schools, voluntary associations, etc.)
• Social/economic relations with "white" patrons
• Political activity
• Family life
• Mob violence and strategies for communal self-defense
• Ideologies of "race" and "color"
• Collective memory
• Social movements (emigration, colonization, abolition, civil rights, suffrage, etc.)
• Occupational status/class stratification within the "free black" caste
Students may be assigned chapters or excerpts from the following: Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Master: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South; Gary Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720-1840; David Gellman, Jim Crow New York: A Documentary History of Race and Citizenship, 1777-1877; Thelma Foote, Black and White Manhattan: The History of Racial Formation in Colonial New York City; W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail; Patrick Rael, Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North; Christopher Phillips, Freedom's Port: The African American Community of Baltimore,1790-1860; Gregg D. Kimball, American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond; Judith Kelleher Schafer, Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846-1862; and Melvin Ely, Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War.
HIUS 401D: Remembering the Civil War, 1815 to Today (4)
Instructor: Matthew Speiser
R 15:30-1800
WIL 141A
This course is a seminar in which students will investigate the role of memory in history, by exploring how American memories of the Civil War have changed (and, in some cases, stayed the same) from the immediate wake of Appomattox to the present day. The course will examine the legacies of Union victory, Confederate defeat, slavery, emancipation, and Reconstruction in American culture. Students will explore key aspects of Civil War memory, including its prominent role in society and how competing memories have emerged, evolved, clashed, and weakened among different individuals, groups, regions, and eras.
Class discussions will focus on memory’s role in society, specifically regarding how Americans have remembered Civil War-era historical figures, their ideas, and their actions, as well as the societies, events, and circumstances surrounding them. We will examine how different people can remember the same event in different ways: how history can shift according to the eye of the beholder.
The readings in this class will examine the study of memory, memory’s place in academic as well as popular culture, and conscious attempts to shape American memory, as well as broader manifestations of Civil War memory throughout society, in fiction, film, scholarship, journalism, speechmaking, and other components of American culture. Each week, the reading selections will total between 200 and 300 pages. We will read some work from historians about Civil War memory, such as segments from David Blight’s Race and Reunion. Many of the readings will be primary sources, such as The Frederick Douglass Papers and a handbook celebrating the Civil War centennial in the 1960s. We will also read fictional and personal books like Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels and segments from Tony Horwitz’s Confederates in the Attic. Students will expand upon the class’s themes by writing a 25-page research paper grounded in primary documents.
For generations, Americans have debated the social, cultural, and political implications of mass migration from Europe, Africa, and Asia, and Latin America and the resulting ethnic-racial demographies for "our" national identity. In this seminar, students will combine traditional archival research with new technologies to explore the impact of African and African-American migration and settlement patterns on American culture and society. We will examine major themes and key episodes from each era of American history -- Colonial, Revolutionary, Early National, Antebellum, Civil War/Reconstruction, Jim Crow/Civil Rights - in preparation for our own, broadly collaborative digital history research projects. Students will be introduced to seminal texts, archival collections at U.Va., as well as relevant digital resources, including the Transatlantic Slaving Database; Virtual Jamestown; Virginia Runaways; Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the Civil War; American Memory; Historical Census Data Browser; Civil War Newspapers; and Race and Place. Students will be graded on the following basis: 50 % on the web-based exhibit that their team constructs; 25 % on an online journal chronicling the student's experience with creating digital history; 25 % on individual participation and work in the course. Each team will present a demonstration of its project in the last week of the course.
HIUS 401E: Digital History Seminar: Mapping the Impact of African and African-American Demographies on American Culture and Society (4)
Instructor: Scot French
W 15:30-18:00
Ruffner 227B
For generations, Americans have debated the social, cultural, and political implications of mass migration from Europe, Africa, and Asia, and Latin America and the resulting ethnic-racial demographies for "our" national identity. In this seminar, students will combine traditional archival research with new technologies to explore the impact of African and African-American migration and settlement patterns on American culture and society. We will examine major themes and key episodes from each era of American history -- Colonial, Revolutionary, Early National, Antebellum, Civil War/Reconstruction, Jim Crow/Civil Rights -- in preparation for our own, broadly collaborative digital history research projects. Students will be introduced to seminal texts, archival collections at U.Va., as well as relevant digital resources, including the Transatlantic Slaving Database; Virtual Jamestown; Virginia Runaways; Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the Civil War; American Memory; Historical Census Data Browser; Civil War Newspapers; and Race and Place. Students will be graded on the following basis: 50 % on the web-based exhibit that their team constructs; 25 % on an online journal chronicling the student's experience with creating digital history; 25 % on individual participation and work in the course. Each team will present a demonstration of its project in the last week of the course.
HIUS 401F: The Law and Politics of Slavery in the Early Republic (4)
Instructor: George Van Cleve
R 15:30-18:00
CAB 331
This seminar will explore how American slavery changed during the period 1770-1821, emphasizing how political and legal changes during that period affected the institution. The seminar will begin with four weeks of readings and discussions on various aspects of slavery and related developments during the early Republic. Readings will consider social and economic changes during this period that affected slavery, as well as the major reasons for its growth, differentiation, and geographic expansion. Readings will also address key political developments, such as the treatment of slavery in the Constitution and disputes over the expansion of slavery into territories and new States (e.g., the Louisiana Purchase, the Missouri Compromise). Finally, readings will consider legal developments such as the abolition of slavery in the northern states, and laws concerning the abuse of slaves. Students will be expected to read approximately 150 pages per week during the first four weeks. Students will also be expected to participate in primary source research training sessions in Alderman Library and the Small Special Collections Library. Students will choose topics for research papers that will be completed during the remaining weeks of the course, and presented in final course meetings at the end of the semester. A paper of approximately twenty-five pages based on primary source research will be required (85% of grade). Class and training participation will account for 15% of the grade. This course fulfills the second writing requirement.
Preliminary readings may include portions of the following: Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery; Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619-1877; Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America; Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic (ed. and completed by Ward McAfee); Paul Finkelman, “Slavery and the Constitutional Convention: Making a Covenant with Death,” in Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward C. Carter II, eds., Beyond Confederation); Peter S. Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood; Arthur Zilversmit, The First Emancipation; Thomas D. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860; Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power; Philip D. Morgan, “Black Society in the Lowcountry, 1760-1810,” in Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, eds. Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution; Allan Kulikoff, “Uprooted Peoples: Black Migrants in the Age of the American Revolution, 1790-1820” in ibid.; Douglas R. Egerton, “Gabriel’s Conspiracy and the Election of 1800”; U.S. House of Representatives, Annals of Congress, 1st Cong. (February-March 1790); Philip D. Morgan, “The Poor: Slaves in Early America,” in David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis, and Kenneth L. Sokoloff eds., Slavery in the Development of the Americas.
HIUS 401J: Towns and Commerce in the Slave South, 1800-1860 (4)
Instructor: Amanda Mushal
M13:00-15:30
RFN 227B
As centers of commerce, shipping, and social and political engagement, towns and cities helped shape the history of the slave South. Yet southern history has generally been written as the history of an agricultural region. How did southern towns relate to plantation society? This course challenges students to explore the physical structure of southern towns, town as centers of social, economic, and political networks, ways in which race and slavery shaped and were shaped by urban environments, and the role of towns in discussions of southern distinctiveness, slavery and industrialization, and the development of southern nationalism.
This seminar is designed to introduce students to major issues in antebellum southern urban history, as well as to the resources available to scholars in this field. During the first part of the course, we will meet weekly to discuss assigned readings. Texts will include selections from Gregg Kimball, American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond, Edward D.C. Campbell, Jr., and Kym S. Rice, eds., African-American Life in the Antebellum South, Lisa Tolbert, Constructing Townscapes: Space and Society in Antebellum Tennessee, and William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, The Web of Progress: Private Values and Public Styles in Boston and Charleston, 1828-1843, as well as other essays and journal articles. We will consider key issues raised by the authors as well as their use of historical evidence. We will also examine antebellum newspaper articles, public records, and other primary documents which students may wish to engage in their research projects.
HIUS 40IK: Black Power and Revolutionary Politics
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
T 15:30-18:00
CAB 236
This course is cross-listed as AAS 406C. See the description in the AAS section, above.
Department of Music
MUSI 207 - Roots Music in America (3)
Instructor: Richard Will
MW 11:00 – 11:50
WIL 301
According to mainstream media, "roots music" like gospel, blues, country, folk, and bluegrass nourishes more popular genres such as rock and hip-hop, while also expressing the emotional and social concerns of (mainly) rural African-American and White American communities. We will examine both claims by studying the origins and development of roots genres and the way they are depicted in films, criticism, politics, and elsewhere.
MUSI 208 - African American Gospel Music (3)
Instructor: Melvin Butler
MW 12-12:50
MIN 125
No description available.
Department of Politics
PLAP 370 - Racial Politics (3)
Instructor: Lynn Sanders
TR 11:00 – 11:50
PHS 204
Examines how attributions of racial difference have shaped American Politics. Topics include how race affects American political partisanship, campaigns and elections, public policy, public opinion, and American political science. Prerequisite: One course in PLAP or instructor permission.
PLAP 382: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights (3)
Instructor: David Obrien
MW 13:00 – 13:50
WIL 301
Studies judicial construction and interpretation of civil rights and liberties reflected by Supreme Court decisions. Includes line-drawing between rights and obligations.
PLCP 581: Government and Politics of Sub-Saharan Africa (3)
Instructor: Robert Fatton
M 13:00 – 15:30
CAB 318
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.
PLIR 424A: International Relations in Southern Africa (3)
Instructor: Andrew Lawrence
R 15:30-18:00
CAB 316
No description available.
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 279: African Ritual and Religion (3)
Instructor: Njoki Osotsi
TR 14:00- 15:15
HAL 123
The class is a survey of African traditional religions with special emphasis on ritual. The central goal of the course is to introduce the students to a wide variety of religious practices in Africa, both indigenous and foreign. The class will study the African traditional approach to the sacred in the traditional and mainstream religions. A range of religious and ritual performances, including initiations and healing rituals will be studied, with the aim of engaging the students' minds and curiosity in the great diversity. The course requires the students to question their basic perspectives, assumptions and biases particularly regarding non-western religions and cultures. The class will achieve these objectives through relevant readings, lectures, movies and discussions. By the end of the class, it is hoped that the student will have broadened their views on religion, especially as it is practiced in Africa. Final exam; 2 quizzes; two short essays.
RELA 410 - Yoruba Religions (3)
Prof. Benjamin Ray
TR 9:30 – 10:45
CAB 210
Studies Yoruba traditional religion, ritual art, independent churches, and religious themes in contemporary literature in Africa and the Americas.
Department of Sociology
SOC 487: Immigration (3)
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
MW 15:30 – 16:45
CAB 316
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.
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Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
POTR 427 - Afro-Brazilian Civilization (3)
Instructor: David Haberly
MWF 11:00 – 11:50
CAB 320
A general introduction, in English, to the literature and culture of Brazil from 1500 to the present, with special emphasis upon the role of Afro-Brazilians in the creation of that literature and culture. No knowledge of Portuguese is required, and lectures and readings will be in English. The course includes discussions of the nation's social and historical development, but these topics will be presented through readings in the major works of Brazilian literature, including the works of important Afro-Brazilian authors.
Fall 2006
African-American and African Studies
AAS 100A – Black Nationalism
1300-1500 R
PV8 108
Instructor: Claudrena N. Harold
This course examines black nationalists’ protracted struggle for political autonomy, economic independence, and cultural self-definition in twentieth-century America. Major events to be discussed include the rise and fall of the Marcus Garvey Movement during the 1920s, the emergence of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam after the close of World War II, and the political and cultural upheavals in Afro-America during the Black Power era. Students will have the opportunity to explore the politics of a wide range of black radicals, including Amy Jacques and Marcus Garvey, Robert Williams, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Audley Moore, and Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones). Scholarly investigations of black nationalism normally conclude with an analysis of the disintegration of the Black Power Movement in the early 1970s, but this course will also investigate the contemporary manifestations of black nationalism. Exploring diverse topics such as the Million Man March in 1995, the rise of Afrocentricity as a major theoretical framework in Black Studies, and the race consciousness articulated in the music of various hip-hop artists, students will investigate the continuing significance and visibility of black nationalism in American politics and culture. Possible texts for the course include Michele Mitchell’s Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction, Dean Robinson’s Black Nationalism in American Politics and Thought, Tony Martin’s Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey, Tommie Shelby’s We Who are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity, William L. Van Deburg’s New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975, James W. Smethhurst’s The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s, and Timothy Tyson’s Radio Free Dixie: Robert Williams and the Roots of Black Power. Students will read an average of 200 pages per week. Grades will be based on class attendance and participation, two exams, and three book reviews.
AAS 101 - Africa in the Atlantic World (4)
1230-1345 T R
WIL 301
Instructors: Roquinaldo Ferreira and Scot French
This team-taught lecture course is part of a year-long survey of the history and culture of Africans in Africa and people of African descent in the Americas. During this semester, we will cover a variety of topics, including African societies before 1800, the Atlantic slave trade, literatures of the Atlantic World, the origins and development of New World plantation societies, Africana religions, life and labor in the United States, and the protracted process of emancipation. Students should come away with an understanding of the major problems, events, and people that shaped the African-American experience. At the same time, we will gain a sense of how that experience fit into the history of people of African descent in the larger Atlantic world. Students are encouraged, but not required, to take both semesters of this course. Reading will include the following books: Herbert Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge, 2001; Robin Law and Paul Lovejoy (eds.), Randy J. Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth Century Atlantic Odyssey. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2004; Michael L. Conniff and Thomas J. Davis, Africans in the Americas: A History of the Black Diaspora. Blackburn Press, 2002; George Reid Andrews, Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000. Oxford, 2004. Grading for the class will consist of the following: Participation/Discussion; Short Response Papers; Midterm Exam; Short Writing Assignment; Final Exam.
(Cross-listed as HIAF 203: The African Diaspora)
AAS 323 – Rise and Fall of the Slave South(3)
0900-0950 MW
MIN 125
Instructor: Edward L. Ayers
This course will explore the emergence and destruction of the most powerful slave society of the modern world: the American South. It will begin with the sixteenth century and extend through the Civil War and Reconstruction. We will examine the lives of slaves and slaveowners, small farmers and large planters, men and women, soldiers and civilians.
Requirements include substantial research in primary documents in Alderman Library. Research topics are broad and require students willing to tackle open-ended assignments. Readings will be diverse, including original documents, materials on the Web, fiction, and secondary accounts. Energetic participation in a weekly discussion section is a central part of the course.
(This course is cross-listed as HIUS 323.)
AAS 405B – From Black Arts to Hip-Hop
1300-1530 M
Minor 108
Instructor: Alwin A. D. Jones
In this seminar we will study the last 50 years of Black “writing” in America, especially focusing on the Black Arts and Hip Hop Movements, the impetus being: Black Writing is Still Alive and Emergent. We will investigate the politics, poetics, and aesthetics of writings as bracketed by these two movements. From its inception, scholars within Black Studies have always maintained an interdisciplinary approach in their intellectual pursuits, we will therefore follow suit in ours by examining film, "life writing," visual art, poetry, music and music lyrics, drama, performance arts, theory, history, activist writing, etc. Our in-depth study will highlight themes and issues within the period such as international collaboration, cross-generational discourse, generational identity, gender, race, space, religion and theodicy, revolution, the relationship between the written and spoken/performed word, “remix” and signification, the role of the cipher, and other interests that students might have. “When you roll up in the dance yo… Anything can happen” as we investigate these themes critically. For example, we will work together to “define” current hip hop sensibilities that include strains and urgings such as “neo-soul,” “spoken word,” “Hollywood rap/film star-ism,” “gangsta rap-ism,” etc. We would want to investigate what we happens when we look at urgings such as commercial and popular hip hop and/or rap in light of the political and aesthetic inclinations of the Black Arts Movement and other strains of hip hop.
The material that we will intellectually remix include the work of well known and important authors and figures, as well as other lesser known but still important writers. A tentative list of primary texts and authors include, but are not limited to: Sapphire’s Push, Sister Souljah’s The Coldest Winter Ever, El Hajj Malik Shabazz from myriad speeches and from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls, from The Amiri Baraka Reader, Listen Up: Spoken Word Poetry, Sonia Sanchez’s Shake Loose My Skin, Tupac Shakur’s The Rose that Grew from Concrete, Saul Williams’s said the shotgun to the head, Toni Morrison’s Sula, Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, and Gwedolyn Brooks’ Blacks (and her autobiographical writings and commentaries). The film text and discussions will highlight productions such as Slam, Bamboozled, from Eyes on the Prize, Brown Sugar, Juice, Boyz in the Hood, Sankofa, The Brotherhood, Drop Squad, Chapelle Show, Ali, and a few blacksploitation films. Other writers and artists whose work we will cover include Audre Lorde, Carolyn Rodgers, Martin Luther King, Haki R. Madhubuti, Nikki Giovanni, John Coltrane, Jessica Care Moore, Sarah Jones, The Nuyorican Poets, The Last Poets, Nina Simone, Outkast, NWA, Dead Prez, Christopher Wallace, Kanye West, Talib Kweli.
AAS 405C – Religion, Politics and the State in Africa (3)
1400-1630 T
Minor 108
Instructor: Vicki L. Brennan
This course addresses the politics of religion in sub-Saharan African societies including topics such as religious freedom, religious conflict, religious nationalism, and religious pluralism. We begin by looking at the interactions between pre-colonial African religions and politics in order to explore the ways in which religions can legitimate and/or undermine authority. We consider religious and political change in relation to both Islamic Jihad and Christian “civilizing missions” in West and South Africa respectively. In the nationalist and postcolonial period, we explore the political dimensions of religious movements and the religious dimensions of political movements; with a particular focus on the impact that transnational religions--such as Pentecostalism and global Islam--have on the soverignty of nation-states in Africa. Course requirements include active participation in seminar discussions, weekly one-page reports on the course readings, and a series of writing assignments that will culminate in a 20-page research paper.
AAS 405D – Race, Class, and Gender in Brazil
1100-1215 T R
Minor 108
Instructor: Angela Figueiredo
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the relationship between race, class, and gender in Brazil since 1930. Classes will include contemporary public issues about affirmative action. Historically, the study of race in Brazil has centered on comparing Brazil and the U.S., with the conclusion that in Brazil racism is less than here because the mixed race population and Afro-Brazilians can negotiate their social position if they are middle-class; frequently, class prevailed over race and gender was not important. Actually, this context has changed in recent decades and we need to consider the economic and political changes that have taken place in Brazil as well as in the level of education, racial self-identification and identity formation among Afro-Brazilians. The study of gender and race in Brazil took off in the 1990s, the majority of it focusing on the difference in income between black and white women. This course will consist of four parts: first, we will study the classic texts on this subject; second, we will talk about the beginning discussions on racism in the 1980s; third, we will study the relationship between gender and race; and, finally, we will study the political context today.
This course meets twice a week, each class with 1:15 hours. Classes will combine lectures and audio-visual resource. In each class two students are expected to read a text and answer questions. Grading will be based on participation in the class and a small final paper.
American Studies
AMST 401 (0001) - White Supremacists Write the Americas: From Aryan Atlantis to White Aztlan
1400 – 1515 MW
BRN 334
Instructor: Ruth Hill
This seminar examines various racial projects that contributed to the national formation of white supremacy, ca. 1915-2005, especially those hemispheric projects that have constructed the ancient Aztec, Maya and Inca civilizations as Caucasian/ Aryan/ White. We will also be examining the related racial projects of ancient White Egypt and ancient White India, some transamerican racial formations of black supremacy and brown supremacy, and the confluence of white supremacy and Christian extremism in postmodern, electronic racial projects. Evaluation: Active and intelligent participation in classroom dialogues and weekly study group meetings, plus 1-2 pp. response papers after study group meetings: 20%; mid-semester précis of research paper including annotated bibliography (10 pp.): 20%; brief oral presentation of research project: 10%; research paper (25-30 pp.): 50%.
Readings and other materials will be on reserve at Clemons and available through toolkit. They include materials from white supremacist websites and selections from the following: Madison Grant, Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History; Conquest of A Continent; Lothrop Stoddard, Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy; New World of Islam; Re-Forging America; Achmed Abdullah, “Through Mohammedan Spectacles”; W.E.B. Dubois, “African Roots of War”; José Vasconcelos, Cosmic Race (La raza cósmica); James Denson Sayers, Can the White Race Survive?; Earnest S. Cox, White America: The American Racial Perspective as Seen in A Worldwide Perspective; Let My People Go; Unending Hate; Teutonic Unity; Matthew Pratt Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900-1940; Lee Baker, From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954; Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of A Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race; and Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s.
AMST 401 (0002) - Hollywood, Film, and American Culture: The 1930s
1300-1530 M W
RAN 212 (M) / MCL 2008 (W)
Instructor: Carmenita Higginbotham
This course examines American cinema produced in Hollywood during the 1930s. While the Great Depression serves as an important backdrop to our investigation, we will interrogate how issues such as ethnic/racial representation, shifting gender roles, sexuality, and urbanity are mediated in popular cinema in this decade. In addition to film, we also will consider extra-textual sources and other aspects influential to the film industry such as the studio system, the Hayes Code, stardom, and changes within narrative and film techniques. Requirements for this course include two short response essays and a 15-20-page research paper.
AMST 201 (0003) - Language in the US
1300-1350 MWF
Cauthen House 134
Instructor: Ashley M. Williams
Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. is not (and never has been) linguistically homogenous: from dying and revitalized Native American languages to newly arrived immigrant languages, from regional and social dialect variation to innovation among adolescents and Hip Hop, the American language situation is diverse and changing. This course invites students to investigate this not-quite-melting-pot variety both through readings in current research and through small-scale field research. Topics covered in the course will include the origins and distinctions of American English, language controversies such as Ebonics and the English-Only movement, research in language attitudes and discrimination, topics in bilingualism and education, plus the latest studies in language issues involving different ethnicities, genders, sexualities, ages, and social classes.
In this course we will pull material from a variety of sources (including films, literature, the media, and recent studies), and will employ a variety of approaches (linguistic, anthropological, sociological, historical, and more) as we investigate and debate what is uniquely “American” about the language situation in the United States:
Grading (100 points total):
Participation: 20
Individual Project & Presentation: 40
Weekly Critical Response Papers (10 @ 4 points each): 40
1) Attendance and participation are essential to completing this course successfully. You are expected to complete the readings, listen attentively and actively, and thoughtfully engage in discussion. Our class meetings depend on your having studied the assigned material inquisitively, critically, and energetically.
2) Individual Project and Presentation (10-15 pages) (papers due the last day of class, presentations during the last few weeks of class): You will write a paper on some topic on language in the US based on original research gathered from a variety of sources (recordings, interviews, articles, other print material, films, music, field observations, etc.) and present your work to the class. Please note that your topic proposal (a brief 1 page description of what you plan to do in your paper, including a short bibliography, plus a brief in-class presentation) is due by WEEK 8.
3) (Nearly) Weekly Critical Response Papers (due dates marked in Schedule; topics on Toolkit): You will hand in a 1-2 page response paper on a question given out the preceding week. These questions will ask you to critically respond to and engage with some aspect of the preceding week’s readings, films, discussions, etc. They probably also will help you in formulating and finalizing your individual paper topic.
Required Texts:
Course Reader: a collection of articles available through course web page on Toolkit.
Finegan, Edward & John R. Rickford (eds.). 2004. Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge University Press.
Lippi-Green, Rosina. 1997. English with an Accent. Routledge.
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 228 Introduction to Medical Anthropology (3)
TR 1100-1230MCL 1020
Instructor: Wende Marshall
The suffering body is inevitable in human experience, but the meaning of suffering is interpreted differently across cultures and time. Conceptions of the body, notions of health and methods of healing vary considerably. The point of this course, which introduces medical anthropology to undergraduates, is to contextualize bodies, suffering, health and power. The aim of the course is to provide a broad understanding of the relationship between culture (particularly in the U.S.), healing (especially the Western form of healing known as biomedicine), health and political power.
ANTH 387 Archaeology of Virginia (3)
TR 1400-1515
MIN 130
Instructor: Jeffrey Hantman
This course provides an overview of the insights gained into Virginia's history and prehistory through the joining of archaeological and ethnohistoric research. The course explores culture change and adaptation in Virginia (and the Chesapeake region more broadly) from the time of earliest human settlement of the region to the nineteenth century. In this vast time frame, we will focus on a number of selected topics for which people, events and sites in Virginia provide a unique perspective. These include: the origins of archaeology in America, current debate surrounding the timing and process of the initial settlement of America, the development of distinct regional polities such as the Powhatan and Monacan chiefdoms, early interaction between American Indians and Europeans and the long-term impacts of colonialism, and archaeological research on Euroamerican and African-American culture in the region.
ANTH 401A Social Inequalities: Religious, Modern, and Postcolonial(3)
W 1400-1630
CAB 215
Instructor: Ravindra Khare
A seminar on comparative discussion of social inequalities in societies both postcolonial and modern (e.g., contemporary India and the U.S.), with a focus on how different social, religious and political forces now play their roles in continuing and complicating social differences and issues along the lines of gender, class, caste, race, religion, and latest, globalization. The seminar will include appropriate in-class exercises conducted by students on the inequalities experienced and coped with in life. Course satisfies Second Writing Requirement.
ANTH 543 African Languages (3)
Instructor: David Sapir
MW 1530-1645
The course will cover the classification of African languages, selected grammatical typologies, African lexicography, and examples of oral literature. Students will give presentations on these topics with respect to a specific language or languages. The intention of the course is to investigate the considerable variety of linguistic types present in sub-Saharan Africa. Permission of Instructor required.
ANTH 585 - Methods in Historical Archaeology (3)
W 1630-1900
CAM 108
Instructor: Fraser Neiman
This course offers an introduction to analytical methods in historical archaeology, their theoretical motivation, and their practical application in the interpretation of material culture. The class combines lectures and discussion with computer workshops, in which students have a chance to explore historical issues raised in the reading and lectures using real architectural and archaeological data. The course is designed to teach students in architectural history, history, and archaeology theoretical models, simple statistical methods, software applications, and how they can be integrated to address important historical questions. Our principle historical focus is change in the conflicting economic and social strategies pursued by Europeans, Africans, and Native-Americans, and their descendents in the colonial Chesapeake. In 2006, much of the course will be devoted to seventeenth-century Jamestown.
Common Courses
CCFA 202 – Arts and Culture of the Slave South
MW 1530-1645
WIL 301
Instructors: Maurie McInnis and Louis P. Nelson
We will embark on an exploration of the interrelations between history, material and visual cultures, music, and literature in the formation of Southern identities. The course covers subjects ranging from the archaeology of seventeenth-century Virginia and the formation of African American spirituals, to creolization and ethnicities in Louisiana, to the plantation architectures of the big house and outbuildings and the literary traditions of antebellum women. Students are 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.
Department of English
ENAM 313 – African American Survey(3)
TR 1400-1515
CAB 132
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
Analyzes the earliest examples of African-American literature, emphasizing African cultural themes and techniques that were transformed by the experience of slavery as that experience met European cultural and religious practices. Studies essays, speeches, pamphlets, poetry, and songs.
ENAM 322 – Faulkner
MWR 1100-1150
CAB 216
Instructor: Stephen Railton
We'll spend the semester inside the fictions Faulkner wrote about Yoknapatawpha County, that intersection of his imagination with the Old South and the Modernist Novel.
ENAM 341 – Black Women Writers (3)
TR 930-1045
CAB 318
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
Course description unavailable.
ENAM 381 – Black Protest Narrative (3)
TR 1100-1215
Instructor: Marlon Ross
This course explores the relation between modern racial protest and African American narrative art (fiction, autobiography, film, narrative poetry) from the mid-1930s to the early 1970s, focusing on the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights movement, and the emergence of Black Power. As well as examining the social, political, and economic contexts of protest narratives, we’ll probe their aesthetic, formal, and ideological structures, and assess how protest writers represent controversial topics of the time, such as lynching, segregation, sharecropping, disenfranchisement, anti-Semitism, unemployment, migration, urbanization, religion, sexuality, war and military service, strikebreaking, cross-racial coalitions, and the role of the individual in social change. We start with the most famous protest narrative, Richard Wright’s Native Son , then study other narratives, many of which challenge Wright’s forms and ideas. Other writers include Angelo Herndon, William Attaway, Ann Petry, Chester Himes, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Alice Walker, and Bobby Seale, as well as pertinent readings in history, literary criticism, journalism, and social science. Films include: Native Son (starring Richard Wright), No Way Out (starring Sidney Poitier), and The Education of Sonny Carson . Heavy reading schedule. Midterm, final, and reading journal required.
ENAM 481 – African American Women's Autobiography (3)
TR 930-1045
BRN 332
Instructor: Angela Davis
Course description unavailable
ENAM 481 – The Slave Narrative
TR 1100-1215
PV8 108
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
Course description unavailable
ENAM 481/ENLT 255 – Disenfranchised Voices
TR 930-1045
CAB 335
Instructor: Marion Rust
For more than a century before Benjamin Franklin, in 1771, purportedly began the letter to his son that became the Autobiography of and for a young nation, inhabitants of colonial America – British, African and Native American, enslaved and indentured, male and female, ministers, heads of state and condemned criminals on their way to the scaffold – found occasion to engage in some form of life-writing. In this class we examine their words, both to broaden our understanding of why and how people choose to narrate a self into being, and to narrow our focus on a particular historical period newly accessible to us through a host of recently discovered personal writings. How does early American life-writing challenge our assumptions regarding what counts as autobiography and what purposes it serves?How did early Americans surmount the obstacles to rendering fluid life experience in the clumsy medium of language, and what can we learn from their attempts as we engage in our own practices of self.
ENAM 481C Crane, Chopin, and Chesnutt
1400-1515 MW
BRN 312
Instructor: Stephen Railton
From very different backgrounds, these American artists all arrived at the end of the 19th and the turn into the 20th century at about the same time. We'll look closely at each writer's own achievement, especially in Maggie, The Red Badge of Courage, The Conjure Woman, The Marrow of Tradition and The Awakening, but we'll also study them in the context they create together as they push American literature into new thematic territories, and define new roles for American readers. Because the class is a seminar, I'll expect you to come to class prepared to talk and listen to each other, and ask you to do a variety of tasks, from leading a class discussion to writing several short writing assignments and a long (10-12 page) final essay.
ENAM 358 - U.S. Literature and Citizenship
TR 1100-1215
CAB 134
Instructor: Victoria Olwell
How has literary writing shaped conceptions of citizenship? What resources does literature provide for thinking about the kinds of inclusion-and exclusion-that citizenship defines? In this course, we’ll explore how U.S. literature has “imagined” national community, to borrow Benedict Anderson’s famous term. We’ll define citizenship in multiple ways: as formal incorporation in the state, as civic participation, as a form of subjectivity, and as cultural inclusion, to name just a few of the most important. Our major project will be to see how literature not only has been essential to the formation of discourses of citizenship, but also has created modes of citizenship. In part, our course will consider the thematics of citizenship in selected literary texts from the late eighteenth century through the present day. We’ll see how literature has provided a space of conversation where conceptions of national community could be formed and disputed. But, we’ll also see literature as itself a technology of citizenship, one that produces relations among readers and styles of subjectivity that are themselves instances, rather than reflections, of citizenship. Our literary readings will be clustered around several areas of struggle over the terms of citizenship; these include national formation, race, gender, immigration, sexuality, labor, and the security state. Literary readings will likely include Charles Brockden Brown, Weiland; Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette; Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass and other poems; several pieces by Frederick Douglas; Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; short stories by Hawthorne and Melville; women’s suffrage plays, poems, and fiction; The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Audre Lorde, Zami, A New Spelling of My Name, Tony Kushner, Angels in America, and Gish Jen, Mona in the Promised Land. We’ll also read a few pieces of recent theory and criticism.
Course requirements include energetic participation, two short papers, a longer essay, and a final examination.
ENLT 224 Studies in Drama– 20th Century American Drama in Black and White
TR 1400-1515
BRN 310
Instructor: Brian Roberts
This course surveys plays by important 20th century American writers--both black and white--with an eye toward examining the movement away from the minstrel tradition as well as with the goal of interrogating the strategies, ethics, and implications of representing racial Others in drama. While reading works in which black and white playwrights script the interactions of black and white characters, we will closely analyze selected scenes and acts in order to become familiar with the techniques of the dramatic art, including issues of dramatic genre, reading versus performance, conventions of speech and dialogue, and issues of plot and subplot. We will also pay attention to African and European influences on 20th century American drama's important movements and modes of stage expression. Course requirements include weekly quizzes, three papers, and a comprehensive final exam.
ENLT 247 –Black Writers in America
TR 1700-1815
CAB 334
Instructor: Erich Nunn
This course traces the interrelations of twentieth-century African American literary and musical histories from W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk through the Negro Renaissance of the 1920s and the Black Arts movement of the 1960s to the present day. Texts include those by writers on music and writing by musicians. Including autobiography, poetry, fiction, drama, and criticism, as well as instrumental and vocal music, the course provides a broad overview of these traditions. Students will learn to pay close attention to language and form, while gaining an understanding of the cultural and historical contexts that inform these literary and musical productions. Course requirements include extensive class participation, three formal essays, weekly response papers, reading quizzes, a mid-term, and a final exam.
ENLT 248 - Fictions of the yard
1700-1815 TR
CAB 247
Instructor: Alwin Jones
This course will introduce students to the various permutations of the genre called “Yard Fiction,” generally associated with the writings of Caribbean nationals and expatriates of color. We will examine mostly novels and novellas, starting with C.L.R. James’s Minty Alley (1939), which is considered the first “Yard Fiction” text. The “yard” can be defined as a space that is home to mostly people of color who are predominantly all working class citizens, employed and unemployed. The yard is usually a building, or a group of buildings on the same street, basically a “tenement.” Subsequently, everything thing in the selected texts generally occurs in each of the different characters’ “own back yard.” The yard, as a physical space, generally binds the characters/people and the text.
Some of the primary texts include Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street, Samuel Selvon’s Moses Ascending, and Earl Lovelace’s The Dragon Can’t Dance. We will also listen and examine the music and poetry of artists such as Linton Kwesi Johnson and Saul Williams. We will examine how these different authors image and utilize the space of yard in order to tell their story. As we progress along in the course, students will be able to develop a working history of “yard fiction” as a specific genre through discussion and written scholarship. Some general themes that are consistent with the genre are gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, urban space, imperialism, globalization, coloniality, independence, property/territory, and culture, along with music/calypso and gossip as primary carrier of news and information.
Department of French Language and Literature
FREN 443 – Africa in Cinema (3)
TR 1230-1345
CAB 321
Instructor: Kandioura Drame
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. Prerequistes: FREN 332 and FREN 344
FREN 570 – Francophone Literature of Africa(3)
TR 1530-1645
WIL 141B
Instructor: Kandioura Drame
Studies the principal movements and representative authors writing in French in Northern, Central, and Western Africa, with special reference to the islands of Madagascar and Mauritius. Explores the literary and social histories of these regions.
Department of Germanic Languages and Literature
GETR 348 (3); ENGN 362: Autobiography, Memoir, and Memory-Making in the Twentieth-Century and Beyond
MWF 1100-1150
Instructor: Ms. Schenberg
Isabel Allende writes, "My life is created as I narrate, my memory grows stronger with writing."
This course asks, what is the relation between memory and creation of an autobiography or memoir? What does Allende mean by her claim that her writing creates (rather than records) her life? How do various twentieth-century authors put memory to work in creating autobiography and memoir?
In reading our selected texts, we will consider the above questions, as well as the following: How is autobiography used to explore childhood, trauma, race, gender and the self as writer? We will also explore the current surge in popularity of these forms of writing.
Authors read will include Walter Benjamin, Annie Dillard, Ruth Klüger, Christa Wolf, Malcolm X, and Maxine Hong Kingston and Barbara Kingsolver.
Students will be expected to keep a reading journal, write response papers, prepare two five-page papers and write a final exam.
Department of History
HIAF 203 – The African Diaspora (4)
TR 1230-1345
WIL 301
Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira
HIAF 203/AAS 101 is a team-taught course that is part of a year-long survey of the history and culture of Africans in Africa and people of African descent in the Americas. During this semester, we will cover a variety of topics, including African societies before 1800, the Atlantic slave trade, literatures of the Atlantic World, the origins and development of New World plantation societies, Africana religions, life and labor in the United States, and the protracted process of emancipation. Students should come away with an understanding of the major problems, events, and people that shaped the African-American experience. At the same time, we will gain a sense of how that experience fit into the history of people of African descent in the larger Atlantic world. Students are encouraged, but not required, to take both semesters of this course. Reading will include the following books: Herbert Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge, 2001; Robin Law and Paul Lovejoy (eds.), Randy J. Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth Century Atlantic Odyssey. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2004; Michael L. Conniff and Thomas J. Davis, Africans in the Americas: A History of the Black Diaspora. Blackburn Press, 2002; George Reid Andrews, Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000. Oxford, 2004. Grading for the class will consist of the following: Participation/Discussion; Short Response Papers; Midterm Exam; Short Writing Assignment; Final Exam.
(Cross-listed as AAS 101).
HIAF 302 – History of Southern Africa
TR 0930-1045
CAB 323
Instructor: John E. Mason
HIAF 302 is a lecture and discussion course on the history of southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The emphasis is on South Africa. HIAF 302 begins with a look at the precolonial African societies of the region, before moving on to a study of conquest, colonialism, the rise and fall of apartheid, and the recent rebirth of African independence.
By the end of the nineteenth century, all of the African peoples of southern Africa had been conquered by European powers and incorporated into Dutch, British, Portuguese, and German colonial empires. Conquest had not come easily. Every society in the region resisted European domination fiercely, sometimes for many decades before being finally defeated. Colonialism and African responses to it dramatically reshaped societies in southern African, transforming political and economic systems, gender and class relations, even religious beliefs.
Resistance to colonialism assumed new forms in the twentieth century, as Africans began to bridge ethnic divisions to create multi-ethnic trade unions, churches, political parties, and liberation movements. Particularly in South Africa, African nationalism was influenced by nonracialism, uniting blacks and progressive whites in the ultimately successful struggle against apartheid.
Course materials include biographies, memoirs, fiction, music, and films, as well as academic studies. Students will write two five to seven page essays and write two blue book exams, a mid-term and a final.
HIAF 389 – Africa In World History
TR 0930-1045
CAB 337
Instructor: Joseph C. Miller
HIAF 389 is an experimental exploration in “world history” 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 never considering Africa’s place in the long-term history of the human race – even though genetic and other evidence establishes that all modern humans descended from ancestors living in Africa. “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, philosopher of the modern discipline of history, specifically excluded Africa as the “continent without history”.
HIAF 389 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 challenges and changes in the broader story of human history throughout the world; and (3) to look afresh at the familiar narrative of world “civilizations” in terms derived from African perspectives, strategies, and experiences. If you want to think again about what you thought you knew, about any part of the world (including the modern US), this could be the course for you. I hope to leave no one in the room unchallenged.
HIAF 389 will provide the usual narrative framework of Africa’s past through reading a current text (Gilbert & Reynolds, Africa in World History) but will develop significantly different interpretive emphases; the critical contrast will reveal the assumptions underlying the way that historians think, or should think, since so few of them actually do. We will also read a world-history text and attempt to bring the two texts together with the approach to be developed in the course. We will also read more technical articles on concepts and processes integral to understanding Africa and history. You need not have taken either HIAF 201 or 202 (Introductions to early and modern Africa), but if you have not you will need to take responsibility for grasping the basic narrative from which the course will build.
The instructor will lecture one session/week on Africa and then, during the second session, invite students to compare the materials presented for Africa to historical patterns and processes elsewhere around the world. Students will write short “take-home points” at the end 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. The final exercise will be a take-home examination asking a single question: “How do you now, having spent a semester looking at the past in Africa in the context of global history, and vice versa, see the similarities and the differences between Africans’ experiences and those of others elsewhere around the globe?” Student writing will be considered intensely and analytically.
HIAF 402A – History Colloquium - Color And Culture in South Africa and the United States (4)
TR 1400-1515
CAB 334
Instructor: John E. Mason
HIAF 402 is a small, research-oriented course that explores the histories of South Africa and the United States in comparative perspective.
South Africa and the American South are cousins: instantly recognizable as members of the same family, but with distinctively different personalities. Both countries owe much of their early economic development to slavery. In both complex systems of racial domination shaped society for generations before and after the emancipation of the slaves. And in both the interracial struggle against racial domination gave rise to some of the most important people and events in their histories.
At the same time, the differences between the two countries cannot be ignored. In South Africa blacks constitute the overwhelming majority of the population, and the descendants of European immigrants are a small minority. In the United States, of course, the reverse is true. Both white supremacy and the struggle against it were more violent in South Africa than in the United States. And, since 1994, a democratic political system has ensured that black South Africans have enjoyed a degree of political power that black Americans have never experienced.
The course holds the similarities and differences between the two countries in a creative tension. Through biography, autobiography, music, film, and scholarship, we will look at the ways in which race shaped the lives of South Africans and Americans, both black and white.
HIAF 402 is designed primarily, but not exclusively, for history majors and fulfills the history department's seminar/colloquium requirement. Students enrolling in the course should have taken at least one course in African history, preferably South Africa, and two courses in American history.
HIAF 404 – Independent Study in African History
TBA
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HILA 306 – Modern Brazil
TR 0930-1045
CLK 101
Instructor: Brian Owensby
Land of the Future. World’s ninth largest economy. More people of African descent than all but a handful of African countries. Nation of immigrants. Last country in the Western hemisphere to abolish slavery. Society of Racial Democracy. Home of samba and bossa nova. Five-time world soccer champion. A place where a metal worker without a college education was elected president. Home of the Cordial Man. Leader of a movement that has begun to question globalization.
All of these are Brazil. This course will trace the history of Brazil from the late 18th century to the present day. We will focus on trying to understand the trajectory of a nation that in many ways defies the idea of what a nation is supposed to be. We will look at how Brazil became modern, and how this history forces us to question the very idea of modernity itself. In doing so, we will compare Brazil and the US, for only by confronting what Americans take for granted is it possible to learn anything about Brazil—or any other place for that matter.
HILA 402A – Race & Hybridity in Latin America
R 1300-1530
CAU 112
Instructor: Brian Owensby
Half a millenium of biological and cultural mixing has made Latin America a place where race means something quite different from what it does in the US and other places. This colloquium will explore Latin America’s unique history of race mixing, from the earliest moments of contact between Europeans and indigenous peoples, to the later arrival of Africans, to the emergence of multi-hued societies of castas, to the creation of national ideologies of mestizaje. The idea is to explore Latin America on its own terms and to allow that exploration to unsettle taken-for-granted notions of race as US Americans generally think of it.
HIME 100A – Migration, Modernity, Democracy: Cultural Exchange and Conflict (3)
M 1530-1800
CAB 337
Instructor: Monica Black
What might such diverse subjects as depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper cartoon, Muslim women veiling, unrest in the suburbs of Paris, and Turkey entering the European Union have in common? Particularly as Middle Eastern and North African migration to Europe has increased over the past decades, questions of cultural exchange and difference have come more and more to dominate relations between the Middle East and Europe. This course will explore how different ways of conceiving of modernity, democracy, the place of religion in peoples’ lives, and certain political struggles—such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or Iran’s nuclear program—have brought Middle Easterners and Europeans increasingly into dispute. The history of European imperialism and decolonization in the Middle East, the rise of forms of Middle East nationalism, the nature and variety of contemporary Muslim religious identity and activism, and the Middle Eastern and North African immigrant experience in Europe will be major themes in the course. Course meetings will be comprised of short lectures introducing the main themes for the week, followed by a discussion of assigned texts. On average, students can expect to read around 150 pages per week. Requirements include a short, midterm paper (5-6 pages), a longer (15 page) paper due at the end of the semester, and active participation in discussions. The course fulfills the college’s second writing requirement.
HIST 100 – Great Migrations of the 20th Century
W 1530-1800
CAB 337
Instructor: Pablo Davis
Three great Northward and Westward migrations that reshaped the politics, economy, society, and culture of the United States in the 20th were those by Southerners, Black and White, and by Puerto Ricans. Drawing on a range of historiographic, literary, and film sources, the course will consider the origins, unfolding, and consequences of these massive movements of people. The course will also draw on soul, country, salsa, and related musical genres as an important auxiliary source of insight into the world of migration.
HIUS 100A –Black Nationalism
R 1300-1500
PV8 108
Instructor: Claudrena N. Harold
This course examines black nationalists’ protracted struggle for political autonomy, economic independence, and cultural self-definition in twentieth-century America. Major events to be discussed include the rise and fall of the Marcus Garvey Movement during the 1920s, the emergence of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam after the close of World War II, and the political and cultural upheavals in Afro-America during the Black Power era. Students will have the opportunity to explore the politics of a wide range of black radicals, including Amy Jacques and Marcus Garvey, Robert Williams, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Audley Moore, and Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones). Scholarly investigations of black nationalism normally conclude with an analysis of the disintegration of the Black Power Movement in the early 1970s, but this course will also investigate the contemporary manifestations of black nationalism. Exploring diverse topics such as the Million Man March in 1995, the rise of Afrocentricity as a major theoretical framework in Black Studies, and the race consciousness articulated in the music of various hip-hop artists, students will investigate the continuing significance and visibility of black nationalism in American politics and culture. Possible texts for the course include Michele Mitchell’s Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction, Dean Robinson’s Black Nationalism in American Politics and Thought, Tony Martin’s Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey, Tommie Shelby’s We Who are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity, William L. Van Deburg’s New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975, James W. Smethhurst’s The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s, and Timothy Tyson’s Radio Free Dixie: Robert Williams and the Roots of Black Power. Students will read an average of 200 pages per week. Grades will be based on class attendance and participation, two exams, and three book reviews.
(Cross-listed with AAS 100A).
HIUS 323 – Rise and Fall of The Slave South
0900-0950 MW
MIN 125
Instructor: Edward L. Ayers
This course will explore the emergence and destruction of the most powerful slave society of the modern world: the American South. It will begin with the sixteenth century and extend through the Civil War and Reconstruction. We will examine the lives of slaves and slaveowners, small farmers and large planters, men and women, soldiers and civilians.
Requirements include substantial research in primary documents in Alderman Library. Research topics are broad and require students willing to tackle open-ended assignments. Readings will be diverse, including original documents, materials on the Web, fiction, and secondary accounts. Energetic participation in a weekly discussion section is a central part of the course.
HIUS 329 – Virginia History, 1861-2005
1230-1345
GIL 141
Instructor: George Gilliam
History is the study of change over time. This course will examine change in Virginia from about 1861 to the present. The course will especially follow six main topics: (a) the evolving nature of democracy in Virginia; (b) continuities and change between “Ol’ Virginny” and modern Virginia; (c) the role of Reconstruction in configuring Virginia’s racial and political divisions; (d) the role of debt and the resolution of the conflict between Funders and Readjusters into Virginia’s “pay-as-you-go” philosophy; (e) social and cultural change in Virginia; and (f) the rural machine politics of Harry F. Byrd.
Readings will average approximately 100 pages per week, and will be drawn from both primary documents and secondary material. Among the readings will be selections from: Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction; Jane Dailey, Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Postemancipation Virginia; Edward L. Ayers, Southern Crossing, Bruce Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1980, and Jay Winik, April 1865: The Month that Saved America.
The class will meet twice per week. Approximately half of each class will be spent in lecture and half in a class discussion. There will be a multiple choice/short answer mid-term exam, one 5-7 page paper involving the use of primary source materials, one group project, and a final examination requiring one short and one long essay.
HIUS 365 – African American History Through Reconstruction
MWF 1300-1350
CAB 341
Instructor: Reginald D. Butler
This lecture course is part of a year-long survey of the African American experience in British Colonial North America and the United States. This segment (AAS-HIUS 365) covers the period from the beginnings of trans-Atlantic slave trade through Reconstruction. We seek to relate the African American experience to the broader experience of Africans in the Diaspora, as well as larger themes and concepts (the rise of capitalism and the nation-state, European expansion, slavery and the slave trade in Africa, the development of racial ideologies, etc.) in world history. We will examine some of the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities, paying particular attention to how African Americans themselves shaped their experiences. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the intersection of the "local" and the "global." Students will be evaluated on three test grades and a research project to be explained fully in the syllabus.
HIUS 367 – History of the Civil Rights Movement
T 1530-1730
WIL 301
Instructor: Julian Bond
This lecture course examines the history, philosophies, tactics, events and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward.
The Southern movement - variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement - was a black-lead, interracial mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation by the mid-60s.
Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping and occasionally complimentary phases - lobbying, litigation and protest.
In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights.
In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation and the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools.
The last phase, lasting a decade from '54 through '65, was a decade of protests - boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations - as well as grass-roots organizing campaigns that laid the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s.
Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength and followers from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation. The movement's well-known and lesser-known proponents and their strategies will be examined.
Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five- to seven-page papers.
Texts:
• Wilkins, Roy, with Tom Matthews, Standing Fast, Da Capo Press
• Forman James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, University of Washington Press
• Bond, Julian and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, Thompson Learning
Videos:
• "Eyes on the Prize - America's Civil Rights Years, 1954 - 1965", # 1 to 6
• "America the at the Racial Crossroads, 1965 - 1985," # 1 and 2; PBS Video, Blackside Inc., Boston
• "The Road to Brown," William Elwood, Producer, California Newsreel
HIUS 401C – History Semnar –The North and Reconstruction (4)
W 1300-1530
CAB 335
Instructor: Michael F. Holt
The purpose of this majors seminar is to examine how bid a role the post-Civil War experiment of Reconstruction in the South played in northern elections between 1865 and 1876. That is, to what extent did those northern elections revolve around federal policy for the South as opposed to intrinsic developments and issues in the North. After a few weeks of common reading and discussion, each student will pick a year and research its state, congressional, and, if relevant, presidential elections in newspapers, Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, which contains both Republican and Democratic platforms for most states, Harpweek, and any other possible primary sources.
Students’ grades will be based on participation in class discussion, a short paper on the preliminary reading, the research paper which will be presented to the seminar, and the criticism they offer of fellow students’ papers. This course fulfills the second writing requirement.
Preliminary readings may include:
• David H. Donald, Jean H. Baker, and Michael F. Holt, The Civil War and Reconstruction
• David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872
• Heather Cox Richardson, The Failure of Reconstruction
• Dale Baum, The Civil War Party System: The Case of Massachusetts, 1848-1876
HIUS 401E – History Seminar – Slavery and the Southern Frontier (4)
T 1530-1800
BRN 310
Instructor: Andrew Torget
This seminar will examine the expansion of the nineteenth-century American South in the decades before the Civil War. The region we know today as the South expanded drastically between 1810 and 1860 as men and women, black and white, poured into regions of North America that would eventually become Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri and Texas. Growing wealthy by growing cotton, white migrants who brought their enslaved workforce to this Southern frontier created the most powerful slave regime in world history--all in a span of only fifty years. Students in the course will examine the rapid and turbulent growth of the Southern frontier during this important period, assessing what the development of this region meant for United States history. The first several weeks of the course will be devoted to reading secondary works on the South and its frontier, to gain a collective sense of what other historians have said about it. For the rest of the class, students will research and write an original paper (approximately 25-30 pages) in consultation with their fellow students and instructor on a topic of their own choosing that relates to the course. Possible readings include: James Oakes, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders; Joan Cashin, A Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier; James Miller, South by Southwest: Planter Emigration and Identity in the Slave South; Michael Morrison, Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War.
HIUS 403 – Slavery & Freedom in the North
T 1400-1630
MIN 108
Instructor: Reginald D. Butler
This course will examine slave and free black life in the towns, seaport cities, and on rural farms and plantations in the Northern and New England colonies/states from the early seventeenth century through the Civil War. Thematically the course will explore the parallel and interactive processes of European expansion/colonization and the construction of uniquely American racial, class, and gender formations. The course will challenge traditional colonial, revolutionary, and early national historiography that situated slavery on the region's political, social, and cultural margins. Rather, we will argue that slavery played a central role, not only as a major source of cheap agricultural, industrial, domestic, and maritime labor, but as a vehicle for minimizing class conflict and cohering ethnic, religious, social and political discord, particularly in Northern port cities. While the thematic and geographical focus of the course will center on the development of "societies with slaves" in this region, it will naturally suggest comparable experiences in other societies in the West Indies, Central and South America and the American South. Other topics for consideration will include, relations with native peoples, changing patterns of the region's slave trade and the impact on African American culture, slavery's implications for the development of working class identity and culture, shifting racial demographies, the role of gender in constructing race and identity, forms of resistance, the role of blacks in the Revolution, slavery and the making of the constitution, the reinvention of racial ideologies to support the exclusion of blacks from participation in the new republic, emancipation and colonization as solution to the "problems" of race and slavery, the abolitionist movement in black and white, African American cultural institution building, the role of blacks in the growth of Ante bellum politics, and African Americans in the Civil war.
We will read extensively in the recent secondary literature, including the works of Ira Berlin, David Roediger, Thelma Foote, Graham Hodges, Gary Nash, Jeffrey Bolster, and William Pierson. The class will also examine related published primary documents (newspapers and other periodicals) and manuscripts. Students will be evaluated on class discussion, required weekly critical writing assignments, and a major paper of twenty or more pages.
Department of Music
MUSI 426 Caribbean Music, Identity, and Power
TR 1100-1215
OCH S008
Instructor: Melvin Butler
Course description unavailable.
Department of Politics
PLAP 570 – Racial Politics
R 1530-1800
CAB 325
Instructor: Lynn Sanders
Course description unavailable.
PLCP 212 – Politics of Developing Areas
MW 0900-0950
WIL 301
Instructor: Robert Fatton
Surveys patterns of government and politics in non-Western political systems. Topics include political elites, sources of political power, national integration, economic development, and foreign penetration.
PLCP 524 – Gender Politics in Africa
TR 0930-1045
RAN 212
Instructor: Denise Walsh
Course description unavailable.
PLIR 424A: International Political Economy of Africa
T 1300-1530
CAB B021
Instructor: Andrew Lawrence
Course description unavailable.
PLIR 424D – U.S. Foreign Policy in Africa
W 1300-1530
CAB 130
Instructor: Leonard H. Robinson
Course description unavailable.
Department of Psychology
PSYC 487 – The Minority Family
M 0900-1130
GIL 081
Instructor: Melvin Wilson
Examines the current state of research on minority families, focusing on the black family. Emphasizes comparing “deficit” and “strength” research paradigms. Prerequisite: PSYC 306 and at least one course from each of the following groups: PSYC 210, 215 or 230, and PSYC 240, 250 or 260, and students in the Afro-American and African studies or studies in women and gender programs.
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 389 Christianity in Africa
TR 1230-1345
TBA
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
Historical and topical survey of Christianity in Africa from the second century C.E. to the present. Cross listed with RELC 389. Prerequisite: A course in African religions or history, Christianity, or instructor permission.
RELG 280 African-American Religious History
TR 1100-1215
TBA
Instructor: Valerie Cooper
Course description unavailable.
Department of Sociology
SOC 341 – Race And Ethnic Relations
MW 1400-1515
CAB 316
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
Introduces the study of race and ethnic relations, including the social and economic conditions promoting prejudice, racism, discrimination, and segregation. Examines contemporary American conditions, and historical and international materials
SOC 410 – Afro-American Communities
TR 1530-1645
TBA
Instructor: M. Rick Turner
Study of a comprehensive contemporary understanding of the history, struggle and diversity of the African-American community
Studies in Women and Gender
SWAG 432 - Gender Politics in Africa
TR 0930-1045
RAN 212
Instructor: Denise Walsh
Course description unavailable.
Spring 2006
African-American and African Studies
AAS 102 - Crosscurrents of the African Diaspora (4)
Prof. Corey Walker
TR 12:30 – 1:45
MCL 2014
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.
AAS 366: African American History Since 1865 (3)
Prof. Claudrena Harold
TR 9:30 – 10:45
MRY 115
This course examines the major political, economic, and cultural developments in black America from the end of the Civil War to the present. Topics to be explored include blacks’ varied response to the rise of Jim Crow; the social and political upheavals brought about by the massive migration of Southern blacks to the industrial North during the First and Second World Wars; the achievements and failures of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements; and the continuing significance of race in American society. This course will explore the political careers of such noted black activists as Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, Marcus Garvey, Ella Baker, Martin Luther King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. Significant attention will also be given to lesser known freedom fighters who struggled to create a more democratic America. Possible textbooks for the course include Tera Hunter’s To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War, Robin D.G. Kelley’s Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, Beth Tompkins Bates’ Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945, Charles Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Struggle, Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, William L. Van Deburg’s New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975, Robert F. Williams’ Negroes With Guns, Komozi Woodard’s Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940-1980, Toni Cade Bambara’s The Black Woman Anthology, and Ronald W. Walters’ Freedom is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates and American Presidential Politics. Students will read an average of 200 pages per week. Grades will be based on class attendance and participation, three quizzes, and three exams.
AAS 406A - Mapping Race, Place, and Diaspora (3)
Prof. Scot French
W 1:00 – 3:30
CAB 247
This upper-level research seminar invites students to immerse themselves in the latest scholarship on race, space, and diaspora while participating in community-based research projects sponsored by the Carter G. Woodson Institute's Center for the Study of Local
Knowledge (CSLK). Funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation, the CSLK seeks to bridge the traditional divide between universities and local communities by creating new models for intellectual and social exchange between academic and lay scholars.
During the first six weeks of the class, students will work closely with the instructor to develop individual research projects using original source materials related to African American life in Central Virginia. Students will meet with lay scholars and activists to
explore possibilities for collaboration. Special training sessions will be held in U.Va.'s new media/humanities computing centers to ensure that students are well-acquainted with new technologies to aid their research. During the second six weeks of the class, each
student will produce a significant work of scholarship (subject to prior approval by the instructor) for incorporation into a community project. The final exam will consist of a formal, 10-minute presentation to the research seminar and invited guests.
AAS 406 E - Afro-Brazilian Civilization (3)
Prof. David Haberly
MWF 11:00 to 11:50
CAB 331
A general introduction, in English, to the literature and culture of Brazil from 1500 to the present, with special emphasis upon the role of Afro-Brazilians in the creation of that literature and culture. No knowledge of Portuguese is required, and lectures and readings will be in English. The course includes discussions of the nation's social and historical development, but these topics will be presented through readings in the major works of Brazilian literature, including the works of important Afro-Brazilian authors. (Enrollment restricted to participants in Brazil Study Abroad program. Meets same time and place as POTR 427.)
American Studies
AMST 201A - Arts of the Harlem Renaissance (3)
Prof. Carmenita Higginbotham
TR 11:00 – 12:15
WIL 216
This course will survey the visual arts (painting, sculpture, photography prints) as well as literature, music and film of the Harlem Renaissance. Students are introduced to the cultural, historical, political and social issues framing the development of the movement and its defining critical anthology, The New Negro Movement. Presented both chronologically and thematically, this course will interrogate issues of artistic identity, gender, patronage and the aesthetic influences of the African Diaspora on African American artists during the 1920s and early 1930s. Students will be exposed to the work of such legendary figures such as Alain Locke, W.E.B. DuBois, Meta Warrick Fuller, Aaron Douglas, Archibald Motley Jr., Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson.
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 225 - Racism, Nationalism, Multiculturalism (3)
Prof. Richard Handler
MW 2:00 – 3:15
MRY 209 3 credits
Introductory course in which the concepts of culture, multiculturalism, race, racism, and nationalism are critically examined in terms of how they are used and structure social relations in American society and, by comparison, how they are defined in other cultures throughout the world.
ANTH 565 - Creole Narratives (3)
Prof. George Mentore
MW 2:00 – 3:15
CAB 338
We begin with 18th- and 19th-century Caribbean intellectual life. We do so from the perspective of European imperialism and its influences upon colonized values, slavery, race, class and color. We examine the persistence of these major themes through the 20th century, formalized in the battle of ideas between the elite of the mother country and the Creole upper classes. We will attempt to read the images of the Creole self and explore their claims for a crisis of identity. We will also focus on the so-called spiritual character of the Creole personality. We shall conclude by looking at the way in which the specifics of island culture have directed nation building and how they appear to have helped in the perpetuation of ideological and political dependencies.
Common Course
CCSS 200 - Rural Poverty in Our Time (3)
Prof. Grace Hale
W 2:00 – 4:50
PHS 203
This course will use an interdisciplinary format to explore the history of non-urban poverty in the American South from the 1930s to the present. Weaving together the social histories of poor people, the political history of poverty policies, and the history of representations of poverty, the course follows historical cycles of attention and neglect: rural poverty during the Great Depression, rural poverty from the war on poverty to the Reagan Revolution, and rural poverty in the new Gilded Age, the present. In each section, we will examine the relationship between representations (imagining poverty),
policies (alleviating poverty), and results (the effects of those representations and policies in the economic, political, and psychological status of poor people).
Department of English
ENAM 314 - African American Survey II (3)
Prof. Lisa Woolfork
TR 9:30 – 10:45
CAB 215
Continuation of ENAM 313, this course begins with the career of Richard Wright and brings the Afro-American literary and performing tradition up to the present day.
ENAM 482E - Fictions of Black Identity (3)
Prof. Lisa Woolfork
TR 11:00 – 12:15
BRN 332
No description available.
ENCR 482 - Race in American Places (3)
Prof. Ian Grandison
T 6:30 – 9:00
BRN 330
Race in American Places is an inter-disciplinary seminar that explores ways in which multi-cultural negotiations in American society (especially around notions of racial difference) are embedded in places. We consider, for instance, how the innocent children's story, The Three Little Pigs, teaches us to draw particular conclusions about the moral standing of people (or pigs) based on the materials and architectural styles of the places where they live, recreate, work, or study. We contemplate the ways such places as Charlottesville's Downtown Mall, although thought of as belonging to the "public," are planned and designed to welcome some members of the public while discouraging use by others. Ever wondered about what the coincidence of homelessness and home-owners' associations implies about assumptions of a relationship between the right to privacy and personal wealth in American society? Or are the places within the typical American home gendered? We explore issues such as these via targeted discussion of readings, mandatory visits to places around Charlottesville, informal workshops, and in-class presentations. Course requirements include three informal small group exercises, an individual site-visit comment paper, a mid-term and a final exam, and a small group research project. The last requirement is presented in an informal symposium that culminates our semester's work.
ENGN 422/ENMC 482 - African American Drama (3)
Prof. Lotta Lofgren
TR 12:30 – 1:45
CLK 101
We will survey African-American drama from the 1950's to the present. We will place the drama in relation to established norms, investigating the motives and methods of the playwrights for carving out new ground. We will examine the shared and divergent concerns of male and female playwrights, their sense of audience, the dilemma of writing as an individual and as a member of a group silenced too long, their relationship to the past, the present, and the future. We will also examine the changing definitions of the black aesthetic. Playwrights include, among others, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Ntozake Shange, August Wilson, and Suzan-Lori Parks.
ENLT 214M - Modern American Race and Ethnicity (3)
Prof. Jolie Sheffer
MW 3:30 – 4:45
CAB 324
This class looks at major American authors of the twentieth century through the lens of place. In American literature, race and ethnicity are not merely descriptive terms, they are lived conditions. To be a raced or ethnic subject is to live in a different America, sometimes a physically segregated one, sometimes a metaphoric one. The authors we study in this course portray the geography of race and ethnicity in different ways. America can be a promised land, a prison, a museum, or an elevator shaft, among other things.
ENLT 247 - Black Writers and Black Music (3)
Prof. Erich Nunn
TR 5:00 – 6:15
WIL 216
No description available
ENLT 255M - New World Colonialism (3)
Prof. Anna Brickhouse
T 6:30 – 9:00
BRN 332
This course will examine American exploration and colonization in a comparative context, reading English, French, and Spanish colonial accounts of New World encounter and considering a variety of genres and forms, including travel accounts, letters, poems, plays, and novels. We will pay special attention to the different functions that the theme of captivity performed within colonial American cultures. (All French and Spanish readings will be available in English translation.)
ENMC 484 - Inter-ethnic Fiction (3)
Prof. Caroline Rody
TF 12:30 – 1:45
Students in the Modern Studies Program will have first priority for admission to this seminar, which will consider American literature’s increasingly interethnic imagination, its engagement with the heterogeneity of contemporary American culture and with its hybrid literary heritage. Reading contemporary fiction and theory, we will consider cross-ethnic meeting not as a marginal concern, but as a constitutive element of ethnic identities, histories, and narratives. How does the encounter with ethnic/racial otherness shape the ethnic text's social and political vision, its reworking of literary and cultural forms and traditions, its handling of language(s), its representations of gendered identities and sexualities, and its engagement with traumatic histories? We will read stories and novels by contemporary American writers from widely diverse backgrounds, such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Michelle Cliff, Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, Sherley Anne Williams, Grace Paley, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Lore Segal, Philip Roth, Jonathan Safran Foer, Sandra Cisneros, Bharati Mukherjee, Bapsi Sidwha, Gish Jen, Chang-Rae Lee, and Karen Tei Yamashita. We will also read theorists of race, ethnicity, and hybridity in literature and culture. Students are expected to be very active class participants; to write brief biweekly compositions, a short paper, and a long seminar paper; and with a partner to lead a class discussion.
ENWR 106 - Class Matters (3)
Peter Capuano
MWF 9:00 – 9:50
BRN 310
No description available.
ENWR 106 - Race in the U.S. (3)
Brian Roberts
TR 9:30 – 10:45
RAN 212
No description available.
ENWR 110 - Caribbean as U.S. Immigrant (3)
Alwin Jones
TR 3:30 – 4:45
No description available.
Health Evaluation Sciences
HES 536 - Health Disparities
Prof. Oliver Norman and Prof. Ruth Gaare
R 9:00 – 11:30
No description available.
Department of History
HIAF 202 - Africa Since 1800 (4)
Prof. John Mason
TR 9:30 – 10:45
MCL 1003
This course 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 current circumstances, both good and bad. We will 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 202 is an introductory course and assumes no prior knowledge of African history.
HIAF 305 - History of West Africa (3)
Prof. James Lafleur
TR 11:00 – 12:15
MCL 1004
HIAF 305 is a lecture and discussion course that explores the history of West Africans in the wider context of the global past. Our course begins in very distant times, and traces currents of change from West Africans’ first attempts to make a living in ancient environments through their subsequent challenges and actions in the eras of the slave trades (trans-Saharan and Atlantic), colonial overrule by outsiders, political independence, and ever-increasing globalization. Though the course focuses primarily on those people living in the region, we will follow a select few to their new places of residence in rural America in the early Atlantic era and in urban centers in our times. The majority of course readings will be journal articles and book excerpts (to be made available on Toolkit). In addition, we are likely to use the following books in their near-entirety: Basil Davidson, West Africa before the Colonial Era: A History to 1850; Stephen Ellis, Mask of Anarchy: the Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War; Sandra Greene, Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: A History of Meaning and Memory in Ghana; Paul Stoller, Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City. Course requirements include active participation class discussions, four map quizzes, and three exams.
HIAF 403 - Landscape and Memory in Africa (3)
Prof. James Lafleur
R 1:00 – 3:30
WIL 141A
Far from being a “wilderness” untouched by human hands, Africa was the first landscape people domesticated physically and cognitively. HIAF 403 investigates the cultural geographies of Africa in historical terms, that is to say, how and why people have changed the meanings they attached to particular places over time and how those notions informed people’s actions. Following an initial introduction to the subject of collective memory, the course proceeds through several recent monographs that highlight African landscapes rich in history. A prospective reading list includes: Emmanuel Akyeampong, Between the Sea and the Lagoon: An Eco-Social History of the Anlo of Southeastern Ghana David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, Siaya: The Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, Misreading the African Landscape Robert Harms, Games Against Nature: An Eco-Cultural History of the Nunu of Equatorial Africa Mark Horton and John Middleton, The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society Nancy Jacobs, Environment, Power, and Injustice: a South African History Terence Ranger, Voices from the Rocks: Nature, Culture, and the History in the Matopos Hills of Zimbabwe Rosalind Shaw, Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone Tamara Giles-Vernick, Cutting the Vines of the Past: Environmental Histories of the Central African Rainforest Course requirements will include active participation in weekly seminar-format meetings, weekly exchange of reading notes, and progressively sophisticated and lengthy writing assignments culminating a final draft of research paper of at least 20 pages.
HIAF 404 - Independent Study in African History
HIAF 501 - Politics and Poverty Africa (3)
Prof. John Mason
T 1:00 – 3:30
CAB 139
I used to call this course "What's Wrong with Africa." The title was intentionally provocative. It reflected a view of Africa that continues to be reproduced daily on television, in magazines and newspapers, and even in movies. Teenagers with machine guns, babies with swollen bellies, the devastation of Aids, and bleak, unending poverty... This is the Africa that we too often see and read about. The image is, of course, misleading; Africa is by no means a continent-wide disaster area. But there is enough truth in these images of human suffering to cause Africans and non-Africans alike to ask, What's wrong? There are no simple answers to this question. HIAF 501 is an introduction to the difficult work of understanding Africa's multiple crises. We will look at the problem from a variety of different perspectives. We will examine both internal factors and Africa's relations with the rest of the world. We will read novels, journalism, polemics, and historical, political and environmental analyses by both African and non-African writers. At the end of the semester, students will write a paper in which they themselves investigate an aspect of the question. Students will write a two-page discussion paper on each week's reading. The paper is due in class every Tuesday. A 12 to 15 page essay on some aspect of Africa's crises will be due at the end of the semester. The long essay will account for approximately 50% of the final grade, the discussion papers about 30%, and class participation about 20%.
HILA 100- Gender and Ethnicity 20th Century Latin America (3)
Prof. Frederick Vallve
W 3:30 – 6
CAB B030
Most Latin Americans hailed the twentieth century as “Latin America’s century,” the triumph of liberalism at the end of the nineteenth century in most of the region, the “liberation” of most of the continent from colonial rule and the unstoppable march towards “order and progress” under the firm guidance of export-oriented economic policies would put Latin America on equal footing with its Northern neighbors and Europe. Yet this was hardly the case, by the end of the century Latin America had experienced three major revolutions as well as many minor ones, its relationship with the USA and Europe was definitely not on an equal footing, most of the region was beset with long periods of political dictatorship and persistent economic underdevelopment and poverty. Yet, in many ways it was indeed Latin America’s century. The impact of Latin American culture was felt throughout the world through literature, music and popular culture and “Latin-ness” became one of the century’s icons. This colloquium will look at the interaction between culture, politics and society in twentieth-century Latin America through readings and discussions focusing on gender and ethnicity. Readings: Klubock, Thomas, Contested Communities: Class, Gender and Politics in Chile’s El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904-1951; Donna Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires, Prostitution, Family and Nation in Argentina; Alejandro De la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality and Politics in 20th Century Cuba; George Reid Andrews, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, Brazil; Alma Guillermoprieto, Samba.
HIUS 100 - Southern Women’s History (3)
Prof. C. Janney
R 1:00 – 3:30
MCL 2007
This weekly seminar will explore nineteenth and twentieth century southern social and cultural history by examining the lives of white and black southern women. We will look at a range of women's lives and activities, from work to sexuality, paying careful attention to the ways in which race and class shaped women's experiences. Assignments will include diaries, autobiographies, novels, films, and monographs. Through discussion and the three papers, we will focus both on how women in the past understood their own lives, and how historians have used their writings in crafting contemporary understandings of southern history. This course also asks students to explore the different ways in which historians approach their craft. We will discuss how a variety of sources—both secondary (textbooks and monographs) and primary (diaries, letters, memoirs, etc.)—influence our construction of a historical narrative. In doing so, students will learn essential skills for participating in upper-level history courses at the University of Virginia and fulfill the second writing requirement. Required readings include: Victoria Bynum, Unruly Women; Drew Faust, Mothers of Invention; Lalita Tademy, Cane River; Harriet Keyserling, Against the Tide: One Woman's Political Struggle. There is also Course Packet of required readings for sale at The Copy Shop on Elliewood Avenue.
HIUS 309 - Civil War and History (3)
Prof. Gary Gallagher
TR 8:00 – 9:15
WIL 301
This course explores the era of the American Civil War with emphasis on the period 1861-1865. It combines lectures, readings, films, and class discussion to address such questions as why the war came, why the North won (or the Confederacy lost), how the war affected various elements of society, what was left unresolved at the end of the fighting, and how subsequent generations of Americans understood the conflict's meanings. Although this is not a course on Civil War battles and generals, about 50 per cent of the time in class will be devoted to military affairs, and we will make a special effort to tie events on the battlefield to life behind the lines. The course will be organized in two lecture meetings a week. Grades will be based on two geography quizzes (each 5% of the course grade), two take-home examinations (each 35% of the course grade), and a 7-page paper that integrates material from the lectures, readings, and films (20% of the course grade). Note: This course does not satisfy the second writing requirement. Required Books (some substitutions may be made): Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy; John Q. Anderson, ed., Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868; Ira Berlin and others, eds., Free at Last; Jean Berlin, ed., Letters of a Civil War Nurse; Andrew Delbanco, ed., The Portable Abraham Lincoln; A. J. L. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 186; Glenn Linden and Thomas Pressly, eds., Voices from the House Divided; Frank Wilkeson, Turned Inside Out: Recollections of a Private Soldier.
HIUS 310 – Reconstruction (3)
Prof. C. Janney
MWF 10:00 – 10:50
WIL 216
This course explores a variety of post-Civil War transitions in the United States. We will discuss both southern and northern reactions to and participation in the rebuilding of a nation that had been pulled apart by four years of war. We will take into account the political response to reuniting the nation and northern perceptions of the defeated Confederacy. A great deal of the course, however, will focus on the southern experience. We will examine how southern whites grudgingly relinquished slaveholding, how the South experimented with less restrictive labor systems, and how African Americans attained limited civil and social equality. We will consider changing modes of economic and social life in both the North and the South, which concluded with the establishment of the Solid South (and debatably the nation) by the end of the 19th century. There will be two lectures each week (Mondays and Wednesdays). Each Friday will be dedicated to discussion. There will be two take-home examinations in the course and a 5-7 page research paper. Possible required readings to include: • Jean Edward Smith, Grant • Hans L. Trefousse, Andrew Johnson: A Biography • John C. Willis, Forgotten Time: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta After the Civil War • Jane Turner Censer, The Reconstruction of White Southern Womanhood • Stephen Kantrowitz, Benjamin Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy • Jane Dailey, Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Postemancipation Virginia • Altina L. Waller, Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900. There is also Course Packet of required readings for sale at The Copy Shop on Elliewood Avenue.
HIUS 324 - 20th Century South (3)
Prof. Lori Schuyler
MW 2:00 – 2:50
RFN G004A
This course will explore the social, cultural, political, and economic history of the South in the twentieth century. Major themes of the course will include the rise and fall of legalized segregation, the development of a viable Republican party in the region, the role of southern reformers and activists, and the importance of historical memory. We will examine major events in the region from the perspectives of black southerners and white southerners, men and women, sharecroppers and landowners, Republicans and Democrats, moderates and activists. Readings for the course may include: W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; Grace Lumpkin, To Make My Bread, Christopher MacGregor Scribner, Renewing Birmingham: Federal Funding and the Promise of Change, 1929-1979; Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi.
HIUS 329 - Virginia from 1865 – Present (3)
Prof. George Gilliam
TR 12:30 – 1:45
RFN G004B
History is the study of change over time. This course will examine change in Virginia from about 1861 to the present. The course will especially follow six main topics: (a) the evolving nature of democracy in Virginia; (b) continuities and change between “Ol’ Virginny” and modern Virginia; (c) the role of Reconstruction in configuring Virginia’s racial and political divisions; (d) the resolution of the conflict between Funders and Readjusters into Virginia’s “pay-as-you-go” philosophy; (e) social and cultural change in Virginia; and (f) the rural machine politics of Harry F. Byrd. Written history is compiled by historians working from various sources of uneven quality and in various times, subject to a wide variety of influences. This course will--in connection with the study of Virginia history--consider the sources available to historians of Virginia, and will examine several of the ways historians have made use of source materials at different times and under various influences. The course will help students develop their skills of critical understanding and analysis of various types of materials. Readings will average approximately 100 pages per week, and will be drawn from both primary documents and secondary material. Among the readings will be selections from: Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction; Jane Daily, Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Postemancipation Virginia; Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South; Charles Pearson, The Readjuster Movement in Virginia; Nancy and Charles Perdue, Talk About Trouble; and Ronald Heinemann, Harry Byrd of Virginia. The class will meet twice per week. Approximately half of each class will be spent in lecture and half in a class discussion. There will be a multiple choice/short answer mid-term exam, one 5-7 page paper involving the use of primary source materials, one group project, and a final examination requiring one short and one long essay.
HIUS 330 - History of UVA in the 20th Century (3)
Prof. Phyllis Leffler
TR 11:00 – 12:15
CAB 332
We hear much about "Mr. Jefferson's University" in its nineteenth century beginnings, but little about how it evolved toward the nationally and internationally prominent institution it is today. How did this evolution occur? What 19th century values are still recognizable? How did tradition and change intersect throughout the 20th century? Who were the individuals who helped to lead this university, and what were their pressing concerns? How does this university compare to others in the region and in the nation at specific moments in time? These are some of the questions we will explore. To fully understand this university, however, it will be necessary to know something about the context of the growth of higher education in the United States. Issues of administration, student culture, academic culture, and state and federal initiatives in higher education will be integrated into the course. Course readings/assignments include the following: Christopher Lucas, American Higher Education: A History; Susan Tyler Hitchcock, The University of Virginia: A Pictorial Histor. Course packet at Brillig Books (ca. 300 pages) Web-based readings of primary documents, student papers, exhibits Use of alumni surveys by Lawn residents and women before 1970 (both in Special Collections and on database) Oral history project based on database created from oral history collection or analysis of new material from the UVA Oral History Archives. Written assignments will include an evaluation of alumni questionnaires (ca. 5 pages), a mid-term take home paper (5-7 pp.), an oral history project and paper (ca. 5-7 pages), and a final paper (ca. 10-12 pages). There will be no in-class exams. This course meets the second writing requirement, and will be of interest to students in American History, American Studies, Women's Studies, African-American History, Education. The course will use discussion of assigned readings extensively.
HIUS 350 - 20th Century U.S. Social Policy (3)
Prof. Guian McKee
MW 3:30 – 4:45
CAB 345
This course will examine the historical relationship between work, poverty, and the development of social policy in the United States during the twentieth century. Topics of particular focus will include the changing structure of the American workplace, shifts in societal conceptions about the place of the state in American life, and alterations in both the nature of poverty and perceptions of the poor in the United States. We will examine the interaction of these issues in shaping social policy, as well as the role of race, gender, and political economy in defining these important dimensions of twentieth century American life. As a result, the course will approach the history of American social policy from the “ground up” and from the “top down”: we will study both the origin and development of broad public policy structures and the experiences of Americans (both elites and non-elites) who determined the course of such policies and lived with their results. Students will engage in detailed historical explorations of progressivism, labor organizing, maternalist welfare policies, workplace reform, Social Security, AFDC (welfare), public housing, urban renewal, employment policy, job training, the War on Poverty, Medicare and Medicaid, the welfare rights movement, and the reaction against the welfare state. The course will conclude with an examination of critical social policy developments in the last fifteen years, including the failure of the Clinton health care plan, the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, and recent proposals for social security and Medicare reform. While primarily a lecture course, this class will provide extensive opportunities for student discussion of assigned readings and other materials. Course requirements will include a research paper of approximately 10 pages, a mid-term and final, regular attendance, and active participation in class discussions. The weekly reading will average 150 pages. Texts may include Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America; Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930; Theda Skocpol, Social Policy in the United States: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective; Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined The War on Poverty; Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White; David Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America, as well as scholarly articles, primary sources, films, and other historical material.
HIUS 366 - Afro-American History Since 1865 (3)
Prof. Claudrena Harold
TR 9:30 – 10:45
MRY 115
This course examines the major political, economic, and cultural developments in black America from the end of the Civil War to the present. Topics to be explored include blacks’ varied response to the rise of Jim Crow; the social and political upheavals brought about by the massive migration of Southern blacks to the industrial North during the First and Second World Wars; the achievements and failures of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements; and the continuing significance of race in American society. This course will explore the political careers of such noted black activists as Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, Marcus Garvey, Ella Baker, Martin Luther King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. Significant attention will also be given to lesser known freedom fighters who struggled to create a more democratic America. Possible textbooks for the course include Tera Hunter’s To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War, Robin D.G. Kelley’s Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, Beth Tompkins Bates’ Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945, Charles Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Struggle, Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, William L. Van Deburg’s New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975, Robert F. Williams’ Negroes With Guns, Komozi Woodard’s Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940-1980, Toni Cade Bambara’s The Black Woman Anthology, and Ronald W. Walters’ Freedom is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates and American Presidential Politics. Students will read an average of 200 pages per week. Grades will be based on class attendance and participation, three quizzes, and three exams.
HIUS 367 - History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)
Prof. Julian Bond
TR 2:00 – 2:50
WIL 402
This lecture course examines the history, philosophies, tactics, events and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward. The Southern movement - variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement - was a black-lead, interracial mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation by the mid-60s. Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping and occasionally complimentary phases - lobbying, litigation and protest. In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights. In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation and the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools. The last phase, lasting a decade from '54 through '65, was a decade of protests - boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations - as well as grass-roots organizing campaigns that laid the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s. Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength and followers from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation. The movement's well-known and lesser-known proponents and their strategies will be examined. Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five- to seven-page papers.
Texts and videos: Roy Wilkins (with Tom Matthews), Standing Fast; James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries; Julian Bond and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, "Eyes on the Prize - America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965", # 1 to 6; "America at the Racial Crossroads, 1965 - 1985,” # 1 and 2; "The Road to Brown.”
HIUS 401 - African American Protest in the 20th Century (4)
Prof. Claudrena Harold
T 1:00 – 3:30
MCL 2007
This seminar examines African Americans' protracted struggle against racist practices and institutional structures, economic exploitation, and cultural imperialism. To better understand the diversity and breadth of black oppositional activity in the twentieth-century, students will examine the protest activities of a number of black leaders and movement organizations, including Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Cyril Briggs and the African Blood Brotherhood, Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, Angela Davis, Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party, Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the Deacons of Self-Defense, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Significant attention will be given to their debates over the best way to deal with the economic consequences of white supremacy and global capitalism, the usefulness of armed self-defense as a weapon in the fight against racial injustice, and the problem of sexism within the black liberation movement. Over the course of the semester, students will be introduced to the research methods and techniques used by historians. We will not only explore historians’ use of oral and written texts, but will also reflect on the ways in which scholars’ theoretical and political viewpoints inform their interpretation of primary sources. Students will have the opportunity to further develop their historical skills through a series of assignments designed to assist them in identifying research topics and questions; interpreting primary texts; and substantiating arguments with historical evidence. Possible texts for the course include W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Manning Marable’s W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat, Angela Davis’ Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, Lance Hill’s The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement, Earl Lewis’ In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth-Century Norfolk, Virginia, William Sales’ From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, Charles Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Struggle, and Manning Marable’s The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life.
Department of Media Studies
MDST 356 - Jim Crow and American Cinema (3)
Prof. Robert Jackson
T 3:30 – 6:30
CAB 311
No description available.
Department of Music
MUSI 207 - Roots Music in America (3)
Prof. Richard Will
MW 10:00 – 10:50
MRY 209
According to mainstream media, "roots music" like gospel, blues, country, folk, and bluegrass nourishes more popular genres such as rock and hip-hop, while also expressing the emotional and social concerns of (mainly) rural African-American and White American communities. We will examine both claims by studying the origins and development of roots genres and the way they are depicted in films, criticism, politics, and elsewhere.
MUSI 208 - African American Gospel Music (3)
Prof. Melvin Butler
TR 2:00 – 3:15
OCH 107
No description available.
MUSI 309 - Performance in Africa (4)
Michelle Kisliuk
TR 3:30 – 4:20
OCH 107
No description available.
MUSI 312 - Jazz Studies (3)
Prof. Scott Deveaux
MW 2:00 – 3:15
OCH 107
No description available.
MUSI 369B - African Drumming and Dance (2)
Michelle Kisliuk
TR 5:15-7:15
OCH 107
This course may be repeated for credit. This is a practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (BaAka pygmies and Bagandou farmers), with the intention of performing informally throughout the semester and formally, with guest artists, at the end of the semester. We will give special attention to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and a polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, high attention, interaction, and faithful,/prompt attendance are required of each class member. Each member is also respectfully expected to help prepare the classroom (move chairs, sweep, set up drums/sticks) and to restore the space to classroom style at the end of each meeting.
Department of Politics
PLAP 370 - Racial Politics (3)
Prof. Lynn Sanders
TR 11:00 – 11:50
MCL 2014
Examines how attributions of racial difference have shaped American Politics. Topics include how race affects American political partisanship, campaigns and elections, public policy, public opinion, and American political science. Prerequisite: One course in PLAP or instructor permission.
PLAP 382 - Civil Liberties and Civil Rights (3)
Prof. David Obrien
MW 1:00 – 1:50
MRY 209
Studies judicial construction and interpretation of civil rights and liberties reflected by Supreme Court decisions. Includes line-drawing between rights and obligations.
PLIR 331 - Ethics and Human Rights in West Africa (3)
Prof. Michael J. Smith
MW 11:00 – 11:50
WIL 402
How do issues of human rights and ethical choice operate in the world of states? Do cosmopolitan ideals now hold greater sway among states than traditional ideas of national interests during the Cold War? Considers ideas of philosophers like Thucydides and Kant in addition to concrete cases and dilemmas taken from contemporary international relations. Specific issues include defining human rights, “humanitarian intervention,” just war theory, and the moral responsibilities of leaders and citizens.
PLIR 424E - Africa: Security and Insecurity (3)
Prof. Flora Jones
M 3:00 – 5:30
CAB 138
No description available.
PLPT 302 - African American Political Thought (3)
Prof. Lawrie Balfour
MW 12:30 – 1:45
CAB 319
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.
PLCP 581 - Politics of Sub-Saharan Africa (3)
Prof. Robert Fatton
M 1:00 – 2:30
CAN 130
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.
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 341 - Witchcraft, Healing, and Popular Religion in Africa (3)
Prof. Amy Nichols-Belo
M 3:30 – 6:15
CAU 112
This course seeks to examine contemporary religious beliefs and practices in a variety of cultural settings throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Through ethnographic texts, documentaries, and feature films, we will investigate healing practices, current ideas about witchcraft and magic, as well as popular religious expression in Islamic and Christian practice. We will focus on the connections of post-colonial politics, HIV/AIDS, and economic marginalization to religious belief and practice. Since this course is a 300-level seminar, students will be expected to actively prepare for and participate in class discussions, present texts in-class, and write a 12-15 page research paper. Additional course requirements include two quizzes and a final examination.
RELA 410 - Yoruba Religions (3)
Prof. Benjamin Ray
TR 9:30 – 10:45
CAB 312
Studies Yoruba traditional religion, ritual art, independent churches, and religious themes in contemporary literature in Africa and the Americas.
RELC 323 – Pentacostalism (3)
Prof. Valerie Cooper
T 3:30 – 6:00
CAB 332
This course will study the history, practices, theology, and praxis 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. The course will explore Pentecostalism’s theological and historical relationship to the Holiness, Apostolic, and Charismatic movements, as well as Pentecostal belief in phenomena like speaking in tongues, healing, miracles, and prophecy. Finally, the course will use race, class, and gender analysis to evaluate the cultural influences of Pentecostalism in the US and elsewhere in the world.
Department of Sociology
SOC 222 - Contemporary Social Problems (3)
Prof. Matthew Hughey
TR 11:00 – 12:15
WIL 301
An analysis of the causes and consequences of current social problems in the United States: Race and ethnic relations, poverty, crime and delinquency, the environment, drugs, and problems of educational institutions.
SOC 410 - African-American Communities (3)
Prof. M. Rick Turner
TR 3:30 – 4:45
CAB 320
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear more comprehensive understanding of the history, struggle and diversity of the African-American community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the African-American community within urban society and on the need for students to obtain knowledge of their cultural history. the course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for African-American people's sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. By means of discussions, lectures, videos, readings and class presentation as well as written assignments, this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamic of the African-American community.
Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
POTR 427 - Afro-Brazilian Civilization (3)
Prof. David Haberly
MWF 11:00 – 11:50
CAB 424
A general introduction, in English, to the literature and culture of Brazil from 1500 to the present, with special emphasis upon the role of Afro-Brazilians in the creation of that literature and culture. No knowledge of Portuguese is required, and lectures and readings will be in English. The course includes discussions of the nation's social and historical development, but these topics will be presented through readings in the major works of Brazilian literature, including the works of important Afro-Brazilian authors.
SPAN 419 - Critical Race Theory (3)
Prof. Ruth Hill
TR 9:30 – 10:45
CAB 319
This course is designed to introduce advanced undergraduate students and graduate students to critical race theory (crt) as an offshoot of critical legal studies (cls), which coined the term “critical race theory,” and as a broader, interdisciplinary body of scholarship and commentary on race and its intersections with gender, class, religion and sexuality. All readings and discussion will be in English. *Enrollment instructor permission only managed through electronic waiting lists. Prerequisites for Spanish majors and minors: 311 and 330; for all others: at least two courses completed in a social science or an interdisciplinary program such as American Studies or African-American Studies. Only distinguished majors and graduate students may enroll in 591.*
Fall 2005
African-American and African Studies
AAS 101: Africa in the Atlantic World (4)
Prof. Scot French
Tuesdays–Thursdays 12:30-1:45 plus discussion
Wilson 301
This team-taught course is part of a year-long survey of the history and culture of Africans in Africa and people of African descent in the Americas. During this semester, we will cover a variety of topics, including African societies before 1800, the Atlantic slave trade, literatures of the Atlantic World, the origins and development of New World plantation societies, Africana religions, life and labor in the United States, and the protracted process of emancipation. Students should come away with an understanding of the major problems, events, and people that shaped the African-American experience. At the same time, we will gain a sense of how that experience fit into the history of people of African descent in the larger Atlantic world. Students are encouraged, but not required, to take both semesters of this course.
AAS 305: Plantations in Africa and the Caribbean (3)
(cross-listed as ANTH 324)
Prof. Hanan Sabea
Tuesdays-Thursdays 12:30-1:45
Cabell 345
This course seeks a comparative analysis of plantations in Africa and the Americas by examining them as places of work and spaces of sociality. It examines the historical linkages between Africa and the Americas in the establishment and reproduction of plantations as they relate to the colonial empires, the differentiated entrenchment of capitalism around the globe, and correspondent movement of ideas, people and things. We will examine the lives people made on plantations as documented in the practices and experiences of slaves, workers, planters, and traders, and explore the socio-economic and political implications of plantations of the localities in which they have been operating.
AAS 306: The Ethics of Black Power (3)
(cross-listed as RELC 306)
Prof. Corey D.B. Walker
Tuesdays-Thursdays 11-12:15
Cabell 330
In his now classic text Blood in My Eye, George Jackson writes, “All revolution should be love inspired.” This lecture course will plumb the depths of Jackson’s remark by critically interrogating the ethical dimensions of the Black Power concept and the cultural, ideological, and political interventions influenced by this conceptual revolution. We will explore the ethics of Black Power in relation to the revolutionary exploits of artists, activists, and intellectuals in their tremendous efforts to challenge and transform the capitalist, racist, and sexist hegemony of the United States and the Western world in the second half of the twentieth century. To this end, we will revisit the work of a number of thinkers, movements, and cultural and political formations, including Albert Cleage, Angela Davis, Vicki Garvin, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Larry Neal, Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, February 1st Movement, SOBU/YOBU, African Liberation Support Committee, Black Arts Movement, Malcolm X Liberation University, Institute of the Black World, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. We will also assess the ethical parameters of the various ideological tendencies that influenced the conceptual formulation and political articulation of Black Power including Black Nationalism, Feminism, Liberalism, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and Pan-Africanism.
AAS 323: The Rise and Fall of the Slave South (3)
(cross-listed as HIUS 323)
Prof. Edward L. Ayers
Mondays–Wednesdays 11-11:50 plus discussion
Minor 125
This course will explore the emergence and destruction of the most powerful slave society of the modern world: the American South. It will begin with the sixteenth century and extend through the Civil War and Reconstruction. We will examine the lives of slaves and slaveowners, small farmers and large planters, men and women, soldiers and civilians.
Requirements include substantial research in primary documents in Alderman Library. Research topics are broad and require students willing to tackle open-ended assignments. Readings will be diverse, including original documents, materials on the Web, fiction, and secondary accounts. Energetic participation in a weekly discussion section is a central part of the course.
AAS 405A: Race and American Islam (3)
Prof. Jamillah A. Karim
Wednesdays 1–3:30
Minor 108
This course will explore how race has helped to shape a distinctively American Islam. Focusing on the experiences of African American, South Asian, and Arab Muslims, the course will examine both black and immigrant responses to American racism. How do American Muslims’ distinct ethnic histories produce different forms of protest to white supremacy? How do they produce different levels of assimilation into the dominant society? How do Islamic ideals inform their resistance and accommodation into the larger American society? And how do they use Islam to overcome racial barriers? The course will also examine the intersections of race, class, and gender. How does the interplay of race-class-gender identities create competing and overlapping notions of American Islam?
AAS 405B: Geographies of the Black Atlantic (3)
Ms. Mieka Brand
Tuesdays 1-3:30
Minor 108
How do people shape the spaces they live in? In what ways are people's lives and experiences themselves shaped by the spaces within which they occur? This course takes 'space' as the central theme for exploring literature on the African diaspora. Ideas about space (and related concepts such as place, landscape, geography, etc.) will grounds us as we study scholarly works by and about people of African descent. Readings will be drawn from a broad span of disciplines, including history, anthropology, geography, literature, cultural studies, and material culture. In our discussions will tie these readings together as we study their varying perspectives on geographies of the Black Atlantic. We will consider questions such as: What are the spaces that people of African descent have carved out for themselves?and how do they reflect particular cultural identities? How have spaces of segregation and division (Plantations, Jim Crow cars, Urban ghettos, for example) informed ideas about race and racial identities? How have African descendants re-imagined and reclaimed marginalized spaces? How have movements (geographical, political or social) contributed to people's understandings of the Black Atlantic?
Readings for the course will include works by Paul Gilroy ("Routes and Roots"); John Jackson (Harlemworld); Liisa Malkki (Purity and Exile); St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton (Black Metropolis); Griffin and Fish (Stranger in the Village); Saunders and Shackleford (Urban Renewal and the end of Black Culture in Charlottesville, Virginia); Upton and Vlach (Common Places); and others. Assignments for the course will include two short papers (~5 pages each), two response papers to fieldsite visits (~1-2 pages each) and a final research project (~10 pages). This course fulfills the second writing requirement.
Anthropology
ANTH 250: Health of Black Folks (3)
Prof. Wende Marshall
Tuesdays-Thursdays 3:30-4:20
Minor 125
This is a course in medical anthropology which will analyze the relationship between black bodies and biomedicine both historically and in the present. Co-taught by Norm Oliver, M.D-(Department of Family Medicine, UVA Health Systems), an anthropologist/physician, and Wende Marshall-a medical anthropologist, the course will offer both political economic, and post-structuralist lenses with which to interpret the individual and social health and disease of African-Americans. Selected topics include the black female body in the middle passage and slavery; the use of race in the human genome project; black bodies as research subjects for biomedical science, and the epidemic of cancer and HIV among African -Americans.
ANTH 324: Plantations in Africa and the Caribbean (3)
(cross-listed as AAS 305)
Prof. Hanan Sabea
Tuesdays-Thursdays 12:30-1:45
Cabell 345
This course seeks a comparative analysis of plantations in Africa and the Americas by examining them as places of work and spaces of sociality. It examines the historical linkages between Africa and the Americas in the establishment and reproduction of plantations as they relate to the colonial empires, the differentiated entrenchment of capitalism around the globe, and correspondent movement of ideas, people and things. We will examine the lives people made on plantations as documented in the practices and experiences of slaves, workers, planters, and traders, and explore the socio-economic and political implications of plantations of the localities in which they have been operating.
ANTH 357: Peoples & Cultures of the Caribbean (3)
Ms. Yadira Perez
Tuesdays-Thursdays 1100-1215
Ruffner G004C
This course examines the cultures, societies, and histories of the Caribbean, focusing primarily on the English-, Spanish- and French-speaking Caribbean. Thematically, the course focuses on processes of racialization, effects of globalization, patterns of family and kinship, experiences of labor and migration; religion and resistance; and tourism.
ANTH 526: History Production and Collective Memory (3)
Prof. Hanan Sabea
Thursdays 5:00-7:30
Cabell 130
This course is an examination of the meaning and relationship between the past and present, memory and history in anthropological debates. Specifically, it seeks an analysis of the conceptual and methodological boundaries between history production and collective memory paradigms. Themes addressed will include the making of public and official history, alternative histories, the politics of memory, ownership of the past, writing and archives, and the role of narratives of the past in the drawing of boundaries between groups, along the lines of race, gender, ethnicity, nation, and religion. Course Satisfies Second Writing Requirement.
ANTH 528: Race, Progress, and the West (3)
Prof. Wende Marshall
Wednesdays 3:30-6
Cabell 338
This course examines theories and practices of race and otherness, in order to analyze and interpret constructions, deconstructions and reconstructions of race from the late 18th to the 21st centuries. The focus varies from year to year, and may include "race, ?progress? and the West," "gender, race and power," and "white supremacy." The consistent theme is that race is neither a biological nor a cultural category, but a method and theory of social organization, an alibi for inequality, and a strategy for resistance. Cross listed as AAS 528. Prerequisite: ANTH 101, 301, or other introductory or middle-level class.
ANTH 529B: The Outsiders: African-American Pioneers in Anthropology (3)
Prof. Gertrude Fraser
Tuesdays-Thursdays 9:30-10:45
Cabell B029
There is a mistaken notion that African American scholars were absent both from Anthropology's intellectual development and the debates which drew on anthropological concepts and research. This course seeks to correct that perception. With an emphasis on the period between 1900 and 1960, the course will document the work and presence of African American pioneers in Anthropology and explore the politics and practices that render their work invisible to us today. The course will also try to understand how these individuals carved an intellectual space for themselves inside and outside the discipline under racist and exclusionary conditions. We will end by assessing the contributions made and lessons offered to contemporary Anthropology and Anthropologists by these hidden ancestors. Course Satisfies Second Writing Requirement.
Art
ARTH 255: African American Art (4)
Instructor: TBA
Tuesdays-Thursdays 2-3:15 plus discussion
Campbell 160
No description available.
English
ENAM 313: African American Survey (3)
Prof. Deborah McDowell
Tuesdays-Thursdays 11-12:15
Cabell 320
Analyzes the earliest examples of African-American literature, emphasizing African cultural themes and techniques that were transformed by the experience of slavery as that experience met European cultural and religious practices. Studies essays, speeches, pamphlets, poetry, and songs. Restricted to third- and fourth-years.
ENAM 381: Black Protest Narrative (3)
Prof. Marlon Ross
Tuesdays-Thursdays 11-12:15
Minor 130
No description available.
ENAM 381: Reading the Black College campus (3)
Prof. K. Ian Grandison
Tuesdays-Thursdays 3:30-4:45
Cabell 340
No description available.
ENAM 481C: Representations of Slavery(3)
Prof. Stephen Railton
Mondays-Wednesdays
BRN 312
No description available.
ENAM 581: Trauma and African-American Literature(3)
Prof. Lisa Woolfork
Tuesdays-Thursdays 11-12:15
BRN 332
No description available.
ENLT 247M Black Women Writers(3)
Prof. Lisa Woolfork
Tuesdays-Thursdays 9:30-10:45
Cabell 334
No description available.
French language and Literature
FREN 411: Francophone Literatures of Africa (3)
Prof. Kandioura Dramé
Tuesdays-Thursdays 11-12:15
Wilson 141B
Survey of 20th century Francophone literature of Africa. Colonial literature and Assimilation; Negritude, Nationalism and Identity; Postcolonial literature; Feminism; Literature and Censorship; Language and Literature; Theatre and ritual performance; and Oral literature as a major intertext will all be examined through novels, poems, and plays by contemporary African writers in French. Authors will include Senghor, B. Diop, C. Beyala, M. Beti, A. Laabi, Djebar, Mimouni, Utamsi, Werewere Liking, Rabemanjara, and Ken Bugul. Weekly response papers, brief mid-semester oral presentations and bibliographies of the selected research subjects and a research paper (12-15 pages/ 570; 20-25 pages/870) are required.
FREN 443: Africa in Cinema (3)
Prof. Kandioura Dramé
Tuesdays-Thursdays 2-3:15
Randall 212
This course is a study of the representation of Africa in American, Western European and African films. It deals with the representations of African cultures by filmmakers from different cultural backgrounds and studies the ways in which their perspectives on Africa are often informed by their own social and ideological positions as well as the demands of exoticism. It also examines the constructions of the African as the other and the kinds of responses such constructions have elicited from Africa?s filmmakers. These filmic inventions are analyzed through a selection of French, British, American, and African films by such directors as John Huston, S. Pollack, J-J Annaud, M. Radford, Ngangura Mweze, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Souleymane Cisse, Gaston Kabore, Amadou Seck, Dani Kouyate, Brian Tilley, Jean-Marie Teno on a variety of subjects relative to the image of Africa in cinema. The final grade will be based on one mid-semester paper (select a film by an African filmmaker and provide a sequential reconstruction of the story based on the methods of P. S. Vieyra and of F. Boughedir ), a final paper (7-10 pages), an oral presentation and contributions to discussions. Each oral presentation should contribute to the mid-semester paper and to the final research paper. The final paper should be analytical, well documented and written in clear, grammatical French using correct film terminology supplied with this description.
FRTR 329: Contemporary Caribbean Culture (3)
Prof. A. James Arnold
Mondays-Wednesdays 3:30-4:45
An upper-division course in Caribbean culture studied through literary texts published in English, French, and Spanish. All texts will be read in English. No knowledge of French or Spanish is required, although it will be advantageous to have a foreign language. Students who have done well in this course in the past have had a solid introduction to the Caribbean either in Anthropology, Afro-American studies, or History. The introduction to Comparative Literature (CPLT 201, 202) can also be helpful.
Interpretation of cultural materials will stress the process of creolization in the region. Differences between Caribbean and US definitions of ethnicity will be stressed, as will attitudes toward gender roles. Authors who have been read in recent offerings of this course include Alexis, Carpentier, Césaire, Danticat, Depestre, Naipaul, Rhys, Santiago, and Walcott.
This course satisfies the Non-Western Studies requirement in the College. Course requirements: Midterm exam and substantial term paper.
History
HIAF 201: Early African History Through the Era of the Slave Trade (4)
Prof. Joseph C. Miller
Tuesdays-Thursdays 9:30-10:45 plus discussions
MCL 1004
From the mists of the once-dark continent's unwritten past Early African History draws out Africans' distinctive achievements in culture, politics, and economic strategies from the dawn of history through the eighteenth century. The course necessarily starts very broadly and then moves into greater detail from the millennium before the Present Era (c. 1000 bce) through the peak of Atlantic slaving in the last 1700s. HIAF 201 follows the sometimes-surprising ways in which village elders, women, merchants, kings, cattle lords, and ordinary farmers pursued meaningful lives without the technologies that modern Americans take for granted. The last third of the course examines the ironic interplay of tragedy and ambition in a continent increasingly trapped in exiling its own people in slavery to Europeans and Americans, until the Atlantic slave trade began to wind down after about 1800.
HIAF 201 is a lower-division introductory survey. The instructor presents the major themes of the early history of the continent in lectures twice each week. Students meet additionally in discussion sections for reviews of readings, map quizzes, and preparation for written assignments. Requirements include weekly short map quizzes, a mid-term examination (only the better of two tries counts), and a final examination (format to be negotiated with the class). The course belongs to the Afro-American and African Studies curriculum, meets the "non-western/non-modern" distribution requirement for the major in History, and qualifies for the College "non-western perspectives" area requirement. As it also meets the College "historical perspectives" requirement, we will consistently focus on what makes the vision of Africa's past presented in the course truly historical--not an uncomplicated question for Africa.
Readings revolve around weekly assignments in a new text (Gilbert and Reynolds, Africa in World History) with supplementary references to maps in Shillington, History of Africa, and Newman, Peopling of Africa. Selected chapters in other books and professional articles introduce the distinctive methodologies of doing history without written sources (including the famous Mande oral epic Sundiata), highlight interpretive ("historiographical") issues, and consider concepts relevant to understanding early Africa . The total number of pages assigned runs at approximately 1200.
HIAF 201 presumes no prior knowledge of Africa or experience with the study of history. Since the subject is so new to nearly everyone in the course, consistent application and preparation are expected, particularly early in the term. Students in all four of their undergraduate years and in all colleges of the University complete the course with success. It is a challenging and rewarding opportunity to discover a once-neglected story of Africa and its place in world history and to examine erroneous assumptions about Africa that modern Americans -- students in HIAF 201 included -- do not know they make.
HIAF 302: History of Southern Africa (3)
Prof. John Mason
Tuesdays-Thursdays 9:30-10:45
Cabell 323
HIAF 302 is a lecture and discussion course on the history of southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The emphasis is on South Africa . HIAF 302 begins with a look at the pre-colonial African societies of the region, before moving on to a study of the conquest, colonialism, the rise and fall of apartheid, and the recent rebirth of African independence.
By the end of the nineteenth century, all of the African peoples of southern Africa had been conquered by European powers and incorporated into Dutch, British, Portuguese, and German colonial empires. Conquest did not come easily. Every society in the region resisted European domination fiercely, sometimes for many decades before being finally defeated. Colonialism and African responses to it dramatically reshaped societies in southern African, transforming political and economic systems, gender and class relations, even religious beliefs.
Resistance to colonialism assumed new forms in the twentieth century, as Africans began to bridge ethnic divisions to create multi-ethnic trade unions, churches, political parties, and liberation movements. Particularly in South Africa, African nationalism was influenced by non-racialism, uniting blacks and progressive whites in the ultimately successful struggle against apartheid.
HIAF 402: Race and Popular Culture in South Africa and the United States (4)
Prof. John Mason
Tuesdays–Thursdays 2–3:15 (4 credits)
Cabell 332
HIAF 402 is a colloquium (or seminar) in comparative South African and American history. We will look at the ways in which popular culture--especially music, film, and sports--reflects South African and American racial categories and identities and, at the same time, helps to create them. Course materials include scholarship, biography, autobiography, music, and film.
South Africa and the American South are like distant cousins: instantly recognizable as members of the same family, but with distinctively different personalities. Both countries owe much of their early economic development to slavery. In both complex systems of racial domination shaped society for generations during and after the emancipation of the slaves. And in both the interracial struggle against racism gave rise to some of the most important people and events in their histories.
A close look at popular culture will open a window on what is perhaps the central irony of both South African and American cultural history--that the harsh realities of racial oppression and racial segregation have produced a culture that is not segregated at all. It is neither black nor white, neither African nor European, but utterly and thoroughly mixed. It is no accident, for instance, that the most distinctively American forms of popular music--blues and spirituals, bluegrass and country, jazz and rock--were born of mixed African and European cultural parentage.
Students will participate actively in class discussions and prepare a research paper on a subject of their own choosing.
HIAF 404: Independent Study in African History (3)
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HIUS 323: The Rise and Fall of the Slave South (3)
(cross-listed as AAS 323)
Prof. Edward L. Ayers
Mondays–Wednesdays 11-1150 plus discussion
Minor 125
This course will explore the emergence and destruction of the most powerful slave society of the modern world: the American South. It will begin with the sixteenth century and extend through the Civil War and Reconstruction. We will examine the lives of slaves and slaveowners, small farmers and large planters, men and women, soldiers and civilians.
Requirements include substantial research in primary documents in Alderman Library. Research topics are broad and require students willing to tackle open-ended assignments. Readings will be diverse, including original documents, materials on the Web, fiction, and secondary accounts. Energetic participation in a weekly discussion section is a central part of the course.
HIUS 328: History of Virginia 1865
Prof. Crandall Shifflett
Tuesdays-Thursdays 12:30-1:45
Maury 115
This course covers the social, political, and economic development of Virginia up to 1865. The course examines in detail seven key subjects in Virginia 's colonial and antebellum history:
• Encounters and Exchanges Between Virginia's Indians and European settlers
• Regional Differences in Settlement, Politics, and Society
• Slavery's emergence and development
• Origins and Legacies of the American Revolution
• Thomas Jefferson and American Society and Politics
• 19th-century Slavery and Nat Turner's Rebellion
• Secession and Civil War in Virginia
This course is intended to provide students with detailed and complex analysis of the major events, themes, and people in Virginia 's history to 1865. We will explore the largest issues of the period not only through political leaders but also through the lives of ordinary Virginians. Primary and secondary readings and 3-4 films cover the key subjects we will focus on. The course requirements include two 5-7 page papers, a midterm and a final exam. Participation in class discussions is expected. Likely readings include, Kupperman, Indians and English, Berlin , Many Thousands Gone, Issac, The Transformation of Virginia, Ellis, American Sphinx, Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, and selected online texts and documents.
HIUS 347: American Labor (3)
Prof. Claudrena Harold
Mondays-Wednesdays-Fridays 12-12:50
Cabell B030
This course examines the cultural lives, labor struggles, and political activities of the American working class from the end of the Civil War to the present. Over the course of the semester, students will analyze how working women and men both shaped and were shaped by the rise of big business during the Gilded Age, the social upheavals of the World War I era, the economic hardships brought about by the Great Depression, the social policies of the New Deal, the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, and continuing debates over the meanings of work, citizenship, and democracy. Significant attention will be given to the organizations workers created to advance their economic interests. The course will explore the success and failures of the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the Communist Party, among other groups. A major issue to be explored in our discussions of working-class movements will be the ways in which laboring people have been divided along racial, gender, ethnic, and regional lines. Since working-class history is about more than the struggle of laboring people to improve their material condition, this course will also focus on other topics, such as workers? leisure activities, customs and thoughts, and religious beliefs.
Possible texts for the course include Nelson Lichtenstein, Susan Strasser, and Roy Rosenzweig's Who Built America ? Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society, 1877 to the Present , Linda Cohen's Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939, Michael Honey's Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers, Thomas Sugrue's The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, Chana Kai Lee's For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, and Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed,Or Not Getting By in America. Students' grades will be based on class attendance and three exams.
HIUS 367: History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)
Prof. Julian Bond
Tuesdays-Thursdays 1-1:50 plus discussion
Maury 209
This lecture course will examine the history, philosophies, tactics, events, and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 to the middle 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-40s forward.
The Southern movement - variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement - was a black-led, interracial mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation by the mid-60s. Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping and occasionally complimentary phases - lobbying, litigation and protest. In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights. In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation and the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools. The last phase, lasting a decade from '54 through '65, was a decade of protests - boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations - as well as grass-roots organizing campaigns that laid the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s.
Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength and followers from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation. The movement's well-known and lesser-known proponents and their strategies will be examined.
Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five- to seven-page papers.
HIUS 401: Southern Progressivism: Government, Economy, Gender, and Race, 1890-1920 (4)
Prof. George Gilliam
Tuesdays 6-8:30
Wilson 141A
Progressivism has been called the "formative birthtime of basic institutions, social relations, and political divisions of United States society as it evolved towards and beyond the mid-twentieth century." Though the period is best-remembered as the time when the public regulation of big business started, the seeds of today's civil rights, environmental protection, and public health and occupational safety movements also were planted during the progressive era.
Southern Progressivism has been complicated by its intersection with virulent racism. State constitutional conventions held in the South between 1890 and 1910 to create the framework for progressive regulation of business at the same time took steps effectively to disfranchise African-Americans and poor whites. C. Vann Woodward concluded that "Southern progressivism generally was progressivism for white men only, and after the poll tax took its toll not all the white men were included."
Scholars have not fully explored the aftermaths of those state constitutional conventions in the South, however, and have left to others to explore whether progressive administrative institutions regulated or promoted business, and to consider the role such regulators played in the implementation of Jim Crow laws. The enforcement of Jim Crow laws and the use of black convict labor in the South provided an impetus for Americans to form the NAACP during this period. Rapid industrialization and urbanization pushed women to organize for protective legislation and for reforms in public health and education. This seminar will provide students the opportunity to explore the intersections of progressive reformers, regulators, the business communities, and the forces of racial segregation. Students interested in turn-of-the-century race regulation, the early women's movements, as well as those who are interested in the relationship between the variegated business communities and progressive regulators should be rewarded. The common readings and seminar discussions also will expose students to stark divisions within the business communities as well as to the nascent women's movement and to issues of race and class that seem particularly pertinent to the changing social landscape of the period.
The course will include five weeks of required readings designed to provide a common understanding of the period and a range of different historical experiences and questions relating to Progressivism. The average weekly reading load will be 120 pages and will include selections from traditional works such as Richard Hofstadter's The Age of Reform, from revisionist works such as Gabriel Kolko's The Triumph of Conservatism, as well as more recent scholarship including Edward L. Ayers' The Promise of the New South and Noralee Frankel, Nancy S. Dye, eds., Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era. By the sixth week of the course students will submit their paper topics in the form of a two-page proposal that outlines their preliminary research plan. During the next several weeks students will meet individually with the instructor. The entire class will also meet several times during the middle of the course so that students can discuss their research progress, learn about each other's work, and help their peers with any research obstacles they may encounter. The primary goal of the seminar is to assist students in learning how to conduct their own research and will culminate in a paper 25-30 pages in length, based on original research in primary sources. That paper is intended to fulfill the second writing requirement.
HIUS 401: African-American Protest in Twentieth-Century America (4)
Prof. Claudrena Harold
Tuesdays 3:30-6
Randall 212
This seminar examines African Americans' protracted struggle against political disfranchisement, social injustice, lynching and white terrorism, racially discriminatory employment structures, and unfair housing policies sanctioned by the federal government. Students will explore not only the diversity and breadth of black oppositional activity, but also the importance of dissent in the making of American democratic traditions. Some of the organizations and activists to be examined in this course include W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Malcolm X and the Organization of African American Unity, Barbara Smith and the Combahee River Collective, Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party, and Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. A central issue to be explored in our examination of these and lesser known activists will be their efforts to deal with the economic consequences of white supremacy and racial capitalism. How black nationalists, socialists, and communists have differed in their ideas about the best way for working-class blacks to improve their material condition will be a question examined closely. Significant attention will also be given to other important issues and debates, including the international dimensions of the black freedom struggle, the usefulness of armed self-defense as a weapon in the fight against racial justice, and the problem of sexism within the black liberation movement.
Possible texts for the course include Charles Payne and Adam Green's Time Longer Than Rope: A Century of African American Activism, 1850-1950, Tony Martin's Race First: The Organization and Ideological Struggles of Marcus Garvey, Penny M. Von Eschen's Race Against Empire, Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957, Chana Kai Lee's For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, William Sales, From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, Lance Hill, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement, Robert Williams, Negroes With Guns, and Charles Jones' The Black Panther Party Reconsidered. Students' grades will be based on class attendance and participation, response papers, and a research paper.
HIUS 401: Slavery in the Making of the Antebellum South (4)
Prof. Calvin Schermerhorn
Thursdays 1-3:30
Cabell 426
This seminar will examine the institution of slavery as a way to chart social developments in the fifty years before the American Civil War. Beginning with the argument that slavery underpinned and permeated all areas of antebellum society, we will investigate how men and women of European and African descent interacted with one another in the context of social networks and communities, real or imagined. The developments we will cover include westward expansion and what it meant for family networks, free and enslaved, the rise of evangelicals, anti-abolitionist and anti-black violence, slave markets and slave labor, racial identities in a slave society, and the idea or ideology of emerging southern sectional identity. The seminar will conclude with a re-evaluation of the opening argument, which will incorporate the results of students? research.
The course will include several weeks of readings, which will introduce major themes in nineteenth century southern history. Selections include: Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slavery; Joan Cashin, A Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier; David Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War; Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market; Donald Matthews, Religion in the Old South; and Joshua Rothman, Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families Across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861. Discussions of the readings focus on historical issues and also the authors' use of evidence. They are designed to encourage members of the seminar to think about the possibilities for using primary sources as the bases for historical arguments.
During the balance of the seminar, students will conceptualize, research, and write a 25 page term paper, which will be the primary requirement of the course. Other requirements include two 3 page papers, an oral presentation of research, and a peer review session for drafts late in the semester.
Politics
PLAP 450: Voting Rights and Representation
Prof. David Klein
Mondays-Wednesdays 3:30-4:45
Cabell 130
No description available.
PLCP 581: The Politics of Sub-Saharan Africa
Prof. Andrew Lawrence
Thursdays 1-3:30
Cabell 431
No description available.
Religious Studies
RELA 276: African Religion in the Americas (3)
Prof. Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
Mondays-Wednesdays 12-12:50 plus discussion
GIL 141
This course explores the African religious heritage of the Americas. We will concentrate on African-derived religions in Latin America and the Caribbean, such as Cuban Santeria, Haitian Vodou, and the Jamaican Rastafari movement. North American slave religion, the black church, and African-American Islam will also be considered. We will seek to identify their shared religio-cultural "core" while developing an appreciation for the distinctive characteristics and historical contexts of each "New World" tradition. We will address topics such as ideas of God and Spirit; the significance of ritual sacrifice, divination, and initiation; the centrality of trance, ecstatic experience and mediumship; and the role of religion in the struggle for liberation and social justice. Final, Midterm, periodic quizzes on the readings, participation in discussion.
RELA 582: Ritual in African Religion
Prof. Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
Tuesdays 3:30-6
Cabell 234
RELC 306: The Ethics of Black Power(3)
(cross-listed as AAS 306)
Prof. Corey D.B. Walker
Tuesdays-Thursdays 11-12:15
Cabell 330
In his now classic text Blood in My Eye, George Jackson writes, “All revolution should be love inspired.” This lecture course will plumb the depths of Jackson’s remark by critically interrogating the ethical dimensions of the Black Power concept and the cultural, ideological, and political interventions influenced by this conceptual revolution. We will explore the ethics of Black Power in relation to the revolutionary exploits of artists, activists, and intellectuals in their tremendous efforts to challenge and transform the capitalist, racist, and sexist hegemony of the United States and the Western world in the second half of the twentieth century. To this end, we will revisit the work of a number of thinkers, movements, and cultural and political formations, including Albert Cleage, Angela Davis, Vicki Garvin, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Larry Neal, Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, February 1st Movement, SOBU/YOBU, African Liberation Support Committee, Black Arts Movement, Malcolm X Liberation University, Institute of the Black World, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. We will also assess the ethical parameters of the various ideological tendencies that influenced the conceptual formulation and political articulation of Black Power including Black Nationalism, Feminism, Liberalism, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and Pan-Africanism.
RELC 345: Kingdom of God in America (3)
Prof. Charles Marsh
Tuesdays-Thursdays 3:30-4:45The course examines the influence of theological ideas on social movements in twentieth century America and asks such questions as: How do religious commitments shape the patterns of everyday living, including economic, political, and sexual organization, as well as racial perception? What role do nineteenth century European and American Protestant theologies play in shaping the American search for "beloved community"? How does social existence influence conceptions of God and religious community? Our main historical focus will be the Civil Rights Movement in the South, but we will also look at counter-cultural movements of the late 1960's, as well as the intentional community movement, the faith-based community-development movement and recent organizing community initiatives.
Psychology
PSYC 404: Stereotyping (3)
Prof. Stacey Sinclair
T 2-4:30
Gilmer 225
Description of course contents: African Americans are lazy. Older adults are senile. Women are dependent. Stereotypes such as these influence each of our lives every day. We may see images in the media that correspond to these stereotypes, some one may use stereotypes to judge us, or we may use stereotypes to judge others. Where do these stereotypes come from? How do they affect those who are subject to them? Why do people engage in stereotyping? The goal of this course is to familiarize you with theories and evidence pertinent to understanding the processes that underlie stereotyping and how stereotypes affect the way we view each other, and ourselves.
Format: Discussions, presentations, and minimal lectures
No. and type of exams: no exams
Papers or projects: 3-4 (5 page) papers and one oral presentation
Prerequisites: PSYC 306 Enrollment Restrictions: PSYC majors; exceptions with instructors' permission.
If course is full through ISIS: A waiting list will be maintained through the psychology website. Do not contact the professor.
PSYC 405: Oppression and Empowerment (3)
Prof. Melvin Wilson
M 7-9:30 p.m.
Gilmer 225
Course description unavailable.
PSYC 487: The Minority Family (3)
Prof. Melvin Wilson
M 9-11:30
Gilmer 240
Course description unavailable. Prerequisites: PSYC 306.
Sociology
SOC 341: Race and Ethnicity (3)
Prof. Milton Vickerman
Mondays-Wednesdays 2-3:15
Cabell 325
Introduces the study of race and ethnic relations, including the social and economic conditions promoting prejudice, racism, discrimination, and segregation. Examines contemporary American conditions, and historical and international materials.
SOC 410: African American Communities (3)
Prof. M. Rick Turner
Tuesdays-Thursdays 3:30-4:45
Cabell 320
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear more comprehensive understanding of the history, struggle and diversity of the African-American community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the African-American community within urban society and on the need for students to obtain knowledge of their cultural history. the course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for African-American people's sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. By means of discussions, lectures, videos, readings and class presentation as well as written assignments, this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamic of the African-American community.
SOC 464: Urban Sociology (3)
Prof. Ekaterina Makarova
Tuesdays-Thursdays 2-3:15
Cabell 323
The course explores changing urban life in different cultural, social and historical settings. It examines both classic and contemporary debates within urban sociology and relates them to the wider concerns of social theory. Among the topics to be discussed are theories of urban development and decline, social segregation and urban inequality, cultural meanings of the city, problems of urban policy and planning.
SOC 487: Immigration (3)
Prof. Milton Vickerman
Mondays-Wednesdays 4-5:15
Cabell 325
A merge glance at any newspaper today will show that immigration is a "hot button" issue. Increasingly, one sees people of influence calling for restrictions on the entrance of illegal immigrants, restrictions on benefits to legal immigrants, and even the curtailment of legal immigration. While these sentiments reflect the social and political climate of the times, they are not new. Over a century ago, Americans expressed very similar sentiments-only, then, they were directed against Eastern Europeans, instead of Blacks, Hispanics and Orientals. Thus, this course seeks to understand immigration in America by examining the racial and historical underpinnings on which it has been built. We will show that some basic sentiments have expressed themselves in several ways in different historical periods. Along the way we will also examine relevant data showing the impact which immigration has had on American society.
Spring 2005
African-American and African Studies
AAS 100 – Black Nationalism (3)
T 1300-1350 MCL 2008
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
This course examines black nationalists’ protracted struggle for political autonomy, economic independence, and cultural self-definition in twentieth-century America. Major events to be discussed include the rise and fall of the Marcus Garvey Movement during the 1920s, the emergence of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam after the close of World War II, and the political and cultural upheavals in Afro-America during the Black Power era. Students will have the opportunity to explore the politics of a wide range of black radicals, including Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), and Assata Shakur. Scholarly investigations of black nationalism normally conclude with an analysis of the disintegration of the Black Power Movement in the early 1970s, but this course will also investigate the contemporary manifestations of black nationalism. Exploring diverse topics such as the Million Man March in 1995, the grassroots movement for the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the race consciousness articulated in the music of various hip-hop artists, students will investigate the continuing significance and visibility of black nationalism in American politics and culture. Required texts may include Tony Martin’s Race First, Ula Taylor’s The Veiled Garvey, William L. Van Deburg’s New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975, William W. Sales’ From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, and Timothy Tyson’s Radio Free Dixie: Robert Williams and the Roots of Black Power. Students will read an average of 150 pages per week. Grades will be based on class attendance and participation, two short essays, a midterm, and one fifteen-page paper.
AAS 102 - Crosscurrents in the African Diaspora (4)
TR 1230-1345 WIL 302
Instructor: Hanan Sabea
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.
AAS/ HIUS 336 – African-American History Since 1865 (3)
MWF 1300-1350 CAB 311
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
This course examines the major political, economic, and cultural developments in black America from the end of the Civil War to the present. Topics to be explored include blacks’ varied response to the rise of Jim Crow; the social and political upheavals brought about by the massive migration of Southern blacks to the industrial north during the First and Second World Wars; black radical politics during the Great Depression and New Deal era; the successes and failures of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements; and the continuing significance of race in American society. This course will explore the political careers of such noted black activists as Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan; however, significant attention will also be given to ordinary black women and men whose fights against racial and economic injustice led to the creation of a more democratic America. Required texts may include Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration, Tera Hunter’s To ‘Joy My Freedom, Kimberly Jones’ Alabama North, William L. Van Deburg’s New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975, Penny M. Von Eschen’s Race Against Empire, Charles Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, and Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic. Weekly reading assignments will average about 150-175 pages. Students’ grades will be based on class attendance, one short paper, and three exams
AAS 406A/ HUIS 402 – Colloquium in African American History (3)
T 1300-1530
Instructor: Reginald D. Butler
Through the reading of contemporary and classic secondary literature and selective primary materials, this course will examine the significant developments in the history of African Americans to the Civil War. We will begin with an analysis of the role of Africa and Africans in the development of the Atlantic World. Our focus will then shift to consider the establishment of slavery in the British Colonies with particular emphasis on acculturation processes and African ethnicity, the temporal and spatial range of slave regimes, and the evolution of racial ideologies. The course then looks at slavery and freedom in the revolutionary, constitutional, and early republic eras with a focus on the role of slavery in the formation of a national identity, the economic, intellectual, and religious forces that under girded the Abolitionist movement, and the division of the nation into two societies, a free North and a slave South. The course will end with an examination of the mature plantation regimes of the Southern United States, the massive migration of slaves from the upper South to the cotton-producing states of Mississippi Alabama, and Georgia, the abolitionist movement, and the role of slavery in the Civil War. Course requirements include weekly reading assignments of 250 pages, short written responses to each week's readings, and a major research paper based on both primary and secondary materials
AAS 406C – African Americans in Urban America (3)
W 1300-1530 MIN 108
Instructor: Cheryl D. Hicks
How have scholars, and particularly historians, defined and addressed black urban identity in America? This research seminar examines the history of the black urban experience, focusing primarily on the period from the turn-of-the century to the present. As we discuss the interpretive frameworks that have guided scholarship in black urban studies, we will focus on selected themes such as migration, labor, politics, and culture. We will explore the various dimensions of the black urban experience by using primary sources, scholarly analyses, music, and film. Evaluation will be based on class participation, two class presentations, one short essay, and a final research paper.
AAS 406D/RELG 440 – Marx, Politics and Theology (3)
M 1530-1800 CAB 132
Instructor: Corey D.B. Walker
Why Marx? Why Now? In light of the massive geopolitical upheavals of 1989 and the economic hegemony of global capitalism in the 1990s, these two questions are particularly resonant for a seminar that seeks to radically rethink Marx and the Marxian legacy for the intellectual project of Critical Religious and Theological Studies. To this end, Marx, Politics, and Theology will interrogate some of the germinal texts by Marx - The German Ideology, Grundrisse, and Capital - in recasting the contemporary problematic of the relation between politics and theology. We will also consider selected texts by a number of theorists who work within the wake of Marx, most notably Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Enrique Dussel, and C.L.R. James.
AAS 406E – Afro-Brazilian Civilization (3)
MWF 1100-1150 CAB 224
Instructor: David Haberly
This course, cosponsored by the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies and the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, is designed to prepare students for a four-week field learning experience in Bahia, Brazil, scheduled for May-June 2005. It offers students a general introduction, in English, to the literature and culture of Brazil from 1500 to the present, with special emphasis upon Afro-Brazilian history and cultural contributions. The course includes discussions of the nation's social and historical development and of a wide range of cultural phenomena in the nation's past and present.
Students who successfully complete AAS 406E will be invited to participate in the summer field learning component, which includes 9 credits of coursework and intensive Portuguese language training through daily classroom instruction and home-stays. Thanks to a grant from the Ford Foundation, the costs of tuition, fees, and travel will be subsidized in part by the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African and African-American Studies. We hope to limit students' share of these costs to between $1,500 and $2,000.
Course prerequisites: Proficiency in Spanish and/or Portuguese and an overall GPA of 3.0 or better. Students proficient in Spanish but not in Portuguese must enroll in PORT 101, MWF 1200-1250.
Enrollment is by instructor permission only. Students who meet the prerequisites for the course should submit the following:
- a letter of application (no more than two pages double-spaced) describing personal interest in subject, relevant coursework (such as AAS 101/102), and academic goals to be achieved through the course;
- at least one letter of recommendation from a faculty member; and
- an up-to-date grade report (VISTAA printout acceptable).
Application materials should be submitted to Prof. Reginald D. Butler at the Carter G. Woodson Institute, Minor 108, by Friday, Nov. 19.
Anthropology
ANTH 257 - Traditional Healing and Western Medicine in Africa (3)
MWF 1000-1050 CAB 325
Instructor: Clare Terni
Shamans. Witch-doctors. Mediums. Con artists. Soul-stealers. Visionaries. Cannibals. Are these words for the village sangomas and inyangas of South Africa? Or for the University-trained doctors in their long white coats? Through a variety of sources and media, this course explores the full spectrum of healing practice in Africa. We will pay particular attention to cultural constructions of "illness" and how people make decisions to seek care. We will also study the ways in which indigenous healing practices both resist and augment European treatments, and the political dimensions of 'health.'
ANTHR 394 - Archeological Approaches to Chesapeake Slavery (3)
W 1700-1930 CAB 330
Instructor: Fraser Nieman
This course explores how archaeological evidence can be used to enhance our understanding of slavery and the slave-based society that evolved in the Chesapeake from the 17th through early-19th centuries. The course covers both archaeological methods and recent contributions to the historical and archaeological literatures on slavery. A central emphasis is a series of research projects that offer students the opportunity to use their newly acquired methodological and historical knowledge in the analysis of data from the Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery (http://www.daacs.org). The class format combines lecture, discussion, and computer workshops. Pre-requisite: prior coursework in archaeology.
ANTH 565 - Creole Narratives (3)
TR 1530-1645 CLK 102
Instructor: George Mentore
We begin with 18th- and 19th-century Caribbean intellectual life. We do so from the perspective of European imperialism and its influences upon colonized values, slavery, race, class and color. We examine the persistence of these major themes through the 20th century, formalized in the battle of ideas between the elite of the mother country and the Creole upper classes. We will attempt to read the images of the Creole self and explore their claims for a crisis of identity. We will also focus on the so-called spiritual character of the Creole personality. We shall conclude by looking at the way in which the specifics of island culture have directed nation building and how they appear to have helped in the perpetuation of ideological and political dependencies.
Art History
ARTH/RELA 345 - African Art (3)
TR 930-1045 CAB 210
Instructor: Benjamin Ray
Each student will design an exhibition catalogue of African art (using MS Word) that will incorporate the results of the student's study of African art. The exhibitions will contain an introductory explanation of the exhibit's theme, selected images of African art objects, relevant field-context images, descriptive labels, and other explanatory textual materials. The images of African art will be taken from excellent collections at the Bayly Museum of the University of Virginia, the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, the Hampton University Museum, National Museum of African Art, and The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The course includes the following curricular components: a brief history of African art studies; African ritual and cosmology; analysis of African art exhibition catalogues; library research on selected art objects; the exhibition of African art in museum contexts; and the commercial treatment of African art. The aim of the course is to create exhibitions of African art that are true to the objects in their own setting while communicating effectively to a Western audience unfamiliar with African art.
American Studies
AMST 201A - Whiteness: Color and Consciousness (3)
1400-1515 MW BRN 328
Instructor: Pensri Ho
AMST 202 - Rural Poverty in Our Time (3)
W 1530-1720 CHM 402
Instructor: Grace Hale
This course will use an interdisciplinary format to explore the history of non-urban poverty in the American South from the 1930s to the present. Weaving together the social histories of poor people, the political history of poverty policies, and the history of representations of poverty, the course follows historical cycles of attention and neglect: rural poverty during the Great Depression, rural poverty from the war on poverty to the Reagan revolution, and rural poverty in the new Gilded Age, the present. In each section, we will examine the relationship between representations (imagining poverty), policies (alleviating poverty), and results (the effects of those representations and policies on the economic, political, and psychological status of poor people). Sources will include oral history collections, films, photographs, music, non-fiction narratives, government reports, and histories. Requirements include a midterm, a final, two short papers, and twenty hours of volunteer work with an area non-profit working with poor people.
English
ENAM 314 African American Literary Survey II (3)
MW 930-1045 CAB 215
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
A continuation of ENAM 313, 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, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Carolyn Ferrell, and Terry McMillian. Mandatory assignments include weekly response paragraphs, four response papers, quizzes, midterm and final exams.
ENAM 382 - Reading the Black College Campus (3)
MW 1400-1515 BRN 330
Instructor: K. Ian Grandison
[Description taken from Spring 2004 COD] A student-centered, reading, seeing, discussion, and communication course, we consider the ways in which identity politics are implicated spatially in built environments. Focusing on how the campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities were shaped by—and shaped—the struggle over African-American education particularly during the Jim Crow Period, we explore built environments as arenas of cultural conflict and negotiation. How do built environments such as college campuses assign and assert the “proper” place of individuals and groups in social hierarchies? How do subordinated groups resist these processes? From the uncomfortable union of “agriculture” and “industry” and “education”—such as connoted by the label “Cow School” for land-grant institutions—to the cultural uses of gothic architecture in avowing the high status of “Ivy League” institutions, we open up discourse on built environments to engage the politics that circumscribe built environments. We will tease out working concepts and methods that help de-center the paradigm of interpreting built environments art-historically—in relation to rigorously policed canons of accepted types and styles. This will be accomplished through discussion of short readings drawn from within and beyond the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and environmentalism and through occasional field trips, workshops, and lectures. In addition to studying readings in time for class discussion, students will be also required to complete two quizzes, four group exercises, and a semester long group-project. The course will help students engage built environments by integrating knowledge gained from experiencing them with our senses, from studying them by mapping and diagramming spatial relationships, and from interrogating primary and secondary written and oral accounts.
ENAM 482 - Disenfranchised Voices (3)
TR 930-1045 PV8 108
Instructor: Marion Rust
"Disenfranchised": African American, Native American, female, spiritual nonconformist, indentured servant, youth. "Narrative": poetry, captivity narrative, criminal narrative, spiritual autobiography, feminist theory,musical drama, slave narrative. In this class, we will read work by escaped captives, religious subversives, con men, anonymous congregations, abused wives, midwives, black seamen and Native American preachers. Possible authors include Anne Hutchinson, Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Olaudah Equiano, Martha Ballard, Abigail Abbot Bailey, Samson Occom, Sarah Pierpont Edwards, Phyllis Wheatley, Judith Sargent Murray and Stephen Burroughs. Requirements consist of active preparation and participation, a final research paper of about 15 pages, and at least two short presentations on assigned readings.
ENAM 582 - Fictions of Black Identity (3)
TR 1100-1215 MIN 130
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
[Description taken from Spring 2004 COD.] This senior seminar will explore the dual meaning of the title "Fictions of Black Identity." The first implication suggests the literary inventions (novels, essays, critical works) that address the meanings of blackness in an American context. The second meaning is heavily invested in the first: that Black identity is a fiction, not necessarily in the sense of falsity, but in its highly mediated, flexible, and variable condition. Questions to consider include: how does one make and measure Black identity? Can one be phenotypically White and still be Black? What is the value of racial masquerade? What does it mean to be legitimately Black? Readings include, but are not limited to, McBride's The Color of Water, Walker's Black, White, and Jewish, Beatty's White Boy Shuffle, and a range of critical essays. Mandatory assignments include weekly response papers, comparative essays, leading class discussion, midterm and final exams.
ENGN/ ENMC 482 - African-American Drama (3)
TR 1230-1345 BRN 332
Instructor: Lotta Lofgren
French
FREN 326 - African Literature and Culture (3)
TR 1400-1515 CAB 247
Instructor: Kandioura Drame
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, painting, sculpture, music, and cinema. Selections from painters and sculptors like Chéri Samba (Zaire), Ousmane Sow, Younousse Sèye (Senegal), Wéréwéré Liking (Cameroun), 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, Tchala Muana (Zaire), Salif Keita (Mali), and Cesaria Evora (Cape Verde); from Mande, Peul, and Kabyle oral literature in French translation; from filmmakers D. D. Mambety, O. Sembène, G. Kaboré, Dani Kouyaté, Moussa Sène Absa. Students should keep in mind that in addition to the reading assignments, a class visit to the National Museum of African Art in Washington will be required. The final grade will be based on contribution to discussions, a mid-term exam, a paper, and a final exam.
History
HIAF 202 – Africa Since 1800 (3)
TR 1230-1345 CAB 345
Instructor: John Mason
HIAF 202, Africa since 1800, explores the history of Africa from the decline of the Atlantic slave trade to the present. Our goal is to examine the historical roots of the continent's current circumstances, both good and bad. We will 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. The course concentrates 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. Course materials include novels, autobiographies, scholarly works, music, and films. HIAF 202 is an introductory course and assumes no prior knowledge of African history.
HIAF 305 History of West Africa (3)
TR 1530-1645 CAB 345
Instructor: James Lafleur
HIAF 305 explores the political, social, cultural, and environmental history of people living in West Africa from earliest times to the present.Though the course perspective emphasizes West Africans’ substantial contributions to historical developments elsewhere – in other regions of Africa as well as in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas – we will keep our focus on people and historical change within the region. Doing so is not only proper to the course content, but also prudent. This “part” of Africa is already by itself physically huge (only somewhat smaller than the continental United States) and therefore boasts great ecological diversity; and was (and continues to be) home to people speaking a dizzying number of languages and thinking of themselves not as belonging to the region but instead to communities with distinctive, and distinctly historical, traditions.The majority of course readings will be journal articles and book excerpts (to be made available on Toolkit). In addition, we are likely to use the following books in their near-entirety:
Adu Boahen, Topics in West African History
Sandra Greene, Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: A History of Meaning and Memory in Ghana
Lisa Lindsay, Working with Gender: Wage Labor and Social Change in Southwestern Nigeria
D. T. Niane, ed., Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali
Charles Piot, Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa
James Webb, Desert Frontier: Ecological and Economic Change along the Western Sahel, 1600-1850
Course requirements include: active participation in biweekly in-class discussions; four map quizzes; two mid-term exams; and a three-hour final exam.
HIAF 404 - Independent Study
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HIAF 501 - Politics of Poverty in Africa (3)
TR 1400-1515 CAB 345
Instructor: John Mason
What's wrong with Africa? The question is intentionally provocative. It reflects a view of Africa that is reproduced daily on television, in magazines and newspapers, and even in movies: teenagers waving machine guns in the air, babies with swollen bellies and pencil-thin limbs, the devastation of Aids, the bleak, unending poverty... This is the Africa that many people think that they know. The image is not so much false as it is grossly incomplete. Africa is by no means a continent-wide disaster area. But there is enough truth in these images of human suffering to cause Africans and non-Africans alike to ask, What's wrong with Africa? There are no simple answers to this question. HIAF 501 is an introduction to the complex task of exploring the roots of Africa's multiple crises. The course looks at the problem from a variety of perspectives. We will examine both internal factors and Africa's relations with the rest of the world. We will read novels, journalism, polemics, and scholarly analyses by both African and non-African writers. At the end of the semester, students will write a paper in which they themselves investigate some aspect of the problem.
HIEU 401 - The Atlantic World, 1700-1833 (4)
W 1300-1530 CAB 426
Instructor: Maya Jasanoff
The eighteenth-century Atlantic world was a place of opportunity, violence, discovery, danger, and tragedy. Cultures mixed, often by force; fortunes were made and lost; and buccaneers, slaves, entrepreneurs, pilgrims, and settlers brought new societies, including our own, into being. This seminar will explore the links between Britain, North America, the Caribbean, and West Africa, during an age of transformation. Focusing on the topics of slavery, migration, and national identities, we will look at specific regions around the Atlantic and consider them in wider global context. How does an Atlantic perspective affect the way we think about American or British history? We will consider this and other questions using a range of materials: memoirs, maps, images, travel accounts, and scholarly histories. At a time when America's relations with Britain and Europe are under intense pressure, understanding our shared Atlantic history seems more relevant than ever.
Class will be discussion-based. Students will be asked to write one short essay (4-5 pp.) and one longer essay (10-12 pp.) on a subject of their choice. Readings (approximately 150-200 pp. per week) will include: Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America; Linda Colley, Britons; Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive; and Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative….
HIST 330 South Atlantic Migrations (3)
MW 1530-1645 CAB 119
Instructor: Pablo Davis
Throughout its history, the South Atlantic region (Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia on the mainland; Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean) has experienced enormous, sometimes wrenching, often creative, and always significant movements of people. Native American life, European settlement, African immigration (most of it involuntary), and the forced exodus of Cherokee and other peoples are all among the most important movements prior to the twentieth century. In the past hundred-plus years, Black and White northward migration; the Cuban expatriate community; Puerto Rican migration to the mainland, and other Caribbean and Latin American immigration have transformed the cultural, social, economic, and political life of the South Atlantic (not to mention the US as a whole). Increasingly, movement has assumed more complex shapes, at times circular. The course amounts to a collective exploration of why people have moved within, into, and out of the South Atlantic region, and how it has mattered, with particular focus on the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
HIST 519 African Ethnicity in the Atlantic World (3)
W 1530-1800
Instructor: James Lafleur
HIST 519 is a reading and discussion course that explores the special intellectual problems and potential of applying historical rigor to the topic of African ethnicity in the Atlantic era. “Ethnicity” is a conceptual term that comes from the social sciences, and marks an individual’s sense of belonging to a group of people. Normally in the social sciences, and in popular thinking, ethnic identity is considered to be immutable and invulnerable to alteration. This stress on continuity rather than change has been particularly tenacious in popular thinking and academic discourse about the ethnicity of Africans, who are commonly thought of as “traditional” (and, polemically, as “backward” or “stuck in the past”). In contrast, descriptions of the ethnicity of African communities on this side of the Atlantic (and particularly in this country) have tended to underestimate the remarkable degree to which persons of African descent continued to consider themselves to belong to specific ethnic communities of their ancestral homelands and the significance such ethnic notions might have played in the shaping of New World history.
A list of prospective “core” materials includes: David Eltis, David Richardson, Stephen D. Behrendt, and Herbert S. Klein, eds., The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM Set and Guidebook; Michael Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South; and Sidney Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective. HIST 519 is a reading and discussion course that requires that students have the ability, and are motivated, to work independently. Students will find that the majority of their efforts are spent outside of the classroom as they prepare for weekly meetings (read, reflect, and formulate ideas to contribute). All students are expected to come to class meetings completely prepared to discuss course readings in an intelligent and collegial manner. Additionally, every student will write a research paper (expected to be in the range of some 15 pages, but in no case longer than 25 pages) on the topic of their choice, within the broad thematic/geographical parameters of this course.
HIUS 100 - Brown v. Board of Education (3)
M 1300-1530 CAU 112
Instructor: Gordon Hylton
This seminar explores the legal and cultural significance of the United States Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education which declared unconstitutional mandatory racial segregation in schools. The course also focuses on the more general role of the Supreme Court in the history of race relations in the United States. The first portion of the seminar will explore the Supreme Court’s treatment of race and racial discrimination in the century leading up to 1954. After examining the Brown case in some detail, it will then focus on the legacy of Brown in the fifty years since the decision. Readings will be a combination of judicial decisions, legal briefs and arguments, and secondary scholarly works. The primary texts will be Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights and Richard Kluger, Simple Justice, 2nd ed.
HIUS 309 Civil War and Reconstruction (3)
TR 930-1045 WIL 301
Instructor: Michael Holt
Through lectures and readings this course will address the following questions. Why did the North win and the South lose the Civil War? What was the purpose of Reconstruction after the war and what impact did it have on the post-war South? Why did Reconstruction ultimately fail? My larger purpose in examining these years, however, is to assess the impact of the Civil War on American society and politics and to challenge the traditional idea that the Civil War was a fundamental turning point or watershed in American history. The course will be organized in three lecture meetings a week without formal discussion sections. Student grades will be based on a midterm, an 8-10 page paper on assigned course reading, and a comprehensive final examination. Readings should average about 230 pages a week.
HIUS 324 - 20th Century South (3)
MW 1300-1350 PHS 204
Instructor: Grace Hale
This course examines the broad history of the American South in the twentieth century, with special emphasis on racial violence, the creation of segregation, class and gender relations within the region, the cultural and economic interdependence of black and white southerners, and the Civil Right Movement and its aftermath. Sources examined will include film, fiction, and music as well as more traditional historical sources like newspapers and court opinions. Students interested in American Studies, African American Studies, and Gender Studies are also welcome. Grading: midterm 25%; paper (5-7 pp) 25%; final exam 30%; participation in discussion sections and attendance at film and documentary screenings 20%
HIUS 367 - History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)
TR 1400-1450 WIL 402
Instructor: Julian Bond
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%).
HIUS 401 - The 60s in Stereo: The Johnson Years (4)
W 1530-1800 PV8 103
Instructor: Kent B Germany
In the 1960s America faced unprecedented challenges and opportunities. At home, the struggle for civil rights, a minimum wage, full employment -- in short, a greater society -- politicized a new generation, bringing many into the streets. Abroad, the Cold War with the Soviet Union reached the brink of a nuclear exchange while the strategy of containing communism led to the deaths of over 50,000 servicemen in Vietnam. Although each would wield power in his own way, presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson both understood the unusual nature of their time and chose to create an extensive historical record of what they did in the White House. Between them these presidents secretly recorded over 1,000 hours of meetings, monologues and telephone conversations, a collection of material that provides an unparalleled view into the workings of the American government at the highest levels. This semester students will be introduced to the Johnson tapes. Students will engage a wide variety of source material ranging from secondary sources, traditional primary sources, to multimedia sources and the tapes themselves to discuss historical methods, the evolution of historical interpretation, and the fragility of primary sources. What are the strengths and weaknesses of these once secret tapes as historical sources? The goal of the course is to give students the tools they need to employ these remarkable sources in a research paper on the Johnson era.
HIUS 401 - Welfare in 20th Century America (4)
M 1530-1800 CAB 426
Instructor: Ethan Sribnick
This seminar examines the history of social welfare policy and the development of the American welfare state. Students are expected to investigate the social, legal, political or intellectual history of one aspect of welfare policy using primary sources and produce a paper of 25 to 30 pages in length. In addition, students will be required to complete a short essay (5 –7 pages) on secondary sources and several other short assignments. Readings will expose students to the history of the U.S. welfare state and various explanations for its unique development. Assigned works will include James T. Patterson, America’s Struggle Against Poverty in the Twentieth Century; Ellen Ryerson, The Best Laid Plans: America’s Juvenile Court Experiment; Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America; along with several other articles and book chapters. Approximately 150 to 200 pages of reading will be required for the first five weeks. For the remainder of the course, students will focus on their research and writing. Students are expected to participate actively in class discussions and consultations with the instructor. Grading will be determined as follows: participation-25%, essay on secondary sources-10%, prospectus and bibliography-15%, final paper-50%. This class will fulfill the CLAS second writing requirement, and the History department 400-level seminar requirement.
HIUS 401 - African Americans in the Civil War (4)
R 1530-1800 CAB 426
Instructor: Andre Fleche
Although the Civil War represents a central event in African American history, much of the scholarship of the period remains devoted to the experiences of white participants. This Major’s Seminar seeks to close that gap by asking advanced undergraduate students in history to develop an original research paper on African Americans in the Civil War. We will use the lens of military history to examine issues of race during the war years by considering issues as diverse as African American soldiers, discrimination and activism within the army, military policy toward slaves, civilians, and freedmen, women’s roles in camp, and post-war commemorations of black service. After 4-5 weeks of shared readings in relevant scholarship, students will embark on an independent research project culminating in a 25 page paper.
HIUS 401 - Southern Home Front (4)
T 1530-1800 CAB B020
Instructor: K. Ray
The latest generations of Civil War scholarship have employed interpretative structures more social in orientation. Historians have addressed older questions about military objectives, to be sure, but they also have posed questions of increasing complexity regarding national identity and political development, the role of the economy, and changes in gender, class and race relations among the people who created and sustained the conflict. In order to acquire these insights, historians have had to account for the experiences of all people who participated in the war.
This seminar will allow students to explore some of the more recent scholarly trends before posing new questions of their own. Specifically, we will spend the first seven weeks reading and discussing secondary literature, and using it to organize research projects that will culminate in a 25-30 page paper. Possible topics include: community division in the secession crisis; the political leaders who shaped the new Confederate nation; the impact of the war on local economies; the women who served at the front lines (as nurses, cooks, and spies) and at home (as mothers, farmers, and laborers); and the enslaved and free black communities who exploited opportunities throughout the crisis to improve their position.
The second half of the semester will consist of independent meetings with the instructor and self-guided research and writing, with periodic classes to discuss research ideas and finished papers. Students will be evaluated primarily on the papers they write, but performance in class discussions will also factor into final grades.
HIUS 403 Documenting the Civil Rights Era (4)
R 1300-1530 RFN 211
Instructor: William Thomas
Permission of the Instructor Required. Students in this course will examine the archival film footage from two Virginia television stations and develop a documentary film for public television around these valuable resources. Students will be expected to contribute to a highly creative enterprise and work together toward a common goal. The course will include readings on the civil rights era and important documentary films, including Eyes on the Prize, Standing in the Shadow of Motown, A Change Was in the Air, Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, The Murder of Emmett Till, and George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire. Students will examine documentary films as a genre of historical interpretation as well as produce one of their own. This course is specially designed with support from the Mead Endowment Fund and the Seven Society, and will be an opportunity for students to work together on an exciting collaborative production. Technical skills are not necessary for this course--the course is aimed for students with creative energy, deep interest in the subject, excellent writing and communication abilities, creative talents, and diverse experiences.
Music
MUSI 208 – American Roots Music (3)
TR 1100-1215 WIL 301
Instructor: Richard Will
Scholarly and critical study of music of the Americas, with attention to interaction of music, politics, and society. Specific topics announced in advance. Prerequisite: No previous knowledge of music required.
MUSI 209 – African Music (3)
MW 1400-1515 MRY 209
Instructor: Heather Maxwell
No description available.
MUSI 212 - History of Jazz (3)
MW 1300-1530 WIL 402
Instructor: Scott DeVeaux
No previous knowledge of music required. Survey of jazz music from before 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century; important instrumental performers, composers, arrangers, and vocalists.
MUSI 309 - Performance in Africa (4)
TR 1530-1620 OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
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. *Must also enroll in MUSI 369
MUSI 369 - African Drumming and Dance (2)
TR 1715-1915 OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
*Must also enroll in MUSI 309
MUSI 369C - Afro-Pop Ensemble (2)
MW 1600-1800 OCH B018
Instructor: Heather Maxwell
No description available.
MUSI 426 - Song and Society in West Africa (3)
TR 1230-1345 OCH S008
Instructor: Heather Maxwell
No description available.
Politics
PLAP 370 - Racial Politics
TR 1230-1345 CAB 216
Instructor: Lynn Sanders
Examines how attributions of racial difference have shaped American politics. Topics include how race affects American political partisanship, campaigns and elections, public money, public opinion, and American political science. Prerequisite: One course in PLAP or instructor permission.
PLAP 382 - Civil Liberties and Civil Rights (3)
MN 1300-1350 MRY 209
Instructor: David Klein
PLCP 212 - Politics of Developing Areas (3)
MW 900-950 WIL 301
Instructor: Robert Fatton
PLCP 581 - Politics of Sub-Saharan Africa (3)
M 1300-1530 CAB 130
Instructor: Robert Fatton
This course is not open to students who have taken PLCP 381. 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.
PLIR - Ethics and Human Rights in West Africa (3)
MW 1100-1150 MIN 125
Instructor: Michael Smith
Linguistics
LNGS 222 - Black English
MW 1100-1150 CAB 138
Instructor: Mark Elson
This course is an introduction to the history and structure of Black English. The goal of this course is to introduce students to the history and structure of what has been termed Black English vernacular or Black Street English. We will also be concerned with the sociolinguistic factors which led to the emergence of this variety of English, as well as its present role in the African-American community and its relevance in education, employment, and racial stereotypes. No prerequisites, but some background in linguistics (example ANTH 240, LING 325) will be helpful.
Religious Studies
RELG 400A - Major Seminar: Theological and Religious Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement (3)
T 1530-1800 CAB 234
Instructor: Charles Marsh
In this course, we explore the methodologies with which scholars have analyzed and interpreted the American civil rights movement. We are especially interested in the recent emergence of religious and theological interpretations. Readings are based on primary and critical sources, and class sessions include lectures, discussions and student presentations on research. Seminar requirements include a one- page written response to the weekly readings completed before class; consistent participation in seminar discussions; a mid-term exam; and a 30-minute presentation based on the final research paper. Prerequisite: permission of instructor. Restricted to Religious Studies Majors.
Sociology
SOC 410 - Afro-American Communities (3)
TR 1530-1645
Instructor: M. Rick Turner
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear more comprehensive understanding of the history, struggle and diversity of the African-American community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the African-American community within urban society and on the need for students to obtain knowledge of their cultural history. the course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for African-American people's sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. By means of discussions, lectures, videos, readings and class presentation as well as written assignments, this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamic of the African-American community.
SOC 442 - Sociology of Inequality (3)
MW 1100-1150 CAB 320
Instructor: Bethany Bryson
A survey of basic theories and methods used to analyze structures of social inequality. Includes comparative analysis of the inequalities of power and privilege, both their causes and their consequences for social conflict and social change
SOC 487 - Immigration (3)
MW 1600-1715 WIL 215
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
A merge glance at any newspaper today will show that immigration is a "hot button" issue. Increasingly, one sees people of influence calling for restrictions on the entrance of illegal immigrants, restrictions on benefits to legal immigrants, and even the curtailment of legal immigration. While these sentiments reflect the social and political climate of the times, they are not new. Over a century ago, Americans expressed very similar sentiments-only, then, they were directed against Eastern Europeans, instead of Blacks, Hispanics and Orientals. Thus, this course seeks to understand immigration in America by examining the racial and historical underpinnings on which it has been built. We will show that some basic sentiments have expressed themselves in several ways in different historical periods. Along the way we will also examine relevant data showing the impact which immigration has had on American society.
University Seminars
USEM 171 - Brown Reflections: The Decision’s Legacy (2)
W 1400-1550 CAB B029
Instructor: Selena Cozart
In the midst of the 50th anniversary of both the Brown Decision of 1954 and the Brown II Decision of 1955, the impact of these decisions on equitable education for all remains a complicated and heavily debated area of study, with many of the outcomes yet to materialize. In this course, students will study the America that produced a need for the Brown decision and investigate what that America has done with that decision in the intervening years. Using memoir, biography, and historical documents and commentary, students will gain a multilayered view of the implications of Brown on their own educational experiences.
USEM 171 - Education in Black and White (2)
W 1400-1550 CAB B029
Instructor: Selena Cozart
What are the issues in education unique to communities of color? Does the ethnicity of your teacher make any difference? What are the implications of classrooms becoming more diverse ethnically, socio-economically, and according to ability while the teacher corps reflects decreasing diversity? Are all of the students of color sitting together? This course is designed to explore issues regarding the education of persons from underrepresented groups in the United States. The focus of this exploration will be K-12 education, higher education, and the preparation of the next generation of educators from these underrepresented groups. This course will investigate a variety of topics that affect both students and prospective teachers of any color. Students will examine best practices for education and think critically about how to contribute to the improvement of education for all.
USEM 171 - Politics of Southern Africa (2)
M 1400-1550 RFN 173
Instructor: Leonard Robinson
This course covers the history of Southern Africa prior to the colonial era through the end of Apartheid in South Africa, and the regions’ evolution toward more open, democratic societies. Politically a highly charged and complex region, the impact of Portuguese, British, and German systems of colonialism – combined with the rigidity, brutality and influence of Apartheid – resulted in an unusual array of dynamics as Africa marched toward independence, the post-independence era and finally the onset of democratization in the late 1980’s. Featured countries are South Africa, Namibia Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and Botswana.
USEM 171 - The 60’s In Black and White (2)
T 1530-1720 CAB 318
Instructor: Julian Bond
The sixties saw a generation of young people begin to build movements which would stop a violent war abroad and start a nonviolent war at home. An ideological attack has been leveled against the decade, obscuring a progressive history and attempting to erase and discredit models successive generations might follow. As a result, '60s history is ambiguous. What made the movements for peace and equal rights possible? What events triggered them? Who were their participants? What is their legacy for the present? This seminar will attempt to answer these and other questions as we examine the history, events, personalities and culture of the 1960s. Students are required to write two brief but comprehensive papers on a '60s individual, organization or movement, and/or a '60s philosophy.
Education
EDLF 555 - Multi-Cultural Education (3)
W 1600-1845 T 1600-1845 R 1000-1245 RFN 241
Instructor: Robert Covert
Prepares students to deal with the increasingly multicultural educational milieu. Emphasizes the process of understanding one’s own bias and prejudices and how they effect the school and classroom learning environment. Included are readings, class discussions, field projects, journal writing, and other methods of directed self explorations.
Fall 2004
African-American and African Studies Program
AAS 100 – Black Nationalism (3)
T 1530-1800 CAB B029
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
This course examines black nationalist’s protracted struggle for political autonomy, economic independence, and cultural self-definition in twentieth-century America. Major events to be discussed include the rise and fall of the Marcus Garvey Movement during the 1920s; the emergence of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam after the close of World War II; the rise of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense during the turbulent sixties; and the movement for the creation of Black Studies programs and departments in the post-Civil Rights era. Students will have the opportunity to explore the politics of a wide range of black radicals, including Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), and Assata Shakur. Scholarly investigations of black nationalism normally conclude with an analysis of the disintegration of the Black Power Movement in the early 1970s, but this course will also investigate the contemporary manifestations of black nationalism. Exploring diverse topics such as the Million Man March in 1995, the grassroots movement for the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the race consciousness articulated in the music of such hip-hop artists as Public Enemy, Lauryn Hill, and Krs-One, students will investigate the continuing significance and visibility of black nationalism in American politics and culture. Students will read an average of 120 pages per week. Grades will be based on class attendance and participation, two short essays (5-7 pages) and one fifteen-page paper. This course satisfies the CLAS second writing requirement.
AAS 101 – Africa In The Atlantic World (4)
T R 1230-1345 WIL 301
Instructor: Scot French
This team-taught course is part of a year-long survey of the history and culture of Africans in Africa and people of African descent in the Americas. During this semester, we will cover a variety of topics, including African societies before 1800, the Atlantic slave trade, literatures of the Atlantic World, the origins and development of New World plantation societies, Africana religions, life and labor in the United States, and the protracted process of emancipation. Students should come away with an understanding of the major problems, events, and people that shaped the African-American experience. At the same time, we will gain a sense of how that experience fit into the history of people of African descent in the larger Atlantic world.
AAS 315/RELC 305 – Theologies Of Liberation (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 337
Instructor: Corey D. B. Walker
Who is God to the oppressed? What does it mean to do Christian theology from the underside? This course will critically examine the ideas, methodologies, and orientations of different theological trajectories within the field of Liberation Theology, including African-American, Gay/Lesbian, Latin American, Minjung, Mujerista, and Womanist theologies of liberation. The course will focus on theological method, modes of social and economic analysis particularly those perspectives inspired by varieties of critical theory and philosophies of liberation, and challenges to traditional Christian theologies.
AAS 305 – Travel Accounts Of Africa (3)
T R 1700-1815 CAB 340
Instructor: Hanan Sabea
The course explores how 18th- and 19th-century travel accounts about Africa have influenced ethnographic writing and popular views about the continent and its people. It traces the genealogy of methods of knowledge production, major concepts that are generated and inherited, underlying assumptions, and recurring images that have shaped the representation of places and peoples in Africa. We will analyze the accounts produced about Africa in terms of the symbolic, technical and ideological conventions used by the writers. We will pay special attention to the gender, nationality, and profession of the authors, the purpose for their travels, and the times and places they visited.
AAS 323/ HIUS 323 – Rise And Fall Of The Slave South (3)
M W 1100 -1150 MIN 125
Instructor: Edward L. Ayers
This course will explore the emergence and destruction of the most powerful slave society of the modern world: the American South. It will begin with the sixteenth century and extend through the Civil War and Reconstruction. We will examine the lives of slaves and slaveowners, small farmers and large planters, men and women, soldiers and civilians. Readings will be diverse, including original documents, materials on the Web, fiction, and secondary accounts. Requirements include a midterm and final as well as a substantial research paper. Energetic participation in a weekly discussion section is a central part of the course.
AAS 365/HIUS 365 – African-American History To 1865 (3)
M W 1400-1450 CAB 345
Instructor: Reginald Butler
This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in British colonial North America and the United States through 1865. We will examine changing constructions of race, gender, and class, as well as the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities associated with this period. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the intersection of the "local" and the "global." Weekly reading assignments will average about 150-175 pages. Grade will be based on participation, weekly reading responses, one short paper, a midterm, and a final.
AAS 401 – Independent Study (3)
TBA
AAS 405B – Imprisoned America
M 1300-1530 MIN 108
Instructor: Ethan Blue
The vast overrepresentation of people of color behind bars in the United States demands that we place American criminal justice in the long history of racial dominance and economic conflict, from chattel slavery and American Indian extermination to the contemporary prison-industrial complex. While the course focuses on the particularities of incarceration in the United States, tools gained and lessons learned will be applicable to analyzing radically disenfranchised populations - immigrants, lepers, juvenile delinquents, and sexual deviants - in other times and locations. In addition to weekly readings, students will write a twenty page paper on a subject of their choosing. Selected readings: Asha Bandele, The Prisoners' Wife; David Garland, Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory; George Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson; Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formations in the United States; and Christian Parenti, Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis.
AAS 451 – Distinguished Majors Program/ Directed Research (3)
TBA
AAS 452 – Distinguished Majors Program/Thesis (3)
TBA
Department of Anthropology
SWAH 101 - Introduction To Swahili (3)
MWF 0900-0950
Instructor: Yared Fubusa
Introduces the most widely spoken indigenous language of East-Central Africa. Focuses on speaking, comprehension, reading and writing skills, and the language in its cultural context.
SWAH 102 - Introduction To Swahili (3)
MWF 1000-1050
Instructor: Yared Fubusa
Continues from SWAH 101.
NOTE: SWAH 101 and 102 are offered under the auspices of the Anthropology Department. A course in Swahili may count toward the Anthropology major, as an elective within the major.
ANTH 225 – Nationalism, Racism, And Multiculturalism (3)
T R 1230-1345 MCL 1020
Instructor: Richard Handler
Introductory course in which the concepts of culture, multiculturalism, race, racism, and nationalism are critically examined in terms of how they are used and structure social relations in American society and, by comparison, how they are defined in other cultures throughout the world.
ANTH 305 -- Travel Accounts Of Africa
TR 1700-1815 CAB 340
Instructor: Hanan Sabea
The course explores how 18th- and 19th-century travel accounts about Africa have influenced ethnographic writing and popular views about the continent and its people. It traces the genealogy of methods of knowledge production, major concepts that are generated and inherited, underlying assumptions, and recurring images that have shaped the representation of places and peoples in Africa. We will analyze the accounts produced about Africa in terms of the symbolic, technical and ideological conventions used by the writers. We will pay special attention to the gender, nationality, and profession of the authors, the purpose for their travels, and the times and places they visited.
ANTH 385 Folklore In America (3)
TR 1100-1215
Instructors: Charles Perdue
This course will focus primarily on Anglo- and Afro-American traditional culture and, within that domain, deal with problems of definition, origin, collection, and analysis of the main genres of folklore--narrative and song.
ANTH 401A Senior Seminar:Anthropology Of Colonialism In Virginia (3)
R 1400-1630
Instructor: Jeffrey Hantman
This course considers the history and cultural contexts of European colonialism in Virginia in the 16th and 17th centuries, and its long-term effects on Native Americans, African Americans, and Europeans. Through archaeological and documentary sources, we will examine the different responses of Indian people to the arrival of Europeans. Archaeology and ethnohistory will also be used to assess the long-term impact of tobacco cultivation and European expansion on Native Americans and the enslaved African Americans who arrived in the 17th century. Finally, we will examine the lingering effects of colonial policies into the 20th and 21st centuries.
ANTH 401B Senior Seminar: Postcolonial Inequalities & Anthropology Today (3)
T 1530-1800
Instructor: Ravindra Khare
A discussion of social inequalities, mainly class, caste, race, religion, age and gender under postcolonial and post-industrial conditions in a comparative cultural and regional perspective. A distinct (but not exclusive) focus will be on contemporary India and America. Very different yet in some ways very similar, these two distant cultures, societies and countries afford distinct opportunities to study entrenched inequalities of caste, class, race and religion, alongside a pursuit of democracy, equality, and civil and human rights. The last third of the course will be devoted to reviewing related and relevant concerns, interests and directions now evident in the organization and activities of American anthropology today.
ANTH 543 – African Language Structures (3)
M W 1400-1515 BRK LIB
Instructor: J. Sapir
The course will cover the classification of African languages, selected grammatical typologies, African lexicography, and examples of oral literature. Students will give presentations on these topics with respect to specific languages. The intention of the course is to investigate the considerable variety of linguistic types present in sub-Saharan Africa.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Department of English Language and Literature
ENAM 313 – African American Survey (3)
T R 1100-1215 MRY 113
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
This course surveys pivotal moments and texts in the history of African-American prose, from l760, the date of Briton Hammon's Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings to l901, the year of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery. We will work our way through canonical and non-canonical texts and through multiple genres-- captivity narratives, spiritual autobiographies, slave narratives, sermons, execution sermons, criminal narratives, speeches, novels--and will explore a number of issues related to literary history, culture, aesthetics, authorship, audience, genre, and narratology. Among the questions to be explored? How have literary historians given shape to or "storied" this tradition? How do black women's writings complicate these "fictions" of literary history? What is the relation between the black vernacular tradition and the black "literary" text? How do the white abolitionists and editors involved in the production of slave narratives trouble traditional conceptions of authorship? Who "authors" a speech by Sojourner Truth that is stenographically transcribed and appears in multiple versions? What confluence of factors and ideologies explain the "canonical" version of "Ain't I a Woman?" Other texts include Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Harriet Wilson's Our Nig; Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom; David Walker's Appeal; Pauline Hopkins's Contending Forces, and Thomas Gray's Confessions of Nat Turner. We will work to situate these and other selections in the political, cultural, and critical controversies of their time and ours.
ENAM 481A – African-American Women Writers (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB B026
Instructor: Angela Davis
We will read several novels and short stories by African-American Women, examining in particular how the authors portray black women as individuals and in the context of American society. This course requires active class participation, four written responses to readings (each one typed page long) and a formal essay (ten to twelve pages long). The reading list is: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls...; Toni Morrison, Sula, and Tar Baby; Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble; Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones; Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place.
Prerequisite: The course is restricted to fourth year majors in English, Women's Studies and African-American and African Studies.
ENCR 481B – Race, Space, And Culture (3)
W 1830-2100 CAM 135
Instructors: K. Ian Grandison
This multi-disciplinary course explores racial and other cultural identities in relation to the built environment and other conceptions of space. How has the concept of race helped to shape our interactions with space in both conscious and unconscious ways? How have our historical constructs of space helped to determine, in both articulated and inarticulate ways, what it means to identify with, or against, one cultural identity or another? Co-taught by Marlon Ross of English and African-American Studies and K. Ian Grandison of Landscape Architecture and American Studies, the course draws from and beyond the disciplines represented by its instructors to synthesize ways of interrogating the written, graphic, filmic, and field resources necessary for broadening our understanding of space. The course provides a forum for weekly discussion hinged on targeted readings (such as James Weldon Johnson's Black Manhattan, Oscar Newman's Defensible Space: Crime Prevention Through Urban Design, Philip Deloria's Playing Indian, Leslie Kanes Weisman's Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment, and Marc Leepson's Saving Monticello: The Levy Familys Epic Quest to Rescue the House that Jefferson Built), films (such as National Geographic's Gorilla and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing), and local field trips (such as to Woolen Mills, Monticello, and Vinegar Hill). Relating to the inter-disciplinary thrust of the course, students will have the opportunity to work in small teams to lead selected class sessions, to complete a research project, and to participate in a final Open-House that serves as the capstone for the course.
Department of French Language and Literature
FREN 346 – Topics in African Culture (3)
M W 1300-1350 CAB 224
Instructor:
La littérature francophone marocaine prend ses racines dans l'Afrique, la France coloniale mais aussi dans le monde arabo-musulman et dans les cultures berbères et judéo-arabe. C'est cette extraordinaire mixité culturelle et ethnique que des auteurs marocains d'expression française vont illustrer dans leurs ouvrages, depuis l'époque coloniale jusqu'à nos jours. Après avoir étudié des œuvres écrites durant le protectorat français au Maroc ou relatant cette période, nous aborderons la littérature contemporaine expression des rêves, des mythes et des aspirations politiques et sociales.
FREN 570 – African Literature
T 1530-1800 BRN 334
Instructor: Kandioura Drame
Studies the principal movements and representative authors writing in French in Northern, Central, and Western Africa, with special reference to the islands of Madagascar and Mauritius. Explores the literary and social histories of these regions.
FRTR 329 -- Comparative Caribbean Literature & Culture
M 1530-1800 CAB 316
Instructor: A. James Arnold
This is an upper-division cross-disciplinary course; it supposes an introduction to literary, historical or anthropological study. The question to be examined throughout the semester is: Who/What is Creole? Literary texts (poems, novels) as well as popular genres will be examined for what they tell us about the construction of national identity. Students will be encouraged to work in small groups to develop a project for class presentation. Multi-media presentations will be welcome. There will be a midterm and a final examination or a research paper. Authors will include several of the following: Alexis (Haiti), Brathwaite (Barbados), Carpentier (Cuba), Condé (Guadeloupe), Naipaul and Lovelace (Trinidad), Walcott (St. Lucia).
Department of History
HIAF 201 – Early African History Through the Era of the Slave Trade (4)
T R 1230-1345 MCL 1004
Instructor: James Lafleur
Early African History draws Africans' distinctive achievements in culture, politics, and economic strategies out from the mists of the once-dark continent's unwritten past. Starting with the dawn of history and taking the story up in detail from the millennium before the Present Era, HIAF 201 follows the sometimes-surprising ways in which village elders, women, merchants, kings, cattle lords, and ordinary farmers pursued meaningful lives without the technologies that modern Americans take for granted. The last third of the course examines the ironic interplay of tragedy and achievement in a continent increasingly trapped in exiling its own people in slavery to Europeans, until the Atlantic slave trade began to wind down after about 1800. (A second semester of African history, HIAF 202, taught in the spring, narrates subsequent events down through twentieth-century colonialism and the post-1960 era of independence and impoverishment.)
HIAF 201 is a lower-division introductory survey. The instructor presents the major themes of early African history in lectures twice each week. Students meet additionally in discussion sections for review of readings, quizzes, and preparation for written assignments. Requirements include weekly map quizzes, a mid-term examination (only the better of two tries counts), three short papers (4-5 pages) rehearsing historical questions for the mid-terms and considering the written sources on Africa's past, and a final examination (format to be negotiated with the class). The course belongs to the African-American and African Studies curriculum, meets the "non-western" requirement for the major in History, and qualifies for the College "non-western perspectives" area requirement. Students may rewrite one of the papers to fulfill the College Second Writing Requirement.
Readings revolve around weekly assignments in a text (Shillington, History of Africa), for a total of about 225 pages. Other assigned chapters and professional articles introduce the distinctive methodologies of doing history without written sources (including the famous Mande oral epic Sundiata), highlight interpretive ("historiographical") issues, and consider concepts relevant to understanding early Africa. The total number of assigned pages runs at approximately 1200.
No formula determines final marks. Students are graded according to their "highest consistent performance" in all aspects of the course, including attendance at lectures and participation in discussions, with allowance made for the unfamiliarity of the subject matter early in the term; a number of options allow students to devise a combination of graded work that will accommodate other academic commitments and reflect specialized abilities most accurately.
HIAF 201 presumes no prior knowledge of Africa or experience with the study of history. Since the subject is new to nearly everyone in the course, consistent application and preparation is expected, particularly early in the term. Students in all four years of their undergraduate careers and in all colleges of the University complete the course with success.
Most find it a challenging opportunity to discover and examine assumptions about modern Americans -- themselves included -- they did not know they held.
HIAF 302 – History Of Southern Africa (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 324
Instructor: John Mason
HIAF 302 is a lecture and discussion course on the history of southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, emphasizing South Africa. The course begins with a look at the precolonial African societies of the region, before moving on to a study of the conquest, colonialism, the rise and fall of apartheid, and the recent rebirth of African independence.
By the end of the nineteenth century, all of the African peoples of southern Africa had been conquered by European powers and incorporated into Dutch, British, Portuguese, and German colonial empires. Conquest did not come easily. Every society in the region resisted European domination fiercely, sometimes for many decades before being finally defeated. Colonialism and African responses to it dramatically reshaped societies in southern African, transforming political and economic systems, gender and class relations, and even religious beliefs.
Resistance to colonialism assumed new forms in the twentieth century, as Africans began to bridge ethnic divisions to create multi-ethnic trade unions, political parties, and liberation movements. Particularly in South Africa, multi-ethnic nationalism evolved into nonracialism, uniting blacks and progressive whites in the ultimately successful struggle against apartheid.
HIAF 302 is an introductory course and assumes no prior knowledge of African history.
HIAF 319 – African Environmental History (3)
T R 1530-1645 MCL 1004
Instructor: James Lafleur
HIAF 402 – Race And Popular Culture In South Africa And The United States (4)
T R 1400-1515 RAN 212
Instructor: John Mason
HIAF 402 is a seminar in comparative South African and American history. We will look at the ways in which popular culture--especially music, film, and sports--reflects South African and American racial categories and identities and, at the same time, helps to create them. Course materials include scholarship, biography, autobiography, music, and film.
South Africa and the American South are like distant cousins: instantly recognizable as members of the same family, but with distinctively different personalities. Both countries owe much of their early economic development to slavery. In both complex systems of racial domination shaped society for generations during and after the emancipation of the slaves. And in both the interracial struggle against racism gave rise to some of the most important people and events in their histories.
A close look at popular culture will open a window on what is perhaps the central irony of both South African and American cultural history--that the harsh realities of racial oppression and racial segregation have produced a culture that is not segregated at all. It is neither black nor white, neither African nor European, but utterly and thoroughly mixed. It is no accident, for instance, that the most distinctively American forms of popular music--blues and spirituals, bluegrass and country, jazz and rock--were born of mixed African and European cultural parentage.
Students will participate actively in class discussions and prepare a research paper on a subject of their own choosing.
HIAF 404 – Independent Study In African History (3)
TBA
Instructor: Staff
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HIST 504 – Monticello Intership (3)
M 1500-1830 PV5 109
Instructor: Phyllis Leffler
Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. Directed research, largely in primary source materials, on topics relating to Jefferson's estate, life, and times. Directed by senior members of the Monticello staff. The internships are restricted to graduate students in history and to fourth year undergraduate history majors. A maximum of two students each semester can be admitted to the course.
HIUS 100 – Black Nationalism (3)
T 1530-1800 CAB B029
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
This course examines black nationalist’s protracted struggle for political autonomy, economic independence, and cultural self-definition in twentieth-century America. Major events to be discussed include the rise and fall of the Marcus Garvey Movement during the 1920s; the emergence of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam after the close of World War II; the rise of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense during the turbulent sixties; and the movement for the creation of Black Studies programs and departments in the post-Civil Rights era. Students will have the opportunity to explore the politics of a wide range of black radicals, including Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), and Assata Shakur. Scholarly investigations of black nationalism normally conclude with an analysis of the disintegration of the Black Power Movement in the early 1970s, but this course will also investigate the contemporary manifestations of black nationalism. Exploring diverse topics such as the Million Man March in 1995, the grassroots movement for the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the race consciousness articulated in the music of such hip-hop artists as Public Enemy, Lauryn Hill, and Krs-One, students will investigate the continuing significance and visibility of black nationalism in American politics and culture. Students will read an average of 120 pages per week. Grades will be based on class attendance and participation, two short essays (5-7 pages) and one fifteen-page paper. This course satisfies the CLAS second writing requirement.
HIUS 323/AAS 323 – Rise And Fall Of The Slave South (3)
T R 0930-1045 MIN 125
Instructor: Edward L. Ayers
This course will explore the emergence and destruction of the most powerful slave society of the modern world: the American South. It will begin with the sixteenth century and extend through the Civil War and Reconstruction. We will examine the lives of slaves and slave owners, small farmers and large planters, men and women, soldiers and civilians.
Readings will be diverse, including original documents, materials on the Web, fiction, and secondary accounts. Requirements include a midterm and final as well as a substantial research paper; the course fulfills the Second Writing Requirement. Energetic participation in a weekly discussion section is a central part of the course.
HIUS 328 – History Of Virginia To 1865 (3)
M W F 1300-1350 GIL 190
Instructor: William Thomas
This course covers the social, political, and economic development of Virginia up to 1865. The course examines key subjects in Virginia's colonial and antebellum history: the life and culture of Virginia's Native Americans, the colonial experience at Jamestown and white colonial settlement, the development of slavery in the Chesapeake region, the establishment of colonial society, the Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, Nat Turner's Rebellion, and the secession of Virginia in 1861.
Requirements for the course include three 5-7 page papers and a final exam. One of the papers will include research in Alderman Library's Special Collections. The course will feature both lecture and discussion during the weekly meetings. The course will use a reader of primary source readings from the period, such as Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia and other documents, autobiographies, and texts. In addition, the course will include some of the following readings:
T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, Myne Own Ground
Charles Dew, Apostles of Disunion
Joseph Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
Rhyss Issac, The Transformation of Virginia
Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom
Helen Rountree, The Powhatan Indians of Virginia
HIUS 347 – The American Working Class Since The Civil War
M W F 1200-1250 CAB 431
Instructor: Claudrena Harold
This course examines the cultural lives, labor struggles, and political activities of the American working class from the end of the Civil War to the Clinton era. Over the course of the semester, students will analyze how working women and men both shaped and were shaped by the rise of big business during the Gilded Age, the social upheavals of the World War I era, the economic hardships brought about by the Great Depression, the social policies of the New Deal, the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, and continuing debates over the meanings of work, citizenship, and democracy. Significant attention will be given to the organizations workers created to advance their economic interests. The course will explore the success and failures of the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and the Communist Party. A major issue to be explored in our discussions of these organizations will be the ways in which laboring people have been divided along racial, gender, ethnic, and regional lines. Since working-class history is about more than the struggle of laboring people to improve their material condition, this course will also focus on other topics, such as workers’ family life, leisure activities (music and sports), customs and thoughts, and religious beliefs.
Required texts for the course may include Jacqueline Jones’ A Social History of the Laboring Classes, Tera W. Hunter’s To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After The Civil War, Nelson Lichtenstein’s State of the Union: A Century of American Labor, Neil Foley, White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture, Linda Gordon’s Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935, and Bruce Nelson’s Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality. Readings will average no more than 150 pages a week. Grades will be based on attendance and class participation, a mid-term examination, two short essays (5 pages), and one ten page paper. This course satisfies the CLAS second writing requirement.
AAS 365/HIUS 365 – African-American History To 1865 (3)
M W 1400-1450 CAB 345
Instructor: Reginald Butler
This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in British colonial North America and the United States through 1865. We will examine changing constructions of race, gender, and class, as well as the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities associated with this period. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the intersection of the "local" and the "global." Weekly reading assignments will average about 150-175 pages. Grade will be based on participation, weekly reading responses, one short paper, a midterm, and a final.
HIUS 367 – History Of The Civil Rights Movement (3)
T R 1400-1450 WIL 402
Instructor: Julian Bond
This lecture course will examine the history, philosophies, tactics, events, and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward.
The Southern movement--variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement--was a black-lead mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation in the South by the middle 1960s.
Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping phases--lobbying, litigation and protest. In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights. In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation, the denial of the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools. The last phase, lasting a decade from '55 to '65, was a period of protest--boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations--as well as organizing campaigns that lay the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s.
Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation in the United States. The movement's well-and lesser-known proponents and opponents and their stratagems will be examined. Discussion section required. Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five-to-seven page papers.
Texts:
Wilkins, Roy, with Tom Matthews, Standing Fast, Da Capo Press
Forman, James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Open Hand Press
Bond, Julian and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit At The Welcome Table, American Heritage
Videos:
"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, Producer, California Newsreel.
HIUS 401 C – Civil Rights Era In Virginia (3)
R 1300-1530 PV8 108
Instructor: William Thomas
This course examines the important events in Virginia during the long period of civil rights battles from the 1930s through the 1970s. This course will examine the politics, media, culture, and economy of Virginia in this period. Virginia was the scene of some of the earliest court battles over desegregation, and one of the cases in Brown v. Board of Education emerged from Prince Edward County. Virginia's segregationist massive resistance program was one of the strongest in the South in the 1950s, resulting in a statewide crisis of public school closings. Prince Edward County officials closed their schools for nearly five years rather than integrate them, and in Danville violence erupted in the summer of 1963 over civil disobedience and protests. The Supreme Court decided key Virginia cases with national repercussions that ended bars on miscegenation, threw out token integration in schools, and removed the poll tax in elections. This course seeks to explore the origins and explanations for these dramatic events, and will focus particularly on new areas of research in this period such as white Protestantism, African American women's history, the role of the Cold War, and media and cultural influences.
Readings will focus on both Virginia and comparative accounts of the period in Southern history, including for example: J. Douglas Smith, Managing White Supremacy, Robert Pratt, The Color of Their Skin, David Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, Jeff Woods, Black Struggle Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-communism in the South, Sarah Patton Boyle, The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in a Time of Transition, and Len Holt, An Act of Conscience.
Students will also have access to and work with a rare archive of television news footage from two Virginia television stations (see www.vcdh.virginia.edu/civilrightstv). Research papers for this course may be on any subject broadly conceived under the course title, and students interested in a wide range of subjects are especially welcome.
HIUS 401 D – The Sixties In Stereo: The Kennedy Years
W 1530-1800 CAB 134
Instructor: David Coleman
In the 1960s America faced unprecedented challenges and opportunities. At home, the struggle for civil rights, a minimum wage, full employment -- in short, a greater society -- politicized a new generation, bringing many into the streets. Abroad, the Cold War with the Soviet Union reached the brink of a nuclear exchange while the strategy of containing communism led to the deaths of over 50,000 servicemen in Vietnam.
Although each would wield power in his own way, presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson both understood the unusual nature of their time and chose to create an extensive historical record of what they did in the White House. Between them these presidents secretly recorded over 1,000 hours of meetings, monologues and telephone conversations, a collection of material that provides an unparalleled view into the workings of the American government at the highest levels.
This semester students will be introduced to the Kennedy tapes. Students will engage a wide variety of source material ranging from secondary sources, traditional primary sources, to multimedia sources and the tapes themselves to discuss historical methods, the evolution of historical interpretation, and the fragility of primary sources. What are the strengths and weaknesses of these once secret tapes as historical sources? The goal of the course is to give students the tools they need to employ these remarkable sources in a research paper on the Kennedy era.
HIUS 401 G – An Exploration In Southern Women’s History: From Segregation To Civil Rights
R 1300-1530 CAB 412
Instructor: Lori Schuyler
This writing intensive course is intended to introduce students to the research and writing of history. Through readings and discussion, students will examine how segregation, industrialization, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement affected the lives of southern women, and how women responded to and shaped these changes in southern society. During the first five weeks, students will read and discuss several major studies of southern women's history. Students will also begin formulating their research topics and exploring primary sources. In the remaining weeks of the semester, students will research and write an article-length (20-30pp) paper that examines some aspect of southern women's history since 1865.
Required Readings May Include:
Tera Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom
Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady
Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow
Elna Green, Southern Strategies
Lisa Lindquist Dorr, White Women, Rape, and the Power of Race in Virginia, 1900-1960
Georgina Hickey, Hope and Danger in the New South city : Working-class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940
Jane Turner Censer, The Reconstruction of White Womanhood
Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi
Department of Music
MUSI 212 – History Of Jazz Music (3)
M W 1300-1350 WIL 402
Instructor: Scott Deveaux
This course is a survey of the history of jazz from its beginnings around 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century. Important instrumental performers, vocalists, composers, and arrangers are listened to and discussed. Lab section is required.
MUSI 307 – Worlds Of Music (3 )
T R 930-1045 OCH 107
Instructor: TBA
To understand the complexities of global musics, we must begin at home appreciating the diversity of musics within the U.S.-"the global is in the local" (Fabian 1998, 5). This course is an introduction to ethnomusicology primarily for music majors featuring case studies of contemporary musical traditions from the twentieth century.
The study of ethnomusicology is a study of understanding otherness and understanding not only how other people make music, but also the way we tend to perceive other musics as less complex than ours, and we tend to appreciate the music but not the people.
Prerequisite: Major in music or anthropology, or permission of instructor.
MUSI 369 – African Drumming And Dance (1-2)
T R 1700-1900 OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
A practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (BaAka pygmies), with the intention of performing at the end of the semester. Though no previous experience with music or dance is required, we will give special attention to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, and faithful attendance are required of each class member, the goal being to develop an ongoing UVA African Drumming and Dance Ensemble.
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor by audition on first day of class.
Department of Politics
PLIR 424A – Globalizing Africa :The International Political Economy Of Africa
TR PV8 103 1400-1515
Instructor: Andrew Lawrence
Given Africa's immense size and geographical, cultural and political diversity, and given political economy's broad conceptual reach, any course on the International Political Economy (IPE) of Africa is bound to be selective in its focus and themes. Additionally, some themes will apply to some countries and regions more than others. However, for every theme covered, this course gives a central place to the voices and experiences of Africans, past and present. The course will analyze perspectives on colonial legacies and postcolonial dynamics; the nature of the African state; regime change and democratization; regional wars and complex humanitarian crises; the politics of debt, structural adjustment, and the AIDS crisis; relations with the U.S. and other major powers; and regional and international organizations.
Restricted to Third-Year, Fourth Year, Politics
PLCP 583 – Modern South African Politics In Comparative Perspective
W CAB 318 1300-1530
Instructor: Andrew Lawrence
This course will examine twentieth (and early 21st.) century South African politics with a focus on the rise and fall of apartheid, in the context of the historical circumstances that produced it, the personal experiences of South Africans under apartheid, and the local and international networks and movements of opposition it generated. Course materials include historical and political analyses, autobiographies, fiction, and film. Through comparative reference to the U.S. and other contexts, the course also examines critical theories of race, racial formation, and segregation. It further investigates the dynamics of colonialism, and its role in creating apartheid doctrine in South Africa, and the shifting relationship between apartheid and (both national and international) capitalism.
Restricted to Third-Year, Fourth Year, Politics
Department of Psychology
PSYC 487 –The Minority Family: A Psychological Inquiry (3)
M 0900-1130 GIL 225
Instructor: Melvin Wilson
This course examines the current state of research on minority families, focusing on the black family. Emphasizes comparing "deficit" and "strength" research paradigms.
Prerequisites: PSYC 306 and at least one course from each of the following groups: PSYC 210, 215 or 230, and PSYC 240, 250, or 260, and students in the African-American and African studies or studies in women and gender programs. Telephone Enrollment Restrictions: PSYC majors. If this course is full through ISIS: keep trying through ISIS.
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 275 – African Religions (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 345
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
Introduces the mythology, ritual, philosophy, and religious art of the traditional religions of sub-Saharan Africa, also African versions of Christianity and African-American religions in the New World.
RELA 390 – Islam In Africa (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 319
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
Historical and topical introduction to Islam in Africa. Cross-listed as RELI 390.
Prerequisite: RELA 275, RELI 207, RELI 208, or instructor permission.
RELC 305 – Theologies Of Liberation (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 337
Instructor: Corey D. B. Walker
Who is God to the oppressed? What does it mean to do Christian theology from the underside? This course will critically examine the ideas, methodologies, and orientations of different theological trajectories within the field of Liberation Theology, including African-American, Gay/Lesbian, Latin American, Minjung, Mujerista, and Womanist theologies of liberation. The course will focus on theological method, modes of social and economic analysis particularly those perspectives inspired by varieties of critical theory and philosophies of liberation, and challenges to traditional Christian theologies.
RELG 321 – African American Religious History
T R 1100-1215 MIN 130
Instructor: TBA
Department of Sociology
SOC 341 – Race And Ethnic Relations (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 319
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
The terms “race” and “ethnicity,” and issues associated with them are, to say the least, problematic. The meanings of these – and related – terms are unclear and policies that address “racial” issues are usually very contentious. Why is this the case? Why is race, seemingly, a source of unending conflict? This course will address these questions by examining the general issue of race from a historical and comparative perspective.
SOC 410 – African American Communities (3)
T R 1530-1645 CAB 216
Instructor: Rick Turner
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear, comprehensive understanding of the history, struggles and diversity of the African-American community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the African-American community within urban society and on the need for students to obtain knowledge of the cultural history of African-Americans. The course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for African-American people's sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. By means of discussion, lectures, videos, reading, writing, and class presentation, this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamics of the African-American community.
SOC 442 – Sociology Of Inequality (3)
M W 1530-1645 CAB 338
Instructor: Bethany P. Bryson
A survey of basic theories and methods used to analyze structures of social inequality. Includes comparative analysis of the inequalities of power and privilege, both their causes and their consequences for social conflict and social change.
Spring 2004
African-American and African Studies Program
AAS 102 – Introduction io African-American and African Studies II: Cross-Currents in the African Diaspora (3)
T R 12:30-1:45 PHS 204
Instructor: Corey D.B. Walker
This team-taught course builds upon and expands on the subjects and themes developed in AAS 101: Introduction to African-American Studies and African Studies. With a temporal focus on the 20th century, we will critically explore and analyze the links and disjunctions in the cultural, economic, political, and intellectual practices and experiences of people of African descent throughout the African diaspora. This course features an interdisciplinary approach in developing conceptual, theoretical, and analytical frameworks for understanding the depth and range of experiences of people of African descent in the Americas, Caribbean, Europe, and Africa. Beginning with an overview of the history, theoretical questions, and methods of the Black Studies Project, the course is divided into three units that examine African diasporic social and political thought and expression; identity formation and comparative racial classification; and literary, cultural, and aesthetic currents in the African diaspora.
AAS 366 – African-American History Since 1865 (3)
M W 2-2:50 RFN G004A
Instructor: Reginald D. Butler and Scot A. French
This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in the United States. We will examine some of the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities, paying particular attention to how African Americans themselves shaped their experiences. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the intersection of the “local” and the “global.” Course requirements include weekly reading responses, a short paper, midterm, and final. Texts may include: Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow; Richard Wright, Black Boy; Theodore Rosengarten, All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw; and Deborah McDowell, Leaving Pipe Shop. (Cross-listed with HIUS 366)
AAS 401 - Independent Study (3)
TBA
AAS 406A – Black Modernity (3)
M 1:00-3:30 MIN 108
Instructor: Davarian Baldwin
This class interrogates the text and contexts of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man to create a working definition of a “Black modernity.” Specifically, bringing historical and cultural analysis to bear on a single work of fiction, this course will survey key themes in the Black modern experience from 1899 to 1950 including migration, urbanization, the black modern aesthetic, black radicalism and black nationalism. While modernity has been generally understood to consist of secularization, mass production, and consumption, scientific rationalization and democratization, black people in the West have had an uneven relationship to these processes. With W.E.B. DuBois’ concept of “double-consciousness” in mind, this course explores the uneven relationship the black subject has had as both outside of, yet central to the modern experience. It should be noted that neither literary, film, nor social scientific texts take on a primary position in this critical reading, thinking and writing intensive course. All texts are used in a fully interdisciplinary framework where the conceptualization of a Black modernity becomes the primary focus of analysis. Those looking to get basic African American history or to simply read the novel should not take this course. As an upper-level seminar that only meets once a week, this is a reading, writing, thinking and participation intensive course. Requirements include two 3-5 page film critiques, five 4-6 page papers (every other week), two 2-3 page conceptual reflection papers, and a take-home final exam.
AAS 406B – Beyond Black And White: Race In 20th Century America (3)
W 1:00-3:30 MIN 108
Instructor: Peter Flora
How is race lived and understood in America? How has each new generation of Americans remade race for its own time from the experiences and ideas of earlier generations? This seminar will tackle these questions by examining the history of racial thought in America since the late nineteenth century. Students' grades will be based on participation in weekly discussions of assigned readings (200-250 pgs/wk), a 4-5-page review essay, and a 20-page research paper on a course-related topic supervised by the instructor. Course readings will include both primary and secondary sources, and will draw from authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Richard Rodriguez, Barbara Fields, and Cornel West, among others.
AAS 406C – Religion And Diaspora (3)
M 930-1200 MIN 108
Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora
The aim of this seminar course is to compare and contrast three functions of the term Diaspora that can be discerned from history. The course begins with an in depth study of the meaning of the term Diaspora given by the rise of the Jewish nation in biblical history. This will be followed by case studies of other uses of the term, for example a) in Rastafarianism in a cultural matrix of the transatlantic world of former African slaves and b) in the rise of Apartheid in South African history. Each student will write a 20 page essay based on material presented in class as part of preliminary research to be carried out while the seminar series runs. Basic reading material will be made available on toolkit to be supported by literature to be identified in the library through working on the 20-page essay.
AAS 406D – The Color Of Work: Labor, Race, And History In South Africa And The United States (3)
R 1-330 RFN 173
Instructor: Clare Terni
How do social constructions of race shape and legitimate peoples? Working lives? This course will explore comparative histories of South Africa and the United States in order to critically consider what it means to be black, white, and working in each of these countries. Special attention will be paid to the mining industries of South Africa and West Virginia, comparisons between Jim Crow and the apartheid system, and the impact of working conditions on the lives of people associated with male workers: their families, age-mates, prostitutes, and others. Students' grades will be based on participation in weekly discussions of readings (ca. 200 pages/wk), a 4-5 page review essay, one class presentation of a reading, and a 20-page research paper on a topic related to the course and supervised by the instructor. Course readings will include material from both history and anthropology, from authors such as Leonard Thompson, John Cell, David Roediger, and Talal Asad, accompanied by primary source materials from both South Africa and the US.
AAS 406E - Afra-Amer-Indians:Constructions Of Race, Identity, And Memory (3)
R 930-1045 PV8 (Pavilion 8) 103
Instructor: Anjana Mebane-Cruz
For many, this class will the their introduction to the concept of "Black-Indians" and the history of mixed race Indians in the US. The course will explore some of the constructs of race categories, perceptions and history building from the colonial period to the present. The course will attend to the ways in which people resist and subvert categorization and legitimacy while even while constructing and preserving memory and identity. There will be guest lecturers from/associated with Afra-Amer-Indian groups. Requirements: Two ten-page papers as well as two or three one page response papers to critical articles/papers. There will be a fifteen page midterm. Final to be decided.
AAS 451 - Distinguished Majors Program/ Directed Research (3)
TBA
AAS 452 - Distinguished Majors Program/Thesis (3)
TBA
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 401D - The Color of Work: Labor, Race, And History In South Africa And The United States (3)
R 1-330 RFN 173
Instructor: Clare Terni
(Cross-listed as AAS 406D; see course description above.)
ANTH 401E - Afra-Amer-Indians (3)
R 930-1045 PV8 (Pavilion 8) 103
Instructor: Anjana Mebane-Cruz
(Cross-listed as ANTH 401E; see course description above.)
ANTH 256 – African Cultures (3)
M W F 9-9:50 RFN G004C
Instructor: Lisa Shutt
Through this course, students will gain an understanding of the richness and variety of African life. While no course of this kind can hope to give more than a broad overview of the continent, students will learn which intellectual tools and fundamental principles are necessary for approaching the study of the hundreds of cultures that exist today on the African continent. Drawing from ethnographic texts, literary works and documentary and feature films, specific examples of African peoples and their lifeways will be selected in order to sample the cultural richness and diversity of the African continent. Fills the Non-Western Perspectives Requirement
ANTH 267 – How Others See Us (3)
M W 10-10:50 RFN G004C
Instructor: Ira Bashkow
This course examines how America, the West, and the white racial mainstream are viewed by "others" in different parts of the world and introduces anthropological perspectives on culture, colonialism, identity, race, and discourses of otherness. Readings and films deal with topics such as the views of Islamist extremists, African perspectives on European colonialism, American Indian responses to Anglo-Americans, Chinese writings about America, Papua New Guinean constructions of white expatriates, the portrayal of whites in Japanese advertising, and critiques of the "invisibility" of whiteness in the U.S. We will ask what others' views can (and can't) teach us about the anthropology of our own lives, as well as about the possibilities and problems of cross-cultural understanding in general. Course requirements center on extensive reading assignments and an interview-based field research project to be conducted in local communities.
ANTH 388 – African Archaelogy (3)
M W F 9-9:50 GIL 141
Instructor: Adria LaViolette
This course surveys the archaeological knowledge currently available about the African continent. The emphasis will be on the Late Stone Age, when fully modern humans dominate the cultural landscape, and the subsequent Iron Age, but will also briefly cover pre-modern humans and the archaeology of the colonial period. We will discuss the great social, economic, and cultural transformations in African history known primarily through archaeology, and the most important archaeological sites and discoveries on the continent. Throughout the course a theme will be the politics of the past, and the changing role of the practice of archaeology in Africa.
ANTH 565 – Creole Narratives (3)
T R 12:30-1:45 PHS 205
Instructor: George Mentore
We begin with 18th- and 19th-century Caribbean intellectual life. We do so from the perspective of European imperialism and its influences upon colonized values, slavery, race, class and color. We examine the persistence of these major themes through the 20th century, formalized in the battle of ideas between the elite of the mother country and the Creole upper classes. We will attempt to read the images of the Creole self and explore their claims for a crisis of identity. We will also focus on the so-called spiritual character of the Creole personality. We shall conclude by looking at the way in which the specifics of island culture have directed nation building and how they appear to have helped in the perpetuation of ideological and political dependencies.
Department of Economics
ECON 415 – Economics Of Labor (3)
T R 11-12:15 RSH 104
Instructor: William Johnson
Prerequisite: ECON 301 (or 311) and 371 (or its equivalent), or permission of instructor
Economic analysis of employment and wages, including the economics of education, unemployment, labor unions, discrimination and income inequality.
Department of English Language and Literature
ENAM 314: African American Survey II (3)
M W 2-3:15 PHS 205
Instructor: Marlon Ross
A continuation of ENAM 313, African American Literature I, this course concentrates on twentieth- and twenty-first century African American literature and culture. Focusing on the changing notions of racial identification, this lecture and discussion based class will address a wide array of genres - including fiction, poetry, drama, polemical prose, autobiography, music, photography, and film - shaping and shaped by pivotal cultural and political movements, such as the "New Negro," the Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights, Black Arts/Black Power, womanism, as well as current debates over matters like hip hop, same-sexuality, affirmative action, incarceration, and "premature death." Writers include, but are not limited to, Charles Chesnutt, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, Anne Spencer, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Margaret Walker, Amiri Baraka, Huey Newton, Carolyn Rodgers, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. Mandatory assignments include two response papers, quizzes, midterm and final exams.
ENAM 382: The Black College Campus (3)
M W 2-3:15 CAU 134
Instructor: K. Ian Grandison
A student-centered, reading, seeing, discussion, and communication course, we consider the ways in which identity politics are implicated spatially in built environments. Focusing on how the campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities were shaped by—and shaped—the struggle over African-American education particularly during the Jim Crow Period, we explore built environments as arenas of cultural conflict and negotiation. How do built environments such as college campuses assign and assert the “proper” place of individuals and groups in social hierarchies? How do subordinated groups resist these processes? From the uncomfortable union of “agriculture” and “industry” and “education”—such as connoted by the label “Cow School” for land-grant institutions—to the cultural uses of gothic architecture in avowing the high status of “Ivy League” institutions, we open up discourse on built environments to engage the politics that circumscribe built environments. We will tease out working concepts and methods that help de-center the paradigm of interpreting built environments art-historically—in relation to rigorously policed canons of accepted types and styles. This will be accomplished through discussion of short readings drawn from within and beyond the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and environmentalism and through occasional field trips, workshops, and lectures. In addition to studying readings in time for class discussion, students will be also required to complete two quizzes, four group exercises, and a semester long group-project. The course will help students engage built environments by integrating knowledge gained from experiencing them with our senses, from studying them by mapping and diagramming spatial relationships, and from interrogating primary and secondary written and oral accounts.
Department of History
HIAF 202- Africa Since 1800 (4)
T R 9:30-10:45 CAB 138
Instructor: John Mason
HIAF 202 examines the last 200 years of African history, beginning with the suppression of the Atlantic slave trade, in the early nineteenth century. The course is divided into four parts. The first is an overview, touching on the slave trade and its consequences, the European conquest of most of the African continent, African resistance to colonial rule, and the reestablishment of Africa independence. We will then retrace these themes, in depth, as they emerge in the history of three specific regions: West Africa, especially Nigeria, Central Africa, especially the Congo and Rwanda, and southern Africa, especially South Africa and Zimbabwe. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which colonialism affected ordinary Africans and with the various strategies Africans employed to resist European domination. HIAF 202 is an introductory course and requires no prior knowledge of African history. Course materials include textbooks, novels, autobiographies, and films.
HIAF 404-Independent Study In African History (3)
TBA
Instructor: Staff
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HILA 330 – South Atlantic Migrations (3)
M 3:30-6 CAB 319
Instructor: Pablo Davis
Throughout its history, the South Atlantic region of the United States (Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Puerto Rico, and US Virgin Islands) has experienced enormous, sometimes wrenching, often creative, and always significant movements of people. Native American life, European settlement (especially Spanish and English), African immigration (most of it involuntary), and the forced exodus of Cherokee and other peoples are all among the most important movements prior to the 20th century. In the past hundred-plus years, Black and White northward migration; the Cuban expatriate community; Puerto Rican migration to the mainland, and other Caribbean and Latin American (im)migration have transformed the cultural, social, economic, and political life not only of the South Atlantic but of the United States as a whole. Increasingly, movement has assumed more complex shapes, at times circular. The course amounts to a collective exploration of why people have moved within, into, and out of the South Atlantic region, and how it has mattered, with particular focus on the past 150 years.
HIST 504 – Monticello Internship (3)
TBA
Instructor: Phyllis Leffler
Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. Directed research, largely in primary source materials, on topics relating to Jefferson's estate, life, and times. Directed by senior members of the Monticello staff. The internships are restricted to graduate students in history and to fourth year undergraduate history majors. A maximum of two students each semester can be admitted to the course.
HIUS324 – 20TH Century South (3)
M W 10-10:50 MRY 209
Instructor: Grace Hale
This course examines the broad history of the American South in the twentieth century, with special emphasis on racial violence, the creation of segregation, class and gender relations within the region, the cultural and economic interdependence of black and white southerners, and the Civil Right Movement and its aftermath. Sources examined will include film, fiction, and music as well as more traditional historical sources like newspapers and court opinions. Students interested in American Studies, African American Studies, and Gender Studies are also welcome. Grading: midterm 25%; paper (5-7 pp) 25%; final exam 30%; participation in discussion sections and attendance at film and documentary screenings 20%.
AAS 366/HIUS 366 – African-American History Since 1865 (3)
M W 2-250 RFN G004A
Instructor: Reginald D. Butler and Scot French
This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in the United States. We will examine some of the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities, paying particular attention to how African Americans themselves shaped their experiences. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the intersection of the “local” and the “global.” Course requirements include weekly reading responses, a short paper, midterm, and final. Texts may include: Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow; Richard Wright, Black Boy: A record of Childhood and Youth; Theodore Rosengarten, All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw; and Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi.
HIUS 367 - History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)
T R 2-2:50 MIN 125
Instructor: Julian Bond
This lecture course will examine the history, philosophies, tactics, events, and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward. The Southern movement--variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement--was a black-lead mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation in the South by the middle 1960s. Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping phases--lobbying, litigation and protest. In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights. In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation, the denial of the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools. The last phase, lasting a decade from '55 to '65, was a period of protest--boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations--as well as organizing campaigns that lay the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s. Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation in the United States. The movement's well and lesser-known proponents and opponents and their stratagems will be examined. Discussion section required. Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five-to-seven page papers.
Department of Music
MUSI 212 - History Of Jazz Music (3)
M W 1-1:50 OCH 101
Instructor: Scott Deveaux
This course is a survey of the history of jazz from its beginnings around 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century. Important instrumental performers, vocalists, composers, and arrangers are listened to and discussed. Lab section is required.
MUSI 307 – Worlds Of Music (3)
T R 3:30-4:45 OCH 107
Instructor: Natalie Serrazin
Prerequisite: Major in music or anthropology, or permission of instructor.
To understand the complexities of global musics, we must begin at home appreciating the diversity of musics within the U.S.-"the global is in the local" (Fabian 1998, 5). This course is an introduction to ethnomusicology primarily for music majors featuring case studies of contemporary musical traditions from the twentieth century.
The study of ethnomusicology is a study of understanding otherness and understanding not only how other people make music, but also the way we tend to perceive other musics as less complex than ours, and we tend to appreciate the music but not the people.
MUSI 309 – Performance In Africa (3)
T R 3:30-4:45 OCH 107
Instructor: Michele Kisliuk
Prerequisite: instructor permission.
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, leading us to question those categories. Class meetings focus not only on musical repertoire, sociomusical circumstances, and processes, but also on the problems and politics of translating performance practice from one cultural context to another. Major in music or anthropology, or permission of instructor. The study of ethnomusicology is a study of understanding otherness and understanding not only how other people make music, but also the way we tend to perceive other musics as less complex than ours, and we tend to appreciate the music but not the people.
Department of Politics
PLAP 370 – Racial Politics (3)
M W 11-11:50 CAB 345
Instructor: Lynn Sanders
Racial Politics is about how race shapes American politics. We will look at race in elections, public policy, and public opinion. We will examine how the political thinking and choices of people of different races differs, how racial politics implicates ideas about class and gender, and how scholarship on race depends on the race of the person conducting it. We will consider the implications for an increasingly racially diverse and complicated polity of defining race primarily in terms of black/white conflict. Our goal is to see how citizens, politicians and scholars draw on ideas about race, to appreciate when these ideas are reinforced or challenged by our politics, and to become sensitive to the ways in which contemporary social scientific scholarship on race itself informs the politics of race in the U.S. Though American political science is built around models of black/white difference, we will work to criticize and extend these models as we consider the enduring and evolving problem of race in the United States. Above all, our goal is to talk with each other about race both critically and democratically.
PLAP 382 – Civil Liberties And Civil Rights (3)
M W 1-1:50 WIL 301
Instructor: David O’Brien
The course focuses on freedom of speech and religion, the rights of the accused, the right of privacy, and struggles over equality and the equal protection of the law.
PLIR 424 – The International Political Economy Of Africa (3)
T R 2-3:15 PV8 103
Instructor: Andrew Lawrence
This course provides a critical overview of the political economy of Africa, at the local, national, regional and
transnational levels. These multiple perspectives provide a context for analyzing some of the major issues confronting Africa. These include the requisites for economic growth; the politics of AIDS and other diseases; and the crisis of transnational wars and militarized conflicts and their accompanying internal and international
refugee crises. An analysis of these and other issues enables students to address key debates: Is state-led economic development possible in contemporary Africa? What are the prospects for regional integration and African Union? How decisive are international organizations, NGOs, and the transnational ideological context for developments in Africa?
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 276 – African Religions in Americas (3)
M W 12-12:50 CAB 337
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
This course explores the African religious heritage of the Americas. We will concentrate on African-derived religions in Latin America and the Caribbean, such as Cuban Santeria, Haitian Vodou, and the Jamaican Rastafari movement. North American slave religion, the black church, and African-American Islam will also be considered. We will seek to identify their shared religio-cultural "core" while developing an appreciation for the distinctive characteristics and historical contexts of each "New World" tradition. We will address topics such as ideas of God and Spirit; the significance of ritual sacrifice, divination, and initiation; the centrality of trance, ecstatic experience and mediumship; and the role of religion in the struggle for liberation and social justice. Final, Midterm, periodic quizzes on the readings, participation in discussion.
RELA 276 – African Art (3)
T R 9:30-10:45 CAB 210
Instructor: Benjamin Ray
Each student will design an exhibition of African art for presentation on the Web that will incorporate the results of the student's study of African art. The exhibitions will contain an introductory explanation of the exhibit's theme, images of selected African art objects, relevant field-context images, descriptive labels, and other explanatory textual materials. The images of African art will be taken from collections at the Bayly Museum of the University of Virginia, the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, the Hampton University Museum, and The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and are used with copyright permission. The course includes the following curricular components: a brief history of African art studies; African ritual and cosmology; analysis of African art exhibition catalogues; library research on selected art objects; the exhibition of African art in museum contexts; training in Web skills and image processing. The aim of the course is to create exhibitions of African art that attempt to be true to the objects themselves while placing them in an educational environment of value to the exhibitor and the viewer alike.
RELC 310 – Third World Christianity (3)
T R 9:30-10:45 RSH 110
Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora
This course focuses issues of Christian thought in third world histories sharing a colonial past. This is an opportunity to examine various kinds of arguments for Liberation Theology that have come with the translation and adaptation to Latin America, Africa and Asia. Literature that exposes students to writers such as Segundo, the Boff brothers, Desmond Tutu, Allan Boesak, Kwame Bediako and others will be on toolkit to read alongside The Cambridge Companion on Liberation Theology (Edited by Christopher Rowland) The main aim in class meetings is to discuss these articles and the issues they raise in student led discussion, while lectures are used to define Liberation Theology in the light of the impact of Christianity in cultures beyond the western world.
Department of Sociology
SOC 341 – Race And Ethnicity (3)
M W 2-3:15 CAB 316
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
This course provides a graduate level introduction to the field of Race and Ethnicity. As such, it attempts to cover a broad spectrum of topics, focusing on the theoretical and consequential aspects of conceptions of race and ethnicity. Of necessity, the course also has a historical focus, since modern-day debates over race are strongly conditioned by the past. Moreover, to really understand issues of race and ethnicity, we must take a cross-cultural perspective, since these debates have often been skewed by a focus on the wrenching problems produced by racial/ethnic conflict in the United States. By adopting these perspectives, the course seeks to provide insight into the complexities that surround issues of race and ethnicity.
SOC 410 - African American Communities (3)
T R 3:30-4:45 CAB 123
Instructor: M. Rick Turner
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear, comprehensive understanding of the history, struggles and diversity of the African-American community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the African-American community within urban society and on the need for students to obtain knowledge of the cultural history of African-Americans. The course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for African-American people's sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. By means of discussion, lectures, videos, reading, writing, and class presentation, this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamics of the African-American community.
SOC 442 – Sociology of Inequality (3)
W 1-4:30 CAB 338
Instructor: Bethany P. Bryson
A survey of basic theories and methods used to analyze structures of social inequality. Includes comparative analysis of the inequalities of power and privilege, both their causes and their consequences for social conflict and social change.
Studies in Women and Gender
SWAG 325 – Gender and African Religions (3)
T R 11-12:15 BRN 328
Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora
The aim is to bring together reading material on different religious traditions of Africa including (Christianity and Islam) from which we can learn about some of the ways religion shapes attitudes to gender in contemporary African societies. African creation myths and examples of ritual behavior, will be used to shed light on concepts of gender that explain both the oppression and ritual 'power' in traditional societies. This will be followed by seminar work led by students on different chapters of Mukonyora's forthcoming book on the impact of colonial conquest on changing attitudes to sexuality in the modern African society of Zimbabwe. Group discussions led by students will be a regular feature of this class that ends with an overview of the challenges that face women in modern African societies where religious movements are widespread.
Swahili
SWAH 101 – Introductory Swahili (3)
M W F 10-10:50 PV8 103
Instructor:
Introduces the most widely spoken indigenous language of East-Central Africa. Focuses on speaking, comprehension, reading and writing skills, and the language in its cultural context.
SWAH 102 – Intermediate Swahili (3)
M W F 12-12:50 PV8 103
Instructor:
No description available.
University Seminar
USEM 171/0020 – The Black and White 60’s (2)
T 3:30-5:30 PV8
Instructor: Julian Bond
The 1960’s saw a generation of young people begin to build movements, which would stop a war abroad and start a war at home. What made these movements for peace and equal rights possible? What events triggered them? Who were participants? What is their legacy in the present? This seminar – through biographies activists in the movements – attempts to answer these and other questions as we examine personalities, events, and culture of the 1960s. Students will be required to write a comprehensive a paper on a 60’s subject – a participant, an organization, a movement.
Fall 2003
African-American and African Studies Program
AAS 101 - Introduction to African-American and African Studies (4)
T R 1230-1345 WIL 301
Instructor: Reginald D. Butler and Scot French
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.
AAS 305/RELC 305 - Black Theology (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 337
Instructor: Corey D. B. Walker
This lecture and discussion course will introduce students to a few of the significant topics and themes in the field of black theology. Among some of the major topics to be discussed include the emergence and academic codification of black theology, its challenge to other Christian theologies, its doctrinal orientations, and its relation to other theologies of liberation. Readings will primarily be drawn from the foundational texts of James H. Cone. We will also consult texts by Dwight Hopkins, William R. Jones, Deloris Williams, and others.
AAS 323/ HIUS 323 - Rise And Fall Of The Slave South (3)
M W 1100 -1150 MIN 125
Instructor: Edward L. Ayers
This course will explore the emergence and destruction of the most powerful slave society of the modern world: the American South. It will begin with the sixteenth century and extend through the Civil War and Reconstruction. We will examine the lives of slaves and slaveowners, small farmers and large planters, men and women, soldiers and civilians.
Readings will be diverse, including original documents, materials on the Web, fiction, and secondary accounts. Requirements include a midterm and final as well as a substantial research paper; the course fulfills the Second Writing Requirement. Energetic participation in a weekly discussion section is a central part of the course.
AAS 365/HIUS 365 – African-American History To 1865 (3)
T R 1230-1345 WIL 301
Instructor: Reginald Butler and Scot French
This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in British colonial North America and the United States through 1865. We will examine changing constructions of race, gender, and class, as well as the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities associated with this period. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the intersection of the "local" and the "global." Weekly reading assignments will average about 150-175 pages. Grade will be based on participation, weekly reading responses, one short paper, a midterm, and a final.
AAS 401 - Independent Study (3)
TBA
AAS 405A/HILA 403 – Thinking From Cuba (4)
R 1300-1530 CAB B029
Instructor: Brian Owensby
What is it to try to see the world from another perspective? Can we ever do it? Is classroom experience enough? With these questions front and center, this course will explore the history of Cuba, from the colonial period to the contemporary era. Chronologically we will cover conquest, slavery, Spanish colonialism, US neocolonialism, and Revolution. Thematically, we will be concerned to understand the structures of slavery, the culture of race in a multi-racial society, the experience of living under colonial and neocolonial powers, the efforts to define a national identity in part through Afro-Cuban culture, and the meaning of an egalitarian revolution in relation to Cuba's past. This class will be unusual in that it will begin here at UVa and finish on site in Havana, Cuba. After a full semester's worth of academic work here, the class will move to Havana in early January for a 7-day extension of the semester. During that week we will hear from Cuban scholars, activists, and government officials, read and discuss works of history and fiction, hold nightly seminars, explore Havana for clues to how everyday life is lived and probably hear some Cuban music. Instructor permission is required for this course. Enrollment limited to 10. If interested, please see Prof. Owensby in Randall 122, W 1330-1430 or Th 1100-1200. Preference for those with some knowledge of Spanish.
AAS 405B – African Modernity: Readings In African Studies (3)
M 9:30-12:00 MIN 108
Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora
This course is designed to allow students an opportunity to spend the first six weeks of the semester examining two well-known books that further understanding of the political, social, and religious dimension of living in Africa today. Augmented by lecture material based on other African writers and seminar discussions that require active student participation, the first book to be looked at is entitled The Idea of Africa by Victor Mudimbe, followed by In My Fathers's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture by Anthony Appiah. Students will be required to read these two books in the first six weeks of the semester before time is allocated for independent research that draws on the extra literature by African writers such as John Mbiti, Kwasi Wiredu, Paulin Hountondji and others responding to the challenges of Western hegemony. Written assignment is a 20-page paper on a selection of topics agreed in class. This class satisfies the following AAS major requirements -- 1) course in humanities, 2) course on Africa, and 3) 400-level or above course with term paper.
AAS 451 - Distinguished Majors Program/ Directed Research (3)
TBA
AAS 452 - Distinguished Majors Program/Thesis (3)
TBA
AAS 529 – Topics In Race Theory (3)
M 1900-2130
Instructor: Wende Marshall
This course will examine theories and practices of race and otherness, in order to analyze and interpret constructions, deconstructions and reconstructions of race (particularly whiteness) from the late 18th to the 21st centuries. Central to our discussion will be the "progress" paradigm, so essential to positivism and western social science, and the relationships between race/whiteness, culture, nation, gender, and history.
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 529A – Topics In Race Theory (3)
M 1900-2130 CAB 432
Instructor: Wende Marshall
This course will examine theories and practices of race and otherness, in order to analyze and interpret constructions, deconstructions and reconstructions of race (particularly whiteness) from the late 18th to the 21st centuries. Central to our discussion will be the "progress" paradigm, so essential to positivism and western social science, and the relationships between race/whiteness, culture, nation, gender, and history.
Department of English Language and Literature
ENCR 481B – Race, Space, And Culture (3)
W 1830-2100 CAM 108
Instructors: K. Ian Grandison and Marlon Ross
This multi-disciplinary course explores racial and other cultural identities in relation to the built environment and other conceptions of space. How has the concept of race helped to shape our interactions with space in both conscious and unconscious ways? How have our historical constructs of space helped to determine, in both articulated and inarticulate ways, what it means to identify with, or against, one cultural identity or another? Co-taught by Marlon Ross of English and African-American Studies and K. Ian Grandison of Landscape Architecture and American Studies, the course draws from and beyond the disciplines represented by its instructors to synthesize ways of interrogating the written, graphic, filmic, and field resources necessary for broadening our understanding of space. The course provides a forum for weekly discussion hinged on targeted readings (such as James Weldon Johnson's Black Manhattan, Oscar Newman's Defensible Space: Crime Prevention Through Urban Design, Philip Deloria's Playing Indian, Leslie Kanes Weisman's Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment, and Marc Leepson's Saving Monticello: The Levy Familys Epic Quest to Rescue the House that Jefferson Built), films (such as National Geographic's Gorilla and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing), and local field trips (such as to Woolen Mills, Monticello, and Vinegar Hill). Relating to the inter-disciplinary thrust of the course, students will have the opportunity to work in small teams to lead selected class sessions, to complete a research project, and to participate in a final Open-House that serves as the capstone for the course.
ENAM 313-Early African American Literature I (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 332
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
This course surveys pivotal moments and texts in the history of African-American prose, from l760, the date of Briton Hammon's Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings to l901, the year of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery. We will work our way through canonical and non-canonical texts and through multiple genres-- captivity narratives, spiritual autobiographies, slave narratives, sermons, execution sermons, criminal narratives, speeches, novels--and will explore a number of issues related to literary history, culture, aesthetics, authorship, audience, genre, and narratology. Among the questions to be explored? How have literary historians given shape to or "storied" this tradition? How do black women's writings complicate these "fictions" of literary history? What is the relation between the black vernacular tradition and the black "literary" text? How do the white abolitionists and editors involved in the production of slave narratives trouble traditional conceptions of authorship? Who "authors" a speech by Sojourner Truth that is stenographically transcribed and appears in multiple versions? What confluence of factors and ideologies explain the "canonical" version of "Ain't I a Woman?" Other texts include Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Harriet Wilson's Our Nig; Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom; David Walker's Appeal; Pauline Hopkins's Contending Forces, and Thomas Gray's Confessions of Nat Turner. We will work to situate these and other selections in the political, cultural, and critical controversies of their time and ours.
ENAM 481A - African-American Women Writers (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB B020
Instructor: Angela Davis
We will read several novels and short stories by African-American Women, examining in particular how the authors portray black women as individuals and in the context of American society. This course requires active class participation, four written responses to readings (each one typed page long) and a formal essay (ten to twelve pages long). The reading list is: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls...; Toni Morrison, Sula, and Tar Baby; Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble; Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones; Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place.
Prerequisite: The course is restricted to fourth year majors in English, Women's Studies and African-American and African Studies.
ENAM 481B – Early African-American Literature (3)
T R 1100-1215 BRN 332
Instructor: Deborah E. McDowell
This course surveys pivotal moments and texts in the history of African-American prose, from l760, the date of Briton Hammon's Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings to l901, the year of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery. We will work our way through canonical and non-canonical texts and through multiple genres-- captivity narratives, spiritual autobiographies, slave narratives, sermons, execution sermons, criminal narratives, speeches, novels--and will explore a number of issues related to literary history, culture, aesthetics, authorship, audience, genre, and narratology. Among the questions to be explored? How have literary historians given shape to or "storied" this tradition? How do black women's writings complicate these "fictions" of literary history? What is the relation between the black vernacular tradition and the black "literary" text? How do the white abolitionists and editors involved in the production of slave narratives trouble traditional conceptions of authorship? Who "authors" a speech by Sojourner Truth that is stenographically transcribed and appears in multiple versions? What confluence of factors and ideologies explain the "canonical" version of "Ain't I a Woman?" Other texts include Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl;
Harriet Wilson's Our Nig; Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom; David Walker's Appeal; Pauline Hopkins's Contending Forces, and Thomas Gray's Confessions of Nat Turner. We will work to situate these and other selections in the political, cultural, and critical controversies of their time and ours.
ENAM 481C – Representations Of Slavery (3)
M W 1400-1515 CAB 247
Instructor: Stephen F. Railton
Slavery was a fact of American life for the first 250 years of the country's existence, but we'll be studying it at one remove. Our focus will be on how slavery has been imagined, conceived or re-presented by American writers, black and white, and by American culture, during the last 150 years. We'll start with Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and end with Morrison's Beloved. In between we'll read novels and stories by Twain, Cable, Chesnutt, Mitchell, Faulkner and a few others. We'll study theatrical and cinemagaphic enactments of slavery, from minstrelsy to the "Tom Shows" derived from Stowe's novel to films like Gone with the Wind. Assignments will include a couple short pieces, an oral report, and a seminar essay.
Department of French Language and Literature
FREN 346 – Topics In African Culture (3)
M W 1300-1350 CAB 236
Instructor: Majida Bargach
La littérature francophone marocaine prend ses racines dans l'Afrique, la France coloniale mais aussi dans le monde arabo-musulman et dans les cultures berbères et judéo-arabe. C'est cette extraordinaire mixité culturelle et ethnique que des auteurs marocains d'expression française vont illustrer dans leurs ouvrages, depuis l'époque coloniale jusqu'à nos jours. Après avoir étudié des œuvres écrites durant le protectorat français au Maroc ou relatant cette période, nous aborderons la littérature contemporaine expression des rêves, des mythes et des aspirations politiques et sociales.
FREN 443 – Africa In Cinema (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 235
Instructor: Kandioura Drame
Study of the representation of Africa in American, Western European and African films. Ideological Constructions of the African as "other". History of African cinema. Sociological and ideological filmmakers from different cultural backgrounds and studies the ways in which their perspectives on Africa are often informed by their own social and ideological positions as well as the demands of exoticism. It also examines the constructions of the African as "other" and the kinds of responses such constructions have elicited from Africa's filmmakers. These filmic "inventions" are analyzed through a selection of French, British, American, and African films by such directors as John Huston, S. Pollack, J-J Annaud, M. Radford, Ngangura Mweze, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Souleymane Cisse, Gaston Kabore, Amadou Seck, Dani Kouyate, Brian Tilley, Jean-Marie Teno on a variety of subjects relative to the image of Africa in cinema. The final grade will be based on 2 short papers (4 pages/each), a final paper (7-10 pages), an oral presentation and contributions to discussions. Each oral presentation will lead to a written paper on the subject of the presentation; the paper will address suggestions made during discussions in class. Papers should be analytical, written in clear and grammatical French using correct terminology supplied with this description.
Department of History
HIAF 201- Early African History Through The Era Of The Slave Trade (4)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 345
Instructor: Joseph C. Miller
Early African History draws Africans' distinctive achievements in culture, politics, and economic strategies out from the mists of the once-dark continent's unwritten past. Starting with the dawn of history and taking the story up in detail from the millennium before the Present Era, HIAF 201 follows the sometimes-surprising ways in which village elders, women, merchants, kings, cattle lords, and ordinary farmers pursued meaningful lives without the technologies that modern Americans take for granted. The last third of the course examines the ironic interplay of tragedy and achievement in a continent increasingly trapped in exiling its own people in slavery to Europeans, until the Atlantic slave trade began to wind down after about 1800. (A second semester of African history, HIAF 202, taught in the spring, narrates subsequent events down through twentieth-century colonialism and the post-1960 era of independence and impoverishment.)
HIAF 201 is a lower-division introductory survey. The instructor presents the major themes of early African history in lectures twice each week. Students meet additionally in discussion sections for review of readings, quizzes, and preparation for written assignments. Requirements include weekly map quizzes, a mid-term examination (only the better of two tries counts), three short papers (4-5 pages) rehearsing historical questions for the mid-terms and considering the written sources on Africa's past, and a final examination (format to be negotiated with the class). The course belongs to the African-American and African Studies curriculum, meets the "non-western" requirement for the major in History, and qualifies for the College "non-western perspectives" area requirement. Students may rewrite one of the papers to fulfill the College Second Writing Requirement.
Readings revolve around weekly assignments in a text (Shillington, History of Africa), for a total of about 225 pages. Other assigned chapters and professional articles introduce the distinctive methodologies of doing history without written sources (including the famous Mande oral epic Sundiata), highlight interpretive ("historiographical") issues, and consider concepts relevant to understanding early Africa. The total number of assigned pages runs at approximately 1200.
No formula determines final marks. Students are graded according to their "highest consistent performance" in all aspects of the course, including attendance at lectures and participation in discussions, with allowance made for the unfamiliarity of the subject matter early in the term; a number of options allow students to devise a combination of graded work that will accommodate other academic commitments and reflect specialized abilities most accurately.
HIAF 201 presumes no prior knowledge of Africa or experience with the study of history. Since the subject is new to nearly everyone in the course, consistent application and preparation is expected, particularly early in the term. Students in all four years of their undergraduate careers and in all colleges of the University complete the course with success.
Most find it a challenging opportunity to discover and examine assumptions about modern Americans -- themselves included -- they did not know they held.
HIAF 302 – History Of Southern Africa (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 423
Instructor: John Mason
HIAF 302 is a lecture and discussion course on the history of southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, emphasizing South Africa. The course begins with a look at the precolonial African societies of the region, before moving on to a study of the conquest, colonialism, the rise and fall of apartheid, and the recent rebirth of African independence.
By the end of the nineteenth century, all of the African peoples of southern Africa had been conquered by European powers and incorporated into Dutch, British, Portuguese, and German colonial empires. Conquest did not come easily. Every society in the region resisted European domination fiercely, sometimes for many decades before being finally defeated. Colonialism and African responses to it dramatically reshaped societies in southern African, transforming political and economic systems, gender and class relations, and even religious beliefs.
Resistance to colonialism assumed new forms in the twentieth century, as Africans began to bridge ethnic divisions to create multi-ethnic trade unions, political parties, and liberation movements. Particularly in South Africa, multi-ethnic nationalism evolved into nonracialism, uniting blacks and progressive whites in the ultimately successful struggle against apartheid.
HIAF 302 is an introductory course and assumes no prior knowledge of African history.
HIAF 402- What’s Wrong With Africa (4)
T R 1400-1515 PV8 108
Instructor: John Mason
War, famine, disease, and unending poverty... This is the Africa that we too often read about in newspapers and magazines and see on TV. While this sort of coverage is misleading--Africa is not simply a continent-wide disaster area--there is enough truth in the images of human suffering to cause Africans and non-Africans alike to ask, What's wrong with Africa?
HIAF 402 explores the roots of Africa's multiple crises, focussing primarily on Africa's relations with the rest of the world, especially the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. Topics include the overseas slave trade, conquest and colonialism, anti-colonial liberation struggles, and post-colonial politics and economics. Course materials include African novels and movies and current scholarship from Africa and the west.
HIAF 404-Independent Study In African History (3)
TBA
Instructor: Staff
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HIST 504 – Monticello Intership (3)
Day: TBA 0930-1045
Instructor: Phyllis Leffler
Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. Directed research, largely in primary source materials, on topics relating to Jefferson's estate, life, and times. Directed by senior members of the Monticello staff. The internships are restricted to graduate students in history and to fourth year undergraduate history majors. A maximum of two students each semester can be admitted to the course.
HIST 511-Slavery In World History (3)
M 1300-1530 PV5 109
Instructor: Joseph C. Miller
HIAF 511 is a small seminar-style class for graduate students and advanced undergraduates (with instructor's
permission) that will explore historical approaches to the study of one of the world's oldest, most ubiquitous, and most tragic, institutions. Most Americans are familiar with slavery only as it developed in the Old South in the decades before the Civil War. In fact, Greeks, Roman, Muslims, Africans, Renaissance Italians, Brazilians, West Indian planters, Buddhists, Maori, and many others also held significant numbers of people -- by no means all of them African -- in bondage. Most also treated slavery as a way to assimilate foreigners, not as the racially exclusive dead end that American laws of slavery prescribed. The objective of HIAF 511 is to move beyond static stereotypes and consider the enslavement as a process of its many distinctive times and places in world history.
Recent major works in this enormous field (some 700-800 academic studies appear each year focused primarily on slavery) will form the basis for weekly class discussions. In addition, each member of the class will select one region and prepare a substantial term-paper (i.e. based on secondary authorities) setting its experiences with slavery in the relevant historical context. The background reading for the modern portions of the course will be Robin Blackburn's The Making of New World Slavery. Other, extremely varied readings will develop the history of slavery in the ancient Mediterranean, the Islamic world, Africa, medieval Europe, Brazil, the Caribbean, and colonial North America, and the United States.
HIAF 511 carries no specific pre-requisites, but its broad setting presumes a general familiarity with several parts of the globe, or a willingness to assimilate a considerable quantity of new material during the semester.
All stages of writing a polished term paper (a preliminary paper proposal, an interim draft, a revised draft, and the final submission) will receive close editorial attention, with the object of developing clarity and efficiency in writing; students will be expected to prepare each one of these steps sufficiently in advance of deadlines to revise before submitting, on time. The paper will constitute the final examination for the course.
Students will also be graded on their grasp of the readings as demonstrated in contributions of relevant insight from them to class discussions.
The instructor will work with students to define paper topics that will support special interests in given times or places and will support petitions to count this course toward appropriate area and other requirements within the history major or, for graduate students, to support history fields or programs in other departments. Undergraduates may use the course to meet the Second Writing Requirement.
Please contact the instructor (<jcm7a@virginia.edu>, 924-6395) if you are considering enrolling in the course, in order to understand its learning strategy and to plan your participation in it in ways that will develop your broader educational goals.
HIUS 323/AAS 323 – Rise And Fall Of The Slave South (3)
T R 0930-1045 MIN 125
Instructor: Edward L. Ayers
This course will explore the emergence and destruction of the most powerful slave society of the modern world: the American South. It will begin with the sixteenth century and extend through the Civil War and Reconstruction. We will examine the lives of slaves and slave owners, small farmers and large planters, men and women, soldiers and civilians.
Readings will be diverse, including original documents, materials on the Web, fiction, and secondary accounts. Requirements include a midterm and final as well as a substantial research paper; the course fulfills the Second Writing Requirement. Energetic participation in a weekly discussion section is a central part of the course.
HIUS 328 – History Of Virginia To 1865 (3)
M W F 1100-1150 GIL 190
Instructor: William Thomas
This course covers the social, political, and economic development of Virginia up to 1865. The course examines key subjects in Virginia's colonial and antebellum history: the life and culture of Virginia's Native Americans, the colonial experience at Jamestown and white colonial settlement, the development of slavery in the Chesapeake region, the establishment of colonial society, the Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, Nat Turner's Rebellion, and the secession of Virginia in 1861.
Requirements for the course include three 5-7 page papers and a final exam. One of the papers will include research in Alderman Library's Special Collections. The course will feature both lecture and discussion during the weekly meetings. The course will use a reader of primary source readings from the period, such as Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia and other documents, autobiographies, and texts. In addition, the course will include some of the following readings:
T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, Myne Own Ground
Charles Dew, Apostles of Disunion
Joseph Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
Rhyss Issac, The Transformation of Virginia
Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom
Helen Rountree, The Powhatan Indians of Virginia
HIUS 365/AAS 365 -African-American History, Through Reconstruction (3)
T R 1230-1345 WIL 301
Instructor: Reginald Butler and Scot French
This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in British colonial North America and the United States through 1865. We will examine changing constructions of race, gender, and class, as well as the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities associated with this period. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the intersection of the "local" and the "global." Weekly reading assignments will average about 150-175 pages. Grade will be based on participation, weekly reading responses, one short paper, a midterm, and a final. (Cross-listed with HIUS 365.)
HIUS 367 - History Of The Civil Rights Movement (3)
T R 1400-1450 MIN 125
Instructor: Julian Bond
This lecture course will examine the history, philosophies, tactics, events, and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward.
The Southern movement--variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement--was a black-lead mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation in the South by the middle 1960s.
Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping phases--lobbying, litigation and protest. In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights. In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation, the denial of the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools. The last phase, lasting a decade from '55 to '65, was a period of protest--boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations--as well as organizing campaigns that lay the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s.
Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation in the United States. The movement's well-and lesser-known proponents and opponents and their stratagems will be examined. Discussion section required. Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five-to-seven page papers.
Texts:
Wilkins, Roy, with Tom Matthews, Standing Fast, Da Capo Press
Forman, James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Open Hand Press
Bond, Julian and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit At The Welcome Table, American Heritage
Videos:
"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, Producer, California Newsreel.
Department of Music
MUSI 212 - History Of Jazz Music (3)
M W 1300-1350 OCH 101
Instructor: Scott Deveaux
This course is a survey of the history of jazz from its beginnings around 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century. Important instrumental performers, vocalists, composers, and arrangers are listened to and discussed. Lab section is required.
MUSI 307 – Worlds Of Music (3 )
T R 1530-1645 OCH 107
Instructor: TBA
Prerequisite: Major in music or anthropology, or permission of instructor.
To understand the complexities of global musics, we must begin at home appreciating the diversity of musics within the U.S.-"the global is in the local" (Fabian 1998, 5). This course is an introduction to ethnomusicology primarily for music majors featuring case studies of contemporary musical traditions from the twentieth century.
The study of ethnomusicology is a study of understanding otherness and understanding not only how other people make music, but also the way we tend to perceive other musics as less complex than ours, and we tend to appreciate the music but not the people.
MUSI 369 – African Drumming And Dance (1-2)
T 1715-1930 OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor by audition on first day of class.
A practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (BaAka pygmies), with the intention of performing at the end of the semester. Though no previous experience with music or dance is required, we will give special attention to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, and faithful attendance are required of each class member, the goal being to develop an ongoing UVA African Drumming and Dance Ensemble.
Department of Politics
PLPT 320 – African-American Political Thought(3)
M W 1400-1515 CAB 324
Instructor: Lawrie Balfour
This course aims to introduce you to both the critical and the constructive dimensions of African American political thought in the past two centuries. Through our readings and discussions, we will assess the claims that black Americans have made upon the polity, how they have defined themselves in the face of efforts to demean and exclude them, 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, and the meaning of such core political concepts as freedom, equality, justice, and progress. 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, and class.
Department of Psychology
PSYC 487-The Minority Family: A Psychological Inquiry (3)
M 0900-1130 GIL 225
Instructor: Melvin Wilson
This course examines the current state of research on minority families, focusing on the black family. Emphasizes comparing "deficit" and "strength" research paradigms.
Format: Lecture discussion presentations. No. and type of exams: TBA. Papers or projects: TBA
Prerequisites: PSYC 306 and at least one course from each of the following groups: PSYC 210, 215 or 230, and PSYC 240, 250, or 260, and students in the African-American and African studies or studies in women and gender programs. Telephone Enrollment Restrictions: PSYC majors. If this course is full through ISIS: keep trying through ISIS.
Department of Religious Studies
RELC 305/AAS 305 – A Black Theology Of Liberation(3)
M W 1400-1515 CAB 337
Instructor: Corey D.B. Walker
This lecture and discussion course will introduce students to a few of the significant topics and themes in the field of black theology. Among some of the major topics to be discussed include the emergence and academic codification of black theology, its challenge to other Christian theologies, its doctrinal orientations, and its relation to other theologies of liberation. Readings will primarily be drawn from the foundational texts of James H. Cone. We will also consult texts by Dwight Hopkins, William R. Jones, Deloris Williams, and others.
RELA 389/RELC 389 Christianity In Africa (3)
M W 1400-1515 CAB 424
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
Well known theologians such as Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian and St. Augustine from North Africa have been claimed in contemporary African Church history to be forefathers of both African and western theology. This lecture series begins with the history of Christianity in Africa from late antiquity to the present, paying particular attention to African agency in mission, but also taking into account the histories of conquest surrounding the missionary enterprise. It will be shown how Greco-Roman imperialism and European colonialism beginning with the Portuguese adventures of the14th century have shaped the African response to Christianity. The emergence of African Indigenous Churches will be looked at against this background colonial conquest, missionary paternalism and independency in Africa. Historical, theological and sociological issues will be brought together in this general introduction to Christianity in Africa.
RELC 511 – Black Theology: Theories, Methods, Sources
M W 1530-1800 MCL 2008
Instructor: Corey D. B. Walker
This seminar provides an in-depth historical and systematic study of the field of black theology. Specific and sustained attention will be given to theological implications of the category of "experience" as it relates to the work of several theologians in this area, particularly the early thought of James H. Cone. We will also closely examine some new trajectories in the field, most notably the turn to American pragmatism and to the wide and disparate field of cultural studies. Readings will include analytical as well as constructive texts and will cut across fields and disciplines.
Department of Sociology
SOC 341 – Race And Ethnic Relations (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 319
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
The terms “race” and “ethnicity,” and issues associated with them are, to say the least, problematic. The meanings of these – and related – terms are unclear and policies that address “racial” issues are usually very contentious. Why is this the case? Why is race, seemingly, a source of unending conflict? This course will address these questions by examining the general issue of race from a historical and comparative perspective.
SOC 410 - African American Communities (3)
T R 1530-1645 CAB 216
Instructor: Rick Turner
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear, comprehensive understanding of the history, struggles and diversity of the African-American community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the African-American community within urban society and on the need for students to obtain knowledge of the cultural history of African-Americans. The course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for African-American people's sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. By means of discussion, lectures, videos, reading, writing, and class presentation, this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamics of the African-American community.
SOC 442 – Sociology Of Inequality (3)
M W 1400-1515 CAB 134
Instructor: Bethany P. Bryson
A survey of basic theories and methods used to analyze structures of social inequality. Includes comparative analysis of the inequalities of power and privilege, both their causes and their consequences for social conflict and social change.
SOC 464 – Urban Sociology( 3)
T R 1100-1215 CLK 101
Instructor: Marakova
The course explores changing urban life in different cultural, social and historical settings. It examines both classic and contemporary debates within urban sociology and relates them to the wider concerns of social theory. Among the topics to be discussed are theories of urban development and decline, social segregation and urban inequality, cultural meanings of the city, problems of urban policy and planning.
University Seminar
USEM 171/0020 – The 60s In Black & White (2)
T 1530-1730 PV8 108
Instructor: Julian Bond
The 1960’s saw a generation of young people begin to build movements, which would stop a war abroad and start a war at home. What made these movements for peace and equal rights possible? What events triggered them? Who were participants? What is their legacy in the present? This seminar – through biographies activists in the movements – attempts to answer these and other questions as we examine personalities, events, and culture of the 1960s. Students will be required to write a comprehensive a paper on a 60’s subject – a participant, an organization, a movement.
Spring 2003
Afro-American and African Studies Program
AAS 102 - Introduction To Afro-American Studies II (4)
T R 1230-1345 MIN 125
Instructor: Corey D. B. Walker
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 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. Discussion section required.
AAS/ANTH 250 - Health Of Black Folks (3)
TR 1700 - 1750 RSH 202
Instructors: Wende Marshall and M. Norman Oliver
"The Health of Black Folks" is a course in medical anthropology which will analyze the relationship between black bodies and biomedicine, both historically and in the present. Co-taught by M. Norman Oliver, M.D-a physician (Department of Family Medicine, UVA Health Systems) and anthropologist (Department of Anthropology) and Wende Marshall, a medical anthropologist, the course will offer both political economic, and post-structuralist lenses with which to interpret the individual and social health and disease of African-Americans. Selected topics include the black female body in the middle passage and slavery; the use of race in the human genome project; black bodies as research subjects for biomedical science and the epidemic of cancer and HIV among African Americans. This course is cross listed as ANTH 250.
AAS/ANTH 306 - African Interlocuters (3)
TR 930-1045 MIN 130
Instructor: Hanan Sabea
The course explores how a group of Africans, working primarily as assistants to Europeans interested in Africa during the late 19th and early 20th century, participated in the process of knowledge production about the Continent. We will juxtapose works (textual and otherwise) composed by African assistants to those produced by anthropologists, explorers, missionaries, and administrators to examine if there is a difference in the descriptions and interpretations about Africa and its people. Ethnographies produced by Africans will constitute our third body of texts. Our analysis will focus on an examination of who these Africans and Europeans were, how they came to participate in this process, and how their different positions are reflected in the categories deployed, the methodologies followed, and the assumptions embedded in the accounts. This course satisfies college second writing, non-western perspective and Anthropology majors' cultural diversityrequirements. This course is cross listed as ANTH 306
AAS/HIUS 366 - African American History Since 1865 (3)
MW 1100 - 1150 CAB 138
Instructors: Reginald D. Butler and Scot A. French. This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in the United States from the age of emancipation to the present. The course explores some of the major problems, events, structures, and personalities that shaped their lives, paying particular attention to how black people themselves shaped their experiences. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the "local" (sometimes, but not necessarily, this locality). Readings will include the following: Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow; Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw; Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class; Gena Caponi, Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin', & Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expressive Culture. Grades will be based on section participation, research project, midterm, and final exam. This course is cross-listed as HIUS 366.
AAS 401 - Independent Study (3)
TBA
AAS 406 - Violence And American Democracy (3)
M 1300-1530 PV 5 109
Instructor: Corey D. B. Walker
Contemporary engagements of violence and democracy are typically reserved for discussions of emerging democratic regimes and movements in such places as the "Third World" and former socialist countries. However, there is a general hesitancy in examining the theoretical and historical relationships of violence and American democracy. This seminar will critically examine how and in what ways violence physical, psychological, and symbolic has informed and continues to inform constructions, articulations, and practices of American democracy. Seminar readings will come from selected works of a wide and diverse collection of thinkers, including Thomas Jefferson, Maria Stewart, Alexis de Tocqueville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Anna Julia Cooper, W.E.B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, Judith Butler, and Thomas Dumm. By illuminating the complex and changing relationships of violence and democracy in the United States, it is hoped that seminar participants will come to a deeper understanding of the American experiment with democracy.
AAS 406B - Religion And Diaspora (3)
W 1000-1230 MIN 108
Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora
This course combines in a study of a book that is in the process of being prepared for publication, the way ideas of displacement in Africa have led to the rise of a "diaspora" type of Christianity and Culture in Southern and Central Africa. It is hoped that the students who take part in this seminar come prepared to dialogue with other views of the meaning of diaspora, especially in the African American uses of the word diaspora today. Students need to come prepared for a lot of discussion because this is course takes the format of a seminar with a lot of students involvement.
AAS 406C – Politics Of Culture In Modern South Africa (3)
R 1300-1530 CAB B020
Instructor: Brenna Munro
In this course we will look at the connection between aesthetics and politics in several modern South African cultural arenas, examining the debates that have raged there about race and writing, struggle and art. We will begin with a section on the vibrant urban culture of 1950s Sophiatown, then turn to the "protest writing" of the 70s and 80s, and finish with a section on the new nation and the dilemmas of writing in "transition"; atoning and accounting for the past, and imgaining new futures. Texts may include Bloke Modisane's memoir, Blame Me on History, Miriam Makeba's township jazz, Drum and Staffrider magazine, worker's performance poetry, Dennis Brutus' poems on exile and imprisonment, Athol Fugard's play Blood Knot, Njabulo Ndebele's contentious essays, J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace and Antjie Krog's account of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa. There will be short papers on each section, presentations, and a longer final paper.
AAS 451 - Distinguished Majors Program/ Directed Research (3)
TBA
AAS 452 - Distinguished Majors Program/Thesis (3)
TBA
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 235 - Introduction To Folklore (3)
TR 1400-1515 BRK B001
Instructor: Charles Perdue
Introduction to the materials and methods of folklore study. The course is also intended to be an introduction to folklore scholarship and to the history of the discipline. Materials used as examples in this course-narratives, songs, etc.-are drawn about equally from Anglo and African-American sources. Course Meets Second Writing Requirement
ANTH 281 - Human Origins (3)
MWF 1000-1050 RSH 202
Instructor: Jeffrey Hantman
The course is intended to provide an overview and assessment of the theory, methods, and data used by anthropologists to reconstruct human physical and cultural evolution. Chronologically, the course spans the time from the initial appearance of hominids (ca 4.5 million years ago) to the period prior to the rise of urbanism and early state formation (ca 10,000 B.C.). The course is divided into three topical components: 1) a review of evolutionary theory, and the controversy surrounding that theory; 2) an in-depth survey of the data used to support current models of the pattern of human evolution, and 3) a study of the origins of modern human adaptations in the relatively recent past, with respect to uniquely human behaviors such as complex language, ritual, religion and art.
ANTH 565 -- Creole Narratives (3)
TR 1530-1645
Instructor: George Mentore
This course sets as its principal task -- within the parameters of Caribbean ethnography -- an examination of social being as narrative. Caribbean stories about cultural identity become the analyzable material not only for understanding these regionally and historically distinct societies, but also for forming an anthropology of personhood. We will move through the plots of such characters as Olaudah Equiano, the slave trade, the peasant village, race, nationalism, mimesis, masculinity, femininity, motherhood, and healing. The idea will be to confront and understand (and not be threatened by) the various intertwined identities made vital in the Antilles.
Department Of Art History
ARTH 345 - African Art (3)
TR 0930 - 1045
Instructor: Benjamin Ray
Each student will design an exhibition of African art for presentation on the Web that will incorporate the results of the student's study of African art. The exhibitions will contain an introductory explanation of the exhibit's theme, images of selected African art objects, relevant field-context images, descriptive labels, and other explanatory textual materials. The images of African art will be taken from collections at the Bayly Museum of the University of Virginia, the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, the Hampton University Museum, and The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and are used with copyright permission. The course includes the following curricular components: a brief history of African art studies; African ritual and cosmology; analysis of African art exhibition catalogues; library research on selected art objects; the exhibition of African art in museum contexts; training in Web skills and image processing. The aim of the course is to create exhibitions of African art that attempt to be true to the objects themselves while placing them in an educational environment of value to the exhibitor and the viewer alike.
Department Of Drama
DRAM 307 - Contemporary African American Drama (3)
MWF 1400-1450 CAB 119
Instructor: Ishmail Conway
This course on African-American Theater will provide an opportunity for students to learn about this rich, distinctive American International art form. This particular theatrical experience emanates out of the experience of Africans in America. The course will explore the theatrical experience that enriches audiences, builds Thespians, communicates history and futures. Specifically, this course will explore the personalities, the literature and plays; the great companies, management and advancement; the socio-cultural implications, the technical contributions to theater.
Department of English Language and Literature
ENAM 314- African American Survey II (3)
T R 1100-1215 CAB 323
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
A continuation of ENAM 313, 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, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Carolyn Ferrell, and Terry McMillian. Mandatory assignments include weekly response paragraphs, four response papers, quizzes, midterm and final exams.
ENAM 332- Contemporary African American Drama (3)
TR 1530-1645 BRN 328
Instructor: Lotta Lofgren
This course will study contemporary African American drama from the 1950's to the present. We will examine how the playwrights rework old and invent new forms to express a unique world view in a theatrically viable way. We will ask such questions as: How much should any artist compromise his or her vision in order to be heard? What kind of audience does each playwright write for? How do African American male and female playwrights differ in their outlook and even in their interpretation of the genre? What is their sense of responsibility to the past and to the future? How does the double need to define oneself as an individual and as a member of a group affect the playwrights and their art? We will read works by Alice Childress, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Ed Bullins, Charles Fuller, Adrienne Kennedy, Ntozake Shange, August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, and others.
ENAM 382 - Black Protest Fiction (3)
T R 1530-1645 CAB 337
Instructor: Marlon Ross
This course explores the relation between modern racial protest and African American fiction and autobiography from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. The modern "protest" tradition emerges in response to the Great Depression, World War II, and the early Civil Rights movement. Protest narratives are influenced by a variety of trends - including Soviet communism, industrial labor unionization, the second wave of the Great Migration, Pan-Africanism, the fight against European fascism, the promise of New Deal policies, and the emergence of mass street demonstrations as a vehicle of racial protest. As well as examining the social, political, and economic contexts of protest narratives, we'll probe their aesthetic, formal, and ideological structures, and assess how protest writers represent controversial topics of the time, such as lynching, segregation, sharecropping, disenfranchisement, anti-Semitism, unemployment, migration, urbanization, religion, sexuality, military participation, strikebreaking, cross-racial coalitions, and the role of the individual in social change. We start with the most famous protest narrative, Richard Wright's Native Son, then study other narratives written before and after, many of which challenge Wright's forms and ideas. Other authors include Angelo Herndon, William Attaway, Ann Petry, Chester Himes, James Baldwin, and Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as pertinent readings in history, literary criticism, journalism, and social science.
ENAM 482B – The Souls Of Black Folk (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 330
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
April 2003 marks the 100th anniversary of W. E. B. DuBois's THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK, which many regard as the African-American "Ur-text." This course is devoted entirely to this book--its reception history, its encyclopedic roots and sources, its surrounding contexts, as well as the range of its influence on African-American literature and intellectual history. We will obviously linger over the book's structuring metaphors and concepts-"souls," "folk," "veil," and "double-consciousness"-and pursue the various manifestations of DuBois's most famous aphorism: "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." We will also address matters concerning the construction of black masculinity in the post-Emancipation South, the psychological complexities of identity, theories of race, and the poetics and politics of mourning. Texts will include the following essays by DuBois: "What is the Negro Problem?" "The Conservation of Races," "The Concept of Race," "The Negro as He Really Is" (with accompanying photographic illustrations), and "Phillis Wheatley and Africam American Culture." Other selections include Aeschylus's The Oresteia (excerpts), Negro spirituals (what DuBois termed "the sorrow songs"), Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (selections), Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, Tennyson's "In Memoriam," Emerson's "Fate" and "The Transcendentalist," Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil," William James's The Principles of Psychology (excerpts), William Dean Howells's An Imperative Duty, Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, Pauline Hopkins's Of One Blood, Tennyson's "In Memoriam," Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice from the South, Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition and James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, as well as DuBois's correpondence with Williams James, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Jessie Fauset, and others. Near the end of the course, students will be invited to address the international dimension of DuBois's work and influence, particularly the Pan-African connection.
Undergraduate students are eligible for the 400 level class only.
ENAM 482D – Fictions Of Black Identity (3)
T R 930-1045 PV8 B003
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
This senior seminar will explore the dual meaning of the title "Fictions of Black Identity." The first implication suggests the literary inventions (novels, essays, critical works) that address the meanings of blackness in an American context. The second meaning is heavily invested in the first: that Black identity is a fiction, not necessarily in the sense of falsity, but in its highly mediated, flexible, and variable condition. Questions to consider include: how does one make and measure Black identity? Can one be phenotypically White and still be Black? What is the value of racial masquerade? What does it mean to be legitimately Black? Readings include, but are not limited to, McBride's The Color of Water, Walker's Black, White, and Jewish, Beatty's White Boy Shuffle, and a range of critical essays. Mandatory assignments include weekly response papers, comparative essays, leading class discussion, midterm and final exams.
Department of History
HIAF 202 - Africa Since 1800 (4)
T R 1400 - 1515 CHM 304
Instructor: John Mason
This course spans the years from the decline of the Atlantic slave trade in the early nineteenth century to the present. The focus of the first part of the course is on the slave trade and its consequences. The effects of the trade in human beings lingered long after its abolition. Many African societies were weakened, setting the stage for colonial conquest, while others were strengthened, often at the expense of their neighbors. The second part of the course looks at the conquest of much of Africa by European nations and at the dynamics of colonial rule. It is especially concerned with the ways in which colonialism affected ordinary Africans and with the many ways in which Africans resisted European domination. The final section of the course is devoted to the post-colonial period, studying first violent and non-violent forms of anti-colonial struggle and then the position of independent African nations in the contemporary world. The course is structured around lectures and readings. Additional course materials include novels and films.HIAF 202 is an introductory course and requires no prior knowledge of African history. Discussion section required.
HIAF 302- History Of Southern Africa (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 423
Instructor: John Mason
HIAF 302 is a lecture and discussion course on the history of southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, emphasizing South Africa. The course begins with a look at the precolonial African societies of the region, before moving on to a study of the conquest, colonialism, the rise and fall of apartheid, and the recent rebirth of African independence. By the end of the nineteenth century, all of the African peoples of southern Africa had been conquered by European powers and incorporated into Dutch, British, Portuguese, and German colonial empires. Conquest did not come easily. Every society in the region resisted European domination fiercely, sometimes for many decades before being finally defeated. Colonialism and African responses to it dramatically reshaped societies in southern African, transforming political and economic systems, gender and class relations, even religious beliefs. Resistance to colonialism assumed new forms in the twentieth century, as Africans began to bridge ethnic divisions to create multi-ethnic trade unions, political parties, and liberation movements. Particularly in South Africa, multi-ethnic nationalism evolved into nonracialism, uniting blacks and progressive whites in the ultimately successful struggle against apartheid.
HIUS 366 - African American History Since 1865 (3)
MW 1100 - 1150 CAB 138
Instructors: Reginald D. Butler and Scot A. French
This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in the United States from the age of emancipation to the present. The course explores some of the major problems, events, structures, and personalities that shaped their lives, paying particular attention to how black people themselves shaped their experiences. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the "local" (sometimes, but not necessarily, this locality). Readings will include the following: Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow; Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw; Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class; Gena Caponi, Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin', & Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expressive Culture. Grades will be based on section participation, research project, midterm, and final exam. This course is cross-listed as AAS 366.
HIAF 404-Independent Study In African History (3)
TBA
Instructor: TBA
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HIST 504 - Monticello Internship (3)
Instructor: Charles McCurdy
Directed research, largely in primary source materials, on topics relating to Jefferson's estate, life, and times. Directed by senior members of the Monticello staff. Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. The internships are restricted to graduate students in history and to fourth-year undergraduate history majors. A maximum of two students each semester can be admitted to the course.
HIUS 202 - American History Since 1865 (4)
T R 1230-1345 MCL 1020
Instructor: William Thomas
This course covers the history of the United States from the Civil War to present. The course examines social, political, economic, and cultural changes in American history and focuses on several major themes-the struggle to fulfill the nation's commitment to equality and justice, the development of large-scale industrial capitalism, the rise of the United States as a world power and its responsibility in global affairs. The course examines in detail such important topics as the course of racial justice since Reconstruction, the growth of businesses and the consumer market, and the fighting and consequences of the Cold War. We will explore some of the most dramatic problems in modern American history: racial conflict, urban growth, suburban expansion, international engagement, demographic change, and political contest. Readings will include Edward Ayers, et al. American Passages text and its accompanying web site of documents, audio, video, and interactive maps, as well as Lewis Sinclair's Babbitt and Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi. The course will also use several documentary and feature films--including Vietnam, a Television History 1945-1970, Dr. Strangelove, and Berkeley in the Sixties. The course is a four credit course, and students attend two lecture classes and one discussion section class each week. Students are required to take a mid-term and a final exam, write two 5-7 page essays, and participate actively in discussion sections.
HIUS 324 – 20th Century South (3)
M W 1000-1050 RFN G004A
Instructor: Lorraine Schuyler
This course will explore the social, cultural, political, and economic history of the South in the twentieth century. Major themes of the course will include the rise and fall of legalized segregation, the development of a viable Republican party in the region, the role of southern reformers and activists, and the importance of historical memory. We will examine major events in the twentieth century South from the perspectives of black southerners and white southerners, men and women, sharecroppers and landowners, Republicans and Democrats, moderates and activists. Grades will be based on participation in weekly discussion sections, as well as one five-page paper, a midterm and a cumulative final exam.
Assigned Readings will include a mix of fiction, autobiography, and scholarly monographs.
Required titles may include:
Paul Gaston, The New South Creed: a Study in Southern Mythmaking
Tera Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom
Katharine DuPre Lumpkin, The Making of a Southerner
W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk
Grace Lumpkin, To Make My Bread
Pete Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s
Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi
Dan Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics
HIUS 367 - History Of The Civil Rights Movement (3)
T R 1400-1450 MIN 125
Instructor: Julian Bond
This lecture course will examine the history, philosophies, tactics, events, and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward. The Southern movement--variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement--was a black-lead mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation in the South by the middle 1960s. Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping phases--lobbying, litigation and protest. In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights. In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation, the denial of the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools. The last phase, lasting a decade from '55 to '65, was a period of protest--boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations--as well as organizing campaigns that lay the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s. Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation in the United States. The movement's well-and lesser-known proponents and opponents and their stratagems will be examined. Discussion section required. Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five-to-seven page papers.
Department of Music
MUSI 212 - History of Jazz Music (3)
M W 1400-1515
Instructor: Scott Deveaux
Prerequisite: No previous knowledge of music is required. This course is a survey of the history of jazz from its beginnings around 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century. Important instrumental performers, vocalists, composers, and arrangers are listened to and discussed. NOTE: This course meets the Non-western perspectives requirement
MUSI 215 - Intro to African Music (3)
M W 1100-1215 TR OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
This course is meant as a first exposure to African rhythm, movement, and concepts of performance. We will explore several African music cultures in-depth (West and Central Africa) and survey several others to get a sense of the breadth and variety of African musical life. There will be a course packet of reading assignments, in-class rhythm and movement workshops, listening and video-viewing, discussion (of reading), and brief writing assignments. There will be a midterm and final exam.
MUSI 309 – Performance In Africa (4)
TR 1715-1930 OCH 107
W 1530 - 1700 OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
This course meets jointly with MUSI 369, African Drumming and Dance Ensemble. Students registered for MUSI 309 receive 4 academic credits, those only in MUSI 369 receive 2 "performance" credits. You may only register for ONE of these courses, not both.
Meeting jointly with MUSI 369 (African Drumming and Dance Ensemble, but with an extra hour of discussion) this course explores performance in Africa through in-depth reading, discussion, audio and video examples, and hands-on practice. The course will explore both "traditional" and "popular" styles, leading us to question those categories. With a few exceptions, we will focus mostly on areas of West and Central Africa, though students may choose other areas to focus on for their research projects. We will explore music/dance styles and 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 issues and politics involved in translating performance practices from one cultural context to another.
Attendance at all class meetings is required, as is careful reading, film viewing, and preparation for discussion. Students will keep a weekly response journal (handed in to the instructor via email) with brief entries for each week responding to the reading, discussions, performance labs, and listening. Every week (by Sunday, 5 p.m.) each student will choose at least one recording from the music library (via the web catalogue) to listen to and respond to in their journal. There will be a mid-term paper (8-10 pages, typed) and a final exam (open book, essay and short answer).
MUSI 369 – African Drumming and Dance (1-2)
TR 1715-1930 OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
Prerequisite: Permission of instructor by audition on first day of class. Note: This semester, this course meets jointly with MUSI 309, Performance in Africa. Students registered for 309 receive 4 academic credits, those in 369 receive 2 "performance" credits. You may only register for ONE of these courses, not both.
This is a practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (BaAka pygmies and Bagandou farmers), with the intention of performing informally throughout the semester and in a final concert in April. We will give special attention to continuing to develop tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and a polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, high attention, interaction, and faithful,/prompt attendance are required of each class member. Each member is also respectfully expected to help prepare the classroom (move chairs, sweep, set up drums/sticks) and to restore the space to classroom style at the end of each meeting. Participation in public performance is also expected.
Students are strongly encouraged to bring a cassette tape recorder to class and to dress comfortably. Several readings are recommended, but not required.
Department of Politics
PLAP 370 – Racial Politics (3)
MW 1100-1150 CAB 345
Instructor: Lynn Sanders
This course examines how attributions of racial difference have shaped American Politics. Topics include how race affects American political partisanship, campaigns and elections, public policy, public opinion, and American political science. Through the course, our animating question will be: is the American liberal democratic polity - a polity which instituted and abolished slavery based in race - basically sound apart from its unfortunate anti-democratic episodes, or is the racial order a fundamental element structuring this polity? Though the American racial order has deep historical roots, we will concentrate our attention on its recent manifestations. We will examine how the political thinking and choices of people of different races differs, how racial politics implicates ideas about class and gender, and how scholarship on race depends on the race of the person conducting it. We will consider the implications for an increasingly racially diverse and complicated polity of defining race primarily in terms of black/white conflict.
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 275- Intro To African Religions (3)
M W 1100-1150 RFN G004C
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
An introductory survey of African religions. The course concentrates on African traditional religions but Islam and Christianity are also discussed. Topics include indigenous mythologies and cosmologies, sacrifice, initiation, witchcraft, artistic traditions and a brief introduction to African-derived religions in the New World.
Readings include: Ray, African Religions; Stoller & Olkes, In Sorcery's Shadow; Soyinka, Death and the King's Horseman; Ijimere, The Imprisonment of Obatala; Salih, The Wedding of Zein; and a packet of readings.
Requirements: regular attendance and participation in discussion, two in-class exams, and a cumulative final exam.
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
LNGS 222 - Black English (3)
MW 1100-1150 MRY 104
Instructor: Mark Elson
An introduction to the history and structure of Black English. The goal of this course is to introduce students to the history and structure of what has been termed Black English vernacular or Black Street English. We will also be concerned with the sociolinguistic factors which led to the emergence of this variety of English, as well as its present role in the African-American community and its relevance in education, employment, and racial stereotypes
Department of Sociology
SOC 341 – Race and Ethnic Relations (3)
MW 1400-1515 CAB 341
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
The terms “race” and “ethnicity,” and issues associated with them are, to say the least, problematic. The meanings of these – and related – terms are unclear and policies that address “racial” issues are usually very contentious. Why is this the case? Why is race, seemingly, a source of unending conflict? This course will address these questions by examining the general issue of race from a historical and comparative perspective.
SOC 410 - Afro-American Communities (3)
T R 1530-1645 CAB 338
Instructor: Rick Turner
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the history, struggles and diversity of the African-American community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the African American community within urban society and on the need for students to acquire knowledge of the cultural history of African Americans. This course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for the African-American people's sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. This class is organized around the premise that there is a distinctive, coherent, persistent African-American Sociological perspective frame of reference, world view, or cultural ethos that is evident in the behavior, attitude, feelings, life styles, and experience patterns of Black America. By means of discussion, lecture, video, reading, writing, and class presentations this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamics of the African-American community.
University Seminar
USEM 171/0020 – The 60s In Black & White (2)
T 1530-1730 CAB 320
Instructor: Julian Bond
The 1960’s saw a generation of young people begin to build movements which would stop a war abroad and start a war at home. What made these movements for peace and equal rights possible? What events triggered them? Who were participants? What is their legacy in the present? This seminar – through biographies activists in the movements – attempts to answer these and other questions as we examine personalities, events, and culture of the 1960s. Students will be required to write a comprehensive a paper on a 60’s subject – a participant, an organization, a movement.
Fall 2002
African-American and African Studies Program
AAS 101 - Introduction to Afro-American and African Studies (4)
T R 1230-1345 MIN 125
Instructor: Joseph C. Miller
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.
AAS 305 - Travel Accounts of Africa (3)
11:00-12:15 TR
Instructor: Hanan Sabea
The course explores how 18th and 19th century travel accounts about Africa have influenced ethnographic writings and popular views about the continent and its people. It traces the genealogy of methods of knowledge production, major concepts that are generated and inherited, underlying assumptions and recurring images that have shaped the representation of a place and people. We will analyze the accounts produced about Africa with special focus on categories of gender, nationality, profession of the authors, the purposes underlying their encounters, and the times and places they visited. This course is cross-listed as AAS 305
AAS 401 - Independent Study (3)
TBA
AAS 405A Caliban's Reason: The Theoretical Legacies of Frantz Fanon and C.L.R. James (3)
M 1300-1530 CAB 331
Instructor: Corey D. B. Walker
There has been a virtual renaissance in the study of Fritz Fanon and C.L.R. James in the United States academy. Both Fanon and James have been appropriatedbyscholars across disciplines - Political Science, Literature, and American Studies - and by scholars who advocate various methodological and theoretical approachepsychoanalysis, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies. But why the (re)turn to Fanon and James? Why now? This seminar critically interrogates the works of thesetwo pivotal intellectual figures in the black radical tradition with an eye towards providing some provisional answers to these and other equally intriguing questions. Through a close and careful reading of their texts we will examine several themes addressed by each of these authors - the challenge of violence,theoriesof revolution, ideas of nation, questions of represention, and relationiships between race, gender, class, and capitalist political economy.
AAS 405B (3)
R 1400-1630 CAB 331
TBA
AAS 405C – The Rebellious Slave in American Thought(3)
W 1300-1530 MIN 108
Instructor: Scot French
This seminar will examine how Americans, from Jefferson's day to our own time, have thought about race, slavery, citizenship, and revolutionary violence by reference to the figure of the rebellious slave. Examples will be drawn from popular culture and selected works of scholarship. Students will be introduced to theories and conceptual models employed by professional and lay historians in the eras of Slavery, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights. Course requirements include short written responses to assigned readings and films, active participation in weekly discussions, and a 20-page research paper on a pre-approved topic. Readings will range from 150 to 200 pages a week. No previous coursework in History or African American Studies required.
Assigned readings may include excerpts from the following:
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1785)
David Walker’s Appeal (1829)
The Confessions of Nat Turner and related documents (1831)
The Virginia Slavery Debates of 1831-32
Frederick Douglass, The Heroic Slave (1851)
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1859)
William S. Drewry, The Southampton Insurrection (1900)
Arna Bontemps, Black Thunder (1936)
Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (1941)
Stanley Elkins, Slavery (1959)
Eugene Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution (1979)
William Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967)
William Styron’s ‘Confessions of Nat Turner:’ Ten Black Writers Respond (1968)
Shirley Williams, Dessa Rose (1986)
AAS 451 - Distinguished Majors Program/Directed Research (3)
TBA
AAS 452 - Distinguished Majors Program/Thesis (3)
TBA
ANTH 529A – Topics in Race Theory (3)
T 1530-1800 CAB 331
Instructor: Wende Marshall
"Gender/Race and Power" will explore the imbrications of race and gender within and without the African Diaspora, with regard to questions of State power, conquest, colonialism/postcolonialism and global capitalism. We will be particularly attentive to the shortcomings of "race theory" in regard to gender and sexuality, and will attempt to chart masculinist assumptions within "canonical" race theory. Requirements: responsibility for leading each seminar; weekly précis on the readings; a final 20-page + bibliography paper.
Course meets the Second Writing Requirement.
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 225 - Racism, Nationalism, Multiculturalism (3)
M W 1400-1515 GIL 130
Instructor: Richard Handler
Introductory course in which the concepts of culture, multiculturalism, race, racism, and nationalism are critically examined in terms of how they are used and structure social relations in American society and, by comparison, how they are defined in other cultures throughout the world.
ANTH/AAS 305 - Travel Accounts of Africa (3)
1530-1800 CAB 236
Instructor: Hanan Sabea
The course explores how 18th and 19th century travel accounts about Africa have influenced ethnographic writings and popular views about the continent and its people. It traces the genealogy of methods of knowledge production, major concepts that are generated and inherited, underlying assumptions and recurring images that have shaped the representation of a place and people. We will analyze the accounts produced about Africa with special focus on categories of gender, nationality, profession of the authors, the purposes underlying their encounters, and the times and places they visited. This course is cross-listed as AAS 305
ANTH 330 – Tournaments and Athletes (4)
T R 1100-1215 MIN 125
Instructor: George Mentore
This course will offer you a cross-cultural study of competitive games. Criticizing current theories about the "innocence" of sports while comparing and contrasting various athletic events from societies around the
world, it will provide an argument to explain the competitive bodily displays of athletes. It will select materials, which allow you to examine bodily movement, meaning, context, and process, in addition to the relations between athletes, officials, spectators, and social systems. Its general thesis will be that sport brings out the universal morals of community, challenges and tests them in controlled and unthreatening genres, yet never defeats them or makes them appear unjust.
The student must enroll in one of the obligatory discussion sections in 330D.
ANTH 356 – Vernacular Architecture (3)
T R 1100-1215 CAM 153
Instructor: Dell Upton
American Vernacular Architecture introduces a variety of North American vernacular building traditions, examining the design and building traditions of a variety of ethnic and regional cultures, the ways buildings and landscapes are used, and what they mean to their builders and users. Among the topics to be explored will be rural and urban house types, vernacular building systems, commercial architecture, the public landscape, and the vernacular landscapes of work and of religion, focusing on European, African, and Native American traditions that shaped the most familiar and widespread folk architectures, as well as on the urban landscapes of 19th- and 20th-century African Americans and European and Asian immigrants. In every case, we will look at built environments as expressions of ethnic and racial identity, organizers of social life, and conscious works of art.
ANTH 388–African Archaeology (3)
M W F 09:00-9:50 CAB 215
Instructor: Adria LaViolette
This course surveys archaeological knowledge currently available about ancient North Africa, the Sahara, and sub-Saharan Africa. The emphases will be on the Late Stone Age, the Iron Age, and the archaeology of the colonial period. The goal is to provide a firm grasp of the great transformations in pre-modern African history, and to provide students with information about some of the most important archaeological sites, discoveries, and research on the continent. Throughout the course, a theme will be the politics of the past, and the changing role of the practice of archaeology in Africa.
ANTH 529A – Topics in Race Theory (3)
T 1530-1800 CAB 331
Instructor: Wende Marshall
"Gender/Race and Power" will explore the imbrications of race and gender within and without the African Diaspora, with regard to questions of State power, conquest, colonialism/postcolonialism and global capitalism. We will be particularly attentive to the shortcomings of "race theory" in regard to gender and sexuality, and will attempt to chart masculinist assumptions within "canonical" race theory. Requirements: responsibility for leading each seminar; weekly précis on the readings; a final 20-page + bibliography paper.
Course meets the Second Writing Requirement.
Department of English Language and Literature
ENLT 247/001 – African American Autobiography (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 334
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
Chronological survey in African American literature in the U.S. from its beginning in vernacular culture to works by Frederick Douglas, Zora Neale Hurston, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker.
ENAM 313-Early African American Literature I (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 324
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
This course surveys pivotal moments and texts in the history of African-American prose, from l760, the date of Briton Hammon's Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings to l901, the year of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery. We will work our way through canonical and non-canonical texts and through multiple genres-- captivity narratives, spiritual autobiographies, slave narratives, sermons, execution sermons, criminal narratives, speeches, novels--and will explore a number of issues related to literary history, culture, aesthetics, authorship, audience, genre, and narratology. Among the questions to be explored? How have literary historians given shape to or "storied" this tradition? How do black women's writings complicate these "fictions" of literary history? What is the relation between the black vernacular tradition and the black "literary" text? How do the white abolitionists and editors involved in the production of slave narratives trouble traditional conceptions of authorship? Who "authors" a speech by Sojourner Truth that is stenographically transcribed and appears in multiple versions? What confluence of factors and ideologies explain the "canonical" version of "Ain't I a Woman?" Other texts include Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Harriet Wilson's Our Nig; Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom; David Walker's Appeal; Pauline Hopkins's Contending Forces, and Thomas Gray's Confessions of Nat Turner. We will work to situate these and other selections in the political, cultural, and critical controversies of their time and ours.
ENAM 381- Race in American Spaces (3)
W 1000-1230 CAM 108
Instructor: Ian Grandison
Description currently unavailable.
ENAM 481C - African American Women Writers (3)
T R 0930-1045 BRN 332
Instructor: Angela M. Davis
We will read several novels and short stories by African American women, examining in particular how the authors portray black women as individuals and in the context of American society. This course requires active class participation, two written responses to readings (each 2 to 3 double spaced typed pages long) and a formal essay (12 to 15 pages long). The reading list is: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls; Toni Morrison, Sula, and Tar Baby; Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble; Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones; Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place.
Prerequisite: The course is first offered to fourth year majors in English, Women's Studies and Afro-American and African Studies
ENAM 483/ENTC 483 – Race and Performance in the 20th C. US (3)
T R 1230-1345 BRN 330
Instructor: Scott Saul
This course will look at how all sorts of Americans -- blacks, Jews, Latinos, Anglos, Asian-Americans and Native Americans -- have played at playing themselves, inventing new kinds of cultural forms for the purpose, or have tried not to play themselves, given the powerful ways that social categories like race can be ill-fitting, arbitrary, or unjust. We will be looking at twentieth-century stories of self-fashioning and self-exposure, masquerade and passing, slumming and nose-thumbing, and will be particularly interested in the interplay between the history of social movements and the bounds of cultural imagination. The course will bring together literature, film and music, with an emphasis on the different strands and practices of African-American music as they emerge over the course of the 20th century. Possible texts include: the novels Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (James Weldon Johnson), Passing (Nella Larson), Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin), and Dogeaters (Jessica Hagedorn); the films The Jazz Singer, Salt of the Earth, Imitation of Life, Little Big Man, and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song; the drama of Maria Irene Fornes, Adrienne Kennedy, Ed Bullins, Luis Valdez, Naomi Iizuka and Suzan-Lori Parks; the poetry of Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown; the performance art of Adrian Piper and Guillermo Gomez-Peña; and the music of ragtime, early blues, R&B, hip-hop and rock en español.
Department of French Language and Literature
FREN 346 - La Litterature Francophone Macocaine (3)
M W F 1200-1250 CAB 225
Instructor: Majida Bargach
La littérature francophone marocaine prend ses racines dans l’Afrique, dans la France coloniale mais aussi dans le monde arabo-musulman et dans les culturesberbère et judéo-arabe. Depuis l’époque coloniale (1912-1956) jusqu’à nos jours, les écrivains marocains d’expression française ont tour à tour séduit ou choqué de part et d’autre de la Méditerranée. Après avoir étudié des oeuvres écrites pendant le Protectorat français au Maroc, nous aborderons la littérature contemporaine expression des rêves, des mythes et des aspirations politiques et sociales.
Lectures: Période coloniale: Ahmed Séfrioui, La boite à Merveilles; Driss Chraïbi, Le passé simple.Littérature d’aujourd’hui: Fouad Laroui, Les dents du topographe, Edmond Amrane el Maleh, 1000 ans et un jour. Expression féminine: Rajae Benchemsi, Fracture du désir.
Documents audiovisuals: Films: Souheil Benbarka, Amok; Nabil Ayouch, Ali Zaoua, prince des rues; Farida Belyazid, Ruses de femme. Sites sur l’internet: entretiens avec les auteurs francophones.
Travaux: Examen partiel, examen final, 5 essais de 2 à 3 pages et un projet de recherche par équipe.
FREN 411 – Francophone Literature of Africa (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 236
Instructor: Kandioura Drame
This course surveys the literary tradition in French, emphasizing post-World War II poets, novelists, and playwrights, and examines the role of cultural reviews in the development of this literary tradition.
Department of Politics
PLCP 212 – Politics of Developing Areas (3)
T R 0930-1045 MRY 209
Instructor: Robert Fatton
Surveys patterns of government and politics in non-Western political systems. Topics include political elites, sources of political power, national integration, economic development, and foreign penetration. Discussion Section Required.
PLPC 581- Politics of Sub Saharan Africa (3)
F 1530-1800 PV8 108
Instructor: Ben Fred-Mensah
Description currently not available
PLIR 582 - Africa and the World (3)
F 1230-1500 PV8 B003
Instructor: Ben Fred-Mensah
Description currently not available
Department of History
HIAF 201- Early African History Through the Era of the Slave Trade (4)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 345
Instructor: Joseph C. Miller
Early African History draws Africans’ achievements in culture, politics, and economic strategies out from the mists of the once-dark continent’s unwritten past. Starting at the dawn of history and continuing in detail from the millennium before the Present Era, HIAF 201 follows the sometimes-surprising ways in which village elders, women, merchants, kings, cattle lords, and ordinary farmers pursued meaningful lives without the technologies that modern Americans take for granted. Thelast third of the course examines the ironic interplay of tragedy and achievement in a continent increasingly trapped in exiling its own people in slavery to Europeans,until the Atlantic slave trade began to wind down after about 1800. (A second semester of African history, HIAF 202, taught in the spring, narrates subsequent events down through twentieth-century colonialism and the post-1960 era of independence and impoverishment.)
HIAF 201 is a lower-division introductory survey. The instructor presents the major themes of early African history in lectures twice each week. Students meet additionally in discussion sections for review of readings, quizzes, and preparation for written assignments. Requirements include weekly short map quizzes, a mid-term examination (only the better of two tries counts), three short papers (4-5 pages) rehearsing historical questions for the mid-terms and considering the written sources on Africa’s past, and a final examination (format to be negotiated with the class). The course belongs to the Afro-American and African Studies curriculum, meets the “non-western” requirement for the major in History, and qualifies for the College “non-western perspectives” area requirement. Students may rewrite one of the short papers to fulfill the College Second Writing Requirement.
Readings revolve around weekly assignments in texts of varying perspectives (Shillington, History of Africa, Newman, Peopling of Africa, and the brand-new Ehret, Civilizations of Africa), for a total of about 225 pages. Other chapters and professional articles introduce the distinctive methodologies of doing history without written sources (including the famous Mande oral epic Sundiata), highlight interpretive (“historiographical”) issues, and consider concepts relevant to understanding early Africa. The total number of assigned pages runs at approximately 1200.
No strict formula determines final marks for HIAF 201. Students are graded according to their “highest consistent performance” in all aspects of the course, including attendance at lectures and participation in discussions, with ample allowance made for the unfamiliarity of the subject matter early in the term; a number of options allow students to devise personal combinations of graded work that will accommodate other academic commitments and highlight specialized abilities most accurately.
HIAF 201 presumes no prior knowledge of Africa or experience with the study of history. Since the subject is new to nearly everyone in the course, consistent application and preparation is expected, particularly early in the term. Students in all four years of their undergraduate careers and in all colleges of the University complete the course with success. Most find it a challenging opportunity to discover and examine assumptions about modern Americans – themselves included – they did not know they held.
HIAF 402- Race and Culture in South Africa and the American South (4)
T R 1400-1515 WIL 141A
Instructor: John Mason
HIAF 403 is a seminar in comparative history. Through biography, autobiography, and scholarship, we will look at the ways in which race became the overwhelming reality in the lives of South Africans and Americans, both black and white. South Africa and the American South are like distant cousins: instantly recognizable as members of the same family, but with distinctively different personalities. Both countries owe much of their early economic development to slavery. In both complex systems of racial domination shaped society for generations during and after the emancipation of the slaves. And in both the interracial struggle against racism gave rise to some of the most important people and events in their histories. At the same time, the differences between the two countries cannot be ignored. Most dramatically, in South Africa the descendants of European immigrants constitute a minority of the population; in the United States, of course, the reverse is true. Course materials include music, movies and videos, as well as biographies, autobiographies, and current scholarship.
HIAF 403-What's Wrong With Africa? (4)
T R 0930-1045 WIL141B
Instructor: John Mason
War, famine, disease, and unending poverty... This is the Africa that we too often read about in newspapers and magazines and see on TV. While this sort of coverage is misleading--Africa is not simply a continent-wide disaster area--there is enough truth in the images of human suffering to cause Africans and non-Africans alike to ask, What's wrong with Africa?
HIAF 402 explores the roots of Africa's multiple crises, focusing primarily on Africa's relations with the rest of the world, especially the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. Topics include the overseas slave trade, conquest and colonialism, anti-colonial liberation struggles, and post-colonial politics and economics. Course materials include African novels and movies and current scholarship from Africa and the west.
HIAF 404- Independent Study in African History (3)
TBA
Instructor: TBA
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HIST 504 - Monticello Internship (3)
Instructor: Peter Onuf
Directed research, largely in primary source materials, on topics relating to Jefferson's estate, life, and times. Directed by senior members of the Monticello staff.
Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. The internships are restricted to graduate students in history and to fourth-year undergraduate history majors. A maximum of two students each semester can be admitted to the course.
HIUS 307 - The Coming of the Civil War (3)
T R 0930-1045 MIN 125
Instructor: Michael F. Holt
This lecture course closely examines American history between 1815 and 1861. While its primary objective is to explain why a sectional conflict of long duration between the North and the South produced secession and Civil War in 1861, it also addresses in some detail the events and significance of the so-called "Age of Jackson." Economic development, westward expansion, and the escalation of sectional antagonism between Northerners and Southerners over time will all be addressed. But the primary focus of the lectures will be on political developments in these years, for only those developments, I believe, can explain why secession and war occurred when they did.
The course will have no discussion sections. Students' grades will be based on a midterm examination, an 8-10 page paper on the assigned course reading, and a comprehensive final examination. Students may take this course on a Credit/No Credit basis, but I require at least a C final average grade to earn a grade of Credit. Readings for the course are likely to include the following:
Harry Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America
William Lee Miller, Arguing about Slavery
Richard E. Ellis, The Union at Risk
Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619-1877
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s
Minisha Sinha, The Counter-revolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina
James M. McPherson, What They Fought For.
HIUS 324 – The American South in the 20th Century (3)
M W 1000-1050 MRY 209
Instructor: Grace Hale
This course examines the broad history of the American South in the twentieth century, with special emphasis on racial violence, the creation of segregation, class and gender relations within the region, the cultural and economic interdependence of black and white southerners, and the Civil Right Movement and its aftermath. Sources examined will include film, fiction, and music as well as more traditional historical sources like newspapers and court opinions. Students interested in American Studies, African American Studies, and Gender Studies are also welcome.Grading: midterm 25%; paper (5-7 pp) 25%; final exam 30%; participation in discussion sections and attendance at film and documentary screenings 20%.
HIUS 367 - History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)
T R 1400-1450 MIN 125
Instructor: Julian Bond
This lecture course will examine the history, philosophies, tactics, events, and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward. The Southern movement--variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement--was a black-lead mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation in the South by the middle 1960s.
Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping phases--lobbying, litigation and protest. In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights. In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation, the denial of the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools. The last phase, lasting a decade from '55 to '65, was a period of protest--boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations--as well as organizing campaigns that lay the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s. Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation in the United States. The movement's well-and lesser-known proponents and opponents and their stratagems will be examined. Discussion section required. Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five-to-seven page papers.
Texts: Wilkins, Roy, with Tom Matthews, Standing Fast, Da Capo Press
Forman, James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Open Hand Press
Bond, Julian and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit At The Welcome Table, American Heritage
Videos: "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, Producer, California Newsreel.
HIUS 401A- Living in the Segregated South (3)
M 1300-1530 RFN 227A
Instructor: Clayton Brooks
Living in the Segregated South will focus on the daily experiences of individuals living in the American South (1890s through 1960s). The seminar offers students the opportunity to reevaluate a contested period of historical study and reconsider the meanings of segregation and southern through a variety of historical monographs, novels, autobiographies, and oral histories that offer diverse perspectives across class, race, and gender lines. Building on this knowledge, students will conduct their own historical inquiries into the twentieth century South. The seminar will provide a basis of support to guide this research project.
Department of Music
MUSI 212 - History of Jazz Music (3)
M W 1400-1515 OCH 101
Instructor: Scott Deveaux
This course is a survey of the history of jazz from its beginnings around 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century. Important instrumental performers, vocalists, composers, and arrangers are listened to and discussed. Lab section is required.
MUSI 369 – African Drumming and Dance (1-2)
T 1715-1930 OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
A practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (BaAka pygmies), with the intention of performing at the end of the semester. Though no previous experience with music or dance is required, we will give special attention to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, and faithful attendance are required of each class member, the goal being to develop an ongoing UVA African Drumming and Dance Ensemble. Prerequisites: Permission of instructor by audition on first day of class.
Department of Politics
PLPT 320 – African American Political Thought (3)
M W 1400-1515 CAB 118
Instructor: Lawrie Balfour
This course introduces students to central concepts and questions in African American political theory and practice since the 19th century. Themes to be explored include: the connection between slavery and democracy, competing conceptions of equality and freedom, the interconnections between race and other markers of political identity such as gender and class, and the role of historical memory in political life.
Department of Psychology
PSYC 487-The Minority Family: A Psychological Inquiry (3)
M 0900-1130 GIL 225
Instructor: Melvin Wilson
This course examines the current state of research on minority families, focusing on the black family. Emphasizes comparing "deficit" and "strength" research paradigms.
Format: Lecture discussion presentations. No. and type of exams: TBA. Papers or projects: TBA
Prerequisites: PSYC 306 and at least one course from each of the following groups: PSYC 210, 215 or 230, and PSYC 240, 250, or 260, and students in the Afro-American and African studies or studies in women and gender programs. Telephone Enrollment Restrictions: PSYC majors. If this course is full through ISIS: keep trying through ISIS.
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 276- African Religion in the Americas (3)
M W 1000-1050
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
This course explores the African religious heritage of the Americas. We will concentrate on African-derived religions in Latin America and the Caribbean, such as Cuban Santeria, Brazilian Candomblé, Haitian Vodou, and the Jamaican Rastafari movement. North American slave religion, the black church, and African-American Islam will also be considered. We will seek to identify their shared religio-cultural "core" while developing an appreciation for the distinctive characteristics and historical contexts of each "New World" tradition. We will address topics such as ideas of God and Spirit; the significance of ritual sacrifice, divination, and initiation; the centrality of trance, ecstatic experience and mediumship; and the role of religion in the struggle for liberation and social justice. Final, Midterm, periodic quizzes on the readings, participation in discussion. Discussion Section required.
RELG 280 - African American Religious History (3)
M W 1100-1215 MCL 2009
Instructor: TBA
This course will survey the origin and development of African American religion in the United States. Centered on essential questions regarding the nature of black faith and the role religious institutions have played in black life, the course will explore the critical relationship between African American religion and African American cultural forms. We will address a number of themes, including: the connection between "the black church" and black political thought; race, gender, and religion; and Black Theology. We will also trace the development of African American religion in various historical contexts, particularly slavery (emphasis on Virginia), the Great Migration, and the Civil Rights era. Although this course will focus primarily on African American Protestantism, careful attention will be given to black Catholicism and the Nation of Islam.
RELA/RELI 390- Islam in Africa (3)
M W 1400-1515
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
This course offers an historical and topical introduction to Islam in Africa. After a brief overview of the central features of the Muslim faith, our chronological survey begins with the introduction of Islam to North Africa in the 7th century. We will trace the transmission of Islam via traders, clerics, and jihads to West Africa. We shall consider the medieval Muslim kingdoms; the development of Islamic scholarship and the reform tradition; the growth of Sufi brotherhoods; and the impact of colonization and de-colonization upon Islam. Our overview of the history of Islam in East Africa will cover: the early Arab and Asian mercantile settlements; the flowering of classical Swahili courtly culture; the Omani sultanates and present-day Swahili society as well as recent "Islamist" movements in the Sudan and other parts of the East African interior. Readings and classroom discussions provide a more in-depth exploration of topics encountered in our historical survey. Through the use of ethnographical and literary materials, we will explore questions such as the translation and transmission of the Qur'an, indigenization and religious pluralism; the role of women in African Islam; and African Islamic spirituality. Midterm, final, short paper, participation in discussion.
Department of Sociology
SOC 341 – Race and Ethnic Relations (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 316
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
The terms “race” and “ethnicity,” and issues associated with them are, to say the least, problematic. The meanings of these – and related – terms are unclear and policies that address “racial” issues are usually very contentious. Why is this the case? Why is race, seemingly, a source of unending conflict? This course will address these questions by examining the general issue of race from a historical and comparative perspective.
SOC 410 - African American Communities (3)
T R 1530-1645 CAB 320
Instructor: Rick Turner
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear, comprehensive understanding of the history, struggles and diversity of the African-American community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the African-American community within urban society and on the need for students to obtain knowledge of the cultural history of African-Americans. The course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for African-American people's sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. By means of discussion, lectures, videos, reading, writing, and class presentation, this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamics of the African-American community.
University Seminar
USEM 171/0020 – The 60s in Black and White (2)
T 1530-1730 WIL 140
Instructor: Julian Bond
The 1960’s saw a generation of young people begin to build movements which would stop a war abroad and start a war at home. What made these movements for peace and equal rights possible? What events triggered them? Who were participants? What is their legacy in the present? This seminar – through biographies activists in the movements – attempts to answer these and other questions as we examine personalities, events, and culture of the 1960s. Students will be required to write a comprehensive a paper on a 60’s subject – a participant, an organization, a movement.
Spring 2002
African-American and African Studies
AAS 102 - Afro-American Culture (4)
T R 1100-1215 MRY 209
Instructor : Hanan Sabea
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 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. Discussion section required.
AAS 250-Health of Black Folks (3)
T R 1700-1815 CAB 345
Instructor: Wende Marshall
"The Health of Black Folks" is a course in medical anthropology which will analyze the relationship between black bodies and biomedicine, both historically and in the present. Co-taught by Norm Oliver, M.D-a physician (Department of Family Medicine, UVA Health Systems) and anthropologist (Department of Anthropology) and Wende Marshall-a medical anthropologist, the course will offer both political economic, and post-structuralist lenses with which to interpret the individual and social health and disease of African-Americans. Selected topics include the black female body in the middle passage and slavery; the use of race in the human genome project; black bodies as research subjects for biomedical science and the epidemic of cancer and HIV among African Americans.
AAS 352 - The American South in the Twentieth Century (3)
M W 1200-1250 RSH 202
Instructor: Scot French
The American South has long stirred the emotions and imaginations of those who lay claim to its storied past. Even today, this much-celebrated "melting pot" of racial, regional, and national identities threatens to combust, from time to time, over such issues as the Confederate flag, affirmative action, and reparations for slavery. This course will survey the social, cultural, and political landscape of the eleven former Confederate States of America, with a particular emphasis on the Commonwealth of Virginia. Topics will include: Heritage vs. History; Jeffersonian Origins of the South's Herrenvolk Democracy; Life and Labor After Emancipation; White Supremacy and the 'Negro Question'; Black Leadership and the Rise of Booker T. Washington; Jim Crow and the Perverse Logic of Southern Progressivism; World War I and the Great Migration; the Southern Renaissance in Arts and Letters; Labor Organizing and Union-Busting in the Depression Era; the New Deal and World War II as Agents of Change; Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Women's Movement in the South; the War on Southern Rural Poverty; the Rise of the Republican Party and the New Christian Right; Southern Cultures in the Age of the Internet; and the Enduring Legacies of Slavery, Civil War and Reconstruction. Lectures will be interspersed with sounds and images from the period. Grades will be based on participation in weekly discussion sections, three short writing assignments (5-7 pages each), in-class quizzes, a midterm exam, and a final exam. Readings may include selections from the following: W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk(1903); Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery: An Autobiography (1901); Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw; William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936); James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1939); William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son (1941); Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, The Making of a Southerner (1946); C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1954); Sarah Patton Boyle, The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition (1962); Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968); Robert Penn Warren, Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back (1980); Melissa F. Greene, Praying for Sheetrock (1991); Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (1998).
AAS 401 - Independent Study (3)
TBA
AAS 406A - Culture, Politcs, and Society in the African Diaspora, 1600 to 1850 (4)
M 1300-1530 CAB 331
Instructor: Frederick C. Knight
This course will provide students with an opportunity to explore a wide range of themes in the history of Africans in the Americas. Among the topics to be considered include the rise of trans-Atlantic slave trade, the evolution of slaveholding societies in the Americas, the development of African-American cultures and identities, and the formation of race, class, and gender. Students will be responsible for class discussion of articles, book chapters, and other assigned texts. Also required is a twenty-page research paper, due at the end of the semester, on a topic of the students' choice and approved by the instructor. Books will include Black Riceby Judith Carney, Exchanging Our Country Marks by Michael Gomez, Black Jacks by Jeffrey Bolster, and Blind Memory by Marcus Wood.
AAS 406B - Remembering Trouble: Race, Memory, and Recovery in Africa and the African Diaspora ( 3)
W 1300-1530 CAB 331
Instructor: Chris Colvin
There is no shortage of painful material, of experiences of violence, violation and turmoil for African peoples throughout the world to draw from when they undertake to remember their troubles. Slavery, colonialism, decolonization, civil and regional wars, migration, exile, globalization, industrialization, racism and racial violence, poverty, even democratization and liberalization have all produced painful memories in a variety of ways for African people. In this course, we will examine the diverse ways and reasons these memories have been expressed in literature, in law, in art and music, in oral histories and in museums. We will ask if there are particular modes of remembering that are specific to local African experiences and cultural contexts. We will also consider what social, political, personal and cultural purposes telling stories of past trouble serve in the present context. We will look to film, literature, oral history, ritual, poetry, music, theater, the visual arts, court transcripts, legislation, museums, memorials, journalism and interviews in considering the problems of remembering and recovering from painful pasts. Texts: Country of My Skull, Antjie Krog; Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zair, Johannes Fabian; Purity and Exile, Liisa Malkki; Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade, Phillip Curtin; Heart of Redness, Zakes Mda. A coursepack will also be prepared by the instructor for use in class. Class Requirements: Besides attendance and active participation in discussions, students will be asked to prepare a one-page written response to each week's readings for the first seven weeks. Thereafter, we will concentrate on preparing, drafting and revising a major research paper that will serve as the principle product of the course. In addition, each student will be asked once during the semester to prepare to lead the discussion on that week's reading. The majority of class time will be devoted to discussion of the weekly readings. We will also view several films and make time on the last two days for each student to present a short, five-minute presentation on the topic they explored in their term paper. This course fulfills the AAS major requirement for a 400-level seminar with research paper.
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 250 - The Health of Black Folks (3)
T R 1700-1815 CAB 345
Instructor: Wende Marshall
This course is cross-listed as AAS 250
ANTH 256 - Peoples & Cultures of Africa (3)
M W F 1000-1050 RSH 202
Instructor: Adria LaViolette
This course engages the human landscape of modern Africa, through the close reading of a selection of monographs and African feature films. The main texts, drawn from fiction, ethnography, and social history, are taught against a backdrop of economic strategies, different forms of social organization, cultural expressions, and challenges facing modern African women and men. An edited volume on Africa will provide relevant essays to combine with and contextualize the monographs and films. We will focus on rural and urban dwellers, the elite and poor, and the forces that draw all of them together; transnational migration; and belief systems. How relationships between men and women are contextualized and negotiated is a theme found throughout the readings and films, as well as the struggle of people in different circumstances to build new relationships with older beliefs and practices, and with changing forms of government. This course does not attempt to survey all issues and peoples in modern Africa, but rather to distill and feature certain themes of especially wide relevance. This is a lecture and discussion course.
ANTH 543 - African Linguistics (3)
M W 1400-1515 CAB 318
Instructor: David Sapir
The course will cover the classification of African languages, selected grammatical typologies, African lexicography, and examples of oral literature. Students will give presentations on these topics with respect to specific languages. The intention of the course is to investigate the considerable variety of linguistic types present in sub-Saharan Africa. The permission of the instructor and a background in linguistics is required.
Department of Drama
DRAM 307 - African American Theater (3)
M W F 1400-1450 GIL 141
Instructor: Ishmail Conway
This course on African-American Theater will provide an opportunity for students to learn about this rich, distinctive American International art form. This particular theatrical experience emanates out of the experience of Africans in America. The course will explore the theatrical experience that enriches audiences, builds Thespians, communicates history and futures. Specifically, this course will explore the personalities, the literature and plays; the great companies, management and advancement; the socio-cultural implications, the technical contributions to theater.
Department of English Language and Literature
ENLT 247 - Survey of African American Literature (3)
T R 1400-1515 BRN 332
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
The Harlem (or New Negro) Renaissance refers to that efflorescence of African-American arts and letters occurring roughly between 1920 and 1935, although its chronological boundaries tend to shift depending on the literary historian's persuasion. This course will quarrel with that popular and largely taken-for-granted notion of an artistic movement of Black Americans identified exclusively with one district in New York City. Principal texts will include photographs by Carl Van Vechten and James Vander Zee; poems by Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Helene Johnson, Sterling Brown, and Langston Hughes; Alain Locke's The New Negro, Claude McKay's Home to Harlem, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Nella Larsen's Passing, recordings by Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey; Duke Ellington's film short Black and Tan Fantasy, and The Emperor Jones, starring Paul Robeson; and book jackets, advertisements, illustrations, and a range of critical essays. We will begin by exploring the construction of Harlem as city myth, as work of art and will examine the place it occupied in the cultural imagination of the l920s and 30s. We'll want to ask why Harlem was considered an exotic-erotic pleasure/tourist zone for some and for others, the emblem of a utopian ethos of racial renewal and political progress. We will address the generational tensions among the writers associated most popularly with the movement, as well as the economics of literary production. We will examine specifically how artists were patronized and marketed to the American public/s and the corresponding effects of the patronage system on black artistic production, and reception. Course Requirements: Three essays and a final examination.
ENAM 482B - The Harlem Renaissance (3)
T R 1100-1215 CAB B026
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
The Harlem (or New Negro) Renaissance refers to that efflorescence of African-American arts and letters occurring roughly between 1920 and 1935, although its chronological boundaries tend to shift depending on the literary historian's persuasion. This course will quarrel with that popular and largely taken-for-granted notion of an artistic movement of Black Americans identified exclusively with one district in New York City. Principal texts will include photographs by Carl Van Vechten and James Vander Zee; poems by Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Helene Johnson, Sterling Brown, and Langston Hughes; Alain Locke's The New Negro, Claude McKay's Home to Harlem, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Nella Larsen's Passing, recordings by Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey; Duke Ellington's film short Black and Tan Fantasy, and The Emperor Jones, starring Paul Robeson; and book jackets, advertisements, illustrations, and a range of critical essays. We will begin by exploring the construction of Harlem as city myth, as work of art and will examine the place it occupied in the cultural imagination of the l920s and 30s. We'll want to ask why Harlem was considered an exotic-erotic pleasure/tourist zone for some and for others, the emblem of a utopian ethos of racial renewal and political progress. We will address the generational tensions among the writers associated most popularly with the movement, as well as the economics of literary production. We will examine specifically how artists were patronized and marketed to the American public/s and the corresponding effects of the patronage system on black artistic production, and reception. Finally, we will try to sort through the various assessments of the Harlem Renaissance in literary history, including those that question the validity of designating it a "movement," since the artists generally caught under this umbrella held such disparate aesthetic and ideological aims. We will read the likes of Nathan Huggins who claims that the Harlem Renaissance was an "historical fiction." And Harold Cruse, who argues that if this was a movement, then it was one defined by "inspired aimlessness," one that "lacked a cultural philosophy" and continued a "tradition of white cultural paternalism." For David Levering Lewis, the Harlem Renaissance was an "exercise in black bourgeois egocentrism and meliorism." There are even those inclined to assess the Harlem Renaissance as did Ralph Ellison "The Lost Generation:" "Looked at coldly . . . [it] was a literary conceit of such major proportions that today it seems like a swindle." Judge for yourself next semester.
ENAM 482D- Black Women Writers 1950s to the Present (3)
T R 1230-1345 BRN 312
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
This seminar explores the range of Black women's writings from mid-century to the present. We will focus closely on the text's adherence to its contemporary literary and social conventions. We will also consider patterns of representation established in the 1950s and watch how they develop, disintegrate, or evolve into the present day. Do certain issues or themes remain important in Black women's writing of the last fifty years? How has the literature adapted in response to a specific cultural or historical moment? Writers include, but are not limited to, Ann Petry, Alice Walker, Jewelle Gomez, Dorothy West, Tananarive Due, Barbara Neely, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Toni Morrison. Class requirements include active class participation, discussion leading, response papers, long and short essays.
ENAM 482E - Mark Twain and His Times (3)
M W 1400-1515 BRN 203
Instructor: Stephen Railton
We\'ll read all Mark Twain\'s major works, and selected examples of his other literary and public performances. We\'ll be equally interested in what his works say about America and what Americans in his time had to say about him. We\'ll make extensive use of internet resources, especially the website "Mark Twain In His Times" that I\'ve been building for several years. Interested students will have the option of doing a web project instead of a final essay, though neither knowledge about nor enthusiasm for electronic technology is a prerequisite for the course. What I will expect you to bring to class is a willingness to participate, to help shape the discussions, and a curiosity about what the well-known, always controversial but also widely and deeply beloved image Sam Clemens created as Mark Twain can tell us about his times, our culture and even ourselves. If the class fills up and you\'re interested in taking it, I will be keeping a waiting list. To get on it you can e-mail me at sfr@virginia.edu
ENAM 482F -Violence in America: Slavery and Civil War (3)
T R 1100-1215 BRN 332
Instructor: Franny Nudelman
In this course, we will study representations of suffering, death, and mourning in the contexts of slavery and civil war. Most broadly, we will investigate how years of debate over slavery influenced the way that people perceived the crisis of war. Here are some questions we will ask: How do wartime renderings of the deaths of soldiers draw on prewar representations of slave suffering and rebellion? What strategies do artists use to convey pain and sorrow, or to show that suffering cannot be communicated? How did racial violence, as well as efforts to resist it, change with emancipation? Why is wartime violence so often portrayed as beneficial, the basis for a renewed sense of national identity and belonging? The syllabus will be interdisciplinary: as well as reading important literary texts like Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Thomas Gray's The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Walt Whitman's Drum-Taps, we will also examine a wide-range of sources such as music and photography, cemeteries and monuments--with an eye to historical context.
ENTC 353-Aesthetics and Politics in African American Literature (3)
T R 0930-1045 MIN 130
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
What tensions underlie the creation of African American literature? How do writers reconcile aesthetic possibility with the social pressures that confront them? What socio-political circumstances do these writers face and how are they presented in their literature? These are some of the questions that will guide our study of selected African American literature this semester. Writers include, but are not limited to, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt, Ralph Ellison, Ron Karenga, James Baldwin, and Ernest Gaines. Class requirements include active class participation, periodic response papers, quizzes, mid-term and final exams.
ENTC 482B - Post Colonial Drama (3)
T R 1530-1645 BRN 310
Instructor: Lotta Lofgren
The weakening of colonial power worldwide has called to our attention a rich and varied drama previously hidden or suppressed. In this course we will conduct a comparative study of plays from many cultures, working toward a viable definition of postcolonial drama, investigating the playwrights varied paths of divergence from the colonizing power. Casting a wide net, we will examine plays by ethnic playwrights in the United States, and by playwrights from Africa, India, the Caribbean, the former Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and possibly others. We will read works by Baraka, Kennedy, Hwang, Parks, Walcott, Soyinka, Havel, Devlin, Highway, Malouf, and others. Requirements: frequent written responses to the readings, class participation, a research paper.
ENTC 482D - African American Historical Fiction (3)
T 1400-1630 BRN 312
Instructor: Caroline Rody
This seminar will investigate a vibrant contemporary literary genre: African-American texts about slavery. Reading novels and poems and viewing films that reimagine this core story of New World African culture, we will consider the meanings of the contemporary project--literary, historical, political, psychological--to rewrite a people's founding trauma. Thematic concerns will include the representation of slave communities, plantation character types, literacy and literary authority, freedom, memory and imagination, power, gender, race and color, sexuality, and the possibilities and limits of cross-race relations. We will consider these texts' engagement with conventional "histories," oral and literary traditions, and 20th century developments in narrative form, as well as their experiments in genre ("neo-slave narrative," epic, picaresque, satire, gothic, science fiction, magic realism) and in uses of rhetoric and humor. The course will begin with 19th century slave narratives (Douglass, Jacobs, others) and continue with 20th century rewritings, many post-1975, including Margaret Walker, Jubilee; Alex Haley, Roots; Octavia Butler, Kindred; Charles Johnson, Oxherding Tale; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Sherley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose; and others. Films will include Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind(excerpts), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Roots, and Daughters of the Dust. Requirements include vigorous class participation, one short paper, a long seminar paper, and weekly paragraph responses.
Department of French Language and Literature
FREN 346 Litterature Africaine (3)
M W F 1000-1050 CAB 325
Instructor: Suzanne Houyoux
Ce cours est une introducion à la littérature francophone d' Afrique noire, en particulier le roman. Après quelques présentations, développant les contextes historique et idéologique de cette littérature, des exercices collectifs de lecture et d'analyse conduiront à des travaux et présentations de groupe. L'évaluation étant permanente, une présence assidue et participation active sont impératives ; l'examen final est remplacé par l'analyse thématique d'un roman.
Department of Government and Foreign Affairs
GFAP 344 - Urban Politics (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 324
Instructor: Glenn Beamer
Prerequisite: any course in GFAP, GFCP, or economics. Analyzes the structure, politics, and problems of American cities. The meaning and scope of "urban crisis" receive extensive attention. Examines the growing ties between the federal government and cities, central city-suburban conflict, machine politics, and welfare and housing policies. A significant part of the course will focus on race and the politics of Chicago, New York, Atlanta, and Detroit.
GFAP 351 - Minority Politics (3)
M W 1300-1350 CAB 345
Instructor: Lynn Sanders
The most entrenched divisions, largest conflicts and most persistent problems in American politics center around race. This course is devoted to an analysis of how attributions of racial difference shape American politics. Through the course, our animating question will be: is the American liberal democratic polity -- a polity which instituted and abolished slavery based in race -- basically sound apart from its unfortunate anti-democratic episodes, or is the racial order a fundamental element structuring this polity? Though the American racial order has deep historical roots, we will concentrate our attention on its recent manifestations. We will investigate the role of race in national elections, public policy remedies for racial inequality, and public opinion about these policies and other racial issues. We will attend to how racial politics implicates ideas about class and gender, and to differences in scholarship on race produced by people of different races. We will consider the implications for an increasingly racially diverse and complicated polity of defining race primarily in terms of black/white conflict. Discussion section required.
GFIR 582 - Africa and the World (3)
W 1530-1800 HAL 123
Instructor: Layi Abegunrin
Prerequisite: some background in international relations and/or the history of Africa. Overview of the international politics of sub-Saharan Africa, including inter-African relations as well as Africa's relations with the major powers, and the international dimensions of the Southern African situation. Explores alternative policy options open to African states. Considers a number of case studies which illustrate the policy alternatives.
GFCP 583 - Politics of South Africa (3)
W 1230-1515 CAB 247
Instructor: Layi Abegunrin
Prerequisite: GFCP 212, GFCP 581 or instructor permission. Studies the socio-political structures of white supremacy and the political transition to majority rule. Emphasizes the confrontation between African and Afrikaaner nationalisms, the consequences of economic growth on the patterns of racial stratification, and the complicated process contributing to the creation of the multi-racial democratic society.
Department of History
HIAF 202 - Africa from Imperialism to Independence (4)
T R 1530-1645 GIL 141
Instructor: John Mason
This course spans the years from the decline of the Atlantic slave trade in the early nineteenth century to the present. The focus of the first part of the course is on the slave trade and its consequences. The effects of the trade in human beings lingered long after its abolition. Many African societies were weakened, setting the stage for colonial conquest, while others were strengthened, often at the expense of their neighbors. The second part of the course looks at the conquest of much of Africa by European nations and at the dynamics of colonial rule. It is especially concerned with the ways in which colonialism affected ordinary Africans and with the many ways in which Africans resisted European domination. The final section of the course is devoted to the post-colonial period, studying first violent and non-violent forms of anti-colonial struggle and then the position of independent African nations in the contemporary world. The course is structured around lectures and readings. Additional course materials include novels and films.HIAF 202 is an introductory course and requires no prior knowledge of African history. Discussion section required.
HIAF 302 - History and (Auto) Biography from Modern South Africa (3)
T R 1100-1215 RFN 283
Instructor: Robert T. Vinson
This course is an introduction to both the modern history of South Africa and to individual South African lives, some famous, some "ordinary folk." The course begins with a brief survey of major pre-20th century themes such as the construction and reconstruction of African states, societies and ethnicities, Dutch and British settlement and conquest, slavery, the discovery of gold and diamonds, subsequent rapid industrialization and the South African War. The course then turns to the extraordinary autobiographies, biographies, essays, novels and personal testimonies of South Africans, black, white, "colored", Jewish and Indian, female and male, urban and rural, to further enliven the turbulent history of 20th century South Africa. From colorful, but dangerous urban townships, to the beautifully haunting countryside, these personal accounts detail how South Africans shaped, and were shaped by, rural impoverishment, rapid industrialization, segregation, apartheid, anti-apartheid organizations and the "negotiated" revolution that culminated in the country's first democratically elected government, that of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress. We will also interrogate the claim that there is a "new" post-apartheid South Africa-noting contrasts and continuities with the old segregationist and apartheid regimes. Readings include Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa; Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom; Mpho 'M'atsepo Nthunya, Singing Away the Hunger; Stephen Biko, I Write What I Like; Winnie Mandela, Part of My Soul Went With Him; Peter Abrahams, Mine Boy; Ahmed Kathrada, Letters from Robben Island; Sol Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa; Gillian Slovo, Every Secret Thing; Don Mattera, Gone With theTwilight: Story of Sophiatown; Shula Marks, Not Either An Experimental Doll; David Goodman, Fault Lines: Journeys into the New South Africa; and Eugene De Kock, Prime Evil. Grades will be determined from two 5-to 7-page analytical essays that situate individual accounts within the larger thematic concerns (land dispossession, urbanization, segregation, apartheid, the resilience of anti-apartheid activity, the "negotiated revolution" etc.) of the course. Each of these essays will be worth 20% of your grade. One of these essays can be extended into the 15-to 20-page final paper that will be worth 40% of your grade. The remaining 20% will be determined by the quality of your class participation. Undergraduates may use the course to meet the Second Writing Requirement.
HIAF 403 History of Pan-Africanism (4)
W 1530-1800 CAB B028
Instructor: Robert T. Vinson
This course surveys the history of Pan-Africanism, from its roots in the trans-Atlantic slave trade to present times and is particularly concerned with three particular themes: 1) Pan-Africanist thought and action within the context of African political and intellectual history; 2) The interactions between Africans and African diasporic communities in the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe and how such exchanges injected a specifically Pan-Africanist consciousness into locally-based political movements and; 3) The centrality of gender-both in masculinist conceptions of African nationhood and in relations between female and male Pan-Africanists-in Pan-African movements. This seminar will be discussion-oriented and based on readings that will include 1st person testimonies from Pan-Africanists like Marcus Garvey, Adelaide Casely Hayford and W.E.B. Du Bois, historical accounts and primary documents from key persons and organizations and from the seven Pan-African Conferences held in the 20th century. A preliminary list of readings include: Lemelle and Kelley eds., Imagining Home: Class, Culture and Nationalism in the African Diaspora; Von Eschen, Race Against Empire; Wamba, Kinship; Abdul-Raheem, Pan-Africanism; Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi in Africa; Harris, Afro-American Reactions to War in Ethiopia; Adi, West African Students in Britain; Esedebe, Pan-Africanism: The Idea and Movement; 1776-1991, Hill ed. Pan-African Biography; Harris ed. Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora; Langley, Ideologies of Liberation in Black Africa 1856-1970 and Adeleke, Un-African Americans. On average, students will be expected to read 150-175 pages per week and to be prepared to effectively discuss the readings in seminar discussions. Grades will be determined by the quality of the individual's contribution to weekly discussions (20%), by two 5-to 7- page position papers (20% each), and by one 15-20 page final paper (40%), which can be a more detailed analysis of a theme developed in one of the position papers. Undergraduates may use this course to fulfill their second writing requirement.
HIAF 503 Gender, Sexuality, and Family in African History (3)
R 1530-1800 MCL 2009
Instructor: Robert T. Vinson
Gender, Sexual and Familial relations, because they are central to understanding Africa's diverse societies and its historical processes, are fundamental to any examination of Africa. Throughout this graduate-level course, we will use these themes as an analytical lens to uncover fresh perspectives on such familiar topics in African history such as state formation, slavery and slave trading, "legitimate commerce", colonialism, nationalism and the post-colonial state. Within this thematic framework, we will also examine controversial and contemporary issues such as female circumcision and HIV/AIDS. The course will be interdisciplinary, utilizing the various perspectives of historians, anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, archaeologists, filmmakers and novelists. A preliminary list of course readings include Bay, Wives of the Leopard; Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands; Gruenbaum, The Female Circumcision Controversy; Greene, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast; Hunt ed., Gendered Colonialisms; Morrell ed., Changing Masculinities; Scully, Liberating the Family?; Van De Walle and Renne ed. Regulating Menstruation; Grinker, Houses in the Rainforest; Emecheta, The Slave Girl; Murray and Roscoe eds. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands; Cohen and Atieno-Odhiambo, Burying SM; Hodgson and McCurdy, Wicked Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa; and Wright ed. Strategies of Slaves and Women. Grades will be determined by the quality of your discussion and by a comprehensive final paper of at least twenty pages on a topic relevant to course readings and agreed upon by the instructor. Advanced undergraduates, who feel themselves capable of engaging in graduate-level work, may use this course as a second writing requirement.
HIST 403 - Culture, Politics, and Society in the African Diaspora, 1600 to 1850 (4)
M 1300-1530 CAB 331
Instructor: Frederick C. Knight
This course is cross-listed as AAS 406A
HIUS 100A - Religion and American Public Life Since World War II (3)
M 1530-1800 WIL 140
Instructor: Byron Hulsey
This reading seminar, which fulfills the second writing requirement, is primarily an examination of religious change, continuity, and conflict in this nation's public life since World War II. In particular, we will explore how different groups of Americans have used their religious faiths to justify contested beliefs and actions as they have confronted the momentous events and issues that have shaped modern American culture. We will devote particular attention to the Cold War, civil rights, Vietnam, the rise of the religious right, and the religious and political dilemmas Americans face in contemporary culture. Students will read approximately 200 pages per week for eight weeks, write five essays of five pages each for five weeks, and participate actively in class discussions during each of the fourteen sessions. The essays will comprise 75% of the final course grade, with the remaining 25% being devoted to class participation. There will be no mid-term or final examination. A complete reading list will be posted at the end of November on the bulletin board of Randall 128. Readings will include: Stephen J. Whitefield, The Culture of the Cold War; Robert S. Ellwood, 1950: Crossroads of American Religious Life; Charles Marsh, God's Long Summe; Adam Fairclough, Martin Luther King, Jr; James Carroll, An American Requiem.
HIUS 366 - Introduction to African American History, 1860-Present (4)
M W 1100-1150 CAB 345
Instructor: Dylan Penningroth
This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in the United States from the age of emancipation to the present. The course explores some of the major problems, events, structures, and personalities that shaped their lives, paying particular attention to how black people themselves shaped their experiences. Readings average about 150 pages per week and may include the following: W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; New York, 1989); Nat Love, The Life and Adventures of Nat Love (Univ. Nebraska Press, 1995); J. T. Trowbridge, The South (1866; Arno 1969); JoAnn Gibson Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It (Knoxville, 1987); Michele Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. Grades will be determined from section participation and three papers.
HIUS 367 - History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)
T R 1400-1450 GIL 130
Instructor: Julian Bond
This lecture course will examine the history, philosophies, tactics, events, and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward. The Southern movement--variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement--was a black-lead mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation in the South by the middle 1960s. Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping phases--lobbying, litigation and protest. In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights. In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation, the denial of the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools. The last phase, lasting a decade from '55 to '65, was a period of protest--boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations--as well as organizing campaigns that lay the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s. Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation in the United States. The movement's well-and lesser-known proponents and opponents and their stratagems will be examined. Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five-to-seven page papers. Texts: Wilkins, Roy, with Tom Matthews, Standing Fast, Da Capo Press; Forman, James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Open Hand Press; Bond, Julian and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit At The Welcome Table, American Heritage. Videos: 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, Producer, California Newsreel Discussion section required.
HIUS 401-The Black Family (4)
W 1300-1530 BRN 330
Instructor: Dylan Penningroth
"The black family" may be one of the most talked-about and least-understood institutions in America. From the powerful lineages of Ghana to the complexities of families under slavery, to Puff Daddy and the Family, black kinship has been a place of power, flexibility, symbolism, and criticism. This course aims to foster a conversation about family life in Africa and the United States: What was it? Who is and who isn't part of the family? Why is kinship so important to people? One way to get at these questions is to study how people who lived in or around black families represented their experiences in diaries, memoirs, letters, court cases, newspapers, and government documents. Students will write a 25-page research paper based on sources like these. During the first month or so, readings of about 200 pages per week will provide students with background on African and African American history and introduce them to the range of available sources. Students will work with the instructor to choose a topic and then do independent research. A complete draft of the paper will be due in mid-November. We will meet again as a group to hear reports about the status of each student's research. Final drafts will be due at the last meeting of the semester, during which students will also be expected to present an oral report to the class on his or her findings. This course fulfills the history thesis and the second writing requirements. Some of the texts we read during the first six weeks may include: Carol Stack, All Our Kin; Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, Introduction and chapter 9; Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present; Brenda Stevenson, Life in Black and White; Roger Gocking, Competing Systems of Inheritance Before the British Courts of the Gold Coast Colony (1990). Some background in history would be helpful, but not required.
HIUS 403B African-American Culture to1865 (3)
R 1300-1530 CAB 224
Instructor: Reginald Butler
From a historical perspective, this course will examine how African American cultures and societies developed in the north and south. How did forcibly transported Africans respond to the different agricultural economies, the conditions of enslavement, and European and native American cultures that they encountered during the colonial period? The course will begin in the early period during which large numbers of Africans arrived in British North America. It will then shift its focus to mature African American communities in which the vast majority of persons were American born. We will examine issues of African ethnicity and geography; family and kinship; religious practice; and diverse forms of aesthetic expression. Readings may include selections from the following: Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Low Country; David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine, eds., More Than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas; Ira Berlin, Many Thousand Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America; Stephan Palmie, ed., Slave Cultures and the Culture of Slavery, Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South; Kathleen M. Brown, Goodwives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia; William D. Piersen, Black Legacy: America's Hidden Heritage; Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and Foundations of Black America; Eugene D. Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made. Grades will be based on class participation, group projects, and a major research paper.
Department of Media Studies
MDST 256- Africa and Africans in the US Media (3)
T R 1230-1345 CAB 247
Instructor: Lisa Shutt
This course will address the role the media has played in creating images and understandings of "Africa" and "Blackness" in this country. We will focus primarily on the context of the present-day United States. However, we will also briefly address pre-colonial and colonial periods and touch on the role of popular media in particular contemporary African contexts. This class will explore how different media, including feature films, popular television, documentaries, popular fiction, academic writing, and radio, television, and print news media create "Africa" in different ways for Americans - each media encapsulating its own markers of legitimacy and expertise - each negotiating its own ideas of authorship and audience. Students will collect examples each week from various sources (print, television, film, etc.) for discussion. We will concentrate on the particular ways various media produce, display, and disseminate information. Finally, we will ask what responsibilities those who create and circulate information about such a mis- and under- represented area of the world have - and whether or not the viewing public shares in any sort of responsibility. Students will assemble a fifteen to twenty-page portfolio/research paper.
Deparmtent of Music
MUSI 212 - History of Jazz Music (3)
T R 1230-1345 OCH 101
Instructor: Matthew Butterfield
Prerequisite: No previous knowledge of music is required. This course is a survey of the history of jazz from its beginnings around 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century. Important instrumental performers, vocalists, composers, and arrangers are listened to and discussed. NOTE: This course meets the Non-western perspectives requirement. Lab, F, 9:00 - 9:50, Rm. 107 OCH (Jeff Decker) Lab, F, 11:00 - 11:50, Rm. 107 OCH (Jeff Decker) Lab, F, 12:00 - 12:50, Rm. 107 OCH (Jeff Decker)
MUSI 369 - African Drumming and Dance (2)
T R 1715-1930 OCH 107
Instructor: Eric Gertner
Prerequisite: Permission of instructor by audition on first day of class. A practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (BaAka pygmies), with the intention of performing at the end of the semester. Though no previous experience with music or dance is required, we will give special attention to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, and faithful attendance are required of each class member, the goal being to develop an ongoing UVA African Drumming and Dance Ensemble.
MUSI 412 - Jazz and Race: The Cultural Politics of Musical Criticism (3)
T R 0930-1045 OCH S008
Instructor: Matthew Butterfield
Prerequisite: Music 312 or consent of the instructor. This seminar will explore the issue of race in jazz music and criticism in a variety of historical contexts, ranging from the music's origins in New Orleans to its present institutional canonization via Wynton Marsalis's Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Topics will include authenticity and musical value as they relate to race, the problem of white hipness, and the relationship between jazz improvisation and vernacular linguistic practices such as Signifyin(g). Students will write several one-page responses to the listening and reading assignments and complete a research paper on a topic of their choice.
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 278 - GENDER IN AFRICAN RELIGIONS (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 431
Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora
By drawing information from African Religions, this course deals with topical questions of interest to anyone wishing to analyze the ways in which ideas or beliefs can impact on human behavior. The course runs as follows (i) a study of the Bantu religious language where ideas about male and female sexuality are used in a complementary fashion to try and express belief in God as creator of the heavens, earth and humanity as gendered realities. An attempt will be made to show the extent to which a traditional African cosmology explains the roles of men as leaders and women as producers in most African traditional societies. (ii) a study of how gender imagery was used in the spectrum of Christian and Gnostic religious movements found in North Africa during late antiquity. Students will be welcome to look at various ways in which gender imagery featured in early Christian talk about God, the creation process and depictions of evil and so on. Since the ancient cosmology in which North Africans used gender imagery made an impact on orthodox Christianity, this section of the course should be of interest to anyone wishing to learn about the emergence of Christianity as a patriarchal religion. (iii) a study of how gender imagery from African traditional religions and Christianity combine is a new discourse on gender in the new religious movements of Africa, otherwise known as independent churches. Since Christianity is the dominant religion of Africa today, it is appropriate to end with a quick survey of the way the traditional religions of Africa continue to shape people's attitudes to sexuality in independent Africa. This way one revisits the religious traditions of Africa in a way that encourages greater sensitivity in matters of gender in today's world by drawing lessons from a part of the world where Christianity is the most popular religion around which Africans are creating new identities.
RELA 390 - Islam in Africa (3)
T R 1230-1345 RFN G004C
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
This course offers an historical and topical introduction to Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa. After a brief overview of the central features of the Muslim faith, our chronological survey begins with the introduction of Islam to North Africa in the 7th century. We will trace the transmission of Islam via clerics, Sufis and Berber jihads to West Africa. We shall consider the medieval Muslim kingdoms; the development of Islamic scholarship and the reform tradition; the growth of Sufi brotherhoods; Fulbe ethnic nationalism and Islamic militancy; and the impact of colonization and de-colonization upon Islam. Our overview of the history of Islam in East Africa will cover: the early Arab and Asian mercantile settlements; the flowering of classical Swahili courtly culture; the Omani sultanates and present-day Swahili society. Readings and classroom discussions provide a more in-depth exploration of topics encountered in our historical survey. Through the use of ethnographical and literary materials, we will explore questions such as the translation and transmission of the Qur'an, indigenization and religious pluralism; the status of women in African Islam; and African Islamic spirituality.
RELC 323 - Pentacostalism: Origins and Development (3)
T R 1100-1215 CAB 323
Instructor: Wallace Best
This course will analyze the Pentecostal movement of the past 20th century as a transcultural religious phenomenon. Looking to a wider international context, we will explore the development of Pentecostalism in such countries as Mexico, Brazil, Korea, and China. We will also concern ourselves with the way ethnic minorities within the United States have reshaped the practice and the meanings of Pentecostalism, as well as Evangelicalism in general, particularly with regard to race and gender. Because the course is about a religious movement, our analytical approach will be historical, anthropological, and theological. Using various Pentecostal texts and articles, we will work toward a clearer understanding of the basic tenets of Pentecostalism, namely "divine healing," "baptism in the Holy Spirit," and "speaking in tongues." We will also investigate how the most recent internationalist shift within the Pentecostal movement has renewed millennialist thought and efforts for Christian ecumenism.
RELG 528 - Black Women's Narratives (3)
W 1530-1800 CAB 320
Instructor: Wallace Best
This course will analyze the Pentecostal movement of the past 20th century as a transcultural religious phenomenon. Looking to a wider international context, we will explore the development of Pentecostalism in such countries as Mexico, Brazil, Korea, and China. We will also concern ourselves with the way ethnic minorities within the United States have reshaped the practice and the meanings of Pentecostalism, as well as Evangelicalism in general, particularly with regard to race and gender. Because the course is about a religious movement, our analytical approach will be historical, anthropological, and theological. Using various Pentecostal texts and articles, we will work toward a clearer understanding of the basic tenets of Pentecostalism, namely "divine healing," "baptism in the Holy Spirit," and "speaking in tongues." We will also investigate how the most recent internationalist shift within the Pentecostal movement has renewed millennialist thought and efforts for Christian ecumenism.
Department of Sociology
SOC 341 - Race and Ethnicity (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 325
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
The terms "race" and "ethnicity," and issues associated with them are, to say the least, problematic. The meanings of these - and related - terms are unclear and policies that address "racial" issues are usually very contentious. Why is this the case? Why is race, seemingly, a source of unending conflict? This course will address these questions by examining the general issue of race from a historical and comparative perspective.
SOC 410 - African American Communities (3)
T R 1530-1645 CAB 338
Instructor: Rick Turner
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear, comprehensive understanding of the history, struggles and diversity of the African-American community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the African-American community within urban society and on the need for students to obtain knowledge of the cultural history of African-Americans. The course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for African-American people's sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. By means of discussion, lectures, videos, reading, writing, and class presentation, this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamics of the African-American community.
University Seminar
USEM 171/0014 - The 60s in Black and White (2)
T 1530-1720 CAB 122
Instructor: Julian Bond
The 1960's saw a generation of young people begin to build movements which would stop a war abroad and start a war at home. What made these movements for peace and equal rights possible? What events triggered them? Who were participants? What is their legacy in the present? This seminar - through biographies activists in the movements - attempts to answer these and other questions as we examine personalities, events, and culture of the 1960s. Students will be required to write a comprehensive paper on a 60's subject - a participant, an organization, a movement.
Fall 2001
African-American and African Studies
AAS 101 Introduction To Afro-American And African Studies(4)
T R 1100-1215 PHS 209
Instructor: Dylan Penningroth
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.
AAS 324 Plantations In Africa And The Caribbean (3)
T R 0930-1045 MIN 130
Instructor: Hanan Sabea
This course seeks a comparative analysis of plantations in Africa and the Caribbean by highlighting the similarities and differences between the two contexts and their effects on plantations as place of work and spaces of sociality. It also examines the historical linkages between Africa and the Caribbean in the making and reproduction of plantations as they relate to the colonial empires, the differentiated entrenchment of capitalism around the globe, and correspondent movement of ideas, people and things. Finally, the course explores the socio-economic and political implications of plantations on the localities in which they have been operating.
This course is cross-listed as ANTH 324.
AAS 351 African American Social And Political Thought (3)
T R 1100-1215 MAU 115
Instructor: Corey D.B. Walker
Negotiating Modernity
The close of the nineteenth century and the opening of the twentieth century was a period of enormous intellectual activity. African American intellectuals were at the vanguard of some of the most intriguing and intellectually stimulating social and political movements shaping the modern world. From the nationalist visions of Alexander Crummell to the feminist leanings of Anna Julia Cooper to the avowed Marxist orientation of Harry Haywood, African American thinkers were instrumental in developing and promoting new and interesting strands of social and political thought. This course will engage the various currents in African American social and political thought from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. With the theme "Negotiating Modernity," we will explore this complex intellectual world where African American intellectuals sought to develop critical social and political responses when "all that is solid melts into air." Course requirements include active class participation, brief response papers, and extended essays.
Selected readings may include: Tunde Adeleke, UnAfrican Americans; Mia Bay, The White Image in the Black Mind;Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice From The South; Alexander Crummell, Destiny & Race; Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism; W. E. B. Du Bois, Darkwater; Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik; Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race; Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism; Stephanie Shaw, What A Woman Ought To Be and Do; Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-education of the Negro.
AAS 401 Independent Study (3)
TBA
AAS 405A Anthropology And The African Diaspora (3)
M 1300-1530 CAB 130
Instructor: Mieka Brand
In this course we will investigate the role of anthropology as it relates to the African diaspora. The term "diaspora" refers to the dispersal of peoples of African descent and their role in the transformation and creation of new cultures, institutions, and ideas outside of Africa. How do people of the African diaspora make sense of their world? In what ways do forces such as colonialism, capitalism or racism shape these understandings? What commonalities and differences can we find across different parts of the diaspora? Readings will range from the early works of W.E.B. Du Bois and Zora Neale Hurston to contemporary literature by anthropologists such as Lee D. Baker, Gertrude Fraser and Theresa Singleton, and will span the fields of socio-cultural anthropology, archaeology, and historical anthropology. Readings will focus primarily on the United States, but will include also studies from the Caribbean, Central and South America, Europe and, of course, Africa. Reading load will range from about 100 to 200 pages per week. In addition to regular attendance and active participation, requirements for the course include four 1-2 page précis, leading one or more discussion section, and a final independent research project of approximately 20-25 pages.
This course will fulfill the AAS major requirement of a 400-level course with term paper.
AAS 405B Race, 'Progress,' And The West (3)
R 1400-1630 CAB 225
Instructor: Wende Elizabeth Marshall
How does the notion of race shape our conceptions of nationhood, class, culture and gender? How was (is) whiteness understood as "raced?" This seminar will analyze the historic development of the race concept in the west from the European "enlightenment" to the 21st century and analyze and interpret constructions, deconstructions and reconstructions of race, particularly in regard to the imbrications of race/culture, race/nation and race/gender in Western theory and practice. Requirements include a 20-page research paper (fulfills AAS major requirement) and short oral presentations on the readings.
Possible readings include: Bernal, Black Athena (introduction to Vol. 2); Stocking, Race, Culture and Evolution; Foucault, selections from The Order of Things; Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World; Prakash, Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World; Lefkowitz and Rogers, selections from Black Athena Revisited; Montesquieu, Persian Letters; Spencer, Evolution of Society; Tylor, Primitive Society; selections from the Hebrew Bible; Goldberg, Racist Culture; Gregory and Sanjek, Race; Krenshaw et. al, Critical Race Theory; Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War; Said, Orientalism; Jackson-Fossett and Turner, Race Consciousness; Brown, Die Nigger Die; Cleaver, Soul on Ice; Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk; Fanon, Black Skin.
AAS 405C Race And Place: African-American Education In Post-Emancipation Virginia, 1865-1965(3)
W 1300-1530 MIN 108
Instructor: Scot French
This advanced research seminar invites students to explore the subject of African American education in post-emancipation Virginia through scholarly readings and the intensive study of archival materials, such as photographs, oral histories, and public records. In the first six weeks of class we will read and discuss works of scholarship that place African American schooling in its local, regional, and national contexts, beginning with Carter G. Woodson's classic, The Mis-Education of the Negro. The second half of the class will be devoted to researching and writing of individual papers and the building of a collaborative web-based project. This course fulfills the AAS requirement of a 400-level seminar with term paper.
Prospective readings include:
• Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro
• William A. Link, Jackson Davis and the Lost World of Jim Crow Education
• James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935
• Samuel L. Horst, The Diary of Jacob E. Yoder of the Freedmen's Bureau School, Lynchburg, Virginia, 1866-1870
• Charles S. Johnson, Growing up in the Black Belt: Negro Youth in the Rural South
• Florence C. Bryant, Memoirs of a Country Girl
and excerpts from various Civil Rights era autobiographies
AAS 451 Distinguished Majors Program/ Directed Research (3)
TBA
AAS 452 Distinguished Majors Program/Thesis (3)
TBA
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 324 Plantations In Africa And The Caribbean (3)
T R 0930-1045 MIN 130
Instructor: Hanan Sabea
This course seeks a comparative analysis of plantations in Africa and the Caribbean by highlighting the similarities and differences between the two contexts and their effects on plantations as place of work and spaces of sociality. It also examines the historical linkages between Africa and the Caribbean in the making and reproduction of plantations as they relate to the colonial empires, the differentiated entrenchment of capitalism around the globe, and correspondent movement of ideas, people and things. Finally, the course explores the socio-economic and political implications of plantations on the localities in which they have been operating.
This course is cross-listed as AAS 324.
ANTH 330 Tournaments And Athletes (4)
T R 1100-1215 MIN 125
Instructor: George Mentore
This course will offer you a cross-cultural study of competitive games. Criticizing current theories about the "innocence" of sports while comparing and contrasting various athletic events from societies around the world, it will provide an argument to explain the competitive bodily displays of athletes. It will select materials, which allow you to examine bodily movement, meaning, context, and process, in addition to the relations between athletes, officials, spectators, and social systems. Its general thesis will be that sport brings out the universal morals of community, challenges and tests them in controlled and unthreatening genres, yet never defeats them or makes them appear unjust.
The student must enroll in one of the obligatory discussion sections in 330D.
ANTH 388 African Archaeology (3)
M W F 09:00-9:50 CAB 215
Instructor: Adria LaViolette
This course surveys archaeological knowledge currently available about ancient North Africa, the Sahara, and sub-Saharan Africa. The emphases will be on the Late Stone Age, the Iron Age, and the archaeology of the colonial period. The goal is to provide a firm grasp of the great transformations in pre-modern African history, and to provide students with information about some of the most important archaeological sites, discoveries, and research on the continent. Throughout the course, a theme will be the politics of the past, and the changing role of the practice of archaeology in Africa.
Department of English Language and Literature
ENLT 247/001 Black Writers In America (3)
T R 1100-1215 CAB 139
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
Black Women Writers 1950s to the Present
This seminar explores the range of Black women's writings from mid-century to the present. We will focus closely on the text's adherence to its contemporary literary and social conventions.We will also consider patterns of representation established in the 1950s and watch how they develop, disintegrate, or evolve into the present day. Do certain issues or themes remain important in Black women's writing of the last fifty years? How ahs the literature adapted in response to a specific cultural or historical moment? Writers include, but are not limited to, Ann
Petry, Alice Walker, Jewelle Gomez, Dorothy West, Tananarive Due, Barbara Neely, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Toni Morrison. Class requirements include active class participation, discussion leading, response papers, long and short essays.
ENLT 247/002 African American Writers (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 245
Instructor: TBA
Description currently unavailable.
ENAM 313 Early African American Literature I (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 332
Instructor: Deborah McDowell
This course surveys pivotal moments and texts in the history of African-American prose, from l760, the date of Briton Hammon's Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings to l901, the year of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery. We will work our way through canonical and non-canonical texts and through multiple genres-- captivity narratives, spiritual autobiographies, slave narratives, sermons, execution sermons, criminal narratives, speeches, novels--and will explore a number of issues related to literary history, culture, aesthetics, authorship, audience, genre, and narratology. Among the questions to be explored? How have literary historians given shape to or "storied" this tradition? How do black women's writings complicate these "fictions" of literary history? What is the relation between the black vernacular tradition and the black "literary" text? How do the white abolitionists and editors involved in the production of slave narratives trouble traditional conceptions of authorship? Who "authors" a speech by Sojourner Truth that is stenographically transcribed and appears in multiple versions? What confluence of factors and ideologies explain the "canonical" version of "Ain't I a Woman?" Other texts include Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Harriet Wilson's Our Nig; Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom; David Walker's Appeal; Pauline Hopkins's Contending Forces, and Thomas Gray's Confessions of Nat Turner. We will work to situate these and other selections in the political, cultural, and critical controversies of their time and ours.
ENAM 381 Black Protest Fiction (3)
M W 1400-1515 CAB 119
Instructor: Marlon Ross
Description currently unavailable.
ENAM 481C African-American Women Writers (3)
T R 0930-1045 BRN 312
Instructor: Angela Davis
We will read several novels and short stories by African-American Women, examining in particular how the authors portray black women as individuals and in the context of American society. This course requires active class participation, four written responses to readings (each one typed page long) and a formal essay (ten to twelve pages long). The reading list is: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls...; Toni Morrison, Sula, and Tar Baby; Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble; Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones; Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place.
Prerequisite: The course is restricted to fourth year majors in English, Women's Studies and African-American and African Studies.
ENAM 481D - Aesthetics And Politics In African American Literature (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 335
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
What tensions underlie the creation of African American literature? How do writers reconcile aesthetic possibility with the social pressures that confront them? What sociopolitical circumstances do these writers face and how do they present in their literature? These are some of the questions that will guide our study of selected African American literature this semester. Writers include, but are not limited to, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt, Ralph Ellison, Ron Karenga, James Baldwin, and Ernest Gaines. Class requirements include active class participation, periodic response papers, quizzes, mid-term and final exams.
This course is cross-listed with ENTC 481H
ENAM 481E Faulkner, Gaines & The Plantation (3)
T R 1100-1215 BRN 310
Instructor: Charles Rowell
To write the South (or to write of the South) -- as William Faulkner and Ernest Gaines do -- is, ultimately, to read the plantation and its accompanying myth in varying manifestations. In such a context, the plantation is an enclosed world marked by restricting codes and mores, a hierarchical regime whose unlimited power is centered in the hands of an owner who determines the daily life and fate of its inhabitants. The plantation is, on the one hand, a large farm, an economic site; it is, on the other, a social and political entity which not only constructs and controls the lives of its inhabitants but also assigns them roles and value in terms of their race, class, and gender; in the revisionary history of some Southerners, the plantation is even a family, filled with white "parents" and black "children." The plantation is ultimately a culture which, with its penchant for control and domination in the interest of a few, shaped the way of life and determined the political imperatives of an entire region, the South.
This course will not only critique the plantation as a socio-political regime; using two of its most renowned writers, one black and the other white, this course will also examine critically how Faulkner and Gaines deploy the plantation as they write the South in fiction. What does it mean for a beneficiary of the regime (Faulkner: white, male, upper-middle class) to represent it in Absalom, Absalom and The Sound and the Fury, among others? If he critiques the plantation or its culture, what does he say, even as he invents a county in Mississippi in which to set his fictional world? And what of Ernest Gaines (black, male, from a poor family) who grew up as a victim of the plantation's legacy? Writing in the wake of legions of Southern white writers who created plantation myths affirmed by white Americans nationwide, Gaines stepped on dangerous ground when he decided to set his fiction in the changing plantation world of southern Louisiana in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Of Love and Dust, and other texts. How does this native of a Louisiana plantation critique (or defend?) that regime? In the end, does Faulkner or Gaines present the "truer" fiction of the South?
ENTC 481H Trauma Theory & African-American Literature (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 335
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
Trauma theory is an emerging branch of literary scholarship pioneered by such critics as Cathy Caruth and Shoshanna Felman. Despite the value of these interpretive strategies, trauma as a literary methodology is not often used to comment on African American culture. In this class we will consider trauma theory by reading the standard-bearers as well as new voices on the scene. Focusing on traumas endemic to African American life, slavery and lynching, we will explore how the fields of history, psychology, and literary analysis converge to form literary trauma studies. We will also consider how African American subjectivity influences the definition and structure of trauma. Students will be required to participate actively, lead discussion and write two essays.
This course is cross listed as ENAM481D
Department of French Language and Literature
FREN 346 Topics In African Culture (3)
T R 1100-1215 CAB 236
Instructor: Majida Bargach
Course description currently unavailable.
FREN 411 Francophone Literature Of Africa (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 235
Instructor: TBA
This course surveys the literary tradition in French, emphasizing post-World War II poets, novelists, and playwrights. Examines the role of cultural reviews in the development of this literary tradition.
Department of Government and Foreign Affairs
GFCP 212 Politics Of Developing Areas (3)
T R 0930-1045 TBA
Instructor: Robert Fatton
Surveys patterns of government and politics in non-Western political systems. Topics include political elites, sources of political power, national integration, economic development, and foreign penetration.
Department of History
HIAF 100 Food And Famine In Africa (3)
W 1300-1530 RFN 311
Instructor: Tamara Giles-Vernick
This course will introduce students to the study of history by exploring famine in Africa. Famines have plagued Africa throughout its history and, contrary to popular belief, have not resulted from exclusively "natural" causes.
Examining famine in Africa's past sheds light on the complexity of assigning "causes" to events in the past. It also demonstrates how history can provide insights into present strategies for preventing famine. In this course, the history of African famine gives us an opportunity to learn about the methods and concerns of historical inquiry and to develop skills for reading critically, writing lucidly, and arguing cogently.
By examining historical case studies of famine in Ethiopia, Somalia, the Sahel, and South Africa, we will explore the complexity of change in human lives. Understanding this complexity helps to illuminate why events such as famines occur. Our case studies will provide us with opportunities to evaluate how historians and other commentators on famine use evidence to explain historical change. We will investigate the different kinds of evidence that historians use, including ecological, oral, and written evidence. We will examine different writings that draw upon historical interpretation, including narratives, first-person accounts, governmental reports, and novels. Finally, we will explore how history can contribute to our understandings of contemporary problems.
HIAF 201 Early African History Through The Era Of The Slave Trade (4)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 345
Instructor: Joseph C. Miller
Early African History draws Africans' distinctive achievements in culture, politics, and economic strategies out from the mists of the once-dark continent's unwritten past. Starting with the dawn of history and taking the story up in detail from the millennium before the Present Era, HIAF 201 follows the sometimes-surprising ways in which village elders, women, merchants, kings, cattle lords, and ordinary farmers pursued meaningful lives without the technologies that modern Americans take for granted. The last third of the course examines the ironic interplay of tragedy and achievement in a continent increasingly trapped in exiling its own people in slavery to Europeans, until the Atlantic slave trade began to wind down after about 1800. (A second semester of African history, HIAF 202, taught in the spring, narrates subsequent events down through twentieth-century colonialism and the post-1960 era of independence and impoverishment.)
HIAF 201 is a lower-division introductory survey. The instructor presents the major themes of early African history in lectures twice each week. Students meet additionally in discussion sections for review of readings, quizzes, and preparation for written assignments. Requirements include weekly map quizzes, a mid-term examination (only the better of two tries counts), three short papers (4-5 pages) rehearsing historical questions for the mid-terms and considering the written sources on Africa's past, and a final examination (format to be negotiated with the class). The course belongs to the Afro-American and African Studies curriculum, meets the "non-western" requirement for the major in History, and qualifies for the College "non-western perspectives" area requirement. Students may rewrite one of the papers to fulfill the College Second Writing Requirement.
Readings revolve around weekly assignments in a text (Shillington, History of Africa), for a total of about 225 pages. Other assigned chapters and professional articles introduce the distinctive methodologies of doing history without written sources (including the famous Mande oral epic Sundiata), highlight interpretive ("historiographical") issues, and consider concepts relevant to understanding early Africa. The total number of assigned pages runs at approximately 1200.
No formula determines final marks. Students are graded according to their "highest consistent performance" in all aspects of the course, including attendance at lectures and participation in discussions, with allowance made for the unfamiliarity of the subject matter early in the term; a number of options allow students to devise a combination of graded work that will accommodate other academic commitments and reflect specialized abilities most accurately.
HIAF 201 presumes no prior knowledge of Africa or experience with the study of history. Since the subject is new to nearly everyone in the course, consistent application and preparation is expected, particularly early in the term. Students in all four years of their undergraduate careers and in all colleges of the University complete the course with success.
Most find it a challenging opportunity to discover and examine assumptions about modern Americans -- themselves included -- they did not know they held.
HIAF 402 History Colloquia (4)
T R 1400-1515 PV8 108
Instructor: John Mason
"What's Wrong with Africa?"
War, famine, disease, and unending poverty... This is the Africa that we too often read about in newspapers and magazines and see on TV. While this sort of coverage is misleading--Africa is not simply a continent-wide disaster area--there is enough truth in the images of human suffering to cause Africans and non-Africans alike to ask, What's wrong with Africa?
HIAF 402 explores the roots of Africa's multiple crises, focussing primarily on Africa's relations with the rest of the world, especially the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. Topics include the overseas slave trade, conquest and colonialism, anti-colonial liberation struggles, and post-colonial politics and economics. Course materials include African novels and movies and current scholarship from Africa and the west.
HIAF 403 Making Race In South Africa And The United States (4)
T R 0930-1045 RAN 212
Instructor: John Mason
HIAF 403 is a seminar in comparative history. Through biography, autobiography, and scholarship, we will look at the ways in which race became the overwhelming reality in the lives of South Africans and Americans, both black and white.
South Africa and the American South are like distant cousins: instantly recognizable as members of the same family, but with distinctively different personalities. Both countries owe much of their early economic development to slavery. In both complex systems of racial domination shaped society for generations during and after the emancipation of the slaves. And in both the interracial struggle against racism gave rise to some of the most important people and events in their histories.
At the same time, the differences between the two countries cannot be ignored. Most dramatically, in South Africa the descendants of European immigrants constitute a minority of the population; in the United States, of course, the reverse is true.
Course materials include music, movies and videos, as well as biographies, autobiographies, and current scholarship.
HIAF 404 Independent Study In African History (3)
TBA
Instructor: Staff
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HIAF 503 Family And Gender In African History (3)
T 1800-2030 RAN 212
Instructor: Tamara Giles-Vernick
Family and gender relations have fundamentally shaped Africa's changing societies, economies, and cultures, just as it has been shaped by them. We will begin this course by exploring various ways of understanding familial and gender relations, as both Africans themselves and social scientists have imagined them. We will then focus on how African men, women and families have participated in, influenced, and been transformed by various processes in African history, including slavery, migration, urbanization, colonial rule, legal change and the development of the postcolonial state.
Family and gender history incorporates the analytical questions and tools of history, anthropology, political economy, and sociology. Students can expect to read at least one book a week for the course. A preliminary list of course readings includes: Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands; Cohen and Atieno-Odhiambo, Burying SM; Cooper, Marriage in Maradi; Emecheta, The Slave Girl; Grinker, Houses in the Rainforest; Hodgson and McCurdy, Wicked Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa; Hunt, Gendered Colonialisms; Ranger, Are We Not Also Men?; Scully, Liberating the Family?; Soyinka, Ake, The Years of Childhood; Werbner, Tears of the Dead.
HIAF 511 Slavery In World History (3)
M 1300-1530 PV5 109
Instructor: Joseph C. Miller
HIAF 511 is a small seminar-style class for graduate students and advanced undergraduates (with instructor's permission) that will explore historical approaches to the study of one of the world's oldest, most ubiquitous, and most tragic, institutions. Most Americans are familiar with slavery only as it developed in the Old South in the decades before the Civil War. In fact, Greeks, Roman, Muslims, Africans, Renaissance Italians, Brazilians, West Indian planters, Buddhists, Maori, and many others also held significant numbers of people -- by no means all of them African -- in bondage. Most also treated slavery as a way to assimilate foreigners, not as the racially exclusive dead end that American laws of slavery prescribed. The objective of HIAF 511 is to move beyond static stereotypes and consider the enslavement as a process of its many distinctive times and places in world history.
Recent major works in this enormous field (some 700-800 academic studies appear each year focused primarily on slavery) will form the basis for weekly class discussions. In addition, each member of the class will select one region and prepare a substantial term-paper (i.e. based on secondary authorities) setting its experiences with slavery in the relevant historical context. The background reading for the modern portions of the course will be Robin Blackburn's The Making of New World Slavery. Other, extremely varied readings will develop the history of slavery in the ancient Mediterranean, the Islamic world, Africa, medieval Europe, Brazil, the Caribbean, and colonial North America, and the United States.
HIAF 511 carries no specific pre-requisites, but its broad setting presumes a general familiarity with several parts of the globe, or a willingness to assimilate a considerable quantity of new material during the semester.
All stages of writing a polished term paper (a preliminary paper proposal, an interim draft, a revised draft, and the final submission) will receive close editorial attention, with the object of developing clarity and efficiency in writing; students will be expected to prepare each one of these steps sufficiently in advance of deadlines to revise before submitting, on time. The paper will constitute the final examination for the course.
Students will also be graded on their grasp of the readings as demonstrated in contributions of relevant insight from them to class discussions.
The instructor will work with students to define paper topics that will support special interests in given times or places and will support petitions to count this course toward appropriate area and other requirements within the history major or, for graduate students, to support history fields or programs in other departments. Undergraduates may use the course to meet the Second Writing Requirement.
Please contact the instructor (<jcm7a@virginia.edu>, 924-6395) if you are considering enrolling in the course, in order to understand its learning strategy and to plan your participation in it in ways that will develop your broader educational goals.
HIST 504 Monticello Internship (3)
Instructor: Phyllis Leffler
Directed research, largely in primary source materials, on topics relating to Jefferson's estate, life, and times. Directed by senior members of the Monticello staff.
Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor.The internships are restricted to graduate students in history and to fourth-year undergraduate history majors. A maximum of two students each semester can be admitted to the course.
HIUS 307 The Coming Of The Civil War (3)
T R 0930-1045 MIN 125
Instructor: Michael F. Holt
This lecture course closely examines American history between 1815 and 1861. While its primary objective is to explain why a sectional conflict of long duration between the North and the South produced secession and Civil War in 1861, it also addresses in some detail the events and significance of the so-called "Age of Jackson." Economic development, westward expansion, and the escalation of sectional antagonism between Northerners and Southerners over time will all be addressed. But the primary focus of the lectures will be on political developments in these years, for only those developments, I believe, can explain why secession and war occurred when they did.
The course will have no discussion sections. Students' grades will be based on a midterm examination, an 8-10 page paper on the assigned course reading, and a comprehensive final examination. Students may take this course on a Credit/No Credit basis, but I require at least a C final average grade to earn a grade of Credit.
Readings for the course are likely to include the following:
• Harry Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America
• William Lee Miller, Arguing about Slavery
• Richard E. Ellis, The Union at Risk
• Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619-1877
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
• Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s
• Minisha Sinha, The Counter-revolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina
• James M. McPherson, What They Fought For
HIUS 323 The Rise And Fall Of The Old South (3)
M W 1100-1150 PHS 203
Instructor: Edward L. Ayers
This course will explore the emergence and destruction of the most powerful slave society of the modern world: the American South. It will begin with the seventeenth century and extend through the Civil War and Reconstruction. We will examine the lives of slaves and slave owners, small farmers and large planters, men and women, soldiers and civilians. Throughout, the focus will be on the way that black Southerners and white Southerners interacted.
Readings will be diverse, including original documents, materials on the Web, fiction, and secondary accounts. Requirements include a midterm and final as well as a substantial research paper. Energetic participation in a weekly discussion section is a central part of the course.
Discussion section required.
HIUS 365 African-American History, Through Reconstruction (3)
M W 1200-1250 RFN G004B
Instructor: Dylan Penningroth
This course explores the history and cultures of people of African descent in North America from the 1500s to the mid-nineteenth Century, and from the African continent to the Americas. We will engage critically with a variety of topics, including identities, families, and communities, gender, the slave trades and slavery, resistance, and emancipation. We will pay special attention to how black people themselves shaped their experiences, and how those experiences relate to the history of the broader Atlantic world.
Readings being considered:
• Boubacar Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade (trans. 1998; New York, 1988)
• T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, Myne Owne Ground: Race and Freedom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676 (New York: Oxford, 1982)
• Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I A Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: Norton, 1985)
• David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995)
• Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (New York: Dover, 1995)
• Eric Foner, Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1983)
The readings will average 150-200 pages per week. There will be two papers and a final exam. Each week we will have two lectures and one required discussion section.
HIUS 367 History Of The Civil Rights Movement (3)
T R 1400-1450 MIN 125
Instructor: Julian Bond
This lecture course will examine the history, philosophies, tactics, events, and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward.
The Southern movement--variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement--was a black-lead mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation in the South by the middle 1960s.
Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping phases--lobbying, litigation and protest. In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights. In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation, the denial of the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools. The last phase, lasting a decade from '55 to '65, was a period of protest--boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations--as well as organizing campaigns that lay the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s.
Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation in the United States. The movement's well-and lesser-known proponents and opponents and their stratagems will be examined. Discussion section required. Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five-to-seven page papers.
Texts:
• Wilkins, Roy, with Tom Matthews, Standing Fast, Da Capo Press
• Forman, James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Open Hand Press
• Bond, Julian and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit At The Welcome Table, American Heritage
• Videos:
• "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, Producer, California Newsreel.
HIUS 401/A History Seminar: Who's An American? Americanism And National Identity In The United States 1945-90 (3)
M W 1530-1800 B003
Instructor: Carl Bon Tempo
What did Southern segregationists, African-American civil rights leaders, feminists, and proponents of the fledgling New Right political movement have in common during the 1960s? At first glance, not much. But upon closer examination, it is clear that many of the leaders in these groups manipulated the ideas and rhetoric of national identity and Americanism in order to formulate their own answers to the question, "Who's an American?"
In this 401 seminar, students will explore how Americans living in the last half of the twentieth century created and employed a political language called Americanism and, in doing so, conceived of national identity. What was Americanism and how did it relate to national identity? The two concepts were closely related. One historian described Americanism this way: "[I]t can best be understood as a political language, a set of words, phrases, and concepts that individuals used - either by choice or necessity - to articulate their political beliefs and press their political demands." This "political language" and these "words, phrases, and concepts" often rested upon definitions of national identity and character.
The main goal of this course is for students to arrive at an understanding of how definitions of Americanism and national identity varied during this period according to which Americans did the defining - and according to their distinct political, social, economic, and cultural agendas. During the first third of the class, students will read selections (between 150 to 200 pages per week) from a variety of works that offer definitions of both Americanism and national identity. Discussions in these weeks will center on how race, place, gender, class, and contemporary historical events contributed to the many forms of Americanism. The readings will provide a methodological, historiographic, and historical foundation for the last two-thirds of the course, during which students will write a 25 page, primary source-centered, research paper.
This seminar provides an opportunity for students to read cutting edge scholarship about national identity, Americanism, patriotism, and citizenship, as well as the opportunity to contribute to this scholarship with their research paper. Possible paper topics include - but are by no means limited to - the ways in which participants in debates about immigration policy, the various branches of the Civil Rights Movement, segregationists in the South, or the neo-conservative political movement of Barry Goldwater (or Ronald Reagan) crafted definitions of national identity and an Americanist language to satisfy its political and social agendas. Papers can address a variety of topics and sources from almost as many angles. This wide scope, I believe, will produce lively discussions and papers.
Texts will probably include: (We will read portions of these works and most will be available via toolkit)
• Lynne Cheney. Selection of articles from The New Republic, The Chronicle of Higher Education,
• and The Reader's Digest on the formation and need for National History Standards.
• Gary Gerstle. Working Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
• Will Herberg. Protestant-Catholic-Jew. Second Edition. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1960.
• Linda Kerber. No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998.
• Gunnar Myrdal. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944.
• David Potter. People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954.
• Bryant Simon. A Fabric of Defeat: The Politics of South Carolina Millhands, 1910-1948. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
HIUS 401/B History Seminar: The North And Reconstruction (3)
W 1300-1530 RFN 227A
Instructor: Michael F. Holt
Reconstruction was the political and constitutional settlement imposed by the victorious North on the defeated Confederacy after the Civil War. Much has been written about the framing of these policies in Washington and their implementation in the South, and this literature is filled with assertions about the reaction of the northern public to this post-war experiment. Surprisingly little systematic research, however, has in fact been done about the relative importance of developments in the South compared to developments within the North itself to the northern public. The purpose of this majors seminar is to undertake that investigation by examining the role of southern Reconstruction vis-à-vis other kinds of issues and concerns in northern elections between 1865 and 1876. After a few weeks of common reading, each student will be assigned a specific election year for research. The objective will be to read as many Republican and Democratic newspapers from the North as possible for that year to determine what issues election campaigns focused on and how central Reconstruction was in the appeals rival parties made to the electorate.
Readings for this seminar will include the following:
• David Donald, Jean H. Baker, and Michael Holt, The Civil War and Reconstruction
• Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction
• William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1877
HIUS 401/D History Seminar: Southern Progressivism:Government, Economy, Gender, And Race 1890-1920 (3)
W 1900-2130 CAB 247
Instructor: George Gilliam
Progressivism has been called the "formative birthtime of basic institutions, social relations, and political divisions of United States society as it evolved towards and beyond the mid-twentieth century." Though the period is best-remembered as the time when the public regulation of big business started, the seeds of today's civil rights, environmental protection, and public health and occupational safety movements also were planted during the progressive era. Southern Progressivism has been complicated by its intersection with virulent racism. State constitutional conventions held in the South between 1890 and 1910 to create the framework for progressive regulation of business at the same time took steps effectively to disfranchise African-Americans and poor whites. C. Vann Woodward concluded that "Southern progressivism generally was progressivism for white men only, and after the poll tax took its toll not all the white men were included."
Scholars have not fully explored the aftermaths of those state constitutional conventions in the South, however, and have left to others to explore whether progressive administrative institutions regulated or promoted business, and to consider the role such regulators played in the implementation of Jim Crow laws. The enforcement of Jim Crow laws and the use of black convict labor in the South provided an impetus for Americans to form the NAACP during this period. Rapid industrialization and urbanization pushed women to organize for protective legislation and for reforms in public health and education. This seminar will provide students the opportunity to explore the intersections of progressive reformers, regulators, the business communities, and the forces of racial segregation. Students interested in turn-of-the-century race regulation, the early women's movements, as well as those who are interested in the relationship between the variegated business communities and progressive regulators should be rewarded. The common readings and seminar discussions also will expose students to stark divisions within the business communities as well as to the nascent women's movement and to issues of race and class that seem particularly pertinent to the changing social landscape of the period.
The course will include five weeks of required readings designed to provide a common understanding of the period and a range of different historical experiences and questions relating to Progressivism. The average weekly reading load will be 120 pages and will include selections from traditional works such as Richard Hofstadter's The Age of Reform, from revisionist works such as Gabriel Kolko's The Triumph of Conservatism, as well as more recent scholarship including Edward L. Ayers' The Promise of the New South and Noralee Frankel, Nancy S. Dye, eds., Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era. By the sixth week of the course students will submit their paper topics in the form of a two-page proposal that outlines their preliminary research plan. During the next several weeks students will meet individually with the instructor. The entire class will also meet several times during the middle of the course so that students can discuss their research progress, learn about each other's work, and help their peers with any research obstacles they may encounter. The primary goal of the seminar is to assist students in learning how to conduct their own research and will culminate in a paper 25-30 pages in length, based on original research in primary sources. That paper is intended to fulfill the second writing requirement.
HIUS 401/F History Seminar: The Politics Of Race In America After 1954 (3)
R 1530-1800 WIL 215
Instructor: Kent Germany
How has race mattered? From 1954 to the present, American race relations have undergone a dramatic transformation. This seminar will examine aspects of that transformation. For this course, the term "politics" is defined in its broad sense and includes the personal, public, private, electoral, and cultural. Readings will focus on the ways that African-Americans have built power since 1954 and the responses made by others to their efforts. The seminar's major focus will be on the American South, but it is not limited to a regional approach. In the first part of the course, students will develop topics for their papers, while discussing and critiquing some of the literature concerning the rise of Massive Resistance, the development of the integrationist coalition, the growth of black power, and the counter response to the Civil Rights Movement. After the first five weeks or so, the course will be devoted to the student's production of a 25 to 30 page paper based on original research. UVA has a wide range of resources that apply to this topic. The reading load should average approximately 200 pages during the appropriate weeks. Some of the probable readings are listed below, but may change slightly. Completion of this course satisfies the second writing requirement.
Some of the probable readings include:
• Carter, Dan T. From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994.
• Goldfield, David R. Black, White, and Southern: Race Relations and Southern Culture, 1940 to the Present.
• Lawson, Steven F. Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in America Since 1941.
• Patterson, James T. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy.
• Powell, Lawrence N. Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana.
• Rieder, Jonathan. The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn Against Liberalism. [selections]
• Smith, Robert Collins. They Closed Their Schools: Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1951-1964. [selections]
• Weems, Robert E. Desegregating the Dollar: African-American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century. [selections]
Possible Paper Topics (These are merely suggestions for further inquiry. Students will be given wide latitude in selection of topics as long as they pertain to the course.) Aspects of Massive Resistance. Corporate policies on employment, marketing, pricing, production, and distribution. Case studies of interracial relationships: political, economic, social, religious, romantic, or otherwise. Student-teacher relationships after Jim Crow (or similar issues in health care, social work, worship, etc.). The Economics of Inclusion. Transformation of UVA. Black Power and Black Studies. Black Capitalism. Economic Development in low-income areas. Residential Patterns. Community organizing. Party realignment. Studies of campaign rhetoric and strategy. The Republican Southern Strategy. Race and the politics of law and order. Race and the politics of welfare. Influence of race in public policies: Desegregation of public accommodations, reapportionment, affirmative action, busing, school desegregation, antipoverty programs, fair housing, policing.
HIUS 403/B African Americans And Sports In The Twentieth Century: a Social History (3)
R 1300-1530 RFN 311
Instructor: Reginald Butler
John Hoberman argues in his recent book, Darwin's Athletes, that in the 19th and early 20th centuries sports were completely racialized as evidence of white superiority and a rationale for European colonial hegemony. The demographics of sports have changed dramatically in post industrial America. This course examines the history of African Americans in competitive athletics and the historical transformations in the rhetoric and meaning of the relationship between athleticism, race, gender and nation. The course is structured around the seminar. Students will read and discuss a variety of texts in anthropology, history, american studies, and literature. Gena Dagel Caponi, Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin, and Slam Dunking, John Hoberman, Darwin's Athletes, and C.I.R. James, Beyond a Boundary, are a few of the books that we will read. Students will also read extensively in magazines and journals as well as view material from popular and documentary film, and television. Students will write weekly reading responses and a major paper of twenty to twenty five pages.
Department of Music
MUSI 212 History Of Jazz Music (3)
T R 1230-1345 OCH 101
Instructor: M. Butterfield
This course is a survey of the history of jazz from its beginnings around 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century. Important instrumental performers, vocalists, composers, and arrangers are listened to and discussed. Lab section is required.
MUSI 219 Introduction To African Music (3)
T R 1400-1450 OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
This course presents a survey of traditional and popular music/dance styles across West and Central Africa. Readings, listening, and video-viewing assignments will be supplemented with with a weekly lab section (which meets during the latter part of each class session) that will offer practical exposure to the African rhythms, movements and styles of musical interaction addressed each week. Careful reading, class discussion and participation in lab learning are required of each student. There will be a mid-term and a final exam. Lab, (no credit), Gertner, M. 12:00-12:50, Rm. 107. Lab, (no credit), Gertner, F. 13:00-13:50, Rm. 107
MUSI 307 Worlds Of Music (3 )
T R 1100-1215 OCH 107
Instructor: Kyra Gaunt
Prerequisite: Major in music or anthropology, or permission of instructor.
To understand the complexities of global musics, we must begin at home appreciating the diversity of musics within the U.S.-"the global is in the local" (Fabian 1998, 5). This course is an introduction to ethnomusicology primarily for music majors featuring case studies of contemporary musical traditions from the twentieth century.
The study of ethnomusicology is a study of understanding otherness and understanding not only how other people make music, but also the way we tend to perceive other musics as less complex than ours, and we tend to appreciate the music but not the people.
MUSI 369 African Drumming And Dance (1-2)
T 1715-1930 OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor by audition on first day of class.
A practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (BaAka pygmies), with the intention of performing at the end of the semester. Though no previous experience with music or dance is required, we will give special attention to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, and faithful attendance are required of each class member, the goal being to develop an ongoing UVA African Drumming and Dance Ensemble.
MUSI 425 Popular Culture & Music (3)
W 1530-1800 OCH S008
Instructor: Kyra Gaunt
Few realize that the performance of German folksong in the 18th century, minstrelsy in the 19th century, the games black girls play in the U.S., bomba in Puerto Rico, and Zairean popular music in the 20th century have a lot to tell us about popular culture. They tell a lot about the shift from popular culture being produced by everyday people to being produced for the masses. Hip-hop is no exception. We explore the contradictory role popular culture has and does play in defining power, modernity, culture, and otherness (i.e., race, class, sex/gender, nation, etc.). Readings from ethnomusicology, anthropology, culture studies, and popular music journalism. Music listening and participating in musical events. Oral presentation of term paper.
Prerequisite: Graduate student or 4th year in music or anthropology, or permission of instructor.
Department of Psychology
PSYC 406 Psychology Of Oppression And Empowerment (3)
T 1400-1630 CAU 112
Instructor: Melvin Wilson
This course analyzes oppression and its amelioration in modern American society. Format: Lecture/discussion. No. and type of exams: TBA. Papers or projects: TBA
Prerequisites: PSYC majors who have taken at least one course from each of the following groups: PSYC 210, 215, 230 and PSYC 240, 250, or 260, and students in the Afro-American and African studies or studies in women and gender programs. Telephone Enrollment Restrictions: Restricted to PSYC majors. If this course is full through ISIS: keep trying .
PSYC 487 The Minority Family: A Psychological Inquiry (3)
M 0900-1130 GIL 225
Instructor: Melvin Wilson
This course examines the current state of research on minority families, focusing on the black family. Emphasizes comparing "deficit" and "strength" research paradigms.
Format: Lecture discussion presentations. No. and type of exams: TBA. Papers or projects: TBA
Prerequisites: PSYC 306 and at least one course from each of the following groups: PSYC 210, 215 or 230, and PSYC 240, 250, or 260, and students in the Afro-American and African studies or studies in women and gender programs. Telephone Enrollment Restrictions: PSYC majors. If this course is full through ISIS: keep trying through ISIS.
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 275 Introduction To African Religions (3)
M W 1100-1150 CAB 345
Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton
An introductory survey of African religions, this course will concentrate on African traditional religions but Islam and Christianity will also be discussed. Topics will include indigenous mythologies and cosmologies, sacrifice, initiation, witchcraft, artistic traditions and African religions in the New World. Readings include: Ray, African Religions; Stoller and Olkes, In Sorcery's Shadow; Soyinka, Death and the King's Horsemen; Ijimere, The Imprisonment of Obatala; Salih, The Wedding of Zein; and a packet of readings.
Discussion Section required.
RELG 280 African-American Religious History (3)
M W 1000-1050 CAB 311
Instructor: Wallace Best
This course will survey the origin and development of African American religion in the United States. Centered on essential questions regarding the nature of black faith and the role religious institutions have played in black life, the course will explore the critical relationship between African American religion and African American cultural forms. We will address a number of themes, including: the connection between "the black church" and black political thought; race, gender, and religion; and Black Theology. We will also trace the development of African American religion in various historical contexts, particularly slavery (emphasis on Virginia), the Great Migration, and the Civil Rights era. Although this course will focus primarily on African American Protestantism, careful attention will be given to black Catholicism and the Nation of Islam.
RELA 341/ RELC 341 Introduction To African Christian Theology (3)
T R 1100-1215 CAB 341
Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora
This course begins with a critique of the questions that have led to the emergence of theologies in plural in today's world. The special attention will be paid to the colonial legacy of negation of African cultures and traditional religion as a way of showing why a traditional of African theology was pioneered by John Mbiti and followed by Pobee, Dickson and others along the lines of endorsing African traditional religion as preparatio evangelica. Attention will also be paid to the use of questions derived from western theology to give shape to most African scholarship in theology so far. Case studies will be used demonstrate this 'cultural' approach to theology to which Black Theology inherited from African American culture by theologians in South African can be also added. In contrast attention will be paid to a newly developed theology based on a vernacular understanding of Christianity from Mukonyora's doctoral study of an African Independent Church called the Masowe Apostles. In short, three kinds of African Theology which are explicable against the background of the experience of being Christian in Africa today will be examined and critiqued in this introduction to African Christian Theology.
RELG 382 Islam In The African American Experience (3)
W 1530-1800 CAB 242
Instructor: Wallace Best
The Nation of Islam (NOI) was unquestionably one of the most significant religious developments among African Americans in the 20th century. In addition to examining the history of the movement, this course will explore the various meanings attributed to NOI practice and theology. Of particular concern will be the ways its ideological structure has allowed the NOI to function both as a "black nationalist" and religious body, with resultant tensions and ambiguities. Since the movement has historically been characterized by its charismatic leadership, we will spend time examining the lives of such figures as Wallace D. Fard, Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan, and of course, Malcolm X. Other themes covered in the course will include: women and the Nation, the return to Orthodoxy, the NOI and black Christianity, the NOI and political power, and the relationship between urbanization, migration and the NOI.
RELA 389/RELC 389 Christianity In Africa (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 118
Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora
Well known theologians such as Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian and St. Augustine from North Africa have been claimed in contemporary African Church history to be forefathers of both African and western theology. This lecture series begins with the history of Christianity in Africa from late antiquity to the present, paying particular attention to African agency in mission, but also taking into account the histories of conquest surrounding the missionary enterprise. It will be shown how Greco-Roman imperialism and European colonialism beginning with the Portuguese adventures of the14th century have shaped the African response to Christianity. The emergence of African Indigenous Churches will be looked at against this background colonial conquest, missionary paternalism and independency in Africa. Historical, theological and sociological issues will be brought together in this general introduction to Christianity in Africa.
Department of Sociology
SOC 341 Race And Ethnic Relations (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 316
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
The terms "race" and "ethnicity," and issues associated with them are, to say the least, problematic. The meanings of these--and related--terms are unclear and policies that address "racial" issues are usually very contentious. Why is this the case? Why is race, seemingly, a source of unending conflict? This course will address these questions by examining the general issue of race from a historical and comparative perspective.
SOC 410 African American Communities (3)
T R 1530-1645 CAB 320
Instructor: Rick Turner
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear, comprehensive understanding of the history, struggles and diversity of the African-American community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the African-American community within urban society and on the need for students to obtain knowledge of the cultural history of African-Americans. The course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for African-American people's sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. By means of discussion, lectures, videos, reading, writing, and class presentation, this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamics of the African-American community.
University Seminars
USEM 171/0020 The 60s In Black & White (2)
T 1530-1730 WIL 140
Instructor: Julian Bond
The 1960's saw a generation of young people begin to build movements which would stop a war abroad and start a war at home. What made these movements for peace and equal rights possible? What events triggered them? Who were participants? What is their legacy in the present? This seminar --through biographies activists in the movements--attempts to answer these and other questions as we examine personalities, events, and culture of the 1960's. Students will be required to write a comprehensive a paper on a 60's subject--a participant, an organization, a movement.
Spring 2001
African-American and African Studies
AAS 102 – Introduction To African-American And African Studies II (4)
T R 1230-1345 MRY 209
Instructor: Olufemi Taiwo
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 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. Discussion section required.
AAS 401 - Independent Study (3)
(TBD)
AAS 406A - African Photography (3)
M 1300-1530 CAB 331
Instructor: Liam Buckley
This course explores the visual cultures structured around the presence of cameras and photographs in Africa. The method of the course is interdisciplinary, drawing on work conducted in visual anthropology, in colonial discourse and postcolonial theory, and material culture studies. In its colonial and postcolonial contexts, the activity of photography has provided persons with a time to establish identities for themselves and social relations with others, while exercising power and testing authority. Students will examine the range of African practices that have developed historically during the taking of, posing for, display, collection and exchange of photographs. The final section of the course focuses on the "social lives" of African photographs--things moving through history, beyond the immediate lives and contexts of those who produced and posed in them, capable of serving varying ideological ends.
AAS 406D - Interpreting Community: A Case Study Of Cape Coast, Ghana (3)
R 1800-2100 Minor Hall 108
Instructors: Scot French and Maurice Cox
[Cross-listed with ARCH 566]
Through the townscape of Cape Coast, Ghana, we will investigate methods of reading cultural landscapes and challenge assumptions about interpretations of place. The course will unfold against the larger context of the West Coast of Africa and the involvement of Cape Coast and other coastal towns in the history of trade-particularly the enslavement of Africans.
This course targets advanced undergraduate and graduate students whose research interests focus on discerning cultural patterns and deciphering expressions of change in the built, natural, and social environments. Using non-traditional sources such as oral testimony, ritual, and performance, students will develop the skills needed for collecting, distilling, and conveying the complexities of community through intensive exposure to Cape Coast. In interdisciplinary teams, students will develop, reformat, and produce interpretations of this place using a variety of digital media.
Requirements include the completion of weekly reading assignments/interpretive exercises, participation in class discussion, weekly journal entries, and a final multimedia product.
The course will be taught in a seminar/workshop format and is conceived of as the predecessor to an interdisciplinary student research project for the summer of 2001 in Cape Coast, Ghana. This summer project is contingent upon funding from the United States Department of Education, Fulbright-Hays Group Study Abroad Program and will have an application process independent of the spring seminar. Collaborators: School of Architecture, Afro-American and African Studies, and the Digital Media Lab, Robertson Media Center.
Instructor's permission is required. Preference will be given to third- and fourth-year students and students applying to study abroad in Ghana this year.
AAS 406E - Critical Race Theory: Law And Literature (3)
W 1300-1530 Minor Hall 108
Instructor: Bernie D. Jones
Critical race theory scholars comprise a group of law professors of color, primarily African American, who developed a critique of the legal profession in the 1980s to 1990s, in response to rising conservatism within the American political, social and legal orders in the post-civil rights era. Disenchanted with both the legal liberalism which made the civil rights movement possible and with the prevailing radical response of critical legal studies, they developed an approach to legal scholarship based in a heightened consciousness of the role race can play in determining African American status within society. One unorthodox approach to scholarship lay in storytelling. Through storytelling, they gave voice to the realities of African Americans whose voices had been silenced by racial hierarchy under the law, and through the use of formalistic legal rules. Critical race theorists used storytelling in essays and in short story fiction, as an approach to cultural criticism. We will be reading works of critical race theory storytelling by Derrick Bell, Patricia Williams, Richard Delgado, and David Dante Troutt.
This class is a research seminar which will satisfy the second writing requirement.
AAS 451 - Distinguished Majors Program/ Directed Research (3)
TBD
AAS 452 - Distinguished Majors Program/Thesis (3)
TBD
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 256 – Peoples & Cultures Of Africa (3)
M W F 1300-1350 CAB 138
Instructor: Adria LaViolette
This course engages the human landscape of modern Africa, through the close reading of a selection of monographs and African feature films from diverse cultural and geographical areas. The main texts, drawn from fiction, ethnography, and social history, are taught against a backdrop of economic strategies, different forms of social organization, cultural expressions, and challenges facing modern African women and men. An edited volume on Africa will provide relevant essays to combine with and contextualize the monographs and films. We will focus on rural farmers, urban dwellers, both the elite and poor, and the forces that draw all of these together; transnational migration; and belief systems. How relationships between mean and women are contextualized and negotiated is a theme found throughout the readings and films, as well as the struggle of people in different circumstances to build new relationships with older beliefs and practices, and with new forms of government. This course does not attempt to familiarize students with all issues and peoples in modern Africa, but rather to distill and feature certain themes of especially wide relevance. This is a lecture and discussion course.
ANTH 318 – Social History Of Commodities: Linkages Between Africa And The Americas (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 423
Instructor: Hanan Sabea
This course examines how certain agriculture products turned into world commodities linking, in the process of their production, exchange and consumption, diverse places and people around the globe. The main focus is on the connections between Africa and the Americas through the movement of people and commodities. Informed by production exchange and consumption theories the course focuses on coffee, sugar and tobacco, primarily in terms of where they originated; when, where and how they transform into commodities of daily consumption; and the conditions under which they are produced and enter into circulation.
Department of Art History
ARTH 255 – African American Art (3)
M W F 1100 – 1150 CAM 160
Instructor: Andrea Douglas
The course is a survey of Afro-U.S art from the 18th century to the present. It hopes to contextualize the painting, sculpture, and photography of Afro-U.S artists in the history of Western art. Emphasis is also placed on the associated post-colonial theory/modern theory. Topics include the New Negro movement, the Black arts movement and post-modern installation. There are no pre-requisites for this course.
Department of Drama
DRAM 307 - African American Theater (3)
M W F 1400-1450 CAB 323
Instructor: Ishmail Conway
This course on African-American Theater will provide an opportunity for students to learn about this rich, distinctive American International art form. This particular theatrical experience emanates out of the experience of Africans in America. The course will explore the theatrical experience that enriches audiences, builds Thespians, communicates history and futures. Specifically, this course will explore the personalities, the literature and plays; the great companies, management and advancement; the socio-cultural implications, the technical contributions to theater.
Department of English Language and Literature
ENLT 247 – Black Writers In America (3)
T R 0800-0915 MCL 2009
Instructor: Kathy Nixon
(Description not available – see instructor)
ENLT 247M/001 – African American Literature (3)
"Fictions of Slave Revolt in Americas"
M W 0900-0950 BRN 330
Instructor: Virginia Thornton
The Middle Passage, the auction block, the quarters, the fields, the whip, the runaway -- these are the defining scenes of slavery in the popular imagination, brought forward on almost any plantation tour to form the picture of slave presence in the Americas. But that's not all of the story. In this class, we'll look at a different part of the narrative, a tale of slaves rising against their owners and the results of armed revolt. We will begin with texts like Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688) and excerpts from the autobiographical The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) and move forward to include Herman Melville's Benito Cereno (1856), Arna Bontemps' Black Thunder (1936), and William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), as well as the recent and controversial Stephen Spielberg film Amistad. Through these and other lens, we will trace both literary and historical accounts of slave uprisings written by participants and their targets, by casual observers, and by those a generation or more later, all of whom try to understand the complex entanglements and oppressions at the heart of slave revolt. Course requirements: weekly e-mail questions, four 5-7 page papers, final exam.
ENAM 314 – African American Survey (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 323
Instructor: Tejumola Olaniyan
A cross-genre survey of African-American literature from the close of the Harlem Renaissance to the present. We will pay close attention to significant formal innovations and thematic preoccupations that define this literature and the relationships, if any, between such concerns and the (changing) conditions of possibility of the literature itself.
ENAM 358 – Relations Of Race (3)
M W 1100-1215 CLM 201
Instructor: Stephen Railton
We'll read popular 19th and 20th century fictions like Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Leopard's Spots to look closely at how America's majority white culture defined "whiteness," "blackness" and the relations between them. We'll also keep those texts in contact with fictions by African American writers like Douglass, Chesnutt, Hurston and Wright. And we'll look continuously at 20th (and maybe even 21st) century popular culture – represented mainly by film and television -- to see how historically constructed racial narratives and types persist and change, continue to operate as popular fictions in our time. Discussion section required.
ENAM 482A – American Film (3)
M W 1530-1645 BRN 330
Instructor: Eric Lott
An introduction to the history of Hollywood film and film technique, focusing particularly on the American film industry's impact on and representation of 20th Century cultural history. We won't read background historical works to help us understand what's going on in the films; we'll read the films as cultural-historical works--prismatic, condensed, displaced, distorted, oneiric works, to be sure, but ones that clue us in to the way Americans have imagined their history over the last hundred years. Syllabus of films still to be finalized, but more than likely many of the following will be included: Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915), Michaeux's The Homesteader (1922), Crosland's The Jazz Singer (1927), Fleming's The Wizard of Oz (1939), Hawks's His Girl Friday (1940), Curtiz's Mildred Pierce (1945), Ford's The Searchers (1956), Hitchcock's Vertigo (1957), Welles's Touch of Evil (1958), Clarke's The Cool World (1963), Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Coppola's The Godfather (1972), Altman's Three Women (1977), Burnett's Killer of Sheep (1977), Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980), Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989), Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994), Spielberg's Amistad (1997). Books: Sklar, Movie-Made America; Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art; Anger, Hollywood Babylon.
ENAM 482D – Aesthetics And Politics In African American Literature (3)
T R 0800-0915 CAB 335
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
What tensions underlie the creation of African American literature? How do writers reconcile aesthetic possibility with the social pressures that confront them? What socio-political circumstances do these writers face and how do they presented in their literature? These are some of the questions that will guide our study of selected African American literature this semester. Writers include, but are not limited to, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt, Ralph Ellison, Ron Karenga, James Baldwin, and Ernest Gaines. Class requirements include active class participation, periodic response papers, quizzes, mid-term and final exams.
ENTC 316 – Black Women Writers 1950s To The Present (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 216
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
This seminar explores the range of Black women’s writings from mid-century to the present. We will focus closely on the text’s adherence to its contemporary literary and social conventions. We will also consider patterns of representation established in the 1950s and watch how they develop, disintegrate, or evolve into the present day. Do certain issues or themes remain important in Black women’s writing of the last fifty years? How has the literature adapted in response to a specific cultural or historical moments? Writers include, but are not limited to, Ann Petry, Alice Walker, Jewelle Gomez, Dorothy West, Tananarive Due, Barbara Neely, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Toni Morrison. Class requirements include active class participation, discussion leading, response papers, long and short essays.
ENTC 331 – Major African American Poets (3)
T R 1230-1345 BRN 328
Instructor: Charles Rowell
In a poem entitled "Black Art," Amiri Baraka, one of the original architects of the Black Aesthetic, writes "We want a black poem. And an/Black World./Let the world be a Black Poem/And Let All Black People Speak This Poem ... " This course will focus on Baraka's heirs, contemporary African-American poets who, though aware of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and its aesthetic dicta, are creating poetry that mines community and self and thus moves beyond the essentialist ideology of the Movement. Yet these contemporary poets are ever mindful of the aesthetic which derives from the culture and lives of USA communities. Yusef Komunyakaa, for example, remembers his Southern home without preachment; Rita Dove reimagines the interior details of family and its importance; Toi Derricotte explores the difficult geographies of women's bodies in childbirth; Michael Harper radically reconstructs US American history as revelation, recounting moments of horror and hope; and, in language that is both luminous and terrifying, Audre Lord inscribes "the love that dare not speak its name."
ENTC 482 – African Literature (3)
R 1400-1630 BRN 330
Instructor: Tejumola Olaniyan
This course is a detailed introduction to the major writers and diverse literary traditions of the continent. We will explore connections of structures—literary/ideological, etc.—across a variety of boundaries—race, gender, class, genre, region, etc. We will address such interesting issues as the possibility of a postcolonial African literary voice in non-African but Europhone languages, the colonial encounter and cultural imperialism, cultural nationalism and the independent nation-state, and history and genre/literary forms. Some of the writers we will read are Nawal El Saadawi, Tsitsi Dangaremba, Wole Soyinka, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nadine Gordimer, Chinua Achebe, and Buchi Emecheta. Requires: class presentation(s), 2 short papers (10 pp. each).
ENTC 482B – Contemporary African-American Women Playwrights (3)
T R 1230-1345 WIL 140
Instructor: Lotta Lofgren
This senior seminar is an intensive study of plays by African American women from the 1950's to the present. Moving fairly quickly to cover as much as possible of this fertile ground, we will examine how these playwrights rework old and invent new forms to express a unique world view in a theatrically viable way. We will ask such questions as: How much should any artist compromise his or her vision in order to be heard? What kind of audience does each playwright write for? What is her sense of responsibility to the past and the future? How does the double need to define oneself within the group and as a group affect the playwrights and their art? The course aims to celebrate the achievement of these remarkable artists: from their position on the margins they offer us plays so new and compelling that they force us to reconsider our notions of what theater is and can be. We will read works by Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry, Adrienne Kennedy, Aishah Rahman, Ntozake Shange, Suzan-Lori Parks, Anna Deavere Smith, and others. Course requirements: enthusiastic class participation, frequent written responses to readings, an occasional oral book report, a longer research paper.
ENTC 533 – The 1970s (3)
M W 1400-1515 CAB122
Instructor: Eric Lott
The 70s are too often seen as America’s Embarrassing Years, the decade of the Dry Look and Watergate, Three’s Company and stagflation, Est and ESP, postindustrial decline and the Bicentennial, Mandingo and the Steve Miller Band. Our narratives of the 70s give us only an era of late-imperial decadence (Vietnam, Studio 54), a self-interested Me Decade (Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism), an age of cults and terrorism (the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, Jim Jones’s People’s Temple), or a shallow (at best campy) culture of celebrity (Halston, Cher, Travolta). This course, by contrast, will be guided by the hypothesis that the 70s are not only the most interesting post-WWII decade but the one in which American culture actually fulfilled the promise of the 1960s—even amid the culture’s pervasive sense of post-heroic anomie. In our interdisciplinary inquiry, we will examine the period’s widespread interest in "authenticity" or roots (the Alex Haley miniseries, Kingston’s Woman Warrior, George Clinton’s One Nation Under a Groove, early Bruce Springsteen, Loretta Lynn’s Coal-Miner’s Daughter, Jimmy Carter); a new kind of cultural radicalism (the Afro, the Wounded Knee affair, the commune, leather culture, Richard Pryor, Lily Tomlin, punk, blaxploitation films, the No Nukes events); a recasting of gender, sexuality, and desire (feminist/lesbian sectarian debates, the Sensitive Man, Renee Richards, the critique of the so-called "sexual revolution," The Mary Tyler Moore Show); a new understanding of political economy (the advent of the "multinational corporation," Barnet and Muller’s Global Reach, Dog Day Afternoon, the commodity irony of the "pet rock," OPEC, Network); an embrace of anti-humanist thought and art (Foucault, Althusser, Warhol, disco, Doctorow’s Ragtime); and a political culture of widespread left-liberalism, later supplanted by the rise of the new right (McGovern, the ‘72 Black Political Convention in Gary, Nixon’s disgrace, Harvey Milk, Annie Hall, Carter’s rightward turn, "austerity," the firing of Andrew Young, American Gigolo, Ronald Reagan). Our inquiry will raise questions about (among other things) cultural value, 70s nostalgia, 70s legacies good and bad, the very idea of periodization, the prospects for a "unified field theory" of a cultural moment, and other matters.
Department of French Language and Literature
FREN 345, SEC. 2 – African Literatures And Cultures (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 332
Instructor: Kandioura Dramé
This course will explore aspects of African literatures and cultures which demonstrate the complexity of the African experience through the creative arts. 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: painting, sculpture, music, and cinema. Selections from painters and sculptors like Cheri Samba (Zaire-Congo), Ousmane Sow, Younousse Seye (Senegal), Werewere Liking (Cameroun), 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 (Zaire-Congo), Salif Keita (Mali), and Cesaria Evora (Cape Verde); from Mande, Peul, and Kabyle oral literatures in French translation; from filmmakers D. D. Mambety, O. Sembene, G. Kabore, Dani Kouyate, Moussa Sene Absa.
Students should keep in mind that in addition to the reading assignments, a class visit to the National Museum of African Art in Washington may be required, depending on availability of funds. The grade will be based on contribution to discussions (regular class attendance is required), writing assignments consisting of 7 short papers and the final exam all written in clear and grammatically correct French.
In addition to a selection of texts placed on reserve in a box at Cabell Hall Room 307, the following books will feature among the required reading list: Manu Dibango Trois kilos de cafés; Werewere Liking - Statues colons; A. Sow - La Femme, la Vache, la Foi; A. H. Ba- Kaidara; M. Mammeri - Poèmes Kabyles anciens
FREN 444 - Africa In Cinema (3)
T R 1100-1215 CLM 322B
Instructor: Kandioura Dramé
This course is an exploration of African cultures through cinema. It deals with the representations of African cultures by filmmakers from different cultural backgrounds and studies the ways in which their perspectives on Africa are often informed by their own social and ideological positions as well as the demands of exoticism. It also examines the constructions of the African as "other" and the kinds of responses such constructions have elicited from Africa’s filmmakers. These filmic "inventions" are analyzed through a selection of French, British, American, and African films by such directors as John Huston, S. Pollack, J-J Annaud, M. Radford, Ngangura Mweze, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Souleymane Cisse, Gaston Kabore, Amadou Seck, Dani Kouyate, Brian Tilley, Jean-Marie Teno on a variety of subjects relative to the image of Africa in cinema. The final grade will be based on 2 short papers (4 pages/each), a final paper (7-10 pages), an oral presentation and contributions to discussions. Each oral presentation will lead to a written paper on the subject of the presentation; the paper will address suggestions made during discussions in class. Papers should be analytical, and written in clear, grammatical French using correct terminology supplied with this description.
Required reading list (on reserve):
Ferid Boughedir -Le cinéma africain de A a Z
Recommended (Specific selections will be announced weekly.)
Kenneth W. Harrow - Matatu- With Open Eyes: Women and African Cinema
Gardies, André - Cinéma d’Afrique Noire Francophone : l’espace-miroir.
Vieyra, P. S. - Le cinéma africain- Sembène Ousmane, cinéaste
Ukadike, F. N. - Black African Cinema, Research in African Literatures - Special Issue: African Cinema. Vol. 26, No.3, Fall 1995.
Diawara, Manthia - African Cinema.
Department of Government and Foreign Affairs
GFAP 344 - Urban Politics (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 324
Instructor: Glenn Beamer
Prerequisite: any course in GFAP, GFCP, or economics
Analyzes the structure, politics, and problems of American cities. The meaning and scope of "urban crisis" receive extensive attention. Examines the growing ties between the federal government and cities, central city-suburban conflict, machine politics, and welfare and housing policies. A significant part of the course will focus on race and the politics of Chicago, New York, Atlanta, and Detroit.
GFAP 351 – Minority Politics (3)
T R 1100-1150 GIL 141
Instructor: Lynn Sanders
The most entrenched divisions, largest conflicts and most persistent problems in American politics center around race. This course is devoted to an analysis of how attributions of racial difference shape American politics. Through the course, our animating question will be: is the American liberal democratic polity -- a polity which instituted and abolished slavery based in race -- basically sound apart from its unfortunate anti-democratic episodes, or is the racial order a fundamental element structuring this polity?
Though the American racial order has deep historical roots, we will concentrate our attention on its recent manifestations. We will investigate the role of race in national elections, public policy remedies for racial inequality, and public opinion about these policies and other racial issues. We will attend to how racial politics implicates ideas about class and gender, and to differences in scholarship on race produced by people of different races. We will consider the implications for an increasingly racially diverse and complicated polity of defining race primarily in terms of black/white conflict. Discussion section required.
GFAP 382 – Civil Liberties And Civil Rights (3)
M W 1300-1350 CLK 147
Instructor: David O’Brien
Prerequisite: two courses in GFAP or instructor permission
In this course we will discuss freedoms of speech, demonstrations, and association, search and seizures and racial profiling, race and capital punishment, school desegregation, and affirmative action. We will study judicial construction and interpretation of civil rights and liberties reflected by Supreme Court decisions, including line-drawing between rights and obligations. (No CR/NC enrollees.) Discussion section required.
GFAP 589 – School Choice: Politics And Effect (3)
T 1300-1530 RFN 281
Instructor: Frederick Hess
School choice may be the most ardently discussed and debated issue in education today. Choice-based reforms, which seek to reform k-12 education by giving students and families more choice in choosing which school to attend, have spread rapidly across the country in recent years.
Not only are market-based reforms such as school vouchers and charter schooling important in their own right, but they provide useful lenses through which to consider deeper questions relating to the purpose, nature, history, and performance of schooling. In this seminar we will examine the theoretical case for and against school choice, the politics and history of school choice, and the evidence on the promise and problems presented by choice. We will pay particular attention to the topics of school vouchers and charter schooling.
Choice advocates suggest that consumer freedom will allow more children to attend high-performing schools free from the red tape that hampers public schools and that competition will force traditional school systems to perform better. Choice critics respond that school choice threatens to splinter the country along class, ethnic, and religious lines; could undermine support for public education; and may result in consumers demanding an education for their children that the larger community would not approve. A great deal of research into the effects of school choice has been conducted in recent years, but there is a great deal of dispute as to whether the data are accurate and how they should be interpreted. This course will explore these issues in depth.
Since 1990, more than 30 states have adopted charter school legislation. More than a thousand charter schools now exist across the U.S. Meanwhile, private and public voucher programs are now running in a number of major cities. The debate over these increasingly popular programs offers an unusually clear look at the philosophical debates and the politics that characterize American education. The conflict highlights cleavages between conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, civil libertarians and those who believe the division between church and state is currently higher than it ought to be, and teacher union leaders and public school critics.
GFCP 583 – Politics Of South Africa (3)
M W 0900-0950 CAB 337
Instructor: Guy Martin
Prerequisite: GFCP 212, GFCP 581 or instructor permission
Studies the socio-political structures of white supremacy and the political transition to majority rule. Emphasizes the confrontation between African and Afrikaaner nationalisms, the consequences of economic growth on the patterns of racial stratification, and the complicated process contributing to the creation of the multi-racial democratic society.
GFIR 582 – Africa And The World (3)
M W 1200-1250 CAB 337
Instructor: Guy Martin
Prerequisite: some background in international relations and/or the history of Africa
Overview of the international politics of sub-Saharan Africa, including inter-African relations as well as Africa's relations with the major powers, and the international dimensions of the Southern African situation. Explores alternative policy options open to African states. Considers a number of case studies which illustrate the policy alternatives.
Department of History
HIAF 202 – Africa From Imperialism To Independence(4)
T R 1700-1815 CAB 345
Instructor: John Mason
This course spans the years from the decline of the Atlantic slave trade in the early nineteenth century to the present.
The focus of the first part of the course is on the slave trade and its consequences. The effects of the trade in human beings lingered long after its abolition. Many African societies were weakened, setting the stage for colonial conquest, while others were strengthened, often at the expense of their neighbors.
The second part of the course looks at the conquest of much of Africa by European nations and at the dynamics of colonial rule. It is especially concerned with the ways in which colonialism affected ordinary Africans and with the many ways in which Africans resisted European domination.
The final section of the course is devoted to the post-colonial period, studying first violent and non-violent forms of anti-colonial struggle and then the position of independent African nations in the contemporary world.
The course is structured around lectures and readings. Additional course materials include novels and films. HIAF 202 is an introductory course and requires no prior knowledge of African history. Discussion section required.
HIAF 302 - History Of Southern Africa (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 424
Instructor: John Mason
HIAF 302 is a lecture and discussion course on the history of southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course begins with a look at the precolonial African societies of the region, before moving on to a study of the conquest, colonialism, and apartheid. It ends with the recent rebirth of African independence.
During the last three hundred years, all African societies in southern Africa were conquered by Europeans and incorporated into colonial empires and the global economy. Conquest did not come easily. Every society in the region resisted fiercely, sometimes for many decades before being finally defeated. Colonialism and African responses to it powerfully reshaped societies in southern African, transforming political and economic systems, gender and class relations, even religious beliefs.
Resistance itself assumed new forms in the twentieth century, as Africans began to bridge ethnic divisions to create multi-ethnic trade unions, political parties, and liberation movements. Particularly in South Africa, multi-ethnic nationalism evolved into nonracialism, uniting black South Africans with many whites in the ultimately successful struggle against apartheid.
The course is structured around lectures, discussions of assigned readings (including novels and autobiographies), videos, and films. HIAF 302 requires no prior knowledge of African history.
HILA 402, Sct. A "Race-Mixing In Latin American History" (4)
T 1530-1800 PV8 B003
Instructor: Mr. Brian Owensby
Difference and intimacy. Violence and love. Freedom and constraint. Myth and memory. Through a 16th-century Indian chronicle, paintings, essays, fiction, and scholarly texts, this course will explore the experience and idea of mestizaje racial and cultural mixing in Latin American history and in Western history more broadly from the perspective of Latin America. This will not be an exhaustive historical treatment, but a delving into how people have lived and understood their relations with one another through what we now think of as race and how social orders have taken shape around this experience. We will learn not only about race in Ibero America but also ask challenging questions of the category of race itself through the Ibero-American experience. Students will write two papers drawing on materials explored in class.
HIUS 100, Sct. A "Religion And America’s Public Life Since World War II" (3)
M 1530-1800 WIL 140
Instructor: Byron Hulsey
This reading seminar, which fulfills the second writing requirement, is primarily an examination of religious change, continuity, and conflict in this nation's public life since World War II. In particular, we will explore how different groups of Americans have used their religious faiths to justify contested beliefs and actions as they have confronted the momentous events and issues that have shaped modern American culture. We will devote particular attention to the Cold War, civil rights, Vietnam, the rise of the religious right, and the religious and political dilemmas Americans face in contemporary culture.
Students will read approximately 200 pages per week for eight weeks, write five essays of five pages each for five weeks, and participate actively in class discussions during each of the fourteen sessions. The essays will comprise 75% of the final course grade, with the remaining 25% being devoted to class participation. There will be no mid-term or final examination. A complete reading list will be posted at the end of November on the bulletin board of Randall 128.
Readings will include:
Stephen J. Whitefield, The Culture of the Cold War
Robert S. Ellwood, 1950: Crossroads of American Religious Life
Charles Marsh, God's Long Summer
Adam Fairclough, Martin Luther King, Jr.
James Carroll, An American Requiem
HIUS 323 - The Rise And Fall Of The Old South (3)
M W 1100-1150 MIN 125
Instructor: Edward L. Ayers
This course will explore the emergence and destruction of the most powerful slave society of the modern world: the American South. It will begin with the seventeenth century and extend through the Civil War and Reconstruction. We will examine the lives of slaves and slave owners, small farmers and large planters, men and women, soldiers and civilians. Throughout, the focus will be on the way that black Southerners and white Southerners interacted.
Readings will be diverse, including original documents, materials on the Web, fiction, and secondary accounts. Requirements include a midterm and final as well as a substantial research paper. Energetic participation in a weekly discussion section is a central part of the course. Discussion section required.
HIUS 366 - Introduction To African-American History, 1860-Present (3)
M W 1100-1150 MRY 104
Instructor: Reginald Butler
This lecture course is part of a year-long survey of the history and culture of people of African Americans in the United States from the early colonial period to the present. The course explores some of the major problems, events, structures, and personalities that shaped the lives of people of African descent in the United States, paying particular attention to how black people themselves shaped their experiences. At the same time, we will gain a sense of how those experiences fit into the history of people of African descent in the wider Atlantic world.
Readings will average about 150-200 pages per week. Students are encouraged, but not required, to take both semesters of the Introduction to African American History. Grades will be determined from section participation, two papers, and a final exam. Discussion section required.
HIUS 367 - History Of The Civil Rights Movement (3)
T R 1400-1450 MIN 125
Instructor: Julian Bond
This lecture course will examine the history, philosophies, tactics, events, and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward.
The Southern movement--variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement--was a black-lead mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation in the South by the middle 1960s.
Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping phases--lobbying, litigation and protest. In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights. In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation, the denial of the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools. The last phase, lasting a decade from '55 to '65, was a period of protest--boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations--as well as organizing campaigns that lay the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s.
Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation in the United States. The movement's well-and lesser-known proponents and opponents and their stratagems will be examined. Discussion section required. Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five-to-seven page papers.
Texts:
Wilkins, Roy, with Tom Matthews, Standing Fast, Da Capo Press
Forman, James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Open Hand Press
Bond, Julian and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit At The Welcome Table, American Heritage
Videos:
"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, Producer, California Newsreel
HIUS 401, Sct. A "The South In The New Deal Era: Race, Class, And Politics In The U.S. South, 1933-1948" (4)
W 1900-2130 CAB 335
Instructor: Lawrence Richards
The New Deal was a turning point in the history of the South. New Deal policies set in motion a process that would result in the demise of the Southern low-wage, agrarian economy and transform it into the dynamic, urban-based economy of the present "Sunbelt." Further, the New Deal sowed the seeds of the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s.
These consequences were not foreseen, and certainly not intended by most Southern politicians. While initially they supported the New Deal, by 1938 most Southern leaders had turned against Franklin Roosevelt and had allied themselves with conservative Republicans to stymie liberal legislation. What motivated this change? Were Southerners primarily concerned that the New Deal was undermining the South's traditional low-wage economy? Were they fearful that increased Federal activism would threaten the racial status quo? And how do we account for the fact that, while we normally think of Southern politicians in this period as staunch conservatives, many prominent liberals also managed to attain high office in the South even in the late 30s? These are some of the questions this course will attempt to answer.
Students taking this course will write a 25 page research paper exploring some facet of Southern politics, race relations, or labor policy during the New Deal era. Topics may range from a study of African-American political activity in the South, to the effect of New Deal policies on Southern workers, to some aspect of Southern politics and/or politicians. These, of course, are only some of the many issue in Southern history from 1933 to 1948 that students may wish to pursue.
Seventy-five percent of the student's final grade will be based on papers and 25 percent will be based on class participation. This course meets the second writing requirement. (Note: some of these readings will be on reserve at Clemons, others will be included in a course packet.)
Readings will include the following:
Sullivan, Patricia, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (University of North Carolina Press, 1996)
Simon, Bryant, A Fabric of Defeat: The Politics of South Carolina Millhands, 1910-1948 (University of North Carolina Press, 1998)
Schulman, Bruce, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1980 (Oxford University Press, 1991
Bartley, Numan, The New South, 1945-1980 (Louisiana State University Press, 1995
Heinemann, Ronald, Depression and New Deal in Virginia: The Enduring Dominion (University Press of Virginia, 1983
Key, V. O., Southern Politics in State and Nation (Alfred Knopf, 1950
Mason, Lucy Randolph, To Win These Rights: A Personal Story of the CIO in the South (Harper, 1952)
Logan, Rayford, ed., What the Negro Wants (University of North Carolina Press, 1944)
Department of Music
MUSI 212 - History Of Jazz Music (3)
M W 123--1345 OCH 101
Instructor: Peter Spaar
This course is a survey of the history of jazz from its beginnings around 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century. Important instrumental performers, vocalists, composers, and arrangers are listened to and discussed.
MUSI 309 – Performance In Africa (4)
T 1715-1930 OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
[This course is combined with MUSI 369, African Drumming And Dance Ensemble. Students registered for 309 4 academic credits, those only in 369 receive 2 "performance" credits only]
This course explores performance in Africa through reading, discussion, audio and video examples, and hands-on practice. The course will explore both "traditional" and "popular" styles, leading us to question those categories. With a few exceptions, we will focus mostly on areas of West and Central Africa, with occasional glances at the Caribbean (Cuba) and Latin America. We will explore musical/dance styles and 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 issues and politics involved in translating performance practices from one cultural context to another.
Attendance at all class meetings is required, as is careful reading, film viewing, and preparation for discussion. Students will keep a weekly response journal (handed into the instructor via e-mail or hard copy notebook) with brief entries for each week responding to the reading, discussions, performance labs, and listening. Every week (by Sunday, 5 p.m.) each student will choose at least one recording from the music library (via the web catalogue) to listen to and respond to in their journal. There will be a mid-term paper (6-8 pages, typed) and a final exam (open book, essay and short answer).
MUSI 369 – African Drumming And Dance (2)
T 1715-1930 OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
This is a practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa BaAka pygmies and Bagandou farmers), with the intention of performing informally throughout the semester. We will give special attention to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and a polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, high attention, interaction, and faithful,/prompt attendance are required of each class member. Each member is also respectfully expected to
help prepare the classroom (move chairs, sweep, set up drums/sticks)and to restore the space to classroom style at the end of each meeting. Participation in public performance is also expected. Students are strongly encouraged to bring a cassette tape recorder to class and to dress comfortably. Class repertoire audiotape available in the music library. Several readings are recommended/On reserve in the music library:
Peruse:
1) Locke, David 1996 "Africa" chapter [Chapter 3] in Worlds of Music Jeff Todd Titon, editor. Schirmer books. Comes with a recording of Agbeko with hardcover book. Read intro and first part of the chapter that focuses on Atsiagbeko and the feel of African polyrhythm. Then peruse the last section of the chapter which focuses on BaAka music.
2) Chernoff, John Miller. 1978. African Rhythm and African Sensibility, Univ. of Chicago Press. This book is less than 200 pages long. I recommend reading the entire book, but at least Chapters 1 and 2 ( pp. 27-88).
3) Kisliuk, Michelle. (Available at the bookstore and on reserve in music library): "Seize the Dance!" BaAka Musical Life and the Ethnography of Performance Oxford University Press.
Further reading:
Manuscript article: "What's the 'it' That we Learn to Perform? Teaching BaAka Music and Dance" Michelle Kisliuk with Kelly Gross. In Ted Solis, ed., Performing Ethnomusicology: World Music Ensembles (tentative title). Manuscript accepted by editor. Contract pending for volume. (Will put copy on electronic reserve)
MUSI 420 – Gender, Race, And Film Musical (3)
M 1530-1800 CLM 322A
Instructor: Suzanne Cusick
(Description not available – see instructor)
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 276 – African Religion In America (3)
M 1900-2130 CAB 118
Instructor: Michael Mason
The Atlantic Slave Trade carried millions of Yoruba-speaking peoples to the Caribbean and Brazil. They brought a diverse pantheon of deities, complex religious ideas, and a wide range of ritual practices. In the Americas, enslaved people and their descendants transformed the pantheon, ideas, and practices in response to their new social circumstances. Recent years have seen the publication of many excellent studies of Yoruba religion in Africa and its relatives in the Americas. These studies have focused on two main questions: How have people used these religious systems to find and express meaning in their lives? What leads people to changed these religions over time? This course explores these questions through several examples from Yoruba religion before turning to Haitian Vodou, Brazilian Candomblé, and Cuban Santería. Discussion section required.
RELC 323 – Pentacostialism: Origins And Development (3)
T 1100-1215 MCL 2009
Instructor: Wallace Best
This course will analyze the Pentecostal movement of the past 20th century as a transcultural religious phenomenon. Looking to a wider international context, we will explore the development of Pentecostalism in such countries as Mexico, Brazil, Korea, and China. We will also concern ourselves with the way ethnic minorities within the United States have reshaped the practice and the meanings of Pentecostalism, as well as Evangelicalism in general, particularly with regard to race and gender. Because the course is about a religious movement, our analytical approach will be historical, anthropological, and theological. Using various Pentecostal texts and articles, we will work toward a clearer understanding of the basic tenets of Pentecostalism, namely "divine healing," "baptism in the Holy Spirit," and "speaking in tongues." We will also investigate how the most recent internationalist shift within the Pentecostal movement has renewed millennialist thought and efforts for Christian ecumenism.
RELG 556 – Issues In African-American Religion (3)
W 1530-1800 CAB 432
Instructor: Wallace Best
The literature on African American religion and religious history has grown substantially in the past half century. In this course we will examine many of the crucial texts as a way to understand how scholars have gone about the study African American religion and history, and as a way to understand the issues that have shaped the religious development of American people of color. In this way the emphasis in the course will be both methodological and historiographical. Topics will include: black religion as history and phenomenon, dialectical models of black faith, black Christian nationalism, religious pluralism, and politico-religious organization. Requirements will include weekly short papers and a final research essay.
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
LNGS 222 – Black English (3)
M W 1100-1150 CAB 138
Instructor: Mark Elson
Introduction to the history and structure of what has been termed Black English Vernacular or Black Street English. Emphasizes the sociolinguistic factors which led to the emergence of this variety of English, as well as its present role in the black community and its relevance in education, racial stereotypes, etc. Discussion section required.
Department of Sociology
SOC 341 – Race And Ethnicity (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 325
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
The terms "race" and "ethnicity," and issues associated with them are, to say the least, problematic. The meanings of these – and related – terms are unclear and policies that address "racial" issues are usually very contentious. Why is this the case? Why is race, seemingly, a source of unending conflict? This course will address these questions by examining the general issue of race from a historical and comparative perspective.
SOC 410 - African American Communities (3)
T R 1530-1645 CAB 338
Instructor: Rick Turner
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear, comprehensive understanding of the history, struggles and diversity of the African-American community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the African-American community within urban society and on the need for students to obtain knowledge of the cultural history of African-Americans. The course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for African-American people's sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. By means of discussion, lectures, videos, reading, writing, and class presentation, this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamics of the African-American community.
School of Architecture
ARCH 507 – Gender And Race Theories (3)
F 0900-1145 CAM 302
Instructor: Lisa Henry
Given the references to the human body throughout the history of architectural discourse, it is surprising that particular bodies: the female body or the black body for example have been mostly suppressed and marginalized. Contemporary critical theory, however, provides a system through which to study the very margins of architectural production. It is the aim of this semester to mobilize some of these discourses in order to study public and domestic architecture, revealing the implications of gender and race within them. We will examine the structure of history, autobiography, and memory, as a means of exploring issues of gender, race, authorship, representation, and the production and reception of architecture. The objective is not only to provide a working methodology with which to analyze and critique architecture, but also to sustain a possible ground for its production. Requirements: The course will be taught in a seminar format. Participants will be responsible for weekly readings, class discussion, a short autobiographical text to be developed over the course of the semester, a collaborative presentation of readings and projects, a short investigative work to include visual representations and text (3-6 pages) will be developed by each student in conjunction with their presentation, and a research/design project developed from the autobiographical text.
ARCH 556 – Interpreting Community: A Case Study Of Cape Coast, Ghana
R 1800-2100 Minor Hall 108
Instructor: Maurice Cox
Through the townscape of Cape Coast, Ghana, we will investigate methods of reading cultural landscapes and challenge assumptions about interpretations of place. The course will unfold against the larger context of the West Coast of Africa and the involvement of Cape Coast and other coastal towns in the history of trade-particularly the enslavement of Africans.
This course targets advanced undergraduate and graduate students whose research interests focus on discerning cultural patterns and deciphering expressions of change in the built, natural, and social environments. Using non-traditional sources such as oral testimony, ritual, and performance, students will develop the skills needed for collecting, distilling, and conveying the complexities of community through intensive exposure to Cape Coast. In interdisciplinary teams, students will develop, reformat, and produce interpretations of this place using a variety of digital media.
Requirements include the completion of weekly reading assignments/interpretive exercises, participation in class discussion, weekly journal entries, and a final multimedia product.
The course will be taught in a seminar/workshop format and is conceived of as the predecessor to an interdisciplinary student research project for the summer of 2001 in Cape Coast, Ghana. This summer project is contingent upon funding from the United States Department of Education, Fulbright-Hays Group Study Abroad Program and will have an application process independent of the spring seminar. Collaborators: School of Architecture, Afro-American and African Studies, and the Digital Media Lab, Robertson Media Center.
University Seminars
USEM 171/0014 – The 60's In Black & White (2)
T 1530-1730 PV8 103
Instructor: Julian Bond
The 1960’s saw a generation of young people begin to build movements which would stop a war abroad and start a war at home. What made these movements for peace and equal rights possible? What events triggered them? Who were participants? What is their legacy in the present? This seminar – through biographies activists in the movements – attempts to answer these and other questions as we examine personalities, events, and culture of the 1960s. Students will be required to write a comprehensive a paper on a 60’s subject – a participant, an organization, a movement.
Fall 2000
African-American and African Studies
AAS 101 - Introduction To Afro-American And African Studies (4)
T R 1100-1215 MRY 209
Instructor: Dylan Penningroth
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.
AAS 205- Travel Accounts And Ethnographies Of Africa (3)
T R 0930-1045 PAV VIII, 103
Instructor: Hanan Sabea
The course explores how 18-19th century travel accounts about Africa have influenced ethnographic writings about the continent. Starting with contemporary US representations about Africa and anthropological reflections on the disciplines engagements with the Continent, we will trace the genealogy of basic concepts by reading travelers, missionaries, and explorers descriptions about their encounters in Central, Southern and Northern Africa. We will analyze the connections between the profession/gender of writers, their nationality, and their descriptions of the places they visited. We will move then to ethnographic accounts of the same regions to examine how the analysis of different areas within the Continent are premised on certain ideas about people and places, how these ideas are reproduced, and how they reflect heritages of the encounter between the West and Africa. Theoretical and methodological questions of knowledge production, power and the development of disciplines will be examined.
AAS 322 – History Of African-American Women 1600-Present (3)
TR 1230-1345 MRY 104
Instructor: Eileen Boris
This course surveys the experience of women of African descent in the United States, looking backward from the end of the twentieth century. Through the voices of African American women, we will trace the struggle to define their own lives and improve the social, economic, political, and cultural position of black communities. Uncovering this history requires both looking at the past from the standpoint of different groups of black women, but also contrasting self-perception with material and ideological circumstances not always of their own choosing. We will discuss West African gender systems; womens enslavement; the gendered meaning of the civil war, emancipation and segregation; forms of resistance and protest; women as community builders and institution creators; and black feminist thought. Throughout we will investigate womens work at home and in the labor market; kinship and family relations; sexuality, violence and beauty culture; the female life cycle; the impact of social policy on black women; and women's relationship to each other, their children, their men, and white society. There will be a course packet of articles; recent historical monographs, like Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1996); and primary sources, including Beverly Guy-Shetfall, Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought (New Press, 1995).
Course is cross-listed as HIUS 322.
AAS 401 - Independent Study (3)
AAS 405A – History In A Box: Research Methods In African American Studies (3)
M 1300-1530 MIN 109 (Woodson Institute Conference Room)
Instructor: Scot French
- An original Harper's Weekly magazine from Oct. 8, 1864
- An undated photograph of two smiling American soldiers -- one black, one white -- taken at the S. Kimura studio
- Gospel Hour Publications on "Petting" and "Sins Most Often Committed by Women"
- A 1961 senior class commencement announcement from Jackson P. Burley High School
- Family letters spanning several decades
- A horsehair brush, a pearl brooch, and an empty Prince Albert tobacco can
These are just some of the items salvaged from a local house and donated to the Carter G. Woodson Institute for identification, preservation, and interpretation. What can these artifacts tell us about the African American family that left them behind? Is it possible to construct, from these fragments, a social and cultural history that extends well beyond Charlottesville? Students will investigate this unprocessed collection, develop a digital archive of images and text, and produce a series of interpretive reports on the contents. No special computer skills are required. Lectures and readings will introduce students to the methodologies employed by archivists and researchers specializing in African American Studies and related fields.
AAS 405B – Photography In Africa (3)
W 1300-1630 MIN 109 (Woodson Institute Conference Room)
Instructor: Liam Buckley
This course explores the visual cultures structured around the presence of cameras and photographs in Africa. The method of the course is interdisciplinary, drawing on work conducted in visual anthropology, in colonial discourse and postcolonial theory, and material culture studies. In its colonial and postcolonial contexts, the activity of photography has provided persons with a time to establish identities for themselves and social relations with others, while exercising power and testing authority. Students will examine the range of African practices that have developed historically during the taking of, posing for, display, collection and exchange of photographs. The final section of the course focuses on the “social lives” of African photographs—things moving through history, beyond the immediate lives and contexts of those who produced and posed in them, capable of serving varying ideological ends.
AAS 405C – African Americans And Civil Rights After 1965: What Next? (3)
T 1400-1630 MIN 109 (Woodson Institute Conference Room)
Instructor: Bernie D. Jones
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund led the legal battle to end de jure discrimination during the civil rights movement. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the battle seemed to be over. Official barriers to full equality within society had been dismantled. The question remained about what the next step should be. How might all African Americans fulfill the dream? The battles moved from the courtroom to the classroom as lawyer academics wondered: what was the movement supposed to have done? Did it do a good job? Was there still work to be done? Based upon their perceptions, they aligned themselves within various camps: critical legal studies, critical race theory, feminist theory, critical race feminism, and law and economics.
This class will be a seminar, in which students will explore how legal scholars within various schools of thought approach the question of civil rights and the effectiveness of the law at addressing the struggle for equality. This class will satisfy the second writing requirement.
AAS 451 - Distinguished Majors Program/ Directed Research (3)
TBA
AAS 452 - Distinguished Majors Program/Thesis (3)
TBA
Department of Anthropology
ANTH 227 - Race, Gender, And Medical Science (3)
MW 1530-1645 CAB 332
Instructor: Gertrude Fraser
This course is designed to explore the social and cultural dimensions of biomedical practice and experience in the United States, with some cross-cultural material for comparative purposes. It focuses on practitioner and patient, asking about the ways in which race, gender, and socio-economic status contour professional identity and socialization, how such factors influence the experience of and course of illness, and how the have shaped the structures and institutions of biomedicine over time.
ANTH 330 – Tournaments And Athletes (4)
T R 1100-1215 MIN 125
Instructor: George Mentore
This course will offer you a cross-cultural study of competitive games. Criticizing current theories about the “innocence” of sports while comparing and contrasting various athletic events from societies around the world, it will provide an argument to explain the competitive bodily displays of athletes. It will select materials which allow you to examine bodily movement, meaning, context, and process, in addition to the relations between athletes, officials, spectators, and social systems. Its general thesis will be that sport brings out the universal morals of community, challenges and tests them in controlled and unthreatening genres, yet never defeats them or makes them appear unjust.
Discussion Section Required.
ANTH 388 - African Archaeology (3)
M W F 1000-1050 CAB 215
Instructor: Adria LaViolette
In this lecture and discussion class we begin with a brief overview of human evolution, from the earliest anstralopithecines to the emergence of modern humans in the Middle to Late Stone Age. We then slow the pace and deal in greater depth the Late Stone Age and Iron Age societies, up through the archaeology of European colonialism. Although we cannot touch on all the topics of interest over this vast time period and continent, the goal of the course are to give you solid footing in the broad themes, most important details, and controversies in African Archeology. Areas of focus include great archaeological sites; hunter/gatherer societies; plant and animal domestication; technological and social innovations of the Iron Age; Nile Valley peoples; medium-range and large-scale societies; the archaeology of Islam; the Trans-Saharan, Atlantic and Indian Ocean trades; and the politics of archaeology in the developing nations on the African continent.
ANTH 589C - Labor, Capital And States In Contemporary Africa (3)
1000-1230 F RSH 111
Instructor: Hanan Sabea
Informed by labor and production theories this course examines one angle of the interface between Africa and the world by focusing on the relationship between international capital, systems of governance, and laboring people. Ethnographic case studies of various social organizational contexts through which this three-tiered relation can be explored will include mining corporations, plantations, conservation and parks, production of cash crops, arms and sex trade, military conscription, and working at ports/docks. Topics covered include: the multiple meanings of labor and work experienced under diverse regimes of power, the social organization of work and its implications for self identification and group formation, the dynamics of organizing space and controlling people through work, the politics of labor under colonial and post-colonial regimes, and the repercussions of the so-called globalization on labor and social relations in the Continent.
Department of English Language and Literature
ENLT 247/0001 - Black Writers In America (3)
T R 1230-1345 SECTION 1, BRN 330
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
“The Short Story”
If literature is the bread of life, then the short story is dim sum: morsels of literary excellence. As a literary form, the short story engages a range of literary genres, contexts, styles and issues in a small discursive space. This class takes an exploratory approach to twentieth-century African American literature by considering a variety of writers and their techniques. Reading the short stories of Ernest Gaines, Toni Morrison, Randall Kenan, James A. McPherson, Octavia E. Butler and others, students will hone their critical thinking skills as they develop interpretive strategies to better understand this literature. Class requirements include active class participation (discussion and presentation), twenty pages of writing (one 4-5 page essay, two 6-7 page essays) and a final exam.
Restricted to 1st-2nd years. Course meets Second Writing Requirement and Non-Western Perspectives Requirement.
ENLT 247/0002 - Black Writers In America (3)
T R 1400-1515 SECTION 2, BRN 328
Instructor: Kendra Hamilton
“The Big House”
The South lost the Civil War…but it won the peace. That is to say, the peacetime war of words that raged—in magazines, history books, popular songs, movies, and more—over how the war would be perceived…and remembered. Indeed, in one of the central ironies of the Civil War, the very fact that the “Big House” way of life was so thoroughly demolished paved the way for a something much better: a mythical “Big House” where all slaves were contented, all Southerners were generous and noble, and all Yankees went home with a Southern bride. The myth soothed the sensibilities of a shattered nation, welded erstwhile opponents into a cohesive national unit, and even identified a convenient scapegoat to take the blame for the “late unpleasantness”: none other than the freedmen, who were both pitied as pathetically “unready” for freedom and attacked as pathologically dangerous to the white race…Of course, not everyone was fooled—particularly not African American artists, many of whom responded by shaking the dust of the South, literally and figuratively, off their feet; migrating North; and creating a vibrant, jazz-inflected literature of the city. But even where these artists most fervently celebrated the modern and the new, they never ceased to gesture toward their Edenic paradise lost, their horrifically haunted homeplace: the South. Our task in this course will be to explore the ways in which African American novels, poetry, and films have tried to tear down the master’s house—to revise, recast, and rewrite the Southern plantation romance in a heroic effort to destabilize a pernicious—and still vital—literary master narrative.
Course requirements: Weekly email “questions” for discussion; four five-page papers; midterm; final exam. Readings/films: Birth of a Nation (film), D.W. Griffith, The Marrow of Tradition, Charles Chestnutt, Cane, Jean Toomer, The Land Where the Blues Began (film), Alan Lomax, Selections from Southern Road, in The Collected Poems of Sterling Brown, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, Selections fromUncle Tom’s Children, Richard Wright, Meridian, Alice Walker, Gathering of Old Men, Ernest Gaines, Selections from Magic City, Yusef Komunyakanaa, Daughters of the Dust, Julie Dash, Beloved, Toni Morrison, Eve’s Bayou (film), Kasi Lemmons.
ENAM 313 - African-American Literature I (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 323
Instructor: Tejumola Olaniyan
A cross-genre survey of African-American literature beginning from the slave narratives to the close of the Harlem Renaissance. We will pay close attention to significant formal innovations and thematic preoccupations that define this literature and the relationships, if any, between such concerns and the (changing) conditions of possibility of the literature itself.
ENAM 481C- African-American Women Writers (3)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 318
Instructor: Angela Davis
We will read several novels and short stories by African-American women, examining in particular how the authors portray black women as individuals and in the context of American society. This course requires active class participation, two written responses to readings (each 2 to 3 double-spaced typed pages long) and a formal essay (12 to 15 pages long). The reading list is: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls; Toni Morrison, Sula and Tar Baby; Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble; Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones; Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place.
Prerequisite: The course is first offered to fourth-year majors in English, Women's Studies, and Afro-American and African Studies.
ENTC 481 B -Trauma, Theory And African-American Literature (3)
TR 0930-1045 BRN 312
Instructor: Lisa Woolfork
Trauma theory is an emerging branch of literary scholarship pioneered by such critics as Cathy Caruth and Shoshanna Felman. Despite the value of these interpretive strategies, trauma as a literary methodology is not often used to comment on African American culture. In this class we will consider trauma theory by reading the standard-bearers as well as new voices on the scene. Focusing on traumas endemic to African American life, slavery and lynching, we will explore how the fields of history, psychology, and literary analysis converge to form literary trauma studies. We will also consider how African American subjectivity influences the definition and structure of trauma. Students will be required to participate actively, lead discussion and write two essays.
Department of French Language and Literature
FREN 443 – Africa In Cinema (3)
T R 1100-1215 TBA
Instructor: Kandioura Dramé
(Course taught in French)
This course is an exploration of African cultures through cinema. It deals with the representations of African cultures by film makers from different cultures and studies the ways in which their perspectives on Africa are often informed by their own social and ideological positions as well as the demands of exoticism. It also examines the constructions of the African as "other" and the kinds of responses they have so far elicited from Africa's cineasts. These filmic "inventions" are analyzed through a selection of French, British, American, and African films by S. Pollack, J-J Annaud, M. Radford, Djibril Diop Mambety, Ngangura Mweze, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Souleymane Cissé, Gaston Kaboré, Amadou Seck, Dani Kouyaté, Brian Tilley, and Jean-Marie Teno on a variety of subjects relative to the image of Africa in cinema. The final grade will be based on 2 short papers (4 pages/each), a term paper (7 pages), and contributions to classroom discussions. Reading: Gardies, André - Cinéma d'Afrique Noire Francophone: L'espace-miroir (Reserve) Diawara, Manthia - African Cinema(Reserve) Vieyra, Paulin Soumano - Le Cinéma Africain (Reserve) and Ousmane Sembène, Cinéaste... (Reserve); Ukadike, F. N. - Black African Cinema (Reserve); Research in African Literatures-Special issue: African Cinema, Vol. 26, No.3, Fall 1995.
FRTR 329 - Comparative Carribean Culture (3)
MWF 1100-1150 CAB 337
Instructor: Albert Arnold
The course will examine in a comparative context Caribbean cultural phenomena, primarily literary, of the past half century. We will read poetry and fiction from the English-, French-, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean and will discuss some music from the region as well. We will examine models of cultural production (Negritude, Caribbeanness) that attempt to account for the specificity of Caribbean societies. The contrasting situation of U.S. society will serve as the backdrop for our discussions, both during the Monday and Wednesday lectures and the Friday discussion sessions.
There will be a midterm and a final examination. Students will prepare a short research paper for the end of the semester as well.
Prerequisites: Some knowledge of modern literature and/or Caribbean society is necessary for success in this course. Students who have performed well in the past have already taken AAS 101, 102, an introduction to Cultural Anthropology, or a serious introduction to literature (CPLT 201, 202 or the equivalent couse in English). First-year students will not be admitted to the course.
Department of Government and Foreign Affairs
GFAP 550 - Race And American Politics (3)
T 1530-1800 CAB 122
Instructor: Lynn Sanders
GFCP 341 - Government And Politics Of The Middle East And North Africa (3)
T R 1400-1515 CAB 215
Instructor: William Quandt
This course will introduce students to the contemporary political systems of the region stretching from Morocco to Iran. A number of themes will be stressed: the struggle for independence; the problems of forming nation-states; the persistence of strong social forces; the role of leadership; the weakness of institutions; political and economic reasons for underdevelopment; oil and renter states; the importance of religion; the political role of women; and prospects for democratization.
GFCP 424 - Democratic Transitions And Consolidation In Latin America (3)
M 1530-1800 CAB 134
Instructor: David Jordan
This seminar investigates the challenges to democratic transitions and consolidations in contemporary Latin America. Such topics as barriers to democratic transition in Mexico, the problems of corruption and the impact on the civic culture from the transition from a statists to a market economy are investigated.
GFCP 531 – Government & Politics In Latin America (3)
M W F 1100-1150 CLK 143
Instructor: David Jordan
GFPT 424A– Africa Political Thought (3)
T R 930-1045 CAB 337
Instructor: Guy Martin
Department of History
HIAF 201, SCT. 100 - Early African History Through The Era Of The Slave Trade (4)
T R 0930-1045 CAB 311
Instructor: Joseph C. Miller
Early African History draws Africans’ distinctive achievements in culture, politics, and economic strategies out from the mists of the once-dark continent's unwritten past. Taking up this story in the millennium before the Present Era, HIAF 201 and follows the sometimes-surprising ways in which village elders, women, merchants, kings, cattle lords, and ordinary farmers pursued meaningful lives without the technologies that modern Americans take for granted. The last third of the course examines the ironic interplay of achievement and tragedy in a continent increasingly committed to exiling its own people in slavery to Europeans, until the Atlantic slave trade began to wind down after about 1800. (A second semester of African history, HIAF 202, taught in the spring, narrates subsequent events down through twentieth-century colonialism and the post-1960 era of independence and impoverishment.)
HIAF 201 is a lower-division introductory survey. The instructor presents major themes of early African history in lectures twice each week. Students meet additionally in discussion sections for review of readings, quizzes, and preparation for written assignments. Requirements include weekly map quizzes, a mid-term examination (better of two tries), three short papers (4-5 pages) rehearsing historical questions for the mid-terms and considering the written sources on Africa's past, and a final examination (format to be negotiated with the class). The course belongs to the Afro-American and African Studies curriculum, meets the "non-western" requirement for the major in History, and qualifies for the College "non-western perspectives" area requirement. Students may rewrite one of the papers to meet College standards for the Second Writing Requirement.
Readings revolve around weekly assignments in a text (Shillington, History of Africa), for a total of about 225 pages. Other assigned chapters and professional articles introduce the distinctive methodologies of doing history without written sources (including the famous Mande oral epic Sundiata), highlight interpretive ("historiographical") issues, and consider concepts relevant to understanding early Africa. The total number of assigned pages runs at approximately 1200.
No strict formula determines final marks. Students are graded according to their "highest consistent performance" in all aspects of the course, including attendance at lectures and participation in discussions, with allowance made for the unfamiliarity of the subject matter early in the term; a number of options allow students to devise a combination of graded work that will accommodate other academic commitments and reflect specialized abilities most accurately.
HIAF 201 presumes no prior knowledge of Africa or experience with the study of history. But since the subject is new to nearly everyone in the course, consistent application and preparation is expected, particularly early in the term. Students in all four years of their undergraduate careers and in all colleges of the University ordinarily complete the course with success. Most find it a challenging opportunity to discover and examine assumptions about modern Americans -- themselves included – they did not know they held. Required work includes weekly quizzes on geography, a mid-term examination (two tries), three short papers (4-5 pages) rehearsing historical questions for the mid-terms and considering written sources on Africa’s past, and a final examination (format to be negotiated with the class). The course belongs to the Afro-American and African Studies curriculum, meets the "non-western" requirement for the major in History, and qualifies for the College “non-western perspectives” area requirement. Students may elect to rewrite one of the papers to meet College standards for the Second Writing Requirement.
Discussion section required.
HIAF 401- History Seminar: The Two Souths (4)
T 1530-1800 CAB 245
Instructor: John Mason
“The Two Souths: History and Culture in South Africa and the United States South”
The Two Souths is a reading and research course in comparative history. We will explore the similarities and differences in South African and American Southern history through biography and autobiography. South Africa and the American South are like distant cousins: instantly recognizable as members of the same family, but with distinctively different personalities. Both countries were born in the conquest of local people by European immigrants. Both owe much of their early economic development to slavery. In both complex systems of racial domination shaped society for generations during and after the Emancipation of the slaves. And in both the interracial struggle against racism gave rise to some of the most important people and events in their histories. At the same time, the differences between the two countries cannot be ignored. Most dramatically, in South Africa the descendants of European immigrants constitute a minority of the population; in the United States, of course, the reverse is true.
During the first part of the course we will read accounts of the lives of ordinary and extraordinary South Africans and southerners, black and white, women and men. The goal here is to begin to understand the historical context within which individuals made choices about their lives.
The second part of the course will be devoted to research and writing. Students will identify a South African and an American southerner whose lives--or aspects of them--can be sensibly compared and write a paper about the two based on primary and secondary sources.
Instructor permission required. Course meets Second Writing Requirement and Non-Western Perspectives Requirement.
HIAF 404 - Independent Study In African History (3)
TBA
In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.
HIAF 505 - Black Atlantic Critical Thought (3)
TR 1100-1215 WIL 141A
Instructor: John Mason
In this course we will examine the ideas and activism of major figures in African and African-American political thought. These men and women of the African diaspora created a tradition of emancipatory thought within societies shaped by slavery and colonialism, by racial oppression and economic exploitation. Circumstances forced them to address questions of both identity and political action. They understood that the black experience is at the heart of modern western history and that blacks are at the same time marginalized within modern western societies. "Who am I," they asked, "and who are we as a people?" "What should I, and we, do about the circumstances that confront us?" Most members of this tradition also considered the ways in which uneven power relationships within black communities shaped the personal and political landscape, limiting the range of political possibility.
The men and women that we will study in this course approached the problems that they and their communities faced in a variety of ways. They drew on resources as varied as pan-Africanism, classical liberalism, democratic socialism, Marxism, black nationalism, critical theory, and gender theory, yet each participated, at least implicitly, in a common intellectual project. Their vision was broad rather than narrow; they were suspicious of power and privilege, rather than covetous of it. Having arrived at answers to the questions they asked, they acted.
Together we will read and discuss the work of a number of representative figures. Students will prepare a one or two page discussion notes each week and help to lead the week's discussion two or three times during the semester. The final assignment will be a term paper of fifteen to twenty pages, examining the writing and activism of either a representative of this tradition or a critic of it.
HILA 320 – History Of The Caribbean, 1500-2000 (3)
T R 1230-1345 CAB 345
Instructor: Richard Drayton
The Caribbean is a region of the Atlantic world bounded by Central America and the north of South America, and by an arc of islands which runs from Trinidad in the south, to the Bahamas in the north, and Cuba in the west. This course begins with the examination of the physical geography of the region, and with a glance backwards to the Amerindian civilizations whose tools and gods had made its reef and jungle human for over five thousand years before the arrival of Columbus. But it is principally concerned with its history after 1500 AD, and with the processes through which people from part of the European and African continents, and ultimately from Asia, came to make the region their home. Our emphasis will be on the islands of the region, and on how sugar production, plantation slavery, and European colonialism shaped society, culture and politics. We shall examine the pattern of forced and free migration; the varieties of slavery, resistance, and rebellion; the shifting currencies of race and identity; how a dialogue between the European and African cultures shaped language, religion, literature and the arts; the varieties of emancipation, popular politics, nationalism, and of experiences of political independence.
Our reading is almost exclusively drawn from within the Caribbean intellectual tradition, in particular from its Anglophone component. We will therefore be studying the Caribbean from the inside, and paying critical attention to how the Caribbean, in our own age, has discovered itself.
Students are expected to attend all lectures, and to read perhaps 150 pages each week, in rhythm with the lectures, each of which will include a discussion. Your grade will be based 20% on participation, 20% on a midterm, and 60% on a final examination.
HIST 504 - Monticello Internship (3)
Instructor: Phyllis Leffler
Directed research, largely in primary source materials, on topics relating to Jefferson's estate, life, and times. Directed by senior members of the Monticello staff.
Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor.The internships are restricted to graduate students in history and to fourth-year undergraduate history majors. A maximum of two students each semester can be admitted to the course.
HIUS 301- Colonial America (3)
M W 1000-1050 MRY 115
Instructor: Mr. Stephen Innes
The colonial period was the seedtime of the characteristics we most associate with America: representative government, liberal capitalism, chosenness, pluralism, complicated race relations, violence, and direct action. Focusing primarily on the course probes the origins of these components of American "exceptionalism." The overriding goal throughout will be to attempt to explain how colonies with such dramatically different beginnings could have arrived at a common republican synthesis by 1776.
Lectures on Monday and Wednesday will be followed by discussion on Friday, led by the instructor. There will be one midterm examination and one two-page paper in addition to the final examination.
The reading assignments include the following books:
• Edmund Morgan, American Slavery - American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia
• James Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth Century Chesapeake
• Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England
• Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, & Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789
• Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft
• Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion
• Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
Discussion section required.
HIUS 307-The Coming Of The Civil War (3)
T R 11-1215 CAB 138
Instructor: Michael F. Holt
By focusing on the interaction between an escalating sectional conflict and the operation of the American political system between approximately 1840 and 1861, this course will attempt to explain why the Civil War broke out in April 1861. There will be three 50-minute lectures each week. Grades will be allotted as follows: Midterm, 30%; Paper, 30%; and Final Exam, 40%.
The reading list may include:
o Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson
o James B. Stewart, Holy Warriors
o William W. Freehling, Road to Disunion: The Secessionists at Bay, 1800-1854
o Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
o David Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861
o Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s
HIUS 322 – History Of African American Women, 1600 To The Present(3)
T R 1230-1345 MRY 104
Instructor: Eileen Boris
This course surveys the experience of women of African descent in the United States, looking backward from the end of the twentieth century. Through the voices of African American women, we will trace the struggle to define their own lives and improve the social, economic, political, and cultural position of black communities. Uncovering this history requires both looking at the past from the standpoint of different groups of black women, but also contrasting self-perception with material and ideological circumstances not always of their own choosing. We will discuss West African gender systems; womens enslavement; the gendered meaning of the civil war, emancipation and segregation; forms of resistance and protest; women as community builders and institution creators; and black feminist thought. Throughout we will investigate womens work at home and in the labor market; kinship and family relations; sexuality, violence and beauty culture; the female life cycle; the impact of social policy on black women; and women's relationship to each other, their children, their men, and white society. There will be a course packet of articles; recent historical monographs, like Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1996); and primary sources, including Beverly Guy-Shetfall, Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought (New Press, 1995).
Course is cross-listed as AAS 322.
HIUS 324-The South In The Twentieth Century (3)
M W 11-1150 MIN 125
Instructor: Grace Elizabeth Hale
This course examines the broad history of the American South in the twentieth century, with special emphasis on racial violence, the creation of segregation, class and gender relations within the region, the cultural and economic interdependence of black and white southerners, and the Civil Right Movement and its aftermath. Students interested in American Studies, African American Studies, and Gender Studies are also welcome. Bibliography: W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, The Making of a Southerner (1946), Grace Lumpkin, To Make My Bread (1932), William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom (1936), Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968), Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic (1998), Grace Hale, Making Whiteness (1998).
Grading: midterm 25%; paper (5-7 pp.) 25%; final exam 30%; participation in discussion sections and attendance at film and documentary screenings 20%.
Discussion section required.
HIUS 361- History Of Women In America, 1600 To 1865 (3)
M W 11-1150 CAB 316
TBA
A study of the evolution of women's roles in American society with particular attention to the experiences of women of different races, classes, and ethnic groups.
Discussion section required.
HIUS 365 – Introduction To African American History, 1500-1865 (3)
M W 1300-1350 MRY 104
Instructor: Dylan Penningroth
This course explores the history and cultures of people of African descent in North America from the 1500s to the mid-nineteenth Century, and from the African continent to the Americas. We will engage critically with a variety of topics, including identities, families, and communities, gender, the slave trades and slavery, resistance, and emancipation. We will pay special attention to how black people themselves shaped their experiences, and how those experiences relate to the history of the broader Atlantic world.
Readings being considered:
• Boubacar Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade (trans. 1998; New York, 1988)
• T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, Myne Owne Ground: Race and Freedom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676 (New York: Oxford, 1982)
• Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I A Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: Norton, 1985)
• David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995)
• Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (New York: Dover, 1995)
• Eric Foner, Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1983)
The readings will average 150-200 pages per week. There will be two papers and a final exam. Each week we will have two lectures and one required discussion section.
HIUS 367 - History Of The Civil Rights Movement (3)
T R 1400-1450 GIL 130
Instructor: Julian Bond
This lecture course will examine the history, philosophies, tactics, events, and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward.
The Southern movement--variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement-was a black-lead mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation in the South by the middle 1960s. Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive networks of church, fraternal, and social and labor organizations, drawing strength from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation in the United States. The movement's well- and lesser well known proponents and opponents and their stratagems will be examined.
Grades will be determined from two brief papers and a final examination and section participation.
Discussion section required.
HIUS 401, SCT. B - History Seminar (4)
W 1300-1530 RFN 227A
Instructor: Grace Elizabeth Hale
"The South Since 1945: Southern Lives in the Civil Rights Era”
In this research seminar, we will spend the first five weeks of the semester examining the general history of the period (1945-1975) and reading biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, Elvis, Flannery O'Connor, and George Wallace. How do the final mechanization of agriculture, the Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War, Vietnam, and the explosion of a commercialized popular culture effect the lives of black and white southerners? How does the region's culture change? Students will in consultation with the professor develop their own research projects on this topic. At subsequent class meetings, students will critique each other's works in progress and report on their own research.
Instructor’s permission required.
HIUS 401, SCT.C - History Seminar (4)
W 1300-1530 RFN 211
Instructor: George H. Gilliam
"Southern Progressivism: Government, Economy, Gender, and Race, 1890-1920"
Progressivism has been called the "formative birthtime of basic institutions, social relations, and political divisions of United States society as it evolved towards and beyond the mid-twentieth century." Though the period is best-remembered as the time when the public regulation of big business started, the seeds of today's civil rights, environmental protection, and public health and occupational safety movements also were planted during the progressive era. Southern Progressivism has been complicated by its intersection with virulent racism. State constitutional conventions held in the South between 1890 and 1910 to create the framework for progressive regulation of business at the same time took steps effectively to disfranchise African-Americans and poor whites. C. Vann Woodward concluded that "Southern progressivism generally was progressivism for white men only, and after the poll tax took its toll not all the white men were included."
Scholars have not fully explored the aftermaths of those state constitutional conventions in the South, however, and have left to others to explore whether progressive administrative institutions regulated or promoted business, and to explore the role such regulators played in the implementation of Jim Crow laws. The enforcement of Jim Crow laws and the use of black convict labor in the South provided an impetus for Americans to form the NAACP during this period. Rapid industrialization and urbanization pushed women to organize for protective legislation and for reforms in public health and education. This seminar will provide students the opportunity to explore the intersections of progressive reformers, regulators, the business communities, and the forces of racial segregation. Students interested in turn-of-the-century race regulation, the early women's movements, as well as those who are interested in the relationship between the variegated business communities and progressive regulators should be rewarded. The common readings and seminar discussions also will expose students to stark divisions within the business communities as well as to the nascent women's movement and to issues of race and class that seem particularly pertinent to the changing social landscape of the period.
The course will include five weeks of required readings designed to provide a common understanding of the period and a range of different historical experiences and questions relating to Progressivism. The average weekly reading load will be 120 pages and will include selections from traditional works such as Richard Hofstadter's The Age of Reform, from revisionist works such as Gabriel Kolko's The Triumph of Conservatism, as well as more recent scholarship including Edward L. Ayers' The Promise of the New South and Noralee Frankel, Nancy S. Dye, eds., Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era. By the sixth week of the course students will submit their paper topics in the form of a two-page proposal that outlines their preliminary research plan. During the next several weeks students will meet individually with the instructor. The entire class will also meet several times during the middle of the course so that students can discuss their research progress,
learn about each other's work, and help their peers with any research obstacles they may encounter. The primary goal of the seminar is to assist students in learning how to conduct their own research and will culminate in a research paper 25-30 pages in length. That paper is intended to fulfill the second writing requirement.
Instructor permission required.
HIUS 401, SCT. D History Seminar (4)
W 1900-2130 RAN 212
Instructor: Jenry Morsman
"American Sport in the 20th Century"
The emergence of sports as a dominant element of American life is a significant development in twentieth-century American history. Every day millions of Americans participate in the ever-expanding world of sport. Some play, some coach, many watch, and even more dream. Some write about it, some package it, some advertise it, some sell it, and many more buy it. There are legions of those, too, who criticize it. Americans have made heroes of their best players, and cities have built reputations on the success of their teams, measured by national, even world titles. The two most recognizable Americans throughout the United States and around the world are retired African American athletes, Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan. Sports in America have evolved from a primarily local and leisurely pastime in the nineteenth century into a big business, a national obsession, and a significant source of American cultural imperialism. This transformation, and its causes and consequences, will be the subject of this course.
Students who enroll in this class will have opportunity to read about and critically think through the professionalization, the commercialization, and the regulation of sports in America. Together we will attempt to come to terms with the concept of amateurism. We will explore the birth of big-time college athletics, the relationship between college athletic programs and the universities with which they are associated, and the crises which have shaped both. We will discover how and why immigrants to America have responded to American sports. We will pay special attention to the influence sports have had in the contested fields of race, class, and gender; and, in turn, we will try to take measure of the ways in which race, class, and gender have influenced they way Americans perceive and play sports.
In the first several weeks of the course, we will make our way through a common reading list of both primary and secondary sources. Averaging roughly 250 pages a week for the first half of the semester, we will read, and discuss in class, a range of materials, so that students may get a clearer sense of the field and develop an appropriate topic. Selected readings for American Sport in the Twentieth Century include (but are not limited to) Ronald Smith's Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Sports; Allen Guttmann's A Whole New Ballgame: An Interpretation of American Sports; S.W. Pope's Patriotic Games: Sporting Traditions in the American Imagination, 1876-1926; Michael Oriard's Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle; Peter Levine's Ellis Island to Ebbets Field: Sport and the American Jewish Experience; and John Hoberman's Darwin's Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race. Class members will also read selected articles and examine several varieties of primary documents housed in Alderman Library.
During the fifth week of classes students will be required to submit a two-page Research Prospectus in which they will propose their respective topics. Students will also write a two-page Primary Source Analysis in the seventh week of the semester. The remainder of the semester will be devoted to completing a rough and a final draft of a paper, 25-30 pages in length. The final draft will account for 60% of each student's overall grade; the rough draft and the two shorter papers will combine to account for 20% of that grade; and class participation (especially discussion of the assigned readings and of each other's written work) will account for the remaining 20%. Successful completion of American Sport in the Twentieth Century will satisfy the University's second writing requirement.
Instructor’s permission required.
HIUS 401, SCT. E-History Seminar (4)
R 1300-1530 RFN 311
Instructor: William Thomas
"Civil War Virginia Seminar"
Civil War Virginia is a thesis seminar that will explore the intersections between social and military experiences in Virginia during the Civil War and their legacies in modern Virginia history. The course will concentrate on explaining and exploring the connections between battle field and home front and the ongoing struggles over the memory of the war and its social and military meaning. Virginia's experience as a battle ground state makes it an ideal place to look at these connections. Students will read the current scholarly literature on Civil War Virginia, placing the military and social experience of Virginia in the larger context of the war. Students will research and write papers on topics that make connections between the military and social experience of the Civil War and its legacies in modern life. Readings include among others: Charles Royster's The Destructive War, Gary Gallagher's Lee and His Generals in War and Memory, Carol Reardon's Pickett's Charge in History and Memory, and Drew Gilpin Faust's Mothers of Invention.
Instructor’s permission required.
HIUS 403 B– African-American Culture To 1865 (4)
W 1300-1530 RFN 311
Instructor: Reginald Butler
From a historical perspective, this course will examine how African American cultures and societies developed in the north and south. How did forcibly transported Africans respond to the different agricultural economies, the conditions of enslavement, and European and native American cultures that they encountered during the colonial period? The course will begin in the early period during which large numbers of Africans arrived in British North America. It will then shift its focus to mature African American communities in which the vast majority of persons were American born. We will examine issues of African ethnicity and geography; family and kinship; religious practice, and diverse forms of aesthetic expression. Students will be required to write a major research paper based on both primary and secondary materials.
Department of Music
MUSI 212 - History Of Jazz Music (3)
M W 1400-1515 OCH 101
Instructor: Scott DeVeaux
This course is a survey of the history of jazz from its beginnings around 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century. Important instrumental performers, vocalists, composers, and arrangers are listened to and discussed.
Prerequisite: No Previous knowledge of music is required. Note: This class meets the Non-western Perspectives requirement.
MUSI 307-Worlds Of Music - Multicultural Music In Us (3)
T R 0930-1045 OCH 107
Instructor: Kyra Gaunt
An introduction to the ethnomusicological study of music and performance examining diverse peoples and cultures making music within the United States. We question what is "American" music and culture and discover extant worlds of music and other musical identities found in our own backyards.
Case studies include steel band in Brooklyn, Asian-American hip-hop, Arab music in Detroit, the Riot Grrrl Movement, and Mexican mariachi. Each student is responsible for an autobiographical oral performance-presentation, weekly responses to assigned readings, a reflective essay, and a final presentation and paper.
Prerequisite: music major or permission of instructor (non-majors with interests and experience in musical performance welcome).
MUSI 309- Performance In Africa (3)
R 1530-1645 OCH107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
This course, in conjunction with MUSI 369 (African Drumming and Dance Ensemble) explores performance in Africa through reading, discussion, audio and video examples, and possible field trips. The course will cover both "traditional" and "popular" styles, leading us to question those categories. Class meetings will focus not only on musical repertoire, sociomusical circumstances, and processes, but also on the issues and politics of translating performance practices from one cultural context to another. These discussions will lead us to broader questions about socio-esthetic processes and the performance of identity. Attendance at all class meetings is required, as is careful reading and preparation for discussion, and a final term paper/presentation.
*Co-requisite: MUSI 369, 2 Credits Enrollment limit: 15 students
MUSI 369 - African Drumming & Dance Ensemble (2)
T R 1715-1930 OCH 107
Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk
A practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (Baaka pygmies), with the intention of performing at the end of the semester. Though no previous experience with music or dance is required, we will give special attention to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and a polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, and faithful attendance are required of each class member, the goal being to develop an ongoing UVA African Drumming and Dance Ensemble.
Prerequisite: Permission of instructor by audition on first day of class.
MUSI 522 - Music And The Black Atlantic (3)
W 1530-1800 OCH S008
Instructor: Kyra Gaunt
A graduate seminar questioning the complex and strategic musical performances of blackness and black (female)ness. Explores the enculturation of black and african ways of performing in the post-1950s diaspora and in post-colonial Africa. How does the performance of stories, music, spoken word, dance and other rituals reflect the aesthetics and philosophies of musical blackness from soul to highlife to voudoun to the other real and imagined global connections between Africans and the African diaspora? Creative writing, experimental ethnography, play, movement, and the interplay between the verbal, sonic, and kinesic will guide our observations and interpretations of written work, sound texts, and live performance. Readings groups (a.k.a. midwives) will be assigned to raise an issue, problem, or question from the readings through performative interaction. Weekly written responses, group presentations, participant-observation and final ethnography (ca. 20 pages) required.
Prerequisite: permission of instructor
Department of Psychology
PSYC 487 – The Minority Family: A Psychological Inquiry (3)
M 0900-1130 GIL 225
Instructor: Melvin Wilson
This course is designed to examine critically the current state of research on minority families. Although the emphasis will be given to the Black family, other minorities, e.g., Native Americans, Chicanos, Asian-Americans will be considered. The psychological literature as well as selected work from anthropology and sociology will be covered. Special attention will be given to comparing "deficit" and "strength" research paradigms throughout the course. Format: Lecture, discussion and 2 presentations. No. and type of exams: 1 exam. Papers or projects (describe): 1 paper.
Prerequisites: PSYC 306 and at least one course from each of the following groups: PSYC 210, PSYC 215 or PSYC 230, and PSYC 240, PSYC 250 or PSYC 260. Also open to students in the Afro-American and African studies or women's studies programs--see instructor for permission. Telephone Enrollment Restrictions: Psych majors If course is full through ISIS: The instructor will keep a waiting list for the course. If you email the instructor (mnw), you will be added to the waiting list. Do not expect a reply from the instructor. Do not email the instructor to check whether you have been added. *Course May Meet Second Writing Requirement.
Department of Religious Studies
RELA 275 – Introduction To African Religions (3)
M W 1000-1050 CAB 311
Instructor: TBA
An introductory survey of African religions, this course will concentrate on African traditional religions but Islam and Christianity will also be discussed. Topics will include indigenous mythologies and cosmologies, sacrifice, initiation, witchcraft, artistic traditions and African religions in the New World. Readings include: Ray, African Religions; Stoller and Olkes, In Sorcery's Shadow; Soyinka, Death and the King's Horsemen; Ijimere, The Imprisonment of Obatala; Salih, The Wedding of Zein; and a packet of readings.
Discussion section required.
RELC 389 - Christianity In Africa (3)
T R 1400-1515 MRY 115
Instructor: Matthew Engelke
This course examines the development of Christianity in Africa from its ancient roots in Egypt and the Maghreb to contemporary times. Our historical survey will cover medieval Nubian and Ethiopian Christianity, the Kongo Christian kingdoms of the 15th and 16th centuries, European missions during the colonial period, the growth of independent churches and the emergence of African Christian theology. We will address issues such as the relationship between colonialism and evangelism; religion and rebellion; translation and inculturation of the gospel; and the role of healing, prophesy and spirit-possession in the conversion process. We will attempt both to position the Christian movement within the wider context of African religious history, and to understand Africa's place in the course of Christian history.
RELG 321 – African-American Religions In Historical Perspective (3)
1200-1250 MWF PAV 8, 108
Instructor: Wallace Best
This course will examine the relationships between African American religion, black culture and black political thought.
Centering our study on a few essential questions regarding the nature and function of black church, we will explore its affect upon black cultural forms -- music (from Gospel to Rap), fiction, poetry, and oratory. We will address a number of themes, including: the relationship between black church and black political leadership, race and religion, feminist theologies, and "Afro-centric Christianity." We will trace the development of African American religion in various historical contexts: Slavery, the Great Migration, and the Civil Rights era. Although this course will focus on African American Protestantism, we will examine black religion in other forms as well, particularly black Catholicism and the Nation of Islam
Department of Sociology
SOC 341 Race And Ethnicity (3)
M W F 1400-1515 CAB 316
Instructor: Milton Vickerman
Introduction to 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.
University Seminars
USEM 170/6 – The 60s In Black And White (2)
T 1530-1730 CAB 337
Instructor: Julian Bond
The 1960’s saw a generation of young people begin to build movement which would stop a war abroad and start a war at home. What made these movements for peace and equal rights possible? What events triggered them? Who were the participants? What is their legacy in the present? This seminar—through biographies of activists in the movements—attempts to answer these and other questions as we examine personalities, events, and culture of the 1960s. Students will be required to write a comprehensive paper on a 60’s subject—a participant, an organization, a movement.
