AAS 1020 – Introduction to African-American and African Studies

Professor Claudrena Harold

TuTh 12:30-1:45pm

Description: This introductory course builds upon the histories of people of African descent in Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean surveyed in AAS 1010. 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 2224-001 – Black Femininities and Masculinities in the US Media

Professor Lisa Shutt

Wed. 2-4:30pm

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

AAS 2224-002 – Black Femininities and Masculinities in the US Media

Professor Lisa Shutt

Tu 2-4:30pm

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

AAS 2559-002 – Introduction to African Languages and Literature

Professor Anne Rotich

MoWeFr 1-1:50pm

This course is a survey of literary texts in English by contemporary African writers. Students will develop an appreciation for different languages and an understanding of issues that preoccupy African writers and the literary strategies that they employ in their work. Students will read a variety of texts including novels, short stories, poetry, film and songs and critically analyze the cultural and aesthetics of the literary landscape. Particular attention will be on how authors engage themes such as identity, patriarchy, gender, class, and politics in post-colonial structures. Students are expected to actively engage in an analysis and exploration of the required literary works and to express their responses through class discussions, group presentations and the writing of analytical essays. 

AAS 2559-003 – Remixing Slavery: Radical Retellings of Enslavement through Music, Comedy, and Other Arts

Professor Tony Perry

Time TBA

When it comes to the story of slavery in the U.S., scholarly studies continue to dominate how this narrative is told and by whom. While much knowledge has come from such scholarship, academics represent one of several groups who have taken up the history of slavery and narrated some dimension of it. In this course, we will engage the work of musicians, visual artists, comedians, authors, and others who have remixed, reworked, and retooled traditional narratives of slavery. In their radical retellings, these storytellers confront, sit with, and sort through a past very much present in the world. In doing so, these individuals go beyond the scholar’s effort of making knowledge to provide a range of possibilities for reckoning with the present history of American slavery. Looking to people such as Octavia Butler, Jay Electronica, Dave Chappelle, Ava DuVernay, and Kara Walker, we will examine many of these representations against the backdrop of more traditional academic narratives and find our own ways to tell these not-so-old stories anew.

AAS 2740 – Peoples and Cultures of Africa

Professor Lisa Shutt

Wed 2-4:30pm

In 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 cultural worlds that exist today on the African continent.  This course will draw from ethnographic texts, literary works and film.

AAS 3000 -- Women and Religion in Africa

Professor Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

TuTh 12:30-1:45pm

This course examines women's religious activities, traditions and spirituality in a number of different African contexts. Drawing on ethnographis, 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 constuction of gender through ritual; sexuality and fertility; and women.

AAS 3500-001 -- "Who you calling a B**CH?!?: Queen Latifiah to Nicki Minaj and the Sexual Politics of Hip Hop."

Professor Dionne Bailey

Tu 6-8:30pm

This course, through a close examination of critical feminist and queer theory, will explore the cultural and political implications of hip hop music and culture – specifically its impact on Black sexual politics and gender performance from the origins of early artist like Salt-n-Pepa, MC Lyte, and Queen Latifah to today's leading artist including Kash Doll, Cardi B, and Nicki Minaj. 

AAS 3500-002 -- Black Women Makes Movies

Professor Nzingha Kendall

Mo 6-8:30pm

Does it matter who directs the films we watch? When black women are behind the camera what do they see? When black women are the audience what do they see? What is different about watching films through black women’s perspectives? This course will tackle these questions and more. An overview of the exciting and varied work of black women filmmakers from across the diaspora, Black Women Make Movies offers an exploration of how the films black women makedefy easy categorization. In this course we will develop a collective practice of critique in order to understand how black women’s films might reshape our conceptions of the world.

AAS 3500-004 -- Being Human: Race, Technology, Performance

Professor Njelle Hamilton

MoWe 2-3:15pm

This course is an introduction to Afrofuturism, exploring race and alienness, race and technology, and race and modernity through global futuristic representations of blackness in TV (Star Trek, Extant, Almost Human), film (Black Panther, Hidden Figures), music (Janelle Monáe, Sun Ra), art (Kehinde Wiley, Ebony Patterson), and literature (Nalo Hopkinson, Octavia Butler, Nnedi Okorafor). In this discussion-based seminar, we will trace “like race” tropes in sci-fi, including aliens, monsters, and invisibility. We will query the ways that science and technology played a part in the dehumanization of blackness, and how artists and author of color employ science/technology/sci-fi to grapple with contemporary and historical issues and to imagine places and conditions where blackness can thrive. Assignments will include literary essays and creative work (short films, artwork, poetry, performance pieces, web-content etc) that reimagine and interrogate representations of race and science/technology in contemporary media. Creative writers, artists, and performers are especially welcome, but no creative background is required for success in the course.

AAS 3500-005 -- African American Health Professionals

Professor Pamela Reynolds

Mon 3:30-6pm

Reading, class discussion, and written assignments on a special topic in  African American and African Studies Topics change from term to term, and vary withe the instructor.  Primarily for fourth-year students but open to others.

AAS 3500-006 -- Introduction to Caribbean Studies

Professor Claire Antone Payton

Th 3:30-6pm

The Caribbean is both a tranquil beach paradise and the origin of some of the most radical revolutionary movements in the history. It supplied the West with one the world's most delightful substances, sugar, but only at the cost of enormous suffering of millions of enslaved Africans. The Caribbean is where concepts of racial difference were invented. It is where the world’s wealthiest can store billions in off-shore bank accounts and where, a few miles away, people can die of hunger and curable diseases. Despite their small size, more than a dozen languages are spoken across the islands, a linguistic indicator of their lasting global connections. It is where centuries of structural and physical violence produced some of the most startlingly creative and dynamic cultures in the world.

Where is the Caribbean among all these contradictions? That is the question that will guide us through this course.  Is it in “the United States' backyard?” Is it at the meeting point of different cultures, an “estuary of the Americas?” Is it tiny or vast? Is it in the center or on the periphery? In this class, we will use nonfiction, fiction, and visual materials as transportation to travel through different Caribbean spaces. We will visit its tourist resorts and shantytowns, its cane fields and sports fields, its oceans and forests. We will learn about its history, geography, environment, the spatial organization of its societies, and its places of cultural meaning. These different itineraries will introduce students to the dynamics of race, capitalism, domination, revolution, and cultural innovation that, when braided together, make our modern world. By the end of the semester, student will be able to locate Caribbean islands not just on a map, but at the center of some of today's most burning political, cultural, and economic issues. 

AAS 3500-008 – African American Literature II

Professor Maurice Wallace

MoWeFr 10-10:50am

Students need not have taken African American Literature I in order to take this course. African American II is 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. The primary goal of this course is to provide students with a broad knowledge of African American literature and cultural production after 1940. We will trace and critically analyze the social, cultural, and political environments that informed the production and circulation of these works.  

AAS 3500-009 -- Afro-Latino Literature

Professor Ethan Madarieta

MoWe 3:30-4:45

This courses focuses on novels by Africans, Latinxs, or Afro-Latinxs, and about Afro-Latinxs: people of both African and Latin American descent living in the United States. In one novel, A Nigerian Salvadoreño artist in Los Angeles becomes the Virgin of Guadalupe. In another, an Afro-Puertoriqueña navigates life in Brooklyn with the help of her ancestors. In a third, a young Dominicano grows up in New Jersey with the help of SciFi in his search for decolonial love. 

Through these works we will explore representations of Afro-Latinidad in order to better understand the complexities of blackness and race in transnational frame—in Latin America and the United States more broadly. We will use this understanding to imagine the ways in which everyday practices work to dismantle colonial systems of power and dominance

AAS 3652 – African American History since 1865

Professor Andrew Kahrl

TuTh 2-3:15pm

This course surveys the major political, economic, and cultural developments in black America from the end of the Civil War to the present. Through an engagement with various primary and secondary texts, and multimedia, students examine African Americans' endeavors to build strong families and communities, create socially meaningful art, and establish a political infrastructure capable of bringing into existence a more just and humane world.

AAS 3810 – Race, Culture, and Inequality

Professor Sabrina Pendergrass

TuTh 2-3:15pm

Description: In this course, we will examine how culture matters for understanding race and social inequality. The course will survey social science research about cultural forms such as everyday discourse, styles of dress, music, literature, visual arts, and media as they relate to race and inequality. As we examine these studies, we will learn about key thinkers in social science approaches to culture, and we will analyze core concepts such as cultural capital, framing processes, symbolic boundaries, scripts, and racial grammar. 

AAS 4570 -- African American Political Writing

Professor Kevin Gaines

MoWe2-3:15pm

In this seminar we will read and discuss several classic nonfiction and fiction books by African American writers that, in various ways, sought to counter the assault on U.S. black lives, livelihoods, and political rights after Reconstruction, a period that historians have called the Nadir, or low point, in African American history.  These writings established the major political and ideological strategies for black protest and social advancement before the militant political and cultural movement known as the "New Negro," and we can discern in them the origins of such past and contemporary discourses as Black Lives Matter, African American nationalism, radicalism, pan-Africanism, conservatism, and feminism.   Authors include W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Booker T. Washington, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sutton E. Griggs.

AAS 4725 – Queer Africas

Professor Kwame Otu

Tu 3:30-6pm

Description: How does “Africa” shape the contours of queerness? Might “Africa” as geography and the “African” as body be inherently queer? Illuminating how contemporary accounts on the murder of David Kato, the Ugandan LGBT human rights activist in 2011, for instance, obscure the circumstances that preceded the execution of the royal pages in nineteenth century Uganda, now famously known as the Martyrs of Uganda, we will explore the complex iterations of afro-queer subjectivities in the the circum-Atlantic world. Importantly, we will examine the extent to which the afterlife of slavery in the Americas intersect with the state of postcoloniality in Africa, and how blackness and queerness get conditioned at these intersections. By providing an introduction to various artists, activists, and intellectuals in both Africa and its myriad diasporas, this interdisciplinary seminar will thus examine what it means to be both black and queer historically, spatially, and contemporarily. The “afro-queer” is a useful optic that will help to complicate how black queer embodiments are radical aesthetics that simultaneously drive imaginations and projects that disrupt racialized gendered normativities dictated by white supremacist regimes. Therefore, we will take seriously such questions as: how do queer political projects perpetuate antiblackness in both liberal and neoliberal scenes of empire? And how are black queer subjects’ refusal of mainstream queer political projects in the era of a Black Lives Matter part of a genealogy of black rejection and complicity? We will interrogate the transnational and transcultural articulations of race, sex, and gender, to highlight the dynamic relationship and tensions between the study of Africa and its myriad diasporas and Queer Studies.   

SWAHILI

SWAH 1020--Introductory Swahili II

Professor Anne Rotich

(13997) MoWeFr 10 - 10:50AM

Swahili, or Kiswahili is widely spoken in East Africa and worldwide. It is estimated that about 70 million people speak Kiswahili globally. It is also widely spoken in Africa especially in Tanzania and Kenya as a national language. It is also spoken in Uganda and the Comoros Islands, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, and Mozambique.  It is also spoken in some Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman.  The course is designed to help you learn enough about Swahili to enable you to handle your needs adequately in basic conversations with Swahili speakers. You will be able to talk about yourself and your preferences, needs, and interests in the past, present and future time. You will learn to greet others, introduce yourself, handle basic social conversations, and talk about a variety of topics of common interest. You will learn to read and write Swahili in past, present, and future time and how to understand written and spoken Swahili well enough to carry out routine tasks and engage in simple conversations. You will also learn about some aspects of everyday culture in East Africa

(12859) MoWeFr 11 - 11:50AM

Swahili, or Kiswahili is widely spoken in East Africa and worldwide. It is estimated that about 70 million people speak Kiswahili globally. It is also widely spoken in Africa especially in Tanzania and Kenya as a national language. It is also spoken in Uganda and the Comoros Islands, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, and Mozambique.  It is also spoken in some Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman.  The course is designed to help you learn enough about Swahili to enable you to handle your needs adequately in basic conversations with Swahili speakers. You will be able to talk about yourself and your preferences, needs, and interests in the past, present and future time. You will learn to greet others, introduce yourself, handle basic social conversations, and talk about a variety of topics of common interest. You will learn to read and write Swahili in past, present, and future time and how to understand written and spoken Swahili well enough to carry out routine tasks and engage in simple conversations. You will also learn about some aspects of everyday culture in East Africa

SWAH 2020 -- Intermediate Swahili II

Professor Anne Rotich

MoWeFr 12 - 12:50PM

ANTHROPOLOGY

ANTH 3310 -- Controversies of Care in Contemporary Africa

Professor China Scherz

TuTh 9:30-10:45am

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

ANTH 3455 -- African Languages

Professor Samuel Beer

TuTh9:30-10:45am

An introduction to the linguistic diversity of the African continent, with focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Topics include linguistic structures (sound systems, word-formation, and syntax); the classification of African languages; the use of linguistic data to reconstruct prehistory; language and social identity; verbal art; language policy debates; the rise of "mixed" languages among urban youth.

HISTORY OF ART

ARTH 2559 -- African Art

Professor Giulia Paoletti

TuTH 11am-12:15pm

DRAMA

Dram 4592--001 Performing Race and Citizenship

Professor Katelyn Wood

TuTh 12:30-1:45pm

Dram 4592-- 002 Hip Hop Theatre

Professor Theresa Davis

TuTh 2-3:15pm

A directed study in dramatic literature, history, theory or criticism offered to upper-level students. Prerequisite: Instructor permission

Dram 4593--002 Poetry in Action: Say Word!

Professor Theresa Davis

A directed study in acting or performance offered to upper-level students. Prerequisite: Instructor permission.

ENGLISH

ENAM 3559 -- Conjuring Race and Gender

Professor Sarah Ingle

TuTh 2-3:15pm

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of American Literature. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.

ENCR4500 -- Critical Race Theory

Professor Marlon Ross

Tu 5:30-8pm

What does race mean in the late 20th and early 21st century? Given the various ways in which race as a biological “fact” has been discredited, why and how does race continue to have vital significance in politics, economics, education, culture, arts, mass media, and everyday social realities? How has the notion of race shaped, and been shaped by, changing relations to other experiences of identity stemming from sexuality, class, religion, disability, multiculturalism, nationality, and globalism? This course surveys major trends in black literary and cultural theory from the 1960s to the present, focusing on a series of critical flashpoints that have occurred over the last several decades. These flashpoints include: 1) the crisis over black authenticity during the Black Power/Black Arts movement; 2) the schisms related to womanism (or women of color feminism), focused on Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple and the Steven Spielberg film adaptation; 3) the debate over the social construction of race (poststructuralist theory); 4) the debate over queer racial identities, focused on two films, Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman and Barry Jenkins’ 2016 film Moonlight; 5) the inequitable consequences of design and planning decisions that perpetuate racial, social, and economic segregation; 6) controversies over hip hop culture; 7) racial violence and the law, focused on the Ferguson and the Black Lives Matter movement; and 8) the aesthetic movement called Afrofuturism. Other reading will include a variety of theoretical essays and chapters drawn from different disciplines, including legal theory, film and media studies, sociology, history, political theory, and hip hop studies. While concentrating on theories of race deriving from African American studies, we’ll also touch on key texts from Native American, Asian and Asian-American, and Chicanx studies. The goal of the course is to give you a solid grounding in the vocabulary, key figures, concepts, debates, and discursive styles comprising the broad sweep of theoretical race studies from the late-twentieth century to the present, and to nurture your own theorizing about race and its deep cultural impact. 

ENLT 2547 -- Black Writers in America

Professor Dionte Harris

TuTh 12:30-1:45pm

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

ENLT 2555 -- Landscapes of Black Education

Professor K. Ian Grandison

TuTh 5-6:15pm

This course examines how seemingly ordinary spaces and places around us, “landscapes,” are involved in the struggle to democratize education in the United States. It focuses on African American education. We explore how landscape is implicated in the secret prehistory of Black education under enslavement; the promise of public education during Reconstruction; Booker T. Washington’s accommodation during early Jim Crow; black college campus rebellions of the 1920s; the impact of Brown v. Board of Education, the rise of black studies programs at majority campuses in the 1960s and ‘70s; and the persistence of separate and unequal education in our current moment. We also touch on the experience of other marginalized groups, especially Native Americans and women. For example, women’s college campuses, such as those of Mount Holyoke and Smith College, were designed to discipline women to accept prescribed gender roles at the height of the women’s suffrage movement. There is a mandatory day-long field trip to the historically black Virginia State University and to Petersburg. Some of the materials include excerpts from the following: Frederick Douglass’ 1845 Narrative, Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery, W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America, Raymond Wolters’ The New Negro on Campus, James D. Anderson’s The Education of Blacks in the South, and Helen Lefkowitz’s Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women’s Colleges. Films include With All Deliberate Speed and Honey-Coated Arsenic. We’ll learn to read and use historical and contemporary maps, plans, and other design-related materials. Assignments include a midterm, team-led student discussions, a team research project, a critical field trip reflection paper and revision, and a final critical reflection on the team project.

ENLS 3559 -- From the Margins to the Center--African American English

Professor C. Chic Smith

TuTh 11:00-12:15PM

Black English, Negro dialect, Ebonics, Black English, slang, and African American English Vernacular (AAEV) are just a few of the names that have been used historically to describe the form of communication that occurs among and between many African Americans.  Rickford & Rickford (2000) define AAEV as the informal speech of many African Americans.  The belief that AAEV is a derogatory or demeaning manner in which to speak has been ingrained in the psyche of America and Americans.  This ideology has remained intact until recently.

This course examines the communicative practices of AAEV to explore how a marginalized language dynamic has made major transitions into American mainstream.  AAEV is no longer solely the way Black people speak; it is now the way Americans speak.

ENLT 2555 -- Performing Race and Ethnicity

Professor Sarah Ingle

TuTh 9:30AM - 10:45AM

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

ENWR 3500 -- Black Women's Writing and Rhetoric

Professor Tamika Carey

TuTh 12:30PM - 1:45PM

This class explores how writing can be used for social action through an exploration of the rhetorical strategies and arguments of Black women writers, a group that has consistently used pen and voice to empower themselves and their communities, address injustices, advocate for civil and human rights, spark social movements, and tell their own stories. Students will read a combination of scholarship in rhetorical theory by writers that include Jacqueline Jones Royster, Gwendolyn Pough, and Elaine Richardson and primary works by such figures as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Anna Julia Cooper, Claudia Jones, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Joan Morgan, and the Crunk Feminist Collective. They will also deliver an oral-presentation, write two short essays, and complete an end of the semester research project. This work will enable students to grapple with questions about the role of representation and power systems in shaping group subjectivity and life, which rhetorical situations and exigencies inspire these writers to take action, which topics they invoke when taking up matters of social justice, which genres, tropes, discourse strategies, and arguments Black women writers find most useful, and which literacies and theories they develop and rely on to do this work. By addressing these questions, students will fulfill the goal of this course, which is to learn how cultural groups such as Black women employ rhetoric as techne, or an artistic skill, to meet their needs, and how these rhetorics can be used to interpret, critique, and intervene in negative social conversations and conditions shaping their lives.

FRENCH

FREN 4743 Africa in Cinema

Professor Kandioura Dramé

TuTh 2 3:15PM

Study of the representation of Africa in American, Western European and African films. Ideological Constructions of the African as 'other'. Exoticism in cinema. History of African cinema. Economic issues in African cinema: production, distribution, and the role of African film festivals. The socio-political context. Women in African cinema. Aesthetic problems: themes and narrative styles. Prerequisite: FREN 3032 and FREN 3584 or another 3000-level literature course in French.

FREN 5581 Francophone African Literature

Professor Kandioura Dramé

Th 3:30- 6:00PM

Topics may include: Francophone novel, colonial literature and visual culture, postcolonial literature and cinema, Francophone Theater & Poetry,

HISTORY

HIAF 1501 -- Runaways and Revolutionaries

Professor James La Fleur

Th 3-6:00PM

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

HIAF 1501--Introductory Seminar in African History

Professor Christina Mobley

Mo 3:30 -6:00PM

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

HIAF 2002 -- Modern African History

Professor John Mason

TuTh 9-10:45AM

Studies the history of Africa and its interaction with the western world from the mid-19th century to the present. Emphasizes continuities in African civilization from imperialism to independence that transcend the colonial interlude of the 20th century.

HIAF 3031-- History of the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Professor Christina Mobley

MoWe 2-3:15PM

This course concerns the trans-Atlantic slave trade, with an emphasis on African history. Through interactive lectures, in-class discussions, written assignments and examinations of first-hand accounts by slaves and slavers, works of fiction and film, and analyses by historians, we will seek to understand one of the most tragic and horrifying phenomena in the history of the western world.

HIAF 3112--African Environmental History

Professor James Le Fleur

TuTh 2-3:15PM

This course explores how Africans changed their interactions with the physical environments they inhabited and how the landscapes they helped create in turn shaped human history. Topics covered include the ancient agricultural revolution, health and disease in the era of slave trading, colonial-era mining and commodity farming, 20th-century wildlife conservation, and the emergent challenges of land ownership, disease, and climate change.

HIUS 2053--American Slavery

Professor Justene Hill

MoWe 11-11:50AM

This course will introduce students to the history of slavery in the United Sates.

HIUS 3231--Rise and Fall of the Slave South

Professor Elizabeth Varon

MoWe 9-9:50AM

A history of the American South from the arrival of the first English settlers through the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Cross-listed with AAS 3231

HIUS 3654 --Black Fire

Professor Claudrena Harold

TuTh 11AM - 12:15PM

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

HIUS 3671 -- History of the Civil Rights Movement

Professor Kevin Gaines

MoWeFr 9-9:50AM

This course examines the history and legacy of the African American struggle for civil rights in twentieth century America. It provides students with a broad overview of the civil rights movement -- the key issues, significant people and organizations, and pivotal events -- as well as a deeper understanding of its scope, influence, legacy, and lessons for today

MEDIA STUDIES

MDST 3406 -- The Wire: Understanding Urban America Through Television at Its Best

Professor Bruce Williams

TuTh 11AM - 12:15PM

This class explores HBO's The Wire as an examination of race, class, and economic change in urban America. We examine the series as a creative work which balances a commitment to realism with the demands of television drama. Students will view episodes of The Wire and read material on urban America, the changing contours of television, and the series itself. Requisites: Permission of Instructor

MDST 3740 --Cultures of Hip-Hop

Professor Jack Hamilton

MoWe 2 - 3:15PM

This course explores the origins and impacts of American hip-hop as a cultural form in the last forty years, and maps the ways that a local subculture born of an urban underclass has risen to become arguably the dominant form of 21st-century global popular culture. While primarily focused on music, we will also explore how forms such as dance, visual art, film, and literature have influenced and been influenced by hip-hop style and culture.

MDST 3760 -- #BlackTwitter and Black Digital Culture

Professor Melissa Clark

We 6 - 8:30PM

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

MDST 4109 -- Civil Rights Movement and Media

Professor Aniko Bodroghkozy

TuTh 12:30 - 1:45PM

Before the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement, there was the Civil Rights Movement. And just as the current movement has benefited from and, to a significant extent, required attention from national media in order to achieve its political and social objectives, so too did the movement of fifty years ago. In both cases, activists in these movements harnessed the power of their era’s new media. This course, while focused on the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, has clear resonance and relevance for the current situation of heightened activism around racial justice. In this course we examine how the media responded to, engaged with, and represented this most powerful of social change movements. We will study a variety of media forms: Hollywood cinema, network television, mainstream newspapers, photojournalism, the black press, popular music, and news magazines in order to explore the relationship between the movement and the media. We will examine media artifacts as primary documents for what they can tell us about American race relations during this period. Through intensive classroom discussion, students will hone their abilities to interpret and analyze media artifacts as historical documents, as aesthetic forms, and as ideological texts.

PAVILION SEMINARS

PAVS 4500--Inequality in America

Professor Justene Hill

MoWe 2:00PM - 3:15PM

N.B for AAS Majors and Minors: this course counts toward the Race and Politics in the US requirement for the AAS Major/Minor.

The Pavilion Seminars are open, by instructor permission, to 3rd and 4th year students. They are 3-credit, multidisciplinary seminars, focused on big topics and limited to max. 15 students each. For detailed descriptions of current offerings, see http://college.artsandsciences.virginia.edu/PAVS.

POLITICS

PLAP 3500--Race and the Obama Presidency

Professor Larycia Hawkins

TuTh 12:30 - 1:45PM

Religious Studies

RELG 1500 -- Religion, Race, and Democracy

Professor Larycia Hawkins

TuTh 2 - 3:15PM

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

Sociology

SOC 2442--Systems of Inequality

Professor Milton Vickerman

MoWe 12-12:50PM

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

SOC 3410 -- Race and Ethnic Relations

Professor Milton Vickerman

MoWe 3:30- 4:45PM

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

SOC 4100 -- Sociology of the African-American Community

Professor Sabrina Pendergrass

TuTh 11:00AM - 12:15PM

Study of a comprehensive contemporary understanding of the history, struggle and diversity of the African-American community.

SOC 4750 -- Racism

Professor Rose Buckelew

TuTh 12:30PM - 1:45PM

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

SPANISH

SPAN 4500 -- Afro-Latinidad

Professor Anne Mahler

TuTh 2-3:15pm

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