AAS 1020 - Introduction to African-American and African Studies (4)

Instructor: Claudrena Harold

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

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

AAS 1559 - Black Feminist Theory and Praxis (3)

Instructor: Joy James

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

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

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

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

AAS 3000 - Women and Religion in Africa (3)

Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

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

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

Cross-listed as RELA 3000

AAS 3500 - Race and Urbanism in Postwar American Culture (3)

Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri

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

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

AAS 3559 - Social Issues and Development in Africa (3)

Instructor: Jason Hickel

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

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

AAS 4080 - Directed Reading and Research (3)

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

AAS 4500 - Racial Geographies (3)

Instructor: K. Ian Grandison

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

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

AAS 4570-1 - Insufficient Blackness in African American Literature and Culture (3)

Instructor: Alisha Gaines

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

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

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

AAS 4570-2 - Violence, Genocide and Africa (3)

Instructor: Cassie Hays

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

Via the historical and sociological study of violence in Africa, this course poses and attempts to resolve a variety of questions. First, what are the patterns and policies of colonial governance that manifest in expressions of violence? In what ways can we see modern actions as originating in the colonial era? How are race and ethnicity solidified, reinforced, or reconfigured through the lens of violence? How and why does gender, and particularly violence against women, become a meaningful way for perpetrators to articulate control or degrade their opposition? What, then, is the role of the racialized, gendered, or youthful body in postcolonial war? How can we begin to move beyond contemporary media representations and ‘read’ the politics of violence in Africa as unexceptional?

This course will focus on the colonial origins, postcolonial manifestations, and public culture depictions of violence in Africa. We will begin with a broad overview of the concepts of colonialism, imperialism, and postcolonialism and a brief history of genocide around the world. Building from this foundation, we will spend several weeks examining case studies from the era of European colonialism in Africa by reading books and watching films on the Belgian Congo, British Kenya and French Algeria. We will then move to analyses of the contemporary examples of Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, and Sudan. Authors to be read include: Robert J.C. Young, Samantha Powers, Arjun Appadurai, Mahmood Mamdani, Frantz Fanon, Adam Hochschild, and Philip Gourevitch.

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

AAS 4570-3 - Prosecuting Rape and Race (3)

Instructor: Joy James

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

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

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

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

AAS 4845 - Black Speculative Fiction (3)

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

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

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

Cross-listed as ENAM 4500

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 - Queer Race Theory (3)

Instructor: Marlon Ross

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

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

Cross-listed as ENCR 5559

ANTH 3559-05 - French Caribbean Cultural and Intellectual Currents (3)

Instructor: Yarimar Bonilla

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

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

Cross-listed as FREN 4559

ANTH 4559-03 - Anthropology of Dissent (3)

Instructor: Yarimar Bonilla and Stephanie Berard

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

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

ANTH 4991-04 - Ethnography of Blacks in the Twentieth Century (3)

Instructor: Wende Marshall

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

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

ANTH 5430 - African Languages (3)

Instructor: Ellen Contini-Morava

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

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

DRAM 3070 - African American Theatre (3)

Instructor: Theresa Davis

2:00-3:15PM Tu/Th, Drama Education Bldg. 217

This course presents a comprehensive study of 'Black Theatre' as the African-American contribution to the theatre. Explores the historical, cultural, and socio-political underpinnings of this theatre as an artistic form in American and world culture. Students gain a broader understanding of the relationship and contributions of this theatre to theatre arts, business, education, lore, and humanity. A practical theatrical experience is a part of the course offering. Prerequisite: Instructor permission.

ENAM 3140 - African-American Literature II(3)

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

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

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

ENAM 4500 - Black Speculative Fiction (3)

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

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

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

Cross-listed as AAS 4500

ENCR 4500- Race in American Places (3)

Instructor: K. Ian Grandison

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

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

ENCR 5559- Queer Race Theory(3)

Instructor: Marlon Ross

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

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

Cross-listed as AAS 5528

FREN 3046 - African Literatures and Cultures (3)

Instructor: Kandioura Drame

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

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

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

FREN 4559 - French Caribbean Cultural and Intellectual Currents (3)

Instructor: Yarimar Bonilla and Stephanie Berard

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

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

Cross-listed as ANTH 4559

FREN 4581- The Rewriting of History through Words and Images in Caribbean and African Cinema and Literature (3)

Instructor: Stephanie Berard

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

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

FREN 4811- Francophone Literature of Africa (3)

Instructor: Kandioura Drame

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

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

Prerequisite: French 332

HIAF 2002 - Modern African History (4)

Instructor: John Mason

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

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

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

HIAF 2031 - The African Diaspora (4)

Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira

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

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

HIAF 3091 - Africa and World History (3)

Instructor: Joseph Miller

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

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

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

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

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

HIAF 4501 -Seminar in African History – “Africa and the Atlantic World” (4)

Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira

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

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

HIUS 3231 - Rise and Fall of the Slave South (3)

Instructor: Cynthia Nicoletti

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

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

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

HIUS 3671 - History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)

Instructor: Julian Bond

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

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

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

HIUS 4501- History Seminar – “Black Power” (4)

Instructor: Claudrena Harold

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

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

HIUS 4591 - Topics in United States History - UVA History: Race and Repair (3)

Instructor: Phyllis Leffler and E. Dukes

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

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

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

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

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

MUEN 3690 - African Music and Dance Ensemble (2)

Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk

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

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

MUSI 2120 - History of Jazz (4)

Instructor: Scott Deveaux

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

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

MUSI 3090 - Performance in Africa (4)

Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk

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

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

PLCP 4810 - Politics of Sub-Saharan African

Instructor: Robert Fatton

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

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

RELA 2850 - Afro-Creole Religions (3)

Instructor: Jalane Schmidt

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

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

RELA 3000 - Women and Religion in Africa (3)

Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

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

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

Cross-listed as AAS 3000

RELC 5230 - Pentecostalism (3)

Instructor: Valerie Cooper

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

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

RELG 2800 - African American Religious History (3)

Instructor: Valerie Cooper

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

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

RELG 3360 - New World Religions (3)

Instructor: Jalane Schmidt

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

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

SOC 2442 - Systems of Inequality (3)

Instructor: Tara Tober

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

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

SOC 3060 - Sociological Perspectives on Whiteness (3)

Instructor: Paul Shlossberg

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

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

SOC 3410 - Race & Ethnic Relations (3)

Instructor: Milton Vickerman

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

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

SOC 4870 - Immigration (3)

Instructor: Milton Vickerman

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

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

POTR 4270 - Brazilian and Afro-Brazilian Civilization (3)

Instructor: David Haberly

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

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

SWAG 2224 - Black Femininities and Masculinities in US Media (3)

Instructor: Lisa Shutt

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

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

AAS 1010 - Introduction to African-American and African Studies (4)

Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira

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

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 1850s. 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; and the rise of anti-slavery movements in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first section provides an overview of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its impacts on Africa. The second section centers on Latin America (Brazil and Cuba) and the French Caribbean - Haiti. The last section deals with North America, tracing the history of slavery from the seventeenth to the late eighteenth century. Course requirements include regular attendance and three written exams.

AAS 3157 - Caribbean Perspectives (3)

Instructor: Yarimar Bonilla

Weds. 3:30-6:00PM, Monroe Hall 124

Combined with ANTH 3157

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.

AAS 3200 - Martin, Malcolm and America (3)

Instructor: Mark Hadley

Mon./Weds./Fri. 2:00-2:50PM, Wilson Hall 215

Combined with RELG 3200

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.

AAS 3456 - Supreme Court and Civil Rights (3)

Instructor: Joseph G. Hylton

Tues/Thurs. 2:00-3:15PM, New Cabell Hall 319

This course explores the role of the United States Supreme Court in defining the legality of racial distinctions in the United States in the post-Civil War era. Special attention is paid to the role of the court¿s landmark 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education. The class will be taught in a discussion format based upon assigned readings.

AAS 3500-1 African Peoples and Cultures (3)

Instructor: Felistas (Njoki) Osotsi

Tues/Thurs. 3:30-4:45PM, Wilson Hall 215

The course explores the cultures of various African peoples through a variety of sources – films, ethnographies, narratives and literature. We will consider how Africa has been portrayed by anthropologists, explorers, historians and the media, and focus on issues that are relevant to an understanding of contemporary African societies: village life, urbanization, migration, status of women, the struggle to gain independence from colonial powers and the postcolonial period.

* NOTE: This course counts toward the African Studies Minor. It also fulfills the “one course about Africa” requirement within the AAS Major, or can be used for AAS elective credit.

AAS 3500-2 From Motown to Hip-Hop: The Evolution of African American Music (3)

Instructor: Claudrena Harold

Tues/Thurs. 9:30-10:45AM, Rouss Hall 410

This course takes a bold, sweeping look at the role of popular music in African Americans' push for self-definition, political power, and social recognition. It considers how musical expression has provided black women and men with an outlet for individual expression, community building, sexual pleasure, political organizing, and economic uplift. Some of the artists that we will explore in-depth include James Brown, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Public Enemy, Parliament-Funkadelic, Luther Vandross, Tupac, Lauryn Hill, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lil’ Wayne, Nikki Minaj, and Beyonce. Through an engagement with these and other artists’ sonic and visual representations (i.e. music videos) students will address larger questions surrounding the sexual exploitation of the black female body, the deep class divisions underlying black America's recurring debates over "proper" racial presentations, and white America’s historic exploitation of African American culture.

In addition to looking at the artistry of black music, we will also give attention to the business side of African American cultural productions. Thus, students will spend time looking at black owned/black-run companies like Motown, Philadelphia International, Master P’s No Limit, and Puff Daddy’s Badboy.

The primary material for this course will be written texts (books and articles), music, and videos.

AAS 4070 - Directed Reading and Research (3)

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

AAS 4500 - Fictions of Black Identity (3)

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

Tues/Thurs. 11:00AM-12:15PM, Nau Hall 141

Combined with ENAM 4500

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.

AAS 4570-1 - Violence and Africa (3)

Instructor: Cassie Hays

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

Via the historical and sociological study of violence and Africa, this course poses and attempts to resolve a variety of questions. First, what are the patterns and policies of imperialism and colonial governance that manifest in expressions of violence? In what ways can we see modern actions as originating in the colonial era? How are race and ethnicity solidified, reinforced, or reconfigured through the lens of violence? How and why does gender, and particularly violence against women, become a meaningful way for perpetrators to articulate control or degrade their opposition? What are the roles of environment and natural resources in instigating or perpetuating violence by and against people? How can we begin to move beyond contemporary media representations and ‘read’ the politics of violence in Africa as unexceptional?

This course will focus on the colonial origins, postcolonial manifestations, and public culture depictions of violence in Africa. We will begin with a short history of genocide; several theoretical analyses of aggression; and a brief look at the roles of media and globalization in instigating and perpetuating violence (and perceptions of violence) in Africa. Building from this foundation, we will examine the concepts of colonialism and imperialism and their practice in German Namibia, Belgian Congo, and British Kenya. We begin our study of the post- and neo-colonial with a look at Algeria’s struggle for independence from the French and a late 20th century story of poaching in Zambia. Several weeks will be spent on investigating the colonial origins of violence in South Africa and Rwanda, concluding with the closely connected issues of war and rape in the DRC and gendered violence in South Africa.

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

AAS 4570-2 -Race, Madness, and Violence in the Epistolary Genre (3)

Instructor: Dennis Tyler

Thurs, 3:30 - 6:00, Wilson 216

This course will primarily examine issues of madness and violence in the epistolary novel. The epistolary novel is a form that uses letters as the principal mode of communication, although diary entries, newspaper clippings, and other documents (recordings, blogs, and e-mails) are sometimes used in order to heighten the authenticity of a story and to mirror the realities of everyday life. We will analyze epistolary works as a portal to the complex range of human expression. In the course, we will talk about the letter form and letter writing in a variety of ways: as a personal and intimate type of communication, as an open forum for confession, as a locus of insanity, as a sort of political activism, and, in some cases, as a source of international exchange between nations (England, African countries, and the United States).

Some of the major issues we will discuss include, but are not limited to, the representation of domestic abuse and sexuality in Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of the novel; the complexities of memory and melancholy as a consequence of slavery in Caryl Phillips's Crossing the River; the trauma of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse in Sapphire's Push; and the crisis of identity in Percival Everett’s Erasure.

A twenty-page research paper is expected at the end of the semester.

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.

ANTH 3157 - Caribbean Perspectives (3)

Instructor: Yarimar Bonilla

Weds. 3:30-6:00PM, New Cabell Hall 316

Combined with AAS 3157

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.

DRAM 3070 - African American Theatre (3)

Instructor: Theresa Davis

Tues./Thurs., 2:00-3:15PM, Drama Education Bld. 217

This course presents a comprehensive study of 'Black Theatre' as the African-American contribution to the theatre. Explores the historical, cultural, and socio-political underpinnings of this theatre as an artistic form in American and world culture. Students gain a broader understanding of the relationship and contributions of this theatre to theatre arts, business, education, lore, and humanity. A practical theatrical experience is a part of the course offering. Prerequisite: Instructor permission.

ENAM 3130 - African-American Survey I (3)

Instructor: Deborah McDowell

Tues./Thurs. 2:00-3:15, New Cabell Hall 424

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 3280 - Reading the Black College Campus (3)

Instructor: K. Ian Grandison

Tues./Thurs. 3:30-4:45PM, New Cabell 122

College campuses are rich sources for interrogating how places and spaces around us manifest the negotiation of power among social groups distinguished by race in America. Landscapes connected with the black struggle to secure literacy in America, for example, are particularly fruitful for such exploration. In “Reading the Black College Campus,” we consider, for instance, the landscapes that shrouded enslaved people such as Frederick Douglass as they acted on a black cultural imperative to secure literacy against the grain of antebellum law and custom. We interrogate Historically Black College and University (HBCU) campuses, such as Virginia Union University’s, as well as (Historically White College and University (HWCU) campuses, such as the University of Virginia’s, to understand the contestation surrounding the democratization of higher education to include opportunities for African Americans from the promising beginning of the first HBCUs during the Reconstruction period; through the curricular compromises championed by Booker T. Washington responding to the inequality engineered by a doctrine of “separate but equal” under surging Jim Crow and the progress made as a result of growing challenges on behalf of racial equality especially in the wake of World War I and of World War II; to the reconstitution of inequality by dividing the landscape into enforced race and class territories in our own post-Jim Crow moment. A student-centered course, our exploration will hinge on your careful study of required reading and other materials and on your participation in a required field trip to an HBCU campus and in related workshops to develop knowledge and abilities to interrogate graphic representations of landscapes. Requirements completed individually include a closed-book midterm and final exam and a three-page paper reflecting on the field trip. Assignments completed in groups include two informal exercises, student-led discussion of assigned materials scheduled for eight sessions of the semester and, most important, a final group research project that includes a prospectus, a report, and a presentation in a final symposium.

ENAM 3559 - Cross-Cultures of Harlem (3)

Instructor: Sandhya Shukla

Tues./Thurs. 9:30-10:45, New Cabell 320

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

Tues/Thurs. 11:00AM-12:15PM, Nau Hall 141

Combined with AAS 4500

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.

ENAM 4814 - African-American Women Authors (3)

Instructor: Angela Davis

Tues./Thurs. 9:30-10:45AM, New Cabell Hall 337

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.

FREN 4743 - Africa in Cinema (3)

Instructor: Kandioura Drame

Tues./Thurs. 11:00-12:15, Wilson Hall 141A

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 332 and FREN 344 or another 300-level literature course in French.

FREN 4813 - Introduction to Francophone Caribbean (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti) (3)

Instructor: Stephanie Berard

Mon. 3:30-6:00PM, Wilson Hall 215

Focuses on the literature, culture and arts of the Francophone Caribbean (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti). Issues of colonialism and postcolonialism, slavery and freedom, exile and immigration, race and gender will be examined through poetry, novels, storytelling, theater, music and film analysis.

Prerequisite: A 300-level French literature course

HIAF 1501 - Reading the African Diaspora (3)

Instructor: Roquinaldo Ferreira

Thurs. 3:30-6:00, Nau 141

This seminar uses movies, novels and a vast array of audio-visual of resources (including the slave trade dataset, the largest attempt ever to quantify pre-nineteenth-century African migration) to explore the African Diaspora in the Atlantic from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. We will pay particular attention to the intellectual debates that have shaped the field of Diaspora Studies in the past sixty years. The class will closely assess state-of-the-art scholarship on African culture, formation of Africa-descent communities, and resistance to slaving. We will read Vincent Brown’s The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery; Laurent Dubois’ Avengers of the New World; and Jane Landers’ Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions. Course requirements include regular attendance and participation, class presentation, and a research paper. This class fulfills the second writing requirement.

HIAF 2001 - Early African History through the Era of the Slave Trade (4)

Instructor: Joseph C. Miller

Tues/Thurs, 9:30-10:45AM, Gibson Hall 211

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 2001 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 2002, taught in spring semester, follows subsequent events down through twentieth-century colonialism and the post-1960 era of independence and impoverishment.)

HIAF 2001 is an introductory lower-division survey. The instructor presents the major themes of the early history of the continent in twice-weekly lectures. Students meet additionally in discussion sections for reviews of readings, map quizzes, and preparation for written assignments. Requirements include short written responses to each class, weekly short map quizzes, 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 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 area requirements in “non-western perspectives” and “historical perspective”.

HIAF 3021 - History of Southern Africa (4)

Instructor: John Mason

Tues./Thurs. 9:30-10:45 AM, Nau Hall 211

HIAF 3021 is a lecture and discussion course on the history of southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The emphasis is on South Africa.

The course begins with a look at the pre-colonial 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 take periodic quizzes on the readings and write two blue-book exams, a mid-term and a final.

HIAF 4511 - Colloquium in African History: Color and Culture in South Africa and the United States (3)

Instructor: John Mason

Tues./Thurs. 3;30-4:45PM, New Cabell B031

HIAF 4511 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, photography, and scholarship, we will look at the ways in which race shaped the lives of South Africans and Americans, both black and white.

HIAF 4511 is designed primarily, but not exclusively, for history majors and fulfills the history department's seminar/colloquium requirement. Students enrolling in the course must have taken at least one course in African history, preferably South Africa, and two courses in American history.

HIUS 3471 - American Labor History (3)

Instructor: Claudrena Harold

Tues./Thurs. 11-12:15, Nau 211

This course examines the political engagements, labor struggles, and cultural endeavors of the U.S. working class from the end of the Civil War to the present. It chronicles how the lives of the U.S. laboring majority was 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 in the United States. A major issue to be explored in our discussions of U.S. working class history will be in the ways in which laboring people have been divided along racial, gender, ethnic, and regional lines.

HIUS 3671 - the History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)

Instructor: Julian Bond

Tues. 3:30-5:30PM, Clark Hall 107

This lecturecourse discusses, critiquesand analyses the American civil rights movement from 1900 through the 1960s, examining the movement's leadership, opposition, tactics, setbacks, achievements and interactions with Presidents, Congressional leadership, and the involvement of rank-and-file activists.

Texts required are: James Forman's The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Julian Bond and Andrew Lewis' I'm Gonna SitAt The Welcome Table, and Roy Wilkins' Standing Fast.

MUEN 2690/3690 or 4690 (registration number depends on student seniority in the ensemble) - African Music and Dance Ensemble (2)

*This course fulfills requirements for the African Studies Minor, but neither the AAS Major, nor the AAS Minor.

Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk

Thurs 5:15-7:15PM, Old Cabell Hall107

The African Music and Dance Ensemble is a practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from Western and Central Africa with performances during and 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 Music and Dance Ensemble.

PLAP 3700 - Racial Politics (3)

Instructor: Lynn Sanders

Mon./Wed. 11:00-11:50AM, Minor Hall125

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.

PLCP 2020 - The Politics of Developing Areas (3)

Instructor: Robert Fatton

Mon/.Wed. 9:00-9:50AM, South Lawn Commons

PLCP 4840 Gender Politics in Africa (3)

Instructor: Denise Walsh

Tues./Thurs. 11:00-12:15, New Cabell Hall B026

Combined with SWAG 4320

This course focuses on the ways social structures and institutions shape gender in sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on the state. It begins with the highly contested conceptions of gender and feminism in Africa. Next, we turn to nationalism and gendered colonial African states. With the success of national liberation movements and the rise of African women’s movements many African countries liberalized; some became democracies. Those political transformations and the spread of a human rights culture meant women in much of Africa won a greater role in politics, the third theme of the course. Their success increased hopes among feminists that the state would attack sexism. Those hopes have yet to be fulfilled, as an investigation of the region’s most contemporary pressing problems, from the sexual division of labor to HIV/AIDS.

PLPT 4060 - Politics and Literature (3)

Instructor: Lawrie Balfour

Weds. 1:00-3:30, Gibson Hall 241

This advanced, interdisciplinary seminar considers how works of fiction enhance our understanding of the terms of democratic life. How do the authors contribute to our understanding of ourselves as individuals and as citizens and to our conception of political identity (local, national, global)? In what ways do they make use of the presence of the past; how do they redescribe familiar histories or bring silenced histories to the fore; and how do they address the legacies of historic injustice (slavery, colonialism, and state violence)? In what ways do different texts work on their readers and what, if any, are the political consequences? The theme of the seminar in the Fall of 2010 is the centrality of race and the afterlife of slavery in American political experience. Our core texts will be Moby Dick, Invisible Man, and Beloved. In addition, to considering these novels as works of political theory, will read other work by Melville, Ellison, and Morrison and an array of critics. Previous upper-level course-work in AAS, Political Theory, American Studies, or English is recommended.

PSYC 4870 The Minority Family: A Psychological Inquiry (3)

Instructor: Melvin Wilson

Weds. 9:00-11:30AM, Ruffner Hall 173

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.

RELA 3890 - Christianity in Africa (3)

Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

Tues/Thurs. 12:30-1:45PM, Gibson Hall 211

Combined with RELC 3890

This course examines the history of Christianity in Africa from its roots in Egypt and the Maghreb 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.

RELC 3890 - Christianity in Africa (3)

Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

Tues/Thurs. 12:30-1:45PM, Gibson Hall 211

Combined with RELA 3890

This course examines the history of Christianity in Africa from its roots in Egypt and the Maghreb 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.

RELC 5559-4 - African Americans and the Bible (3)

Instructor: Valerie Cooper

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

In this course, we will look at the ways African American scholars, clergy, laity, men, women, the free, and the enslaved, have read, interpreted, preached, and taught scripture. In examining these uses, we will also seek to sketch out a broader theology, history, and sociology of black people as they used the tool at hand, the Bible, to argue for their own humanity, create their own cultures, and establish their own societies. We will also undertake the interpretive enterprise, seeking to find common ground for understanding the meaning of the biblical text in our own, and others’ communities.

RELG 3200 - Martin, Malcolm and America (3)

Instructor: Mark Hadley

Mon./Weds./Fri. 2:00-2:50PM, Wilson Hall 215

Combined with AAS 3200

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

SOC 3410 - Race and Ethnic Relations (3)

Instructor: Milton Vickerman

Mon./Weds. 2:00-3:15, New Cabell Hall 345

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 Family (3)

Instructor: Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl

Mon./Weds. 3:30-4:45PM, McLeod Hall 2005

The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear more comprehensive understanding of the history, struggle and diversity of the AfricanAmerican community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the AfricanAmerican 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 AfricanAmerican people sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. By means of discussions, lectures, videos, reading and class presentation as well as written assignments, this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamic of the AfricanAmerican community.

SWAG 2224: Black Femininities and Masculinities in Media (3)

Instructor: Lisa Shutt

Mon. 6:30-9:00, Cocke Hall 115

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

SWAG 4840 Gender Politics in Africa (3)

Instructor: Denise Walsh

Tues./Thurs. 11:00-12:15, New Cabell Hall B026

Combined with PLCP 4320

This course focuses on the ways social structures and institutions shape gender in sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on the state. It begins with the highly contested conceptions of gender and feminism in Africa. Next, we turn to nationalism and gendered colonial African states. With the success of national liberation movements and the rise of African women’s movements many African countries liberalized; some became democracies. Those political transformations and the spread of a human rights culture meant women in much of Africa won a greater role in politics, the third theme of the course. Their success increased hopes among feminists that the state would attack sexism. Those hopes have yet to be fulfilled, as an investigation of the region’s most contemporary pressing problems, from the sexual division of labor to HIV/AIDS.