Spring 2021 Undergraduate Course

Professor Ashon Crawley

TuTh 12:30PM - 1:45PM

This introductory course surveys the histories of people of African descent in Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean from approximately the Middle Ages to the 1880s. Emphases include the Atlantic slave trade and its complex relationship to Africa; the economic systems, cultures, and communities of Africans and African-Americans in the New World, in slavery and in freedom; the rise of anti-slavery movements; and the socio-economic systems that replaced slavery in the late 19th century.

Fulfills: 1020 requirement

Professor Lisa Shutt

Tu 2:00 - 4:30PM

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.

Fulfills: Humanities

We 2:00 - 4:30PM

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.

Fulfills: Humanities

Professor Kimberly Fields

We 3:30-6:00PM

This course introduces students to the adoption and implementation of environmental policy in the United States and examines issues of environmental quality and social justice. We will concentrate on federal, state and local governance and relations across these levels. In turn, we will compare the abilities of state and federal governments to develop and implement environmental efforts and policy, as well their consequences. The course takes as axiomatic the premise that all people have a right to live in a clean environment free from hazardous pollution or contamination, and to the natural resources necessary to sustain health and livelihood. With this as our starting point, we will question why, and through what social, political and economic processes, some people are denied this basic right. How is it that certain populations of people do not have access to basic resources, or are systematically burdened with pollution or environmental hazards to a greater extent than other populations? What are the social relations of production and power that contribute to these outcomes? What can be done?
We begin by examining the philosophical foundations and history of the environmental justice movement and foundational concepts such as justice, race and class. We then explore these concepts through a series of case studies of urban environmental (in)justice in the U.S. Through these case studies we will examine environmental justice issues in urban and rural settings; the strategies and politics of poor peoples’ environmental justice movements; and climate justice.

Fulfills: Race and Politics in the US; Social Science/History

Professor Sabrina Pendergrass

TuTh

In this course, we will examine the social organization of African American communities. Some of the intellectual framing for the issues we will study come from writings by the pioneering sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois. We will discuss African Americans’ social status and experiences at the intersections of class, color, gender, and sexuality. We also will study institutions within the community, and we will consider social issues that African Americans will face in the future.

Fulfills: Social Science; History

Professor Lisa Shutt

Th 2:00-4:30pm

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. Drawing from ethnographic texts, literary works and documentary and feature films, specific examples of the lives people are living on the African continent will be examined in order to sample the cultural richness and diversity of the African continent

Fulfills: Africa; Social Science/History

Professor Kimberly Fields

We 6:00-8:30pm

We should always be aware of the stark consequences of constitutional decisions for society, especially as it pertains to marginalized populations. Law is everywhere, in our lives and in our society.  It is a dominant force in our culture. Each of us is likely to feel the heavy hand of the law in one form or another at some point in our lives – some more than others.  Our focus in this course is on the individual rights and freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights, the government’s authority to limit those freedoms, and the consequences for all of us and the general good of society. As we proceed, think about the circumstances under which it is right for the government to limit personal freedoms, ignore or side step or intervene in inequality and its racial dimensions. Should the Supreme Court be the one to decide how far governments can or cannot go, as opposed to the legislature? How does the protection of rights square with policy making? Is the Court clear and sensible in how it approaches these questions and the impacts of its decisions on the lives and experiences of the marginalized? This course will introduce the student to the substance of the Constitution, the conditions under which it was developed, what it means, how its meaning has been determined, changed, interpreted and the ways in which it has shaped and has been shaped by ideas about and considerations of race. Our goal in this course is not only to understand the features of the Constitution, but also to appreciate the role(s) ideas about and considerations of race have played in shaping and influencing the ongoing processes of interpreting and applying constitutional law to our lives, our society, and our politics. 

Fulfills: Race and Politics; Social Science/History

Profesor Brian Smithson

TuTh 9:30-10:45am

What role do vision and hearing, sight and sound play in creating race? How have these senses shaped the lives of people in Africa and the African Diaspora? How have vision and hearing been tools of white supremacy and Black resistance? We will take up these and other questions in this course. Our inquiries will range across times and cultures as we seek to understand how seeing and hearing, showing and sounding have been weapons of empire in the Black Atlantic, but also tools for self-fashioning and liberation. In the process, we will touch on a broad range of topics, including the direct link between plantation slavery and present-day surveillance technologies, the aesthetics of hip hop videos as a strategy of global Black liberation, and techniques used in African religions to protect secrets from the gaze of non-Black outsiders. 

Fulfills: Social Science/History

Professor Pamela Reynolds

We 3:30-6:00pm

This course addresses important issues of race and health disparities, as well as offering students an introduction to the understudied history of black medical professionals. Over the past three centuries, African American physicians, dentists, nurses and public health professionals have made major contributions to eliminating health disparities, offering, in many instances, the only source of medical and dental care available. Many of our majors consider a career in medicine--either as physicians, nurses or public health workers--and this course will surely be relevant for them. Students will also have the valuable experience of examing an array of primary documents pertaining to African American health care professionals in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the South.

Fulfills: Social Science/History

Professor Janée Moses

TuTh 12:30-1:45

What do Bessie Smith and Beyoncé have in common? Are blues performances the origin of black feminism(s)? How has each, in her own times, shaped black women’s conceptions of identity? Their negotiations with race, gender, sexuality, and class? Through the lenses of music, performances, and fiction, this course will explore these questions, examining the tradition of early blues women such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Billie Holiday and the impact of their feminist legacies on artists and writers in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course is divided into four parts: Part 1 provides the theoretical foundation for our examination of the blues as both sound and language practice, or song and text. Part 2 explores the method of the blues tradition in novels and performances to examine how black women give language to complex circumstances in their romantic and familial relationships. Part 3 examines the legacies of blues women in black feminist rhetoric and scholarship of the late 20th-century, focusing specifically on the emergence of new black radicalisms and hip-hop culture. Part 4 interprets popular formulations of Black Feminism with 21st century performer, Beyoncé and such writers as Roxane Gay and Chimamanda Adichie. 

Fulfills: Humanities

Professor Marlene Daut

We 2:00-4:30pm

Beginning with national literary developments in Haiti, this course expands to consider writing from Barbados, Cuba, Trinidad, Jamaica, Antigua, and Bermuda. We will examine these writings, both fictional and non-fictional, to help us to think about whether and/or how a coherent Caribbean literary tradition exists across geographical, linguistic, national, and indeed, imperial lines.

Fulfills: Humanities

Professor James Parker

Tu 3:30-6:00pm

Focusing largely on east and central Africa, this class studies ideologies of economic development towards Africa, and the localized responses of rural communities across the continent. Fusing histories of imperialism and capitalism alongside works of literature, philosophy, and activism, the class explores how the West has sought to exploit the natural resources of the continent alongside the attendant social and ecological consequences of these ideologies. Further, the class will foreground responses to such initiatives in rural communities in order to demonstrate how the exigencies of global capitalism have affected populations and clashed with diverse ecological understandings of the environment. Finally, we will explore a diverse number of continental environmental justice movements and their intersections with global environmental movements.

Fulfills: Africa; Social Science/History

Th 3:30-6:00pm

Professor Sarah Balakrishnan

This course studies colonial rule in Africa: what it involved, who it exploited, and why today we still grapple with its legacies. Over five hundred years, a handful of powers in Western Europe radically changed the ways that most people in sub-Saharan Africa now live their lives. How did this situation come about? When white people met black people on the African continent, what processes and events led this relationship to becoming one of colonial domination? This class analyzes the imperial encounter in Africa in the period between 1450 and 1900 using a variety of sources: literature, poems, films, maps, voyagers’ accounts, artwork, and scholarly works by historians. 

Fulfills: Africa; Social Science/History

Professor Andrew Kahrl

MoWe 10:00-10:50am

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.

Fulfills: Social Science/History

Professor Njelle Hamilton

TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm

This undergraduate seminar takes the form of an in-depth study of the literary works of two brilliant, prolific young Nigerian women writers: feminist and social realist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and African-futurist Nnedi Okorafor, two of the most globally well-known and -loved authors the continent has produced. Through close analysis of their novels and other writings we will consider broad questions such as: How applicable are Western feminist theories to non-Western experiences? How are traditional literary forms such as the bildungsroman subverted by race, gender, and postcoloniality? How do sociopolitical realities inform literary expression? How does trauma affect narrative? How is Nigeria depicted in international news in contrast to how locals perceive and narrate their own reality? And how can these novels help us understand the contemporary African novel within the contexts of larger historical and cultural forces, events, and movements? Beyond affording you a deeper appreciation for African and Nigerian literature, history, and current events, this course will lead you through the process of crafting a sophisticated argument and writing about literary texts in their cultural and historical contexts.

Fulfills: Humanties; Africa

Professor Sabrina Pendergrass

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 news 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, collective memory, and racial grammar. The course will draw on disciplines such as sociology, political science, anthropology, and more.

Fulfills: Social Science/History

Professor Njelle Hamilton

TuTh 3:30-4:45pm

Superheroes, space operas, time travel, futuristic tech — the stuff of dreams and the subject of countless popular literary and cultural works over the past century. Far too long featuring mainly white male heroes and US or European settings, sci-fi and fantasy (SF/F) have become increasingly diverse in recent years, even as reframed definitions  open up archives of previously overlooked black and brown genre writing from across the globe. Still, the Caribbean is often ignored, imagined either as a rustic beach or a technological backwater. In this undergraduate seminar, however, you will encounter authors and auteurs from the English-, Spanish- and French-speaking Caribbean working at the cutting edge of SF/F, and discover novels, stories, artwork and film that center Caribbean settings, peoples, and culture, even as they expand the definition of genre. We will also discuss supporting turns by Caribbean actors in mainstream works such as Star Trek and Black Panther. Assignments will include short critical essays and a long research paper where you think through how Caribbean texts redefine, expand, or critique mainstream SF/F. Meets the Second writing requirement.

Fulfills: Humanities; 4000

Professor Marlene Daut

Tu 2:00-4:30

The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)—a thirteen-year series of slave revolts and military strikes— resulted in the abolition of slavery in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1793 and its subsequent independence and rebirth in January 1804 as Haiti, the first independent and slavery-free nation of the American hemisphere. To this day, Haitian independence remains the most significant development in the history of modern democracy. The theories undergirding it – that no human beings could ever be enslaved – continue to define contemporary political ideas about what it means to be free. But in the early 19th century, Haiti was the only example in the Americas of a nation populated primarily by former enslaved Africans who had become free and independent. Other nations, including France, England, and the United States, were determined to prevent abolition and their colonies from becoming free and thus refused to recognize Haitian sovereignty. While still one of the least well known events in modern history, this course explores the global repercussions of Haiti’s revolution for freedom.

Fulfills: Social Science/History; 4000

Professor Kwame Otu

Mo 3:30-6:00pm

How does "Africa" shape the contours of queerness? 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.

Fulfills: Africa; Humanities; 4000

Professor Anne Rotich

MoWeFr 10:00-10:50am

This course is a continuation of SWAH 1010. The course is designed to advance your knowledge of Swahili from the SWAH 1010. It is expected that you will build your Swahili lexicon and Swahili grammar to enable you to adequately contribute to basic conversations with Swahili speakers. You will be able to talk more deeply about your work, studies, country and your preferences, needs, and interests following the correct grammar rules. You will learn how to handle basic social conversations at the market, in the hospital, and also talk about a variety of topics of common interest. You will also learn about more cultural aspects of everyday culture in East Africa from class and from engaging virtually the Swahili community in Charlottesville.

MoWeFr 11:00-11:50am

This is an intermediate Swahili course that is intended to equip you with more language skills in speaking, reading, writing, listening and cultures. It’s an opportunity for you to enhance your language skills gained from SWAH 2010. At the end of this course you will have increased your Swahili vocabulary, speak Swahili with more ease and less errors, understand and interact with Swahili speakers. You will be able to write and analyze texts and essays in Swahili on different topics and appreciate more the cultures of the Swahili people. You will also be able to express yourself, your everyday activities, discuss politics or current events in Swahili. To achieve this we will utilize Swahili short story texts, multi-media resources, the internet, magazines, and news broadcast stations to enhance your learning. 

Professor David Coyoca

TuTh 2-3:15

Fulfills: Humanities

Professor Lisa Goff

Tu 3:30-6

This course introduces the issues and debates that have shaped public history as a scholarly discipline, but the focus of the course will be on the contemporary practice of public history. Students will work with Special Collections to produce their own public history exhibits. Readings and field trips will provide a foundation for students’ hands-on engagement with public history.

Fulfills: Social Science/History

Professor Jack Hamilton

MoWe 2-2:50

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.

Fulfills: Humanities

Professor Marlon Ross

Th 5-7

What does race mean in the late 20th and early 21st century? Given the various ways in which race as a biological “fact” has been discredited, why and how does race continue to have vital significance in politics, economics, education, culture, arts, mass media, and everyday social realities? How has the notion of race shaped, and been shaped by, changing relations to other experiences of identity stemming from sexuality, class, disability, multiculturalism, nationality, and globalism? 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) racial violence and the law, focused on the Ferguson and the Black Lives Matter movement; and 6) 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-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.

Fulfills; Humanities; 4000

Professor Cory-Alice Andre-Johnson

TuTh 12:30-1:45

Fillfuls: Social Science and History

Professor Ira Bashkow

TuTh 12:30-1:45

This course examines theories and practices of race and otherness, in order to analyze and interpret constructions, deconstructions and reconstructions of race from the late 18th to the 21st centuries. The focus varies from year to year, and may include 'race, 'progress and the West,' 'gender, race and power,' and 'white supremacy.' The consistent theme is that race is neither a biological nor a cultural category, but a method and theory of social organization, an alibi for inequality, and a strategy for resistance. Cross listed as AAS 5528. Prerequisite: ANTH 1010, 3010, or other introductory or middle-level social science or humanities course.

Fillfuls: Social Science and History

Professor Louis Nelson

This interdisciplinary course covers the American South to the Civil War. While the course centers on the visual arts, architecture, material culture, decorative arts, painting, and sculpture; it is not designed as a regional history of art, but an exploration of the interrelations between history, material and visual cultures, foodways, music and literature in the formation of Southern identities.

Fulfills: Humanities

Professor Theresa Davis

 TuTh 2-3

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.

Fulfills: Humanities

Professor Theresa Davis

A directed project-based study offered to upper-level students. Prerequisite: Instructor permission.

Fulfills: Humanities

Professor Indu Ohri

MoWeFr 9-9:50

In your high school English classes, I am sure you heard of and read books by Victorian and Modernist English authors like Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and Virginia Woolf. But have you heard of Mary Prince (the author of a famous British slave narrative), Rabindranath Tagore (the first Asian winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature), or Lafcadio Hearn (the most famous “interpreter” of Japan for the West)? This class will invite you to learn more about the lives and writings of these fascinating non-Western Victorian and Modernist writers by metaphorically visiting different parts of the British empire. During your global voyage, you will read British writers of color from the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa, who wrote about their experiences living under imperial rule in published novels, essays, and poetry. You will look at the counternarratives these authors produced, in which they explore encounters with the English from the perspective of the Other.

Along the way, you will join in the recent calls to “undiscipline” Victorian and Modernist studies by studying, researching, writing about the literature and theory of British people of color. Besides reading these authors, you will examine literary criticism that discusses the need to diversify scholarship and college curriculums to be more inclusive and embrace the voices of non-Western writers. In this course, you will uncover a rich literary tradition and make a significant contribution to this emerging scholarly conversation in Victorian and Modernist studies. Toward the end of our global journey, you will possibly collaborate with scholars to “undiscipline” Victorian studies for students, academics, and others. Tentative authors include Mary Prince, Mary Seacole, Joseph Conrad, Rabindranath Tagore, Sarojini Naidu, Lafcadio Hearn, Setsuko Koizumi, Chinua Achebe, and others.

Fulfills: Humanities

Professor Connie Smith

TuTh 11-12:15

This course examines the communicative practices of African American Vernacular English (AAEV) to explore how a marginalized language dynamic has made major transitions into American mainstream discourse. AAEV is no longer solely the informal speech of many African Americans; it is the way Americans speak.

Fulfills: Humanities

Professor Njelle Hamilton

TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm

This undergraduate seminar takes the form of an in-depth study of the literary works of two brilliant, prolific young Nigerian women writers: feminist and social realist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and African-futurist Nnedi Okorafor, two of the most globally well-known and -loved authors the continent has produced. Through close analysis of their novels and other writings we will consider broad questions such as: How applicable are Western feminist theories to non-Western experiences? How are traditional literary forms such as the bildungsroman subverted by race, gender, and postcoloniality? How do sociopolitical realities inform literary expression? How does trauma affect narrative? How is Nigeria depicted in international news in contrast to how locals perceive and narrate their own reality? And how can these novels help us understand the contemporary African novel within the contexts of larger historical and cultural forces, events, and movements? Beyond affording you a deeper appreciation for African and Nigerian literature, history, and current events, this course will lead you through the process of crafting a sophisticated argument and writing about literary texts in their cultural and historical contexts.

Fulfills: Humanties; Africa

Professor Lisa Woolfork

TuTh 9:30-10:45

This course is “Sally Hemings University.” Its objective is to prepare students to examine and reconfigure the status quo. This course seeks to help students appreciate the shift from euphemisms (“racially-charged” or “racially-tinged”) to vocabularies of consequence (“racist” or “white supremacist”), to foster a facility for talking capably and comfortably about “uncomfortable” topics such as systems of domination and their influence upon university and daily life. “Sally Hemings University” is a site where the adverse effects of overt and subtle forms of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism and other systems of dominance are scrutinized. As a course, “Sally Hemings University” explores questions generated by re-framing “Mr. Jefferson’s University” (and universities generally) as a site that destabilizes the dominant narrative of the university as Jefferson’s primary property and by extension that of similarly entitled white men.

Fulfills: Humanities; 4000 with instructor permission

Professor Steve Arata 

MoWe 5-6:15

In this seminar we will read widely and deeply in Anglophone West African literature of the last 60 years, with roughly equal attention given to prose fiction, drama, and poetry. Likely candidates for our reading list include Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Chimananda Adichie, Kofi Awoonor, Christopher Okigbo, Ama Ata Aidoo, Helon Habila, Inua Ellams, Ben Okri, Helen Oyeyemi, Emmanuel Iduma, Chigozi Obioma, and Yaa Gyasi. Requirements will include two essays and a handful of shorter writing assignments.

Fulfills: Humanities; Africa

Professor Njelle Hamilton

TuTh 3:30-4:45pm

Superheroes, space operas, time travel, futuristic tech — the stuff of dreams and the subject of countless popular literary and cultural works over the past century. Far too long featuring mainly white male heroes and US or European settings, sci-fi and fantasy (SF/F) have become increasingly diverse in recent years, even as reframed definitions  open up archives of previously overlooked black and brown genre writing from across the globe. Still, the Caribbean is often ignored, imagined either as a rustic beach or a technological backwater. In this undergraduate seminar, however, you will encounter authors and auteurs from the English-, Spanish- and French-speaking Caribbean working at the cutting edge of SF/F, and discover novels, stories, artwork and film that center Caribbean settings, peoples, and culture, even as they expand the definition of genre. We will also discuss supporting turns by Caribbean actors in mainstream works such as Star Trek and Black Panther. Assignments will include short critical essays and a long research paper where you think through how Caribbean texts redefine, expand, or critique mainstream SF/F. Meets the Second writing requirement.

Fulfills: Humanities; 4000

Professor K. Ian Grandison

Tu 5-7:30

This interdisciplinary seminar uses the method of Critical Landscape Analysis to explore how everyday places and spaces, “landscapes,” are involved in the negotiation of power in American society.  Landscapes, as we engage the idea, may encompass seemingly private spaces (within the walls of a suburban bungalow or of a government subsidized apartment) to seemingly public spaces (the vest pocket park in lower Manhattan where the Occupy Movement was launched in September 2011; the Downtown Mall, with its many privately operated outdoor cafés, that occupy the path along which East Main Street once flowed freely in Charlottesville; or even the space of invisible AM and FM radio waves that the FCC supposedly regulates in the public’s interest).  We launch our exploration by considering landscapes as arenas of the Culture Wars.  With this context, we unearth ways in which places are planned, designed, constructed, and mythologized in the struggle to assert and enforce social (especially racial) distinctions, difference, and hierarchy.  You will be moved to understand how publicly financed freeways were planned not only to facilitate some citizens’ modern progress, but also to block others from accessing rights, protections, and opportunities to which casually we believe all "Americans" are entitled.  We study landscapes not only as represented in written and non-written forms, but also through direct sensory, emotional, and intellectual experience during two mandatory field trips to places in our region.  In addition to informal group exercises and individual mid-term exam, critical field trip reflection paper, and final exam, you are required to complete in small groups a final research project on a topic you choose that relates to the seminar.  Past topics have ranged from the racial politics of farmers’ markets in gentrifying inner cities to the gender--and the transgender exclusion—politics of universal standards for public restroom pictograms.  Students showcase such results in an informal symposium that culminates the semester.  Not only will you expand the complexity and scope of your critical thinking abilities, but also you will never again experience as ordinary the spaces and places you encounter from day to day.

Fulfills: Humanities; Race and Politics

Professor Marlon Ross

Th 5-7:30

What does race mean in the late 20th and early 21st century? Given the various ways in which race as a biological “fact” has been discredited, why and how does race continue to have vital significance in politics, economics, education, culture, arts, mass media, and everyday social realities? How has the notion of race shaped, and been shaped by, changing relations to other experiences of identity stemming from sexuality, class, disability, multiculturalism, nationality, and globalism? 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) racial violence and the law, focused on the Ferguson and the Black Lives Matter movement; and 6) 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-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.

Fulfills: Humanities; 4000

Professor Kandioura Drame

MoWe 2-3:15

This course addresses various aspects of Francophone African Culture including, oral traditions, literature, theatre, cinema, and contemporary music and visual arts.

Fulfills: Humanities; Africa

Professor Boutaghou

MoWe 3:30-4:45

Fulfills: Humanities

Professor Kandioura Drame  We 3:30-6:00

Fulfills: Humanities; Africa

Professor John Mason

TuTh 9:30-10:45

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.

Fulfills: Social Science and History; Africa

Professor James La Fleur

TuTh 2-3:15

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.

Fulfills: Social Science and History; Africa

Professor Justene Hill Edwards

MoWe 9-9:50

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

Fulfills: Social Science and History

Professor Penny Von Eschen

TuTh 2-3:15

In this course we emphasize how U.S. power has been exercised in the world with focus on intersections of cultural, political, and economic power. We analyze how power is produced and contested through language and media, and how hegemonic discourses -- the dominant and most powerful blocs defining U.S. society and empire -- are produced. We are equally concerned with cracks and contradictions in these discourses, and people who challenge them.

Fulfills: Social Science and History

Professor Haigler

Fulfills: Social Science and History; Race and Politics

Professor Gillet Rosenblith

TuTh 4:00-5:15

Fulfills: Social Science and History

Professor Andrew Kahrl

MoWe 10-10:50

Fulfills: Social Science and History

Studies the history of black Americans from the Civil War to the present.

Professor Claudrena Harold

TuTh 12:30-1:45

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.

Fulfills: Social Science and History

Professor Christa Dierksheide

Mo 2-4:30

The major seminar is a small class (not more than 15 students) intended primarily but not exclusively for history majors who have completed two or more courses relevant to the topic of the seminar. The work of the seminar results primarily in the preparation of a substantial (ca. 25 pp. in standard format) research paper. Some restrictions and prerequisites apply to enrollment. See a history advisor or the director of undergraduate studies.

Fulfills: Social Science and History; 4000

Professor Jack Hamilton

MoWe2-2:50

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.

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.

Fulfills: Humanities; Africa

Professor Noel Lobley

MoWe 2:00pm-3:15pm

African cities and urban areas have long been places for some of the most futuristic music being created, diverse sounds that reverberate between local identities and international avant garde music scenes. Explosive, hypnotic and ultra-modern electronic sounds meld stunning dance forms with musical theatre and fashion, articulating the urban youth experience in cities as diverse and vibrant as Jo'Burg, Nairobi, Kinshasha, Lagos and Durban.

We will engage multiplex genres of futuristic music, including Congotronics, Shangaan Electro, and Gqom apocalyptic bass music, paying close attention to innovations in artistic practice, remix culture and Afrofuturism. We will explore the histories and futures of the sounds linking African beat making, technology, guitars, and the dynamics of twenty-first century amplified African cityscapes.

Blending critical and contextual work with exciting opportunities for creative practice, we will imagine and co-design project work with a collective network of African artists from The Black Power Station, a Pan-African arts collective in Makhanda, South Africa. No prior musical experience is required.

Fulfills: Humanities; Africa

Professor James Todd

 MoWe 3:30pm-4:45pm

Studies judicial construction and interpretation of civil rights and liberties reflected by Supreme Court decisions. Includes line-drawing between rights and obligations. (No CR/NC enrollees.)

Professor Nicholas Winter We 3:00-5:30

Investigates a selected issue in American government or American political development. Prerequisite: One course in PLAP or instructor permission.

Fulfills: Social Sciences and History; Race and Politics

Professor Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

TuTh 9:30-10:45

Introduces the mythology, ritual, philosophy, and religious art of the traditional religions of sub-Saharan Africa, and also African versions of Christianity and African-American religions in the New World.

Fulfills: Humanities; Africa

Professor Kara Skora

A survey course which familiarizes students with African-derived religions of the Caribbean and Latin America.

Fulfills: Humanities

Professor Cindy Hoehler-Fatton

Historical and topical survey of Christianity in Africa from the second century c.e. to the present.

Fulfills: Humanities; Africa

Professor Oludamini Ogunnaike

Studies Yoruba traditional religion, ritual art, independent churches, and religious themes in contemporary literature in Africa and the Americas.

Fulfills: Humanities; 4000

Professor Milton Vickerman

MoWe 4:00pm-5:15pm

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.

Fulfills: Social Science and History

Professor Rose Buckelew

TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm

This course is an exercise in critical thinking and writing. We will investigate connections between race and crime in contemporary America. To do so, we will explore constructions of crime and race and patterns of victimization, criminality and punishment. We will uncover shifting definitions of crime and the ways that institutions, policies and practices shape patterns of punishment.

Fulfills: Social Science and History

Professor Milton Vickerman

MoWe 2:00pm-3:15pm

Surveys basic theories and methods used to analyze structures of social inequality. Includes comparative analysis of the inequalities of power and privilege, and their causes and consequences for social conflict and social change. Prerequisite: Six credits of sociology or instructor permission.

Fulfills: Social Science and History; 4000

Professor David Skubby

MoWe 3:30pm-4:45pm

Fulfills: Social Science and History

Professor Ian Mullins

TuTh 11-12:15pm

Fulfills: Social Science and History; Race and Politics; 4000 with intructor permission