L90 AFAS 1002 Foundations in African & African-American Studies

Designed to introduce the student to issues in African & African American Studies and how students with AFAS degrees utilize their knowledge in graduate and professional programs or the working world. Particular attention will be paid to the discipline of African & African American studies, which engages with the artistic, cultural, historical, literary, and theoretical expressions of the peoples and cultures of Africa and the African Diaspora. Faculty members as well as Saint Louis professionals will give one-hour lectures on their particular disciplinary approach, their research, or their professional life. Students will be required to attend 3 outside lectures or performances. May be taken before declaring major, and may be taken by non-majors.

Credit 1 unit. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: CPSC, HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 1020 First-Year Seminar: Black Lives Matter and Educational Justice for Black Youth

In the wake of the global uprising against racial injustice, this introductory course examines how schools in the United States can create opportunities for Black youth to thrive. We will examine the schooling experiences of Black children and youth amid pervasive anti-blackness, analyze the relevance of educational models for racial justice, and imagine radical ways that P-16 schools might dismantle white supremacy.
Same as L12 Educ 102C

Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: SSC Arch: SSC Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S

L90 AFAS 103D Beginning Swahili I

A beginning language course emphasizing acquisition of reading, writing, and conversational skills in Swahili language. Through video and other multimedia presentations, students are also introduced to the culture of Swahili-speaking communities living in over a dozen African countries. Five hours a week including culture and language laboratory hours. This course is strongly recommended for students participating in the Summer in Kenya Program.

Credit 5 units. A&S IQ: LCD, LS BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 1045 Wolof Language and Culture

This course introduces students to Wolof language and culture. Wolof is a West African language spoken in Senegal and the Gambia. It is also spoken on a smaller scale in Mauritania, Mali, French Guinea, and in the migrant communities in the US and France. This is the first course of a beginning-level of a Wolof program. In order to acquire a basic proficiency, students will practice speaking, reading, writing and listening. Each module will begin with a thematic and practical dialogue from which we can study vocabulary, aspects of grammar as well as a cultural lesson. Interactive material, including texts, images, videos, films, and audio, will be provided. Its aim is to provide students with knowledge of the basic structures of the language and the ability to communicate. Students will also learn important aspects of life and culture of the Wolof. For AFAS majors, this course counts as Area Requirement 4.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD BU: HUM EN: H UColl: LA

L90 AFAS 1046 Wolof Language and Culture II

This course continues the introductory study of Wolof language and culture. Wolof is a West African language spoken in Senegal and the Gambia. It is also spoken on a smaller scale in Mauritania, Mali, French Guinea, and in the migrant communities in the US and France. This is the second course of a beginning-level of a Wolof program. Students will practice speaking, reading, writing and listening. Each module will begin with a thematic and practical dialogue from which we can study vocabulary, aspects of grammar as well as a cultural lesson. Interactive material, including texts, images, videos, films, and audio, will be provided. Its aim is to provide students with knowledge of the more advanced structures of the language and the ability to communicate. Students will learn important aspects of life and culture of the Wolof.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 104D Beginning Swahili II

Second semester Swahili language course emphasizing conversational competence and knowledge of Swahili-speaking cultures of East Africa. In addition to learning grammar and vocabulary sufficient enough to allow a student to perform basic survival tasks (asking for directions, buying a ticket for travel, checking into a hostel, ordering food) in Swahili, students will also be introduced to authentic Swahili texts including plays, short stories, and newspapers. Students will have an opportunity to practice their acquired language skills by interacting with Swahili-speakers in the St. Louis region. PREREQ, AFAS 103D.

Credit 5 units. A&S IQ: LCD, LS BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 1130 Introduction to Race

This course serves as an introduction to the analytic category race. Students will be exposed to major theories concepts, processes, frameworks, and scholars of race. They will develop the skills and language to critically examine and discuss race, with emphasis on how conceptions of race and collective identity have deep historical roots and have changed over time. This course takes the position that race-like gender, class and sexuality-is socially constructed. That said, while race is socially constructed, this course also emphasizes that racialization and racial categories have social, political, and economic consequences in people's everyday lives. Meaning the socially and historically constructed category of race has real implications for people and communities. Ultimately, the purpose of the course is to teach students to read, think and write critically about one of today's most contentious topics-race-by exposing them to readings and other course materials that consider race and the process of racialization in specific contexts and time periods throughout the world.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 1240 Beats, Rhymes & Life: A Cultural History of Hip-Hop

There is something cinematic about Hip-Hop. Indeed, the vividness of the genre's greatest lyricist or the evocative tonnage of its greatest producers are often described as "feeling like a movie. "Over the past 50 years, this phrasing has proven to be both figurative and literal. From Spike Lee's resonant usage of Public Enemy's rebellious "Fight the Power" in Do The Right Thing to Hype William's haunting rendering of Nas's "One Love" in Belly, Hip-Hop has functioned as the soundtrack and aesthetic muse for nearly a half-century of Black film making. In the second half of this yearlong Ampersand course, students will build upon the cultural history established in the fall semester to explore how Hip-Hop-inspired, re-imagined, and soundtracked the world of film. Over the course of the semester, students will engage with a wide array of films, including documentaries, independent films, biopics, music videos, live performances, and various feature films. Films will be supplemented with traditional and multimedia sources within Hip-Hop Studies and Film and Media Studies, including articles, books, interviews, magazines, lyrics, and photography. This course is for students in the 50 Years of Hip Hop Ampersand program only.

Credit 3 units. A&S: AMP A&S IQ: HUM, SC EN: H

L90 AFAS 144 First-Year Seminar: Monumental Anti-Racism

As sources of national memory and identity, public monuments, place names, historical markers, and other elements of commemorative landscapes are potential sites of cultural violence (e.g., alienation, disrespect, and erasure) contributing to broader conflict and inequality; they are therefore important considerations in movements for equal opportunity and justice. Some contend that memory sites are "the new lunch counters," where our racial politics are worked out. This course examines the racial politics of commemorative objects and practices as well as commemorative intervention as a strategy of anti-racist activism. We begin with an historical survey of various ways that racism has been inscribed on the commemorative landscape, and readings in history, political theory, cultural studies, and other fields will be used to gain insight into these contested commemorative objects, their development, and social significance. We then turn to a critical assessment of efforts to remove and recontextualize commemorative objects and to erect new objects commemorating neglected figures and issues. We consider how these reparative efforts relate to what political theorists call "remedies of recognition" and specifically how they might aid in advancing equal opportunity and justice. Through our study and engagement with contested commemorative landscapes (including local, national, and global cases), students will become familiar with the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of memory studies, diverse forms and sites of commemoration, local and global efforts to advance what has been termed "commemorative justice," and the challenges being faced.

Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: CPSC, HUM BU: BA EN: H

L90 AFAS 178 First-Year Seminar: Imagining and Creating Africa: Youth, Culture, and Change

The goal of this course is to provide a glimpse into how youth reshape African society. Whether in North Africa with the Arab Spring, in West Africa with university strikes, or in East Africa through a linguistic full bloom, youth have been shaping social responses to societies for a long period. In this course, we will study social structures, including churches, NGOs, developmental agencies as well as learn about examples of Muslim youth movements, and the global civil society. The course will also explore how youth impact cultural movements in Africa and how they influence the world. In particular, we will examine Hip-Hop movements, sports, and global youth culture developments that center on fashion, dress, dance, and new technologies. By the end of the course, students will have enriched ideas about youth in Africa and ways to provide more realistic comparisons to their counterparts in the United States. Course is for first-year, non-transfer students only.

Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: LCD BU: IS EN: H

L90 AFAS 192 First-Year Seminar: Africans Experiences in the Second World War

Most conventional histories of the Second World War pay scant attention to Africa, thereby creating the misconception that the war had little impact on the peoples of the African continent. This introductory seminar restores the experiences of ordinary African women and men to the larger historical narratives of both Africa and World War II. Combining personal memoirs with official primary sources reveals not only how the global conflict influenced African history but also how Africans helped shape the final outcome and consequences of the war. This course is for first-year, non-transfer students only.
Same as L22 History 192

Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: IS EN: H

L90 AFAS 195 First-Year Seminar: Travel Noire: Consumption and the Gaze in the Black Travel Movement

This course explores the growing industry of leisure tourism that caters to Black people. It takes as its premise that tourism is more than just voluntary, recreational travel; it is an encounter shot through with desire, intimacy, and ideology. We approach the tourism encounter from both sides -- the consumer and the consumed -- as we explore various types of tourism from domestic and international tourism to sex tourism and heritage tourism. If tourism is a desire machine, what desires of self and other are reflected in the discourse about travel noire? Who is being consumed and what is being made consumable in this growing market space? Students will be required to create a travel itinerary based in Missouri during the course and to propose a narrative revision to a local tourism destination. This course is for first-year, non-transfer students only.

Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: LCD, SSC Arch: SSC Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S

L90 AFAS 1951 Becoming Free: A History of Black Womens Ideas in the U.S.

This course will uncover the ideas that motivated Black women's activism during the ongoing struggle for freedom in the U.S. As producers of knowledge, Black women offered important contributions to critical thought on racism, sexism (and how they work together to make power and inequality), religion, politics, education, and more. All Black women did not think the same; they espoused different ideologies across time, space, and class lines. Some of the ideologies we will explore include racial uplift, racial individualism, Black nationalism, and Black feminism. We will look to the unexpected places Black women documented their ideas - from the novel to the political tract to the public speech - and learn from the Black women scholars who have de-marginalized Black women's historical and contemporary intellectual contributions.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 200I Independent Work

Independent work must be approved by the faculty sponsor, the academic coordinator, and the department chair.

Credit variable, maximum 3 units.

L90 AFAS 203D Intermediate Swahili III

Enhanced acquisition of language fundamentals acquired in first year Swahili through performance, reading, and writing. Students gain skills performing role-plays such as asking for directions, booking a bus ticket, ordering food in a restaurant, etc. Students read more authentic Swahili texts including plays, short stories, newspapers, and poems. Prereq: AFAS 103DQ-104DQ or the equivalent

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD, LS BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 2045 The Writer as Witness: Mourning and Memory in the African Novel

This course introduces students to the histories and traditions of the African novel. While paying attention to the anticolonial legacies of the African novel, this course explores questions of memory and mourning in African writing. Through analyses of works by writers such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nuruddin Farah, Nadine Gordimer, Zakes Mda, J.M Coetzee, and others, we will trace how African writers have used their novels to imagine creative ways of bearing witness to their pasts and imagining their futures. In addition to novels, we will also read secondary critical writing on African literature.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 204D Intermediate Swahili IV

Fourth semester Swahili language course emphasizes the development of the ability to discuss a wide range of cultural and literary topics with native speakers of the language. These topics are introduced by reading authentic Swahili texts such as plays, novels, poems and newspaper. Students enhance their writing skills and creativity in the language through group-writing projects. PREREQ, Swahili 103D(Q), 104D(Q) and 203 D(Q).

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD, LS BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 208B African-American Studies: An Introduction

Lectures, readings, films, and discussions reflect a range of academic approaches to the study of African American people. Course materials drawn from literature, history, archeology, sociology, and the arts to illustrate the development of an African American cultural tradition that is rooted in Africa, but created in the Americas. Required for the major.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC, SD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 209B African Studies: An Introduction

This course will introduce students to a variety of approaches to the study of Africa by considering the ways that scholars have understood the African experience. It will expose students to the history, politics, literary, and artistic creativity of the continent. Emphasis will be placed on the diversity of African societies, both historically and in the present, and explore Africa's place in the wider world. Required for the major.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: IS EN: H

L90 AFAS 210 The Linguistic Legacy of the African Slave Trade in Interdisciplinary Perspective

This course explores the linguistic consequences of the African slave trade, and in so doing introduces students to basic concepts in linguistic science that are relevant to human language development and controversial educational theories that are based on race. Anthropological, linguistic, and psychological dimensions of African American culture are embedded within complementary evaluations of educational controversies surrounding the teaching of (standard) English to American slave descendants, including the Ebonics controversy and its relevance to larger questions of social efficacy, and the affirmative action debate that has consumed the nation. Students will work individually or in groups to produce a major intellectual artifact (e.g., a term paper, a scholarly web page, or a project pertaining to the linguistic plight of citizens within this African Diaspora). Students will be introduced to foundational African American studies in anthropology, education, English, linguistics, and psychology.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC, SD Arch: SSC Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S UColl: CD, ML

L90 AFAS 2151 St. Louis Black History, Culture and Civic Engagement

Discover the stories of Black Saint Louisans and their contributions to the city, the region, and the nation. From Dred and Harriet Scott to J. D. and Ethel Lee Shelley, from Scott Joplin to Chuck Berry, from James Milton Turner to Tishaura Jones, the course will engage first-hand accounts and innovative scholarship to examine St. Louis's deep and rich history of Black life, culture, resistance, and civic engagement that has shaped the city for three centuries. Beyond the classroom, students will experience this history through visits to key sites in the city's African American past, tour local Black museums, and learn directly from area history-makers and custodians of African American history. Students will apply their learning through collaborative work with a community partner that elevates histories of the African American experience in St. Louis.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM

L90 AFAS 2153 Topics in African American Studies: Afro-Latin America on Camera

In this course, we will see how the camera, in still and moving photography, has served to register blackness in Latin America as a structure, experience, and representation frequently neglected in popular media. Starting with the images of enslavement and freedom in the form of painting, sketches, prints, daguerrotypes, and other early photographs in nineteenth-century Latin America, we will explore how the camera has marked the passing of time and created racial histories-actual and fictional-that educate us, move us, and influence how governments make policy. We will view an array of films, video, and still photography, across multiple genres, that center the histories and present-day joys and struggles of black people in Latin America while actively considering how our own consumption of media informs our racial perceptions of Latin America. The work that we view and read about will be used to question Latin America's perceived racial exceptionalism narratives, such as mestizaje, mulatismo, and racial democracy, and how they depend on sugarcoated histories of race mixture during slavery and colonization. This course will also focus heavily on how image-making becomes a persuasive means to make one's blackness known in the framework of the Latin America nation-state, to stake claims to rights, and to document black life in productive, pleasurable ways that do not always center the ongoing gentrification, annihilation, and genocide of black communities.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM, VC BU: BA, ETH EN: H

L90 AFAS 2154 Topics in African-American Studies: The Struggle for Black Reparations

This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to understand reparations. Drawing on histories of injustice, newspaper articles, economic analyses of the cost of reparations, Senate hearings, and H.R. bill 40, we will interrogate the historical and contemporary impact of white supremacy and anti-Blackness on African American life that drive demands for redress. The course readings are divided into three parts: we will examine slavery, the Jim Crow era, and the contemporary moment to understand how the U.S. government, often in partnership with the private sector, has exploited African Americans. This course will also challenge us to evaluate varying reparation models, debates regarding its feasibility, and grapple with what true liberation looks like for Black people today.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM, SSP Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 2157 Racism, Reform & Rebellion: The Ferguson Uprising & the Rise of Black Lives Matter

On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African-American teenager, was murdered in the Canfield Green Apartment complex by Officer Darren Wilson, a member of the Saint Louis County Police. Brown's murder and the subsequent disrespect of his lifeless body would punctuate years of frustration among local, Black St. Louisians who continued to suffer abuse at the hands of law enforcement. As they collectively mourned, Black people in the region decried the persistent racism, and called for reforms. Beginning in Ferguson and expanding to all sectors of the greater Saint Louis area, the protest would eventually spread across the country, coalescing into what would eventually be referred to as "the Movement for Black Lives" or #BlackLivesMatter. Eventually, this social movement, hashtag and broader discourse would profoundly shape American discourses about racism, inequality, and social justice. At the height of its popularity #BlackLivesMatter would challenge state governance, universities, corporations, electoral politics, commerce and many other aspects of American life. This course will explore the ways that Saint Louis, as a city and region, came to occupy the center stage of American history at the outset of the 21st Century.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC EN: H

L90 AFAS 2232 Gender and Sexuality in the African Diaspora

This course is an interdisciplinary examination of gender and sexuality in the Africa Diaspora. We will study the complexities of gender and sexual experiences, practices, identities, and community formations within select cultural contexts. Through lectures, and discussion and creative activities, films, and reading materials, both fiction and nonfiction, we will examine how genders and sexualities are constructed, experienced, and lived in various socio/cultural geographies throughout the Black world.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 242 Afro-Modern Dance (Dunham Technique)

This course introduces students to Katherine Dunham's dance technique, which combines ballet, modern, and Afro-Caribbean dance. Dunham Technique is one of the most important foundations for jazz dance and also shares characteristics with West African Dance and several modern dance techniques. Some lectures and occasional short readings will supplement this studio-based course so that students can learn more about Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), one of the great pioneers of dance in America. The class is open to all levels, although at least one semester of previous dance experience is required. Repeatable one time for credit in subsequent semester.
Same as L29 Dance 240

Credit 2 units.

L90 AFAS 251 Juvenile Justice in the Black Experience

This course examines the sociolegal past, present, and future of American juvenile justice, with a focus on the Black American experience. The course is organized in three parts. Part I surveys the late 19th- and early 20th-century development of the "parental state," including its institutional centerpiece (the juvenile court), its principle legal subjects ("dependents" and "delinquents"), and how these took shape alongside the contemporaneous rise of American Apartheid. Part II examines several key changes and challenges in contemporary juvenile justice, including the transformation of this institution in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement and the endurance of racialized juvenile social control in the post-Civil Rights period. Finally, Part III considers possible futures of youth justice in the United States and beyond as well as practical strategies for achieving equal protection within and beyond the law. For AFAS majors, this course counts as Area Requirement 2.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC, SC, SD Arch: SSC Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S

L90 AFAS 255 Introduction to Africana Studies

The course provides an overview of the field Africana Studies and provides analysis of the lives and thoughts of people of African ancestry on the African continent and throughout the world. In this course we will also examine the contributions of Africana Studies to other disciplines. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach drawing from history, philosophy, sociology, political studies, literature, and performance studies and will draw examples from Africa, the United States, the Caribbean, Europe, and South America. When possible, we will explore Diaspora relationships and explore how the African presence has transformed societies throughout the world. This class will focus on both classic texts and modern works that provide an introduction to the dynamics of African American and African Diaspora thought and practice.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC, SD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: IS EN: H

L90 AFAS 2674 Sophomore Seminar: Slavery and Memory in American Popular Culture

Sophomores receive priority registration. The history of slavery has long created a sense of unease within the consciousness of many Americans. Recognizing this continued reality, this seminar examines how slavery is both remembered and silenced within contemporary popular culture. Although slavery scholarship continues to expand, how do everyday Americans gain access to the history of bondage? Taking an interdisciplinary approach to these intriguing queries, we will examine a range of sources: literature, public history, art/poetry, visual culture, movies and documentaries, as well as contemporary music including reggae and hip hop. The centerpiece of this course covers North American society, however, in order to offer a critical point of contrast students will be challenged to explore the varied ways slavery is commemorated in others parts of the African Diaspora.
Same as L22 History 2674

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 288 Free the Land: Black Lives and Environmental (In)Justice

Black history is inextricable from the study and discussion of environmental racism and environmental justice in the United States. Environmental racism is defined as "any policy, practice or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages individuals, groups or communities based on race." This course expands and illuminates this definition through examinations of space and spacemaking where Black and indigenous people reside-from Africa to the Caribbean and United States. We will interrogate instances of environmental injustice as expressed through toxic waste, land theft, conservation colonialism, and the slow violence of biological extermination and social erasure. We will also examine environmental justice as a social movement in which local communities, activists, online networks, and at times government actors resist environmental injustice to create cleaner, more sustainable environments for all. Throughout the semester, we will read scholarly texts, engage primary sources, analyze popular and independent media, and study testimony and self-published materials from Black activists across the globe.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC, SC Arch: SSC Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S

L90 AFAS 2991 Undergraduate TA

Credit 3 units.

L90 AFAS 2999 Internship in African & African American Studies

Students receive credit for a faculty-sponsored and approved internship with a community partner. Preference will be given to AFAS community partners. The internship is intended to give students the opportunity to obtain professional experience and apply AFAS concepts in project with a community partner in their area of interest. Students must have a faculty advisor, and a site or project supervisor at the community partner. Registration requires completion of the Learning Agreement, which must be filled out and signed by their faculty sponsor, the AFAS Director of Community Engagement, and their site supervisor prior to beginning internship work. Students should agree on a set of deliverables with the faculty sponsor, for instance, bi-weekly journals with an end-of-the-semester short reflection paper. Students are encouraged to use their internship experience for their future capstone or senior honors thesis. Students may not receive credit for work done for pay but are encouraged to obtain written evaluations about such work for the student's academic adviser and career placement file. May be taken for 1-3 credit hours, depending on the number of internship hours.

Credit variable, maximum 3 units.

L90 AFAS 3000 Directed Research in African & African American Studies

Students works on research activities, a project, or specialized training in Black Studies under the supervision or direction of an AFAS professor outside of a classroom for an "approved learning experience." Approval of an instructor and the chair of the department is required. This designation should constitute rigor and knowledge gained consistent with other 300-level courses in the Department. May be taken for 1-3 credit hours, depending on the number of hours committed per week.

Credit variable, maximum 3 units.

L90 AFAS 3002 Feminist Fire!: Radical Black Women in the 20th Century

Black women have been at the forefront of the Black radical tradition since its inception. Often marginalized in both the scholarship and the popular memory, there exists a long unbroken chain of women who have organized around the principles of anti-sexism, anti-racism, and anti-capitalism. Frequently critical of heterosexist projects as well, these women have been the primary force driving the segment of the Black radical tradition that is commonly referred to as Black Feminism. Remaining cognizant of the fact that Black Feminist thought has also flourished as an academic enterprise -- complete with its own theoretical interventions (e.g., standpoint theory, intersectionality, dissemblance) and competing scholarly agendas -- this course will think through the project of Black Feminism as a social movement driven by activism and vigorous political action for social change. Focusing on grassroots efforts at organizing, movement building, consciousness raising, policy reform, and political mobilization, this course will center Black Feminists who explicitly embraced a critical posture toward capitalism as an untenable social order. We will prioritize the lives and thoughts of 20th-century women like Claudia Jones, Queen Mother Audley Moore, Frances Beal, Barbara Smith, Audre Lorde, and Angela Davis as wellas organizations like the Combahee River Collective, the Chicago's Black Women's Committee, and the Third World Women's Alliance. At its core, this course aims to bring the social movement history back into the discourse surrounding Black Feminism.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC, SD Arch: HT, HUM Art: HUM BU: BA EN: H

L90 AFAS 301 A History of African-American Theater

A survey of African American theatre from post-Civil War "coon" shows and reviews to movements for a national black theatre, such as Krigwa, Lafayette and Lincoln, and the Black Arts Movement. Early black theatre and minstrels; black theatre movement and other ethnic theatre movements in America. Critical readings of such plays as Amiri Baraka's "Dutchman," Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun," Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's "Mulebone." Also works by August Wilson, Ed Bullins, Charles Fuller, Georgia Douglas Johnson.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC, SD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H UColl: CD

L90 AFAS 301F Historical Methods-African History

This is a small-group reading course in which students are introduced to the skills essential to the historian's craft. Emphasis will be on acquiring research skills, learning to read historical works critically, and learning to use primary and secondary sources to make a persuasive and original argument. See Course Listings for current topics. Required for history majors. Preference given to History majors; other interested students welcome.
Same as L22 History 301F

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H

L90 AFAS 3031 Music of the African Diaspora

This course explores musical cross-fertilization between the African continent and South America, the Caribbean, and Europe. Beginning with traditional musics from selected regions of the African continent, the course examines the cultural and musical implications of transnational musical flows on peoples of the African diaspora and their multicultural audiences.
Same as L27 Music 3021

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: IS EN: H

L90 AFAS 3071 Caribbean Literature in English

Rum! Fun! Beaches! Sun! This is the image of the Caribbean in America today. This course will survey literature and culture from these islands, looking both at and beyond this tourists' paradise. It will aim to introduce students to the region's unmistakably vibrant tradition of multicultural mixture, while keeping an eye on the long history of slavery and rebellion out of which the islands' contemporary situation formed. Along the way we will encounter a wide variety of texts, from the earliest writing focused on life in urban slums, to the first novel ever to have a Rastafarian as its hero, to more contemporary considerations of the region's uncertain place in a U.S.-dominated world. Toward the end of the course, we will also look at important films like The Harder They Come as well as discussing the most globally famous cultural product of the contemporary Caribbean: reggae music. The course will involve readings from multiple genres, and will cover authors such as C.L.R. James, Derek Walcott, Jean Rhys, V.S. Naipaul, Jamaica Kincaid, and Caryl Phillips.
Same as L14 E Lit 3071

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 311 Modern Dance and the African-American Legacy

This course examines the works of several African-American choreographers and their contributions to the field of modern dance in America. These works are considered modern dance classics and some depict important historical events. Through the medium of dance aided by discussions, video and class reading assignments, the choreographers' works are analyzed for form, content and social relevance. Studio work includes technique to support learning the repertory. Prerequisite: one to two years training in modern, jazz or ballet
Same as L29 Dance 311

Credit 2 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC, SD Arch: HUM Art: CPSC, HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 3111 African American Images in Film

The course surveys the evolution of African American images in film, which began with the first major feature length silent film, Birth of a Nation (circa 1915), which celebrated the Ku Klux Klan and contained racist depictions of African Americans. The first "talking film," Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer contained the (in)famous song, "Mammie," which was sung by Mr. Jolson in Black Face, a carry-over from White performers who darkened their faces with burned cork during minstrel and vaudeville live performances. Those early films were produced and directed by European Americans who tended to portray African Americans through negative sterotypical depictions. Gradually, with the passage of time, technology, and the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, a combination of European and African American film makers began to provide a broader array of Black portrayals that included a spectrum of negative to positive depictions of Black people. We will include an examination of Washington University's Eyes on the Prize archives.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 3113 Culture, Politics, and Society in Francophone Africa

France and Africa have a long historical relationship, dating back to the early Euro-Mediterranean empires, the first explorers, long-distance traders, Christian missionaries, colonialists, and today's French West and North African communities. In this course, we delve into this long process of interaction between France and its colonies of Africa. During the first half of the semester, we explore these historical relationships and examine the scientific constructs of race in the 19th and early 20th century. We touch on themes that defined the colonial encounter, including the development of the Four Communes in Senegal, the Negritude movement, and French Islamic policies in Africa. The curriculum for this course includes articles, films, and monographs, to explore these themes and includes writers and social activists living in France and the African diaspora. The second half of the course examines Francophone Africa after independence. Here the course explores the political and cultural (inter) dependence between France and its Francophone African partners. In addition, we examine the challenges of many African states to respond to their citizen's needs, as well as France's changing immigration policies in the 1980s, followed by the devaluation of the West and Central African Franc (CFA).

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD, SSC, SC, SD Arch: SSC Art: SSC BU: IS EN: S

L90 AFAS 3117 Capitalism, Socialism and Labor: The Political Economy of 20th Century Africa

This course surveys the integration of African individuals and communities into the global economy. We will, however, pay equal attention to their efforts to resist integration, or at least have a greater say in how it would take place. This social history of the political economy of sub-Saharan Africa in the "long" 20th century critiques theories of imperialism, capitalism, socialism, development and under-development from the perspective of ordinary people. The essay-based course work is focused on making original arguments using primary historical sources as evidence.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 3120 African Immigration to the United States of America

The United States of America has historically been known as a "nation of immigrants." However, current rhetoric has brought this notion into question. This country has consistently been a magnet for millions of people from all over the world, and this course seeks broadly to understand recent African immigration. In Black studies, most attention has been paid to the forced migration of the enslaved during the Atlantic Slave trade. Studying 20th and 21st African immigration is key to truly understanding the Black experience in America. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 2.1 million Africans live in America as of 2015. The majority of these migrants are from Sub-Saharan Anglophone Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa), but they are also from war-torn countries such as Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. The primary focus of this course will be on contemporary African labor immigrants, including skilled professionals, children who arrived in the United States for family reunification, refugees, and winners of the Diversity Visa lottery who are now permanent residents. The migratory flux also includes people who were forced to leave their birth countries for political reasons as well as genocide. Through the class, we will examine the "push and pull" factors of immigration. The second part of the course explores the lived experience of Africans in America, whether they are well educated as compared with other migrant communities or whether they are laborers. We will study the role of remittances, language barriers, paths to naturalization, and job opportunities once Africans reach American soil. Increasingly, repatriation (both voluntarily and forced), xenophobia and Islamophobia are challenges that rock African immigrant communities. Today, many Africans live between two countries: Africa and America. This transnationalism allows them to navigate different lives, stories, identities, and cultures. Several activities are organized in the African local community. There is a large group of Ghanaians, Kenyans, Egyptians, Senegalese, Nigerians, Ethiopians, and Somalians in St. Louis. We will invite these individuals to the class as guest speakers so that students can fully understand their multiple lives in the St. Louis metropolitan area.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, IS EN: H

L90 AFAS 3190 Engaging the City: The Material World of Modern Segregation: St. Louis in the Long Era of Ferguson

See course listings for current offering.
Same as L98 AMCS 3190

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC, SC, SD Art: CPSC BU: HUM EN: S

L90 AFAS 3192 Black New Orleans

New Orleans is a location on a map, a collective memory, and a metaphor. But most of all, New Orleans is and has been a site of Black cultural production for centuries. While the name often conjures images of Mardi Gras beads and Bourbon Street revelers, this intermediate level seminar unpacks the complex histories of Black communities beyond stereotypes popularized by mass media and tourism marketing. We will discuss topics such as airboat tours, so-called post-Katrina "resilience," voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, and more. Drawing inspiration from Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson's statement that "Black New Orleans Is The Center of The World," we will come to understand the Crescent City as a crucible and incubator of Black culture. The materials used in this course are as multifaceted as the city itself and include scholarly texts, primary sources, fiction, spoken word, music, and documentary film.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC EN: H

L90 AFAS 321C African Civilization to 1800

Beginning with an introduction to the methodological and theoretical approaches to African history, this course surveys African civilization and culture from the Neolithic age until 1800 AD. Topics include African geography and environmental history, migration and cross-cultural exchange, the development of Swahili culture, the western Sudanese states, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the historical roots of apartheid. For AFAS majors, this course counts as Area Requirement 4.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H

L90 AFAS 322C African Civilization: 1800 to the Present

Beginning with social and economic changes in 19th Century Africa, this course is an in-depth investigation of the intellectual and material culture of colonialism. It is also concerned with the survival of pre-colonial values and institutions, and examines the process of African resistance and adaptation to social change. The survey concludes with the consequences of decolonization and an exploration of the roots of the major problems facing modern Africa.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: IS EN: H UColl: HAF, HSM

L90 AFAS 3254 African Americans and Children's Literature

This course explores two distinct themes: how African descended people have been depicted in American and British children's literature and how African Americans have established a tradition in writing for children and young adults. It will also examine two related questions: How has African American childhood been constructed in children's literature and how have African American writers constructed childhood in children's literature? We will look at such classic white writers for children like Helen Bannerman, Annie Fellows Johnston, and Mark Twain as well as efforts by blacks like the Brownies Book, published by the NAACP, and children's works by black writers including Langston Hughes, Ann Petry, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Arna Bontemps, Virginia Hamilton, Walter Dean Myers, Mildred Taylor, Floyd and Patrick McKissack, Julius Lester, Rosa Guy, Sharon Bell Mathis, bell hooks, and others. For AFAS majors, this course counts as Area Requirement 1.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC, SD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 3255 Black Masculinities

This course will investigate and explore how manhood, or masculinity, interacts with ideas of sexuality in public and private life. Together, we will look closely at writers who offer cultural and theoretical frameworks to challenge our ideas of what black manhood is and should be, particularly those writers who are bold enough to represent same-sex desire among black men and women. Authors will include James Baldwin, Essex Hemphill, Mark Anthony Neal, Mignon Moore, and E. Patrick Johnson.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC, SD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA EN: H

L90 AFAS 3282 Sexuality in Africa

An examination of various themes of African sexuality, including courtship, marriage, circumcision, STDs and AIDS, polygamy, homosexuality, child marriages, and the status of women. Course materials include ethnographic and historical material, African novels and films, and U.S. mass media productions. Using sexuality as a window of analysis, students are exposed to a broad range of social science perspectives such as functionalist, historical, feminist, social constructionist, Marxist, and postmodern.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC Art: SSC BU: BA

L90 AFAS 330S Topics in Gender & Am Culture:Native Sons & Daughters:Gender, Sexuality and African-American Culture

This topics course introduces students to gender as a category of analysis. Students investigate why and how gender becomes infused with cultural meanings. Through various methodological approaches, they explore how these socially constructed meanings shape Americans' everyday lives and societal dynamics more broadly. The topic varies by semester; common focal points include the intersection of gender with race and ethnicity, social class, health care, education, and politics. This course fulfills the Social Differential requirement. Please see the course listings for a description of the current offering.
Same as L98 AMCS 330S

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA EN: H

L90 AFAS 332R Race and Design

This seminar introduces students to the relationship between race and design in history, theory, and practice. How have racial ideologies shaped the formation of design? How has design mediated the reproduction of racial ideologies across time, space, and social forms? While tracing the tangled history of race and design, we will engage current critical writing and design practices. Topics include: material cultures of slavery and racial capitalism; racism in the design industry; racial politics of modernism; architectures of incarceration and surveillance; and antiracist practices. Students will develop their own perspective on these issues through site visits and a final research project. Prerequisite: None
Same as I50 INTER D 332R

Credit 3 units.

L90 AFAS 3430 West African Music and Dance in Context

A West African dance course specifically focused on the Ivorian dance traditions of the Baule, Bete Dan, Lobi, Makinke, and Senufo peoples. The course addresses the relationship between music and dance as well as their social and cultural significance. Study of myths, art, costumes and masks as they relate to various dances and music is also included. A studio course with related reading material.
Same as L29 Dance 343

Credit 2 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: CPSC, HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 3500 Barack Obama and the Idea of an African-American Presidency

We will start the course reading some scholarly selections about the history and administrative structure of the presidency. We will then look at four instances of African Americans running for president: comedian and activist Dick Gregory in 1968, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm in 1972, and civil rights activist Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. Of course, a number of black people have run for the presidency as third-party candidates: Frederick Douglass, James Ford, Lenora Fulani, Cynthia McKinney, Angela Davis, and Eldridge Cleaver, among others. In addition, some have sought the Republican Party's nomination as conservatives, such as Alan Keyes, Herman Cain, and Ben Carson. Some of these individuals will be briefly discussed, but time will not permit us to study them. We are fortunate that Dick Gregory and Shirley Chisholm wrote firsthand accounts of their campaigns. We will then move on to the heart of the course: an examination of United States Senator from Illinois Barack Obama's successful campaign for presidency as the first black nominee of a major party. We will consider his career before he became president, and we will examine certain aspects of his presidency itself. It is hoped that this course will offer students a new understanding of the American presidency and some exposure to how black people have thought about this office as a cultural symbol and a realization of power.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 3550 Undoing Empire: Introduction to Postcolonial Writing and Art

This course introduces students to the histories and politics of postcolonial writing and art. By tracing the genealogies of writing and art produced in the aftermath of colonialism, this course will explore how writers, artists, and scholars working from the context of formerly colonized nations have responded to the legacies of racial, cultural, and economic oppression. Students will look at novels, poems, art, and theater produced by those working from Africa, the Caribbean, and other formerly colonized nations in order to chart the complex networks of political solidarity these works enable. Writers like Franz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and Gayatri Spivak will be read alongside literary and artistic pieces by writers such as Chinua Achebe, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Jamaica Kincaid, Derek Walcott, Safiya Sinclair, Arundhati Roy and artists such as Zanele Muholi, Santu Mofokeng, Tessa Mars, William Kentridge, and others. Topics such as racial memory, postcolonial identity, radical aesthetics, and Afro-futurism will be explored.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD EN: H

L90 AFAS 3600 Beyond Sea, Sunshine and Soca: A History of the Caribbean

This course examines major themes in the history of the Caribbean from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. The first half of the course will focus on the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, exploring issues such as indigenous societies, European encounter and conquest, plantation slavery, the resistance of enslaved Africans and emancipation. The remainder of the course focuses on aspects of the cultural, economic, political and social experiences of Caribbean peoples during the twentieth century. Major areas of inquiry include the labor rebellions of the 1930s, decolonization, diasporic alliances, Black Power, identity construction and the politics of tourism. While the English-speaking Caribbean constitutes the main focus, references will be made to other areas such as Cuba and Haiti.
Same as L22 History 3600

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H

L90 AFAS 363 Mapping the World of "Black Criminality"

Ideas concerning the evolution of violence, crime, and criminal behavior have been framed around many different groups. Yet, what does a typical criminal look like? How does race - more specifically blackness - alter these conversations, inscribing greater fears about criminal behaviors? This course taps into this reality examining the varied ways people of African descent have been and continue to be particularly imagined as a distinctly criminal population. Taking a dual approach, students will consider the historical roots of the policing of black bodies alongside the social history of black crime while also foregrounding where and how black females fit into these critical conversations of crime and vice. Employing a panoramic approach, students will examine historical narratives, movies and documentaries, literature, popular culture through poetry and contemporary music, as well as the prison industrial complex system. The prerequisite for the course is L90 3880(Terror and Violence in the Black Atlantic) and/or permission from the instructor, which will be determined based on a student´s past experience in courses that explore factors of race and identity. For AFAS majors, this course counts as Area Requirement 2.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC, SD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA EN: H

L90 AFAS 3644 "Look Here, Karen": The Politics of Black Digital Resistance to White Femininity

In this course, we will explore the ways in which Black online publics use resistance strategies, such as mimetic imagery and racial humor, to call attention to white femininity and its deployment of the police against African Americans. We will trace the relationship between the police state and white femininity through the historical lens of 'innocence' and protection of the U.S. nation as well as the similarities and differences of Black online publics' responses in relation to past resistance strategies. What does it mean to be a 'typical' Karen in Internet culture? What are the aesthetic boundaries of Karens? And, what do digital platforms afford to Black users who make Karens visible? While paying attention to race, gender and class, this course offers students the skills to be able to collect and analyze online data, such as 'Karen' memes, in order to make critical arguments and observations that are grounded in historical accuracy.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA EN: H

L90 AFAS 3651 Black Women Writers

When someone says, black woman writer, you may well think of Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. But not long ago, to be a black woman writer meant to be considered an aberration. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that Phillis Wheatley's poems were "beneath the dignity of criticism," he could hardly have imagined entire Modern Language Association sessions built around her verse, but such is now the case. In this class we will survey the range of Anglophone African American women authors. Writers likely to be covered include Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Wilson, Nella Larsen, Lorraine Hansberry, Octavia Butler, and Rita Dove, among others. Be prepared to read, explore, discuss, and debate the specific impact of race and gender on American literature.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC, SD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 3655 Black Conservatives and Their Discontent: African Americans and Conservatism in America

In this course, we will examine the attraction of some African Americans to the ideas and aims of conservatism: limited government, individual freedom, the objectivity of merit, religious tradition, self-reliance, and a free market economy. On the matter of race, African Americans who identify as conservatives tend to be strongly opposed to affirmative action, to distrust race-based public policy solutions and government intervention in race issues generally, to opposed to reparations for slavery, and to believe in character-building and values such as thrift and hard work as important virtues for Blacks to cultivate. Their hostility toward liberalism and leftist ideology is not quite the same as some religious-based Black conservatives, such as the racially militant Nation of Islam and the several black Pentecostal sects, who strenuously believe that white liberalism and white leftist thought are expressions of white decadence. However, their beliefs are not far removed from this. In this way, Black conservatives aBre seen in a harshly antagonistic way by the national lack political establishment, which is largely liberal, and by black intellectuals and scholars, who are, for the most part, leftist-leaning. The critics of Black conservatism cannot understand how some Black people can be attracted to ideas that are rooted in racist assumptions, that are justifications for white domination, and that have been used to defend the white-dominated status quo and a white, Eurocentric value system. Race must be used as a weapon for liberation from white thralldom. What does a Black person have to conserve, and why would they want to identify with an ideology that has been used to oppress them? Black liberals and leftists call Black conservatives "Uncle Toms" and "Sellouts." Black conservatives return the antagonism in full measure, arguing that white liberals and leftists use the victimology of Blacks as a cudgel to beat whites with whom they politically disagree in order to effect the social change they desire and that they treat Blacks essentially as injured children who need to be either indulged, romanticized, excused, aided, or pitied. Racial identity is nothing more than a mere weapon of resentment. Black conservatives feel that Black liberals and leftists play into the hands of white liberals and leftists by making race an overdetermining factor in the lives of Black people. They also argue that the public policy solutions of Black liberals and leftists have not worked and that they in fact mostly benefit the Black middle class. They call civil rights leaders and Black liberal and leftist intellectuals "race hustlers" and "race charlatans." The conflict here is not simply or solely political; it is also deeply psychological and a question of identity. What does being Black mean, and what is it prohibited from meaning? We will look closely at many of the major works of significant Black conservatives to understand the nature of their arguments and their claims to legitimacy. How do Black people see conservatism? What do they hope conservatism will do for the Black community? Have they made much of an inroad among Blacks? Is it true, as some conservatives have claimed, that Blacks have a natural affinity for certain conservative ideas? For AFAS majors, this course counts as Area Requirement 2.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 367 Maroons and Marronage

What did it mean to free oneself from enslavement in different parts of the Americas? What constitutes success? How do agency, resistance, and complicity emerge in the transition from unfreedom to freedom? What are the legacies of such actions in the contemporary moment? By focusing on flight from enslavement, we will trace the contours of colonization in the Americas and discuss how maroons challenged the naturalness of the colonial order and shaped larger geopolitical relations among colonial powers. First, we will take a nuanced approach to broad themes such as freedom, independence, and resistance as we examine case studies from Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America. We will then explore how these narratives of freedom and resistance have been used in the present day for a variety of purposes from commemoration to tourism to activism. By following the lives and afterlives of maroons in the Americas, this course asks us to critically engage with the often ignored co-authors of the hemisphere's past, present, and future.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD, SSC Arch: SSC Art: SSC BU: BA, IS EN: S

L90 AFAS 3672 Medicine, Healing and Experimentation in the Contours of Black History

Conversations regarding the history of medicine continue to undergo considerable transformation within academia and the general public. The infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment serves as a marker in the historical consciousness regarding African Americans and the medical profession. This course taps into this particular evolution, prompting students to broaden their gaze to explore the often delicate relationship of people of African descent within the realm of medicine and healing. Tracing the social nature of these medical interactions from the period of enslavement through the 20th century, this course examines the changing patterns of disease and illness, social responses to physical and psychological ailments, and the experimental and exploitative use of black bodies in the field of medicine. As a history course, the focus will be extended towards the underpinnings of race and gender in the medical treatment allocated across time and space--the U.S., Caribbean, and Latin America--to give further insight into the roots of contemporary practice of medicine.
Same as L22 History 3672

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC, SD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 368 Emerging Africa: Language, Identity, and Social Change

Beginning with a review of key issues that shape Africa's linguistic history, the course explores linguistic situations in several African countries, including examining the role language plays in constructing identities, maintaining social cohesion, and empowering marginalized communities. An integral part of the course will be a critical look at the growth and influence of urban slang and pidgins in Kenya, South Africa, Senegal, Zambia, DR Congo, and Cameroon.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC, SC, SD Arch: SSC Art: SSC BU: HUM EN: S

L90 AFAS 3838 African-American Poetry from 1950 to the Present

Beginning with the year in which Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize, we will examine the tradition of African American poetry and the ways in which that tradtition is constantly revising itself and being revised from the outside. We will focus in particular on the pressures of expectation -- in terms of such identity markers as race, gender, and sexuality -- and how those pressures uniquely and increasingly affect African American poetry today.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM

L90 AFAS 3861 Psychology of Black Women

This course is designed to provide a critical analysis of the distinctive experiences of Black women through a psychological lens. We will explore topics relating to Black women's experiences in home, school, and community contexts, such as identity development, socialization experiences, and misogynoir. The class will also consider how Black women draw on individual strengths and cultural assets to support their personal wellbeing. This course will heavily center the narratives of Black women, and focus on mixed methods and qualitative research approaches. We will draw upon interdisciplinary frameworks (e.g., intersectionality, Black feminist thought, and liberation psychology) to help us understand Black women's experiences. PREREQ: L33 Psych 100B
Same as L33 Psych 386

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC, SC Arch: SSC Art: SSC EN: S

L90 AFAS 386A Topics in African-American Literature: Rebels, Sheroes, and Race Men

In this seminar-for we are fortunate to be an elite group this term--we will focus on the first century of African American prose writers. In genre terms that means we will largely, but not exclusively, read autobiographies and novels. Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs are now familiar names in U.S. literature surveys, but others are not yet household names, and in fact may never be. We will survey a core group of texts, available at the WUSTL bookstore, but also supplement our readings with materials placed on BlackBoard, via online databases (e.g., materials accessible digitally from the Schomburg Division of the New York Public Library). For AFAS majors, this course counts as Area Requirement 1.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC, SD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 387C African-American Literature: Early Writers to the Harlem Renaissance

Same as L14 E Lit 387

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM

L90 AFAS 388C African American Literature: African American Writers Since the Harlem Renaissance

African American literature in the 20th and 21st centuries grew from a renaissance in Harlem into a world-shaping institution. Public enemies and Nobel prize winners; card-carrying Communists, rock-ribbed Republicans, and Black Power nationalists; Broadway playwrights, Book-of-the-Month Club novelists, and a duly elected U.S. president are among the authors we will study with special attention to the intimate link between black writing and black music. Aiming at chronological and stylistic breadth, the syllabus will begin with poet Alice Dunbar Nelson (born 1875) and end with novelist Colson Whitehead (born 1969), with an array of better-known names--W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison--coming in between. Assignments will consist of two papers, one presentation, and one exam. Prereqs: none, but related classes such as E Lit 2151 and E Lit 2152 and/or AFAS 255 are suggested. Satisfies the Twentieth Century requirement in English, and/or one 300-level elective requirement in AFAS.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 3890 Black Heritage Preservation Seminar and St. Louis Workshop

What is Black heritage, how is it thoughtfully preserved, and to what ends? These are fundamental questions guiding the seminar and workshop, Black Heritage Preservation, where we combine local, regional, and global exploration of the construct of Black Heritage across the African Diaspora with hands-on, community-based work to preserve the African American heritage of greater St. Louis. The course is motivated by growing recognition of the power of preservation as a form of equity, and commitment to asserting the importance of African American history as a vital force in the American cultural landscape.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC EN: H

L90 AFAS 393 Topics in Women,Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Topic varies. See semester course listings for current offering.
Same as L77 WGSS 383

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC, SD Art: AH, GFAH BU: BA EN: H

L90 AFAS 394 African Literature in English

Same as L14 E Lit 394

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 39SM Women and Crime in the Evolution of American History

Crime happens. Property is damaged and stolen, lives are lost, and law, order, and justice evolves. This course taps into that ongoing reality by centering the herstorical evolution of female crime, highlighting women and girls of many kinds across time and spaces of America. It moves across centuries (through to the contemporary period) probing within and far beyond icons to unveil the gendered nature of crime and moreover to empower students to see and trace everyday female criminality that ignited across racial, ethnic, as well as lines of age in the winding path of American history. While men and boys dominate public and even scholarly expectations of crime and carceral conversations for many, students will leave this course with a far more rigorous understanding of the herstories gained by taking serious the types of crimes that women and girls acted out by exploring: robbery, assault, infanticide, larceny, murder, arson, prostitution, serial killers, and drug-related crimes. As well as going further to probe state and federal power through carceral medicine - showing the interior world of female prisoners, physicians, the movement of females into "asylums'' and mental state hospitals, incarceration based on "insanity" while going further to examine births, illnesses, and death of women and teens in jails and prisons. Students will be likewise pushed to engage America's timeline of race, gender, and executions that includes women and girls. Racialized and gendered criminality, law enforcement violence, healthcare and deathcare in prisons are critical public health issues that students can better understand the complicated evolutions by deeply probing the herstorical lives of women, girls, and crime through this course. Students will read, learn, dig up the past, and write to ensure a future of herstory and remembrance.
Same as L22 History 39SM

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA EN: H

L90 AFAS 4008 Slavery and Public History

Public history, or applied history, encompasses the many and diverse ways in which history is put to work in the world and applied to real-world issues. This course teaches public history practice with particular emphasis on engaging in the public history of slavery through research and interpretation on the regional histories of enslavement within St. Louis and at Washington University. Students will learn by engaging critical scholarship on public history, debates about how public history is practiced, and learning core tenets of public history interpretation, museum best practices, oral history, preservation, and material culture and their particular application to public history interpreting slavery. This includes grappling with the politics of memory and heritage that shape, limit, and empower public history practice on slavery, and how white supremacy has shaped what histories we absorb in the public.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 401 Senior Seminar

This capstone seminar is required for students who are majoring in African and African-American Studies.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 4013 Queer of Color Critique

That sensation produces surplus, often uncontainable knowledge, is something that is beginning to be explored in various arenas of queer theory as an important component of queer of color critique. This seminar will explore different sensational arenas, the different possible critiques that they produce, and what this means for thinking about sexuality, gender, and queer theory. Throughout the course of the semester, we will explore sensation in multiple ways 1) as a diagnostic tool for understanding some of the different ways that race, gender, and sexuality intersect 2) as a way to trouble the dichotomy between interiority and exteriority to understand the ways in which orders of knowledge become imprinted on the body 3) as a mode of producing alternate forms of knowledge about gender, race, and sexuality. In addition to reading about different sensations and their relationships to politics and sexuality, this course will require students to think creatively as they attempt to write about sensation, sexuality, and politics. Ultimately, the purpose of this class is to examine sexuality and sensation as collections of embodied and politicized experiences. Prerequisite: Introduction to Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (L77 100B) or permission of instructor.
Same as L77 WGSS 4013

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC, SD Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 403 Advanced Swahili

This course aims at helping students gain skills in reading and appreciating selected readings in Swahili literature. Although the course will primarily focus on plays, novels, poetry, students will also be introduced to Swahili songs, comic books, and other forms of popular literature in an attempt to understand the growth and development of contemporary Swahili literature. Prereqs: Permission of instructor and successful completion of AFAS 103D, 104D, 203D, 204D or equivalent experience.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, LS Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 4031 Advanced Readings in Swahili Literature

To be designed with instructor. Permission of instructor required.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD, LS Arch: HUM Art: HUM

L90 AFAS 4041 Beginning Graduate-Level Swahili

A beginning language course for graduate students emphasizing acquisition of reading, writing, and conversational skills in Swahili language. Through video and other multimedia presentations, students are also introduced to the culture of Swahili-speaking communities living in over a dozen African countries.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD, LS EN: H

L90 AFAS 4042 Beginning Graduate-Level Swahili II

Second semester graduate level Swahili language course emphasizing conversational competence and knowledge of Swahili-speaking cultures of East Africa. Introduction to elementary level Kenyan and Tanzanian Swahili texts, grade school readers, newspapers, and government educational material. PREREQUISITE, AFAS 4041.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD, LS EN: H

L90 AFAS 4043 Intermediate Graduate-Level Swahili III

Enhanced acquisition of language fundamentals acquired in first year Graduate Level Swahili through performance, reading, and writing. Students gain skills performing role-plays such as asking for directions, booking a bus ticket, ordering food in a restaurant, etc. Students read more authentic Swahili texts including plays, short stories, newspapers, and poems. Prereq: AFAS 4041, 4042 or permission of instructor.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD, LS EN: H

L90 AFAS 409 Gender, Sexuality, and Change in Africa

This course considers histories and social constructions of gender and sexuality in sub-Saharan Africa during the colonial and contemporary periods. We will examine gender and sexuality both as sets of identities and practices and as part of wider questions of work, domesticity, social control, resistance, and meaning. Course materials include ethnographic and historical materials and African novels and films. PREREQUISITE: Graduate students or undergraduates with previous AFAS or upper level anthropology course.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC, SC, SD, WI Arch: SSC Art: SSC EN: S

L90 AFAS 4103 Black Decolonial Thought: Conceptualizing Epistemic Violence from Frantz Fanon to Achille Mbembe

It is a truism that colonization has deeply impacted African societies, but we should also acknowledge the multiple ways of thinking and doing that are deployed on the continent. One of the goals of this course is to depart from the dominant epistemology of European and North American scholarship. We will consider African societies and cultures in the diversity of their practices, beliefs, worldviews, and experiences, by using an Afro-oriented canon of knowledge production. If decolonization is the end of political domination of a territory by European empires, the decolonial turn involves a way of thinking about the self, society, and cultures on their own terms (or their ipseity), instead of being always viewed through Eurocentric lenses of reflection and theory imposed by colonization. We will study prominent Black authors who fed the stream of decolonial thought.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC EN: H

L90 AFAS 4110 The Black South Atlantic

Since the transatlantic slave trade and the establishment of European colonial empires, Latin America and the African continent have remained culturally and geopolitically enmeshed. This course will therefore serve as an interdisciplinary expansion southward of the 'Black Atlantic,' a term made popular by black studies scholar Paul Gilroy. Our focus on the South Atlantic will be to reorient the debate toward black intellectual, cultural, and activist exchange between Africa and Latin America across history, politics, and cultural production.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC, WI Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 4134 The AIDS Epidemic: Inequalities, Ethnography, and Ethics

In the year 2000, HIV became the world's leading infectious cause of adult death. In the next 10 years, AIDS killed more people than all wars of the 20th century combined. As the global epidemic rages on, our greatest enemy in combating HIV/AIDS is not knowledge or resources but rather global inequalities and the conceptual frameworks with which we understand health, human interaction, and sexuality. This course emphasizes the ethnographic approach for the cultural analysis of responses to HIV/AIDS. Students will explore the relationships among local communities, wider historical and economic processes, and theoretical approaches to disease, the body, ethnicity/race, gender, sexuality, risk, addiction, power, and culture. Other topics covered include the cultural construction of AIDS and risk, government responses to HIV/AIDS, origin and transmission debates, ethics and responsibilities, drug testing and marketing, the making of the AIDS industry and "risk" categories, prevention and education strategies, interactions between biomedicine and alternative healing systems, and medical advances and hopes.
Same as L48 Anthro 4134

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD, SSC, SC, SD Arch: SSC Art: SSC BU: IS EN: S

L90 AFAS 415B Historic Preservation, Memory and Community

Whose history is significant enough to be worth preserving in physical form? Who gets to decide, and how? Does the choice to preserve buildings, landscapes and places belong to government, experts or ordinary people? How does the condition of the built environment impact community identity, structure and success? This place-based course in historic preservation pursues these questions in St. Louis' historically Black neighborhood The Ville, where deep historic significance meets a built environment conditioned by population loss, disinvestment and demolition. The course explores the practice of historic preservation as something far from neutral, but a creative, productive endeavor that mediates between community values, official policies and expert assertion. Critical readings in preservation and public history will accompany case studies, community engagement and practical understanding. This course is open to both undergraduates and graduates.
Same as I50 INTER D 415B

Credit 3 units. EN: H

L90 AFAS 417 Topics in African History: Power and Rebellion in 20th-Century Africa

What is violence? Are some forms of violence more acceptable than others? How have Africans from different constituencies thought about the role of violence in colonial and postcolonial societies? How has violence been used to establish power or to dismantle it? This course examines the politics of violence in 20th-century Africa. Pulling examples from across the African continent, it will engage the preceding questions through topics such as colonial state violence, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, African soldiers in colonial East Africa, the Mau Mau of Kenya, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, armed struggle in Southern Africa, and the Tanzania-Uganda war. Students must have taken Introduction to Africana Studies and/or a course on Africa. For AFAS majors, this course counts as Area Requirement 4.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA EN: H

L90 AFAS 4215 Mediated Blackness: A Black Studies Approach to Digital Methods

Starting from the theoretical foundations of Black Digital Studies, this course offers students a survey of the diverse digital methods needed to understand and solve contemporary social phenomena and problems. Whether partnering with policymakers to create new Internet regulations or reporting on breaking news from Black Tik Tokers and other content creators, humanities students and practitioners are consistently faced with opportunities to solve problems related to race and technology, such as issues related to surveillance, mis/disinformation, and more. Ultimately, students will be able to apply a Black Digital Studies lens to an array of industries, including, but not limited to, the non-profit sector, research, journalism, content creation, and policy making.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 421A From Mammy to the Welfare Queen: African American Women Theorize Identity

How do representations of identity affect how we see ourselves and the world sees us? African American women have been particularly concerned with this question, as the stories and pictures circulated about black female identity have had a profound impact on their understandings of themselves and political discourse. In this course we will look at how black feminist theorists from a variety of intellectual traditions have explored the impact of theories of identity on our world. We will look at their discussions of slavery, colonialism, sexuality, motherhood, citizenship, and what it means to be human.
Same as L77 WGSS 421

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC, SD EN: H

L90 AFAS 4235 Blackness in Brazil

Brazil is the country with the largest population of people of African descent outside of the African continent. However, with its history of race mixture under colonialism and slavery, many have imagined Brazil as a racial paradise such that race minimally influences one's social, political, or economic quality of life. The main focus of this course will be to understand from an interdisciplinary approach, first, the historical and sociocultural conditions of the African diaspora in Brazil. Second, we will focus on how national ideologies of racial mixture employ a rhetoric of inclusion that incorporates selective aspects of black culture into Brazilian national identity while excluding black people from the protections and pleasures of full citizenship. Beginning with the experiences of enslaved Africans, we will engage how Afro-Brazilians have developed ideas and spaces of freedom and belonging through social movements, religion, the arts, and resistance well into the black consciousness movements of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the course, we will collaboratively read, view, and listen to a variety of primary and secondary sources in order to analyze and write about blackness and the lives of black people in Brazil across history, intersecting, most predominantly, with the social structures of gender, sexuality, class, and religion.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 423B Topics in American Literature: James Baldwin Now

Same as L14 E Lit 423

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SD Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 424A Topics in American Literature: Slavery and its Legacies

This course offers an advanced introduction to both the literature and the concept of modernism, the "ism" used to mark the experimental verve of early twentieth-century writing and to grasp its ties to modernity, or the modern social world. As the course title suggests, we will devote most of our time to the career of modernism in the United States, a place imagined as both the modernist nation par excellence and the desert modernism escaped to be born. Three groups of primary texts--early modernist experiments, 1920s modernist landmarks, and Great Depression revisions--will illuminate the grand ambitions of eccentric literary forms and sequestered avant-garde movements; the public disputes and buried alliances between "high" expatriate and Harlem Renaissance modernisms; and the influential Depression-era reinterpretation of modernism as reactionary self-indulgence. The syllabus will feature fiction, poetry, and drama by old and new literary celebrities: Djuna Barnes, John Dos Passos, T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mike Gold, Ernest Hemingway, Nella Larsen, Meridel LeSueur, Claude McKay, Clifford Odets, Tillie Olsen, Ezra Pound, Jean Toomer, and Richard Wright. A shorter list of critical essays will highlight modernism's tendency to theorize itself while introducing 21st-century perspectives from the "New Modernist Studies." Satisfies the American requirement. For undergraduates, Junior or Senior standing is required.
Same as L14 E Lit 424

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 426W Memory for the Future

The year-long Studiolab "Memory for the Future" (M4F) will create spaces and practices of humanities education, practical public history, and collaboration in the spirit of "multidirectional memory." This concept tries to address the interlinked histories and legacies of the Holocaust, slavery, apartheid, and colonialism and create opportunities for dialogue between communities impacted by and implicated in these forms of violence. Our principal aims are to explore, enrich, and sustain the global and local focus of "reparative memorial practices" in St. Louis. Focusing on commemorative efforts through public memorials, monuments and especially museums, M4F will engage survivors, activists, institutional leaders, and scholars (students and faculty) in the development of educational materials, artistic representations, exhibitions, and other approaches to bringing the past into the present. We strive to support the efforts of local and regional initiatives and venues to end racism, antisemitism, and homophobia and their related violence through innovative and inclusive memory work. Alongside classroom-based instruction focusing on discussing scholarship and acquiring practical, curatorial, and pedagogical skills, students will work with area institutions and initiatives to apply their study of multidirectional memory. This practicum is an integral part of the course and requires students to leave campus and regularly work with one of our partners (The Griot Museum of Black History, George B. Vashon Museum, St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Reparative Justice Coalition of St. Louis, St. Louis Community Remembrance Project). Participants of the Studiolab are expected to attend regular weekly meetings and engage in self-directed and collaborative project work. We are also preparing study trips to regional sites of memory and education. The M4F Studiolab will convene at the Lewis Collaborative, a living-learning-commercial space at the west end of the Delmar Loop. All A&S graduate students and advanced undergraduates are invited to participate. Undergraduate enrollment by permission of the instructors. For History majors, this course fulfills the capstone requirement as an Advanced Seminar. As a year-long course, students are expected to enroll in both the fall and spring sections. For more information, please consult https://www.m4f.community/
Same as L56 CFH 426

Credit 4 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: CPSC, HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 4311 Black Experimental Music

Founded on the South Side of Chicago in 1965, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) united dozens of African American artists who were interested in experimental approaches to composition and improvisation. Their creative work, often described as black experimental music, would transform black-identified musical styles like jazz as well as white-identified styles of experimental concert music from which African Americans were often excluded-until the AACM intervened. In this course, we will investigate the Association's history by reading and discussing a wide range of texts about the organization, including books and articles written by AACM members themselves. We will also examine a number of important recordings and musical scores created by AACM artists, including Muhal Richard Abrams, Fred Anderson, Anthony Braxton, Joseph Jarman, George Lewis, Nicole Mitchell, Roscoe Mitchell, and Wadada Leo Smith.
Same as L27 Music 4311

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 435A Practicum in Digital Humanities: Enslavement in St. Louis

This is a variable topics course, and content will change from semester to semester.
Same as L93 IPH 435

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 4377 Performing Ghosts: Blackness, Performance, and Archival Erasure

Taking ghost as apparition, metaphor, an imaginary, and type of possession, this course focuses on the intersections between performance, affect theory, and archival practice to investigate how scholars and artists contend with the psychic and affective terrors against blackness. Part of these terrors, the course asserts, happened and is happening in the realm of the affective, ephemeral, and archival. Moving across theoretical works, literature, and theater, our readings differently query: how can performance enable us to recuperate the lives of those violently erased from the archive? How to imagine embodiment for subjects "tracked" by history, such as black folks whose bodies suggest other forms of pathology, like sexual deviancy, mentally "insanity," and other forms of criminalization? How have attachments to ghosts been used as a methodology to stage and reperform blackness in the past and in the present? And lastly, how can we capture embodiment (or enfleshment) without live bodies? By rethinking "liveness," "absence," "loss," and "remains," the readings and discussions will offer performance as a methodological and analytical infrastructure to conduct historical and/or archival research.
Same as L15 Drama 437

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SD Arch: HUM Art: CPSC, HUM BU: BA, HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 4601 Historical Racial Violence: Legacies & Reckonings

There is growing awareness of the legacies of historical racial violence in the United States and a related increase in reckoning efforts. Area histories of enslavement, lynching, and other racial terror and dispossession relate to inequality, conflict, and violence in the same places today. These 'haunting legacies' include heart disease and other health disparity, homicide rates, white supremacist mobilization, and corporal punishment in schools. Meanwhile, many communities and institutions are moving to acknowledge and address legacies of historical racial violence in various ways. This course combines seminar-style readings and writing on legacies of racial violence with a practicum component, where individual students or groups of students will conceptualize and develop interventions intended to clarify and disrupt legacies of racial violence, facilitating contemporary reckoning. The practicum will explore and support a broad range of interventive efforts, including public policy measures, original research projects, archival development, commemorative efforts, and a related array of mediums, including visual art, design, film, digital projects, and other creative approaches.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC, SC, SD Arch: SSC Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S

L90 AFAS 4602 Topics in Afro-American Studies: Afro-American Poetry from 1920 to the Present

Themes and major figures associated with the shaping of the modern literary imagination as it relates to Afro-American poets from the 1920s to the present. Prerequisites: AFAS 208B and 209B.

Credit 3 units. Arch: HUM Art: HUM

L90 AFAS 4607 Education of Black Children and Youth

This course provides an overview of the education of Black children and youth in the United States. Covering both pre- and post-Brown eras, students in this course offers a deep examination of the research focused on Black education. The social, political, and historical contexts of education, as essential aspects of American and African-American culture and life, will be placed in the foreground of course inquiries. Prerequisite: Completion of any 1000, 2000, or 3000-level Education course, graduate standing, or permission of instructor.
Same as L12 Educ 4607

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 4608 Education of Black Children and Youth in the United States

This course provides an overview of the education of Black children and youth in the United States. Covering both pre- and post-Brown eras, this course offers a deep examination of the research focused on Black education. The social, political, and historical contexts of education -- as essential aspects of American and African-American culture and life -- will be placed in the foreground of course inquiries. Prerequisite: Completion of any 1000, 2000, or 3000-level Education course, graduate standing, or permission of instructor.
Same as L12 Educ 4608

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SD, WI Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 461B Construction and Experience of Black Adolescence

This course examines the construct of black adolescence from the general perspectives of anthropology, sociology, and psychology. It begins by studying the construct of black adolescence as an "invention" of the social and behavioral sciences. The course then draws upon narrative data, autobiography, literature and multimedia sources authored by black youth to recast black adolescence as a complex social, psychological, cultural and political phenomenon. This course focuses on the meaning-making experiences of urban-dwelling black adolescents and highlights these relations within the contexts of class, gender, sexuality, and education.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC Arch: SSC Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S UColl: ACS, SSC

L90 AFAS 470 What is Africanfuturism? 21st Century African Speculative Fiction

This course examines the genealogies, aesthetics, and politics of Africanfuturism, a sub-genre of speculative fiction and African literature. While the term Africanfuturism is recent, coined by Nnedi Okorafor in 2019, there is nothing new about speculative fiction from Africa. Africanfuturism is the aesthetic practice of producing worlds created by Africans that center (rather than marginalize) Africa and Africans; where Africans are represented as the historical agents who produce their own futures (rather than historical subjects assigned to a "traditional" past); and where technology, science, and philosophy are recognized as indigenous to Africa (rather than imported).

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, IS

L90 AFAS 474 Black Geographies: Space, Place and Ecologies of Power

From the gardens of enslaved women in 19th century Louisiana to 21st century racial justice marches in St. Louis, this advanced seminar will explore the emerging field of "Black Geographies." We will explore questions such as: How have Black communities been both enclosed and liberated by spatial arrangements of earth, sea, and sky? How do Black Geographies challenge and re-imagine conventions of social and cultural geography? What interventions are cutting-edge interdisciplinary scholars making, and what methods are they using to articulate original research? We will also spend a significant portion of class critically engaging with "Missouri Cartographies" -how historians, sociologists, and designers have depicted Black resistance and unveiled dark stories within and beyond the boundaries of our city. Suggested for undergraduate students who have taken at least one AFAS course. Graduate students may enroll with instructor permission.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA EN: H

L90 AFAS 475 Advanced African History Seminar

This seminar allows students who have completed basic African history course work to explore advanced topics in the field. Selected topics include: African geography and environmental history, the classical kingdoms of the Sahel, the development of Swahili culture, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the historical roots of Apartheid, the intellectual and material culture of colonialism, African resistance and adaptation to social change during the colonial era, decolonization, and roots of some of the major problems facing modern Africa.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD BU: ETH EN: H

L90 AFAS 4781 Human Rights and Democracy in African Diaspora Communities

This course examines how questions of democracy and human rights have been conceptualized in African diaspora communities in the Americas and Europe. Course materials will focus on cultural and political developments during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and their relationship to critiques of democracy that have been developed by members of African diaspora communities. Course materials will also explore the relevance of human rights to struggles for racial, gender, and economic justice and civil rights in African diaspora communities. Special emphasis will be placed on issues such as incarceration, reproductive rights, genocide, and reparations for slavery and their relevance to African-descendant communities in Haiti, the United States, Germany, Brazil, and Colombia.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC EN: H

L90 AFAS 4881 Advanced Seminar: Mad: Mental Illness, Power and Resistance in Africa and the Caribbean

This seminar explores the history of mental illness in Africa and the Caribbean during the colonial and post-colonial periods. We will be guided by the following questions: What is mental illness? How do social, cultural and political realities affect how mental illness is defined? Should mental illness always be analyzed within a specific cultural context? How did psychiatry factor into the efforts of European colonizers to maintain social order in their colonies? How have colonized people resisted colonial notions of madness? What is the place of religion in these histories? How did mental institutions change after the end of colonial rule and how was post-colonial Caribbean and African psychiatry harnessed in service of decolonization? The course will pay special attention to how European colonial powers employed similar understandings of blackness across regions as they formulated ideas concerning the black populations they deemed "mad" across Africa and the Caribbean.
Same as L22 History 4881

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD EN: H

L90 AFAS 4890 Catholicism and Slavery

This course explores the role of Catholicism in the global history of slavery. Beginning with an assessment of how early Church theologians interpreted slavery in the Bible, the course will then grapple with how the Church justified taking a leading role in ending serfdom in Europe but endorsed the Atlantic slave trade, becoming one of its most invested participants. We will compare regional contexts of Catholicism & examining global continuities and regional particularities regarding the questions: What did it mean to be enslaved by the Catholic Church? How did enslavers and the enslaved approach Catholicism, as both institution and religious practice, in a context of unfreedom and oppression? In what ways did enslaved people resist Catholic enslavement, drawing upon or rejecting the teachings of Catholicism in their resistance?

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC, WI Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L90 AFAS 49SA Advanced Seminar: Slavery in America: The Politics of Knowledge Production

TThis course focuses on the long history of chattel slavery in North America, from origins through emancipation, encompassing Black and Indigenous enslavement. The course foregrounds the struggles over power, over life and death, that were at the heart of slavery's traumatic and grotesquely violent two-hundred-fifty-year career in North America, with attention to hemispheric context. At the same time, it highlights the fiercely contested historical battleground where scholars have argued about how to define American slavery--as a system or site of labor, production, and reproduction; law, property, and dispossession; racial and gender domination; sexual violation, rape, and incest; psychological terror and social death; containment and marooning; selfhood and nationality; agency and resistance; anti-colonial and revolutionary liberation and millennial redemption. Finally, it engages the "politics of knowledge production" that have produced the slavery "archive," replete with its annihilating silences, repressions, and erasures, and overdetermined "presences." In the end, the course's overarching question is how the politics of slavery, of its material experiences, interpretations, and archives, have shaped the lives and afterlives of slavery and race, to the present day. Students will conduct original research on topics related to North American slavery in consultation with the instructor that will culminate in a 12-15-page final essay. The course includes attention to the role of slavery in the founding and development of Washington University, and research projects that engage the University's slavery "archive" and questions related to enslavement in the history of the University and/or the history of St. Louis are welcome and will be supported by Olin Library Special Collections and other resources. Modern, U.S. PREREQUISITE: SEE HISTORY HEADNOTE.
Same as L22 History 49SA

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SD BU: BA, ETH, HUM EN: H