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 BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 1100 First-Year Seminar: Gender, Sexuality and Power in 19th and 20th Centuries

Gender is a powerful lens through which to examine Africa's past. Defined as the behaviors, attitudes, and roles that society assigns the sexes, gender is one of the principles that has shaped African societies from the earliest times to the present. This course provides a broad introduction to major themes and debates relating to gender in African history. We will examine how gender has been produced, reproduced and transformed in the lives of African women and men from the latter parts of the 19th to the 20th century. We will highlight African agency and structures of power as we seek to examine gender as a social and historical construct in Africa. We will also analyze how gender intersects with race, sexuality and politics. Beginning with some of the methodological questions about gender in African history, our case studies -- drawn from a range of sources, including articles, book chapters, novels and films -- will cover topics such as domesticity and the colonial encounter, the reconfiguration of gender relations, nationalism and the women's question in African history, and sexuality and the state. For first-year students only.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 1102 Freshman Seminar: Civil Rights

This course examines both the chronological and thematic frameworks of the American civil rights movement: the architecture of segregation; its evolution as a social movement; and aspect of the movement's legal strategies, student activism, and militancy. The course ends by considering the varied goals and outcomes, raising questions about the meaning of race and rights in contemporary America. Although based in scholarly readings, the course also uses films, music, memoirs, biographies, art, fiction, and theatre as the vehicles through which activists recorded their own histories. Freshmen only.

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

AFAS 1103 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 IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: CPSC, HUM BU: BA, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

AFAS 1104 First Year Seminar: Contextualizing Problems in Contemporary Africa

Africa is typically presented as a continent in constant turmoil in the U.S. and international media present. This freshmen seminar challenges this simplistic and common myth by exploring the historical and global roots of key issues facing contemporary Africa. Case studies include the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, post-apartheid violence in South Africa, HIV/AIDS in Africa, oil and corruption in Nigeria, the legacy of colonialism, the quest for modernity, refugees and forced migration, and commercial sex work. In each of these cases students will explore how the issue emerged within a specific historical, social, and global context. We investigate the implications of various forms of inequalities (e.g., between the global north and global south, within Africa, and among generations and genders) in shaping each topic and how differently situated people within Africa understand, respond to, and cope with everyday realities. Readings will include anthropological and historical analysis, African literature, journalist's accounts, and popular articles. By the end of the course, students should be able to critically assess the value of using a contextual analysis in understanding problems in contemporary Africa. This class is a discussion-based seminar and students are expected to actively participate. Students will be graded on a series of analytical essays, a final project, and in-class participation.

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

AFAS 1105 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 IQ: LCD BU: IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

AFAS 1106 First-Year Seminar: Afro-Futures: A First-Year Seminar for the End of the World

Afrofuturism as a concept is only 25 years old, but the aesthetic practice of imagining and constructing alternative techno-futures, presents, and pasts while placing Blackness and people from Africa and the diaspora at the center of these narratives certainly predates the word. As a genre that includes literature, music, and visual arts, Afrofuturism is closely linked to magical realism, science fiction, and Afropunk. In this course, we will conceive of Afrofuturism as a global practice. In the spirit of imagining alternative histories, this course resists the standard narrative of the genre that it began in the West and was then later picked up by African artists. The readings and syllabus are designed to bring together literature, music, and film from African artists and intellectuals, who often resist bounded categories but nevertheless engage in the practice of daring to imagine otherwise.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 1107 Freshman Seminar: Self & Identity in African American Literature

For whom should the black author write? In this seminar we will consider how African American literature examines the meaning of African American identity, the individual's relationship with the community, and the often vexed relationship of the black author to the American mainstream. We will read classic authors as well as some less familiar ones. W.E.B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin and Octavia Butler are just some of the possibilities. Class participation and regular reading logs are required. FRESHMEN ONLY.

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

AFAS 1108 Introduction to African Literature

James Bond, in Casino Royale, introduces us to Africa with a group of men betting on a fight between a mongoose and a snake; Hotel Rwanda creates an Africa of beautiful landscapes marred by the violence of genocide; Casablanca positions Africa as the site of wartime fantasy, intrigue and romance. These imaginary Africas, however, obscure the continent's irreducible complexity. As many as 3,000 languages are spoken across Africa's 54 countries, each defined by a unique blend of urban and rural cultures. The people of the Central African country of Chad belong to more than 100 ethnic groups. From their regional affiliations to their sociocultural perspectives, Africa's writers are no less diverse, its literary traditions no less dynamic. By examining texts from various genres and regions, we will trace the development of African literature by considering its roots in the oral traditions and colonial history of the continent, its role in the articulation of African subjectivity on the road to independence, its response to the challenges of the post-independence era, and its present-day stronghold within the global literary marketplace. Readings will include works by Ferdinand Oyono, Nadine Gordimer, Ousmane Sembène, Assia Djebar, Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Dinaw Mengestu, among others. No prior knowledge of the literature of Africa is required.

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

AFAS 1109 Introductory Seminar: Literature of the Middle Passage

Arguably the Middle Passage was the crucible in which racial identity and consciousness as we know it developed. All who experienced it, captives and captors alike, were irreversibly changed. In this course we survey the history of the Middle Passage and explore its lingering cultural legacy.

Credit 3 units. Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA

AFAS 1110 Freshman Seminar: Black Power and Black Arts

This course will survey the literary, artistic, intellectual, and political work of the Black Power and Black Arts movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It will look at the emergence of these movements from earlier forms of black nationalism, socialism, pan-Africianism, mainstream civil rights struggle and earlier black cultural movements. Film, music, and readings may include works of Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Amiri Baraka and Don Lee. Freshmen only.

Credit 3 units. Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA

AFAS 1111 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 IQ: LCD, SSC Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 1112 Introduction to African American Images in Film: A Freshman Seminar

This seminar for Freshmen will introduce students to an array of films depicting African Americans at different points in the history of film making, as well as the relevance of these films to the advancement of civil rights in America, and, by extension, the world. Students will be introduced to elementary documentary film production in collaboration with Washington University library staff and hands-on utilization of the Henry Hampton Archive. The course provides a balanced introduction to various civil rights topics that are relevant to African Americans, their depiction in film, and knowledge of how documentary film production can be used to overcome past discrimination.

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

AFAS 1113 Images of Africa in Literature and Art, C. 1800 to Present Day

This course examines representations of Africa, African peoples, and African cultures from the early nineteenth-century to the present day. Drawing on a wide variety of African and colonial source materials-including novels, photographs, art, advertising, and movies-we will critically explore the ways in which historical developments and cultural products helped to shape conceptions of African identities and ethnicities. Among other issues, we will address the legacy of the slave trade; gender and the construction of cultural traditions; colonial society, nationalist resistance, and the rise of pan-Africanism; and South African Apartheid. Emphasis will be placed on critical engagement with the source materials through written assignments and participation in class discussion. Freshmen only.

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

AFAS 1114 First Year Seminar: African-American Women's History: Sexuality, Violence and the Love of Hip Hop

Black women, much like their male counterparts, have shaped the contours of African American history and culture. Still, close study of African American women's history has burgeoned only within the past few decades as scholars continue to uncover the multi-faceted lives of Black women. This course will explore the lived experiences of Black women in North America through a significant focus on the critical themes of violence and sexuality. We will examine African American women as the perpetrators and the victims of violence, as the objects of sexual surveillance as well as explore a range of contemporary debates concerning the intersections of race, class, and gender, particularly within the evolving hip hop movement. We will take an interdisciplinary approach through historical narratives, literature, biographies, films and documentaries. This class is for first-year, non-transfer students only.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

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 BU: BA, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 1151 Freshman Seminar: The Atlantic Slave Trade

This course is an examination of the Atlantic slave trade (1445-1870), arguably the world's first sustained globalization process. It involved the dispersal of approximately 12 million enslaved Africans to the western hemisphere and Europe, thereby linking the historical destinies of Africa, Europe and the Americas. This course will not only detail the horrors of the Middle Passage but also demonstrate how the African presence transformed the Americas and became a central factor in our modern conceptions of race.

Credit 3 units. BU: BA

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 IQ: HUM, SC BU: BA, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 1511 African American Representation in Popular Culture

This course will explore how American society has historically represented African-Americans and how black people have represented themselves internally to the black community and externally to the world. Furthermore, how black representation is co-produced through interactions by the mass media, American society and the black community will be examined by focusing on specific themes. Some of the areas of black representation that will be discussed are visual (photo and video), scientific, technological, music, sport, black men, black women, sexuality, black poor, black affluent, black nationalism and black conservatism.

Credit 3 units. BU: BA

AFAS 1530 Topics in African American Art

A survey of the development of African-American artists from the earliest phase of mass emancipations after the Revolutionary War to the Harlem Renaissance with a brief look at slave crafts. Lectures focus on the integration of African Americans into the mainstream western art market and their eventual exile from the social restraints of post-Reconstruction United States. The course examines the role of significant African-American content in seemingly mainstream works of art.

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

AFAS 1550 Afro-Hispanic Literature: An Introductory Course

In The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Paul Gilroy defines the 'Black Atlantic' as a culture that is not specifically African, American Caribbean, or British but all of these at once. This cultural phenomenon will be explored by analyzing selected poems, novels, short stories, essays, and dramas of Spanish speaking writers of African descent from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. Utilizing the theoretical framework of Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, and Frantz Fanon, the texts will be analyzed considering their socio-historical, geographic, and racial implications and their respective literary movements beginning with the 1900s to the present. No prior knowledge of Spanish is required since this course will be taught in translation.

Credit 3 units. Art: HUM

AFAS 1560 Conceptualizing Danger: Love and Politics in the Time of HIV/AIDS in Africa

Students will explore the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa through a variety of analytic perspectives. Course materials include historical analysis, anthropological perspectives, development literature, African film and literature, and the mass media. Students will conduct a semester-long research project using on-line newspapers from Africa. This course is limited to freshmen only.

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

AFAS 1610 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 EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 1620 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 EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 1630 Intensive Introductory Wolof

This course is an intensive introduction to Wolof for students participating in the Senegal summer program. 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. Students will practice speaking, reading, and listening but the primary focus of the course will be gaining oral proficiency. 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, images, videos, films, and audio, will be provided as well as organized trips outside of the classroom (markets, bodegas, etc.) to practice dialogues. Its aim is to provide students with knowledge of the basic structures of the language and the ability to communicate.

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

Typical periods offered: Summer

AFAS 1640 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 EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 1650 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 EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 1800 First-Year Seminar: Black Constellations: Mapping Trajectories in 20th Century Black Poetics

How might we map the evolution of African American poetry in the 20th century? Both formally and thematically, can we identify and analyze patterns, transformations, and differences to better understand African American poetry and its monumental growth over the course of the 20th century? As an integral and expansive realm within American poetry, influencing and influenced by American poetics as a whole, in what ways are the thematic concerns and craft techniques found in African American poetry different from 'American' poetry (if at all)? This discussion-based class will analyze and map African American 20th century poetic trajectories (literary legacies, inheritances, and genealogies) with the goals of 1) developing a language for the evolution of a major field of American poetry in the 20th century, 2) questioning and broadening the 20th century American canon, and 3) crafting new, more precise questions that examine black poetic identity in the past century.

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

AFAS 1995 African & Afro-American Coursework Completed Abroad

Credit 12 units.

AFAS 1996 African and Afro-American Studies Elective

Credit 1 unit. EN: H

AFAS 2010 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 EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 2011 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 EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 2022 Black Theatre Workshop

A performance-oriented course that explores the black experience through acting, directing, and playwriting. Students will do short performances during the semester. They will also be required to attend three to five plays. Each student must participate in a final performance which is in lieu of a written final examination.

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

AFAS 2031 Caribbean Identities: An Interdisciplinary Approach

The primary goal of this course is to explore scholarly research and cultural materials dealing with Caribbean identity. We will survey, examine, and discuss issues that bear on Caribbean identities including topics in contemporary language use and policy, literature, music, and other forms of popular media (television, radio, newspapers, etc.) to illustrate how various islands in the Caribbean identify and distinguish themselves from others. The course will focus on theory-based and research oriented information as well as critical essays and popular media that will provide you with knowledge to have an intelligent and informed discussion about issues dealing with Caribbean identities.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC EN: S

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 BU: HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 2050 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 Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S UColl: CD, ML

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 2060 Blackness and the Politics of Recognition in Latin America

In 2015, for the first time in Mexico's history, there was an official count of its population of African descent, thus leaving Chile as the only nation in the hemisphere not have done this. A year prior, Brazil introduced a quota system for all federal jobs, leading to new questions about who qualifies for these positions. These examples and more highlight a new era in Latin America that questions who counts -- both literally as with censuses and figuratively as with affirmative action -- as Afro-descended in a region characterized by racial mixture. In this course, we will analyze the new turn toward racial governance as we grapple with the following questions: How does the racial governance of the 21st century upend or echo the racial governance of the colonial era? How does this new era affect our understanding of race and identity? What is lost and gained by counting people as black? For AFAS majors, this course counts as Area Requirement 4.

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

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 2070 Topics in African American Studies: Native Sons and Daughters Gender & Sexuality of African American

This course will focus on the relationship of race, gender and sexuality in the context of the cultural and political transformations of the two postwar periods, the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, the Sexual Revolution, the war on drugs and the Obama era. The primary focus will be to consider how gender and sexuality inform cultural imaginings and representations of African American experience since WWII. Emphasizing close reading of canonical literature paired with critical representations of blackness in film and visual art we will examine how African American artists employed aesthetic expression for cultural critique of American racism and how fiction served as an arena for advancing a critique of racist injustice and for raising fundamental questions about the concept of race itself. Course content will be guided by the following questions: Why are gender and sexuality important to consider when reading African American cultural texts? How do discourses of gender and sexuality affect the meaning of blackness? How does gender impact racial representation and its political meanings? Finally, what are the cultural impacts of these gendered sexualized and politicized racial representations?

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

AFAS 2081 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 Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

AFAS 2090 African Studies: Mapping Urban Languages and Resistance in Africa

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: HUM, IS EN: H

AFAS 2120 Topics in African Francophone History

This course seeks to demonstrate how the French colonial administration conceptualized empire in West and Central Africa, and further examines how various African populations responded to the politics of language, culture, and assimilation throughout Francophone Africa. Beginning with the Berlin Conference (1884-1885) and an introduction to Senegal, one of France's oldest colonies (1891-1960), this course uses oral historical accounts of African participation in both world wars. It also highlights U.N. imperialism in Central Africa-beginning with the trusteeship of Cameroun, culminating with the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, and subsiding with the Belgian Congo's second independence. It ends with a discussion of topical themes in political science discourse such as democratization, development, globalization, and human rights.

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

AFAS 2140 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 Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S

Typical periods offered: Fall

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

Typical periods offered: Fall

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, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

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 Art: HUM BU: BA, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

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 BU: BA, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 2160 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 Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 2230 The African Diaspora: Black Internationalism Across Time and Space

This course is an introduction to the history of the African diaspora. It will engage the following questions: what constitutes a diaspora and what is the African diaspora in particular? Where is it? What were the conditions that led to the dispersal of Africans throughout the world? How have Africans in the diaspora constructed cultural and political identities across time and space? What were the circumstances that led to the dispersal of Africans? When the dispersal resulted from conditions of inequality, as was the case when the transatlantic slave trade led to the forced migration of Africans to the 'new world,' what were the legacies of that inequality? How has the African presence transformed the societies in question? Though the course will focus on readings from the United States, the Caribbean and South America, students will also be exposed to the African diaspora as a series of dispersals, with a view to placing the African diaspora in the 'new world' within the historic context of a longer history of African dispersal.

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

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 BU: BA, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 2550 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 Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 2750 Quantitative Methods in African and African-American Studies

This course teaches the basic descriptive and inferential statistics used to analyze racial injustices. Specifically, the course will teach descriptive statistics, probability theory, hypothesis testing and confidence intervals, sampling, correlations, simple and multiple regression, and basic model building and testing. All statistical analyses will be conducted using SPSS and Excel.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 2990 Undergraduate TA

Credit 3 units.

AFAS 2995 African and Afro-American Coursework Completed Abroad

Credit 2 units.

AFAS 2996 Quantitative Methods

This course provides students with a basic foundation of quantitative methods and its role in evidence-based decision making in the fields of public health, criminal justice, education, and environmental justice. The course covers statistical principles that govern the analysis of data in social sciences. Included in this course are exploratory data analysis, probability theory, confidence interval testing, hypotheses testing, power and sample size determination, and multivariable methods.

Credit 3 units.

AFAS 2998 Independent Work

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

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

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 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

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 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 3003 From Shaft to Django: The History of Blaxploitation Film

Hollywood was in steep decline in the late 1960's. On the brink of collapse, the film industry was rescued by an unprecedent boom in films that featured Black casts and targeted Black audiences. Narratives of slick-talking hustlers and afro-sporting femme fetales intent on sticking it to the man, these would come to be known as Blaxploitation films. This class will historically contextualize and critically examine the Blaxploitation phenomenon of the 1970's. We will explore what led to the emergence of Blaxploitation, the peaks of its popularity, the controversies that surrounded it, its rapid demise, and its lasting influence. Blaxploitation was a brief, bombastic and highly polarizing era in the history of American film. Heralded by some as a revolution in representations of Black empowerment and by others as pandering to longstanding racial stereotypes. Indeed, it's influence on Black culture stretches beyond the 1970's and into cultural realms beyond the silver screen. While this is primarily a film course emphasizing close readings of canonical Blaxploitation cinema, we also will explore: Blaxploitation soundtracks (i.e., Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes), Black Pulp Fiction novels that inspired the films (i.e., Ernest Tidyman and Sam Greenlee), the aesthetics of Blaxploitation promotion via the Black Film Promotional Material Collection located in the Julian Edison Department of Special Collections, and finally we will consider how Blaxploitation aestheticism influenced subsequent cultural movements like the 1990's renaissance in Black film, Hip-Hop and contemporary satire.

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

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 3006 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 Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, HUM EN: H

AFAS 3009 The Politics of Kanye West: Performances of a Wild Genius

As a hip-hop artist Kanye West has had unprecedented impact on the sonic force of music, fashion, politics, and videography. Coupling his controversial moments, with his corpus of musical texts with special focus on sonic production, this course illuminates Mr. West as a case studey for interrogating the interplay between fame, gender, sexuality, and race. Mostly, we explore how racialized ways of doing iconography, complex ways of seeing, creates a distorted or reductive frame through which we see the black and famous. Nonetheless, the course oscillates with entertaining these nuances, while being entertained by the decade-long catalogue of music and visual imagery. Together, we extract the Politics of Mr. West in his music and life, while also illuminating the importance of a politics of genius-making in the larger arc of black pop culture tradition.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 3014 Black Womens Rhetorics: From Healthcare to Hip Hop

The course will permit an understanding of Black Feminism through the interdisciplinary exploration of Black feminist writings, practices, and expressions. The course will draw from literature, history, linguistics, sociology, political science, and other disciplines in order to critically examine key issues, assumptions, and debates from the perspective of Black women. We will trace the sociohistoric origins of Black Feminist Thought, ultimately attempting to understand contemporary iterations of Black Feminism within popular culture and throughout the African Diaspora. Essentially, this course asks: what kinds of cultural bonds have been created through Black women having a shared racialized and gendered experience? How has Black Feminism been a form of resistance, a kind of technological agency, and a kind of political identity? Furthermore, how have Black women historically articulated their realities to the larger public in an effort to persuade their audience(s) to listen to and value who they are and what they say in the midst of racist, dehumanizing, oppressive structures and institutions?

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

AFAS 3016 African American Politics

Credit 3 units.

AFAS 3035 The Sociology of African-American Politics

While this course includes the insights of political science, history, anthropology, law, and cultural studies, it is based in sociology. If political science can be said to focus on theories of governance and the mechanics of governmental administration, political sociology can be said to focus on the underlying social forces making civic and political thought and action possible, the consequences of political thought and action, the impact of informal civic and political worlds on the state, and power dynamics between and within groups. In this course, we will consider each of these topics across seven sections.

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

AFAS 3040 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 Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H UColl: CD

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 3050 Coming of Age: Coming to Consciousness in Black American Literature, Film, and Music

In this course, we will study the phenomenon of GWB: growing-up while black. To ground this semester-long study, we will explore such questions as the following: To what extent are childhood and adolescence shaped by race? How has the movement from childhood to adulthood been similar and different for black Americans across moments in history? What are the rites of passage in coming of age, and how do the particularities of race, gender, sexuality, and region, among other factors, impact these touchstones of life? Utilizing literature and film as primary texts, we will analyze how the format and methods of our texts construct or disrupt ideas of childhood, adulthood, maturity, consciousness, failure, and success.

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

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

AFAS 3062 Islam, Culture and Society in West Africa

This course will explore the introduction of Islam into West Africa beginning in the 10th Century and explore its expansion and development in the region, placing emphasis on the 19th century to present day. It will focus on the development of West African Muslim cultural, social, religious, and political life, to understand not only how the religion affected societies, but also how West African local societies shaped Islam. The course also aims to introduce students to a critical understanding of Islamic writing in West Africa. It will also examine the organization of Muslim Sufi orders in West Africa through time and space. The course is organized around a series of lectures, readings, as well as print and visual media. For AFAS majors, this course counts as Area Requirement 4.

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

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

AFAS 3070 Topics On Africa: African Urban Futures

Nearly fifty percent of Africa's population now lives in urban areas. By 2050 this number is expected to triple to 1.23 billion or what will then be sixty percent of the continent's total population. This urban growth is happening alongside rapid economic expansion, technological innovations, and-in some cities-political insurrection. Many of these developments are taking place in peripheral urban areas that lack formal planning, basic infrastructure, and security. Yet, as many theorists point out, the very lack of cohesive planning and stable infrastructure in urban Africa has produced flexible spaces where novel forms of dwelling, work, and leisure are possible. Many residents, often by necessity, rearrange their built environments to make the city function beyond the limits of its original design. In the process, urban dwellers produce new built spaces, aesthetics, and economic practices, calling into question assumptions about what a city is and how it works. What are the implications of Africa's urban revolution for both the people who inhabit these cities and the world at large? How will Africa's urban future shape what some theorists are calling the African century? What can contemporary cities across the continent tell us about the future of urban life everywhere? In this seminar, we will explore these questions by surveying a variety of case studies and topics from across the African continent. The purpose in focusing on Africa in general is not to homogenize an incredibly diverse continent, but to make connections across a variety of different contexts in order to explore conceptual debates and assemble a theoretical tool-kit that is useful for grappling with themes that are simultaneously abstract and concrete. For AFAS majors, this course counts as Area Requirement 4.

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

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 3075 Recipes for Respect: Black Foodways in the United States

This course will illustrate the ways that African Americans have interacted with the farmed environment, domestic service, and cookery to gain social mobility and civil rights. At least one site/community/restaurant space in St. Louis exemplary of the issues surrounding Black foodways will be examined as a way to understand food -- its production, its preparation and its distribution -- as expressive culture and a means of social justice.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 3080 Imaging Blackness: Race and Visual Culture in Africa and the African Diasporas

This course examines the relationship between race, nation, and visual culture by interrogating the ways in which citizenship in Western nations is racially defined. Through the semester, we will focus specifically on South Africa and African diaspora communities in the U.S., Britain, Canada, Germany, and the Caribbean. People from Africa and the African diaspora have historically been excluded from the national imaginary and have sought other forms of belonging that challenge the limitations of the nation-state. First, this course examines the role of visual culture in reifying the relationship between race and nation. Collectively through readings, film screenings, and by engaging with other visual arts practices (photography and fine art), we will interrogate the following questions: What is the relationship between early cinema and photography and how have these visual technologies contributed to contemporary understandings of race, particularly blackness and Africanness? What is the relationship between early cinema, race, and nation? How has cinema been used by black communities to signal the emergence of modern black life? How does Africa figure in the African diasporic imaginary through visual art? After establishing the long history of the intimate relationship between race, nation, and visual culture we will then interrogate the manner in which artist of the African diaspora and South Africa have employed the visual technologies of cinema and photography to contest dominant representations (stereotypes) of blackness. We will engage with the manner in which these artists have and continue to challenge, critique, and offer new ways to think through the relationship between race, nation, and visual culture. Throughout the course we will examine how other vectors of power like class, gender, and sexuality are central to formations of race and nation. By engaging with contemporary visual artists of South African and the African diaspora we will examine how cultural production, for example, can and does serve as one means through which people imagine their lives, often resisting and revising forms of oppression to create alternative community and cultural formations.

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

AFAS 3101 Give Up the Mic: Black Feminism in the United States

It is a mistaken, but widely held assumption that Black feminism in the United States emerged from the second wave women's movement of the 1960s. This course offers a different view: the black feminist movement has a long history with roots in the slavery era. This course will chart the historical evolution of black feminist theory and praxis from the 19th century to the present through reading texts from a variety of black feminists including abolitionists, anti-lynching advocates, clubwomen, blues artists, unionists, communists, civil rights and black power movement activists, poets, leaders of formal feminist organizations, and hip hop feminists. We will examine essays and books that articulate the complexity of black American women's demand for social, economic and political equality, as well as the desire for a vision of liberation based on historical and ongoing struggles against race and gender oppression. We will identify the central concerns of black feminist thought, salient theoretical models such as the intersection of race, gender, sexuality and class, and how the movement changed over time.

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

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 BU: BA, HUM EN: H

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 Art: SSC BU: IS EN: S

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

AFAS 3116 Black Home Spaces in the U.S.

What does it mean to be at home? How do home and nation intersect? What are some of the ways African Americans have cultivated home spaces, and within what societal conditions? Using these questions and drawing from literature, geography, black feminism, and film, we will explore home space as a force and factor in shaping black identities in the U.S. As microcosms of cities and the nation, home spaces are structured by the social, economic, political, and historical landscape of a society. As places of individual and communal living and dwelling, home spaces shape and are shaped by people. To study home is necessarily to study nation, family and affective ties, gender, and built space. In the United States, slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, restrictive covenants, and gentrification have targeted and disproportionately affected black lives, communities, and home spaces. In the face of this dehumanization, devaluation, and discrimination, black people have found ways to claim, make, and obtain spaces and senses of home, whether fleeting or permanent, conceptual or concrete. Modes of homemaking serve as a lens through which to ascertain the challenges, triumphs, and banalities of black life in the U.S. throughout history.

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

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 BU: BA, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

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, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

AFAS 3130 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: HUM, IS EN: H UColl: HAF, HSM

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 3140 Urban Inequality: Racism, Segregation, & Ghettoization in the American City

The academic study of urban inequality proceeds from the understanding that: 1) cities are deeply unequal, especially when considered in terms of race and class; 2) rather than being random or natural, urban inequality is the product of human ideas, policies, and practices; and 3) urban inequality has substantial and enduring impacts on city life and life chances, especially for racial minorities and the poor. Echoing these general themes, this course closely examines the causes, development, and consequences of urban inequality in the U.S. context. In order to explore U.S. urban inequality most clearly, the course focuses on the African-American urban experience and what has variously been called the black belt, the inner city, and, most importantly, the ghetto. The scope is still national, though, with analyses of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, D.C., Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans, Oakland, and St. Louis, among other cities. The course primarily draws from sociology and history but also includes insights from anthropology, political science, criminology, and law, among other disciplines.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC Art: CPSC EN: S

AFAS 3160 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

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 3161 African-American Politics

This course examines the historical and contemporary efforts by African Americans to gain full inclusion as citizens in the U.S. political system. The course focuses on topics such as the politics of the civil rights movement; African American political participation; and the tension between racial group politics and class politics.

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

AFAS 3170 Research Materials for African and African American Studies

The goal of this course is to help students develop effective information handling skills for conducting library research in the area of African and African American Studies. Class assignments and projects focus on identifying and evaluating primary and secondary resources using basic library resources, online catalogs from various institutions, journal article databases, and Internet resources. The format of the class will consist of lecture/discussion, demonstrations, and hands-on practice in Olin Library.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

AFAS 3231 Black Power Across Africa & the Diaspora: International Dimensions of the Black Power Movement

This seminar explores the Black Power Movement as an international phenomenon. By situating Black Power within an African World context, this course will examine the advent and intersections of Black Power politics in the United States, parts of Africa (including Ghana, Algeria, Nigeria and Tanzania), the Caribbean (Jamaica, Bermuda, the Bahamas and Cuba), South America (Brazil) and Canada. Particular emphasis will be placed upon unique and contested definitions of Black Power as it was articulated, constructed and enacted in each region.

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

AFAS 3235 The Art of Black Healing: Justice, Repair & Radical Restoration

From the Transatlantic slave trade to chattel slavery and, then, institutionalized racism, Black people have long been subjected to some of the most horrific forms of violence and suffering at the hands of colonization, white supremacy and anti-Black racism. Yet, despite the tremendous pain endured, we continue to generate systems of healing and repair that allow us to reclaim our power and reestablish healthy relationships to ourselves and our communities. In this course, students will engage the spiritual, political, and physical frameworks of healing that Black people deploy as a response to harm and oppression. This course engages the tradition of Black healing and will prioritize the literal application of various healing practices in our time of study by collectively experimenting with new ways of learning,thinking, theorizing, creating, doing and being.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 3240 Topics in Architectural History: African Architecture and Urbanism

This architectural history course examines the built and social environments of select great African cities from 200 BCE to the 21st century. Our case studies will include, among others, Alexandria, Timbuktu, Zimbabwe, and Johannesburg. In addition to considering the varieties of urban expression on the continent itself, we will also look at the impact of the African presence upon cities in the diaspora. Can we identify African contributions to architectural or artistic forms in North America, the Arabian penninsula, or Asia?

Credit 3 units. Art: HUM BU: IS

AFAS 3242 Introduction to African-American Psychology

This course provides an introduction to the experiences of African Americans from a psychological perspective. Throughout the course, we will consider a range of theoretical and methodological approaches that scholars have developed to conceptualize the thoughts, styles, and behaviors of African Americans. The course begins with an overview of these theories, methodologies, and frameworks. The second part of the course is devoted to exploring psychological research around pertinent topics in the field such as racism and discrimination, gender, achievement and schooling, kinship and family, racial identity, religion and spirituality, and mental health. Finally, we conclude the course with discussions of current topics, controversies, and recent advances in African American psychology. Prereq: Intro to Africana Studies.

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

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 Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

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 Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 3260 Zambaje: Afroindigenous Relations in Latin America

What does it mean to be Black and Indigenous in Latin America? What are the relations between Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations? How are the two marginalized groups constructed in relation to each other? This course takes a broad approach to relationships between Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations in Latin America. It begins in the colonial moment, exploring the tensions and solidarities between the two groups of people. It explores Afro-Indigenous populations and their position in the colonial and nationalist moments. It then examines questions of identity, recognition, sovereignty, conflict, and erasure into the present. Some key concepts we will unpack include mixture and separation; competitions and solidarities; slavery and freedom; ethnicity and race; and collective rights.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 3270 For Freedom's Sake: The Civil Rights Movement in America

This course provides an introduction to the period of struggle in American history known as the Civil Rights Movement. Our primary task is to survey the major historical figures, organizations, locations, strategies and ideas that coalesce to make the history of the movement. The course broadly covers the years of the Black Freedom Struggle between 1945 and 1971, with a sharper focus on the pivotal years of 1954-1965. By placing the movement within a broader context, the course seeks to identify the historical developments and social realities that made the movement necessary and possible. The class also looks at the years following the movement, and the general transition from Civil Rights to Black Power.

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

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 3280 Masculinity and 20th-Century African-American Literature

This seminar considers how literature, from the Great Migration through our contemporary moment, represents and complicates myths of Blackness as a repository of masculine virility and patriarchal incapacity. Through close readings of canonical African-American literature by the likes of Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, and John Edgar Wideman, this course will critically (re)define the keywords blackness and masculinity and consider the terms and implications of their interrelatedness. Working from the foundational claim that masculinity is never an established fact but rather socially constructed upon a fickle node of ceaseless anxiety and brash assertion, literature will serve as a critical site to pursue the following inquires: How does Blackness impact broader meanings of American masculinity? Further, how does Blackness both threaten and fortify masculinity? Finally, how does centering the relationship between Blackness and masculinity assist in thinking through themes of gender, race and sexuality more broadly?

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

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

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

AFAS 3290 James Baldwin: Life, Letters & Legacy

In his 1972 essay No Name in the Street, James Baldwin recounts that he could never in good conscience just write, because he had never been just a writer. Indeed, Baldwin saw himself as a public witness to the situation of black people, compelled to speak truth to power in whatever form he deemed necessary. Baldwin -- as Black, gay, man, American, author, activist, and so much more -- has served as an essential figure in theorizing alterities of the presumed rigidity of these very concepts. In this respect, this course will center Baldwin the thinker as much as Baldwin the author. We will examine his classic novels and essays as well as his work across many less-examined domains: theatre, sermon, dialogue, film, and short story. Moreover, while committing ourselves to close reading methods, we will situate Baldwin's works within the sociohistorical context and consider how he shaped and was shaped by events, beginning with the Civil Rights Era through our precarious contemporary moment in which he remains -- often tragically -- a timely voice.

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

Typical periods offered: Fall, Summer

AFAS 3310 Sabotage and Anarchy: The Study of Power, Mourning, and Resistance in Black Girlhood

In this course, we will inquire, rupture, and cultivate an interdisciplinary understanding of Black girlhood in the context of the United States. We will theoretically build a grammar around how the coming-of-age experience of Black girls, starting in the 19th century, is central to how structural violence, exclusion, and neglect shape the lives of Black children. We will study age as a social construct within institutions of care, schooling, and incarceration. We will also consider the different creative mediums of knowledge production to elucidate themes of girlhood in poetry, nonfiction, social science, and creative memoir.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 3320 Visualizing Blackness: Histories of the African Diaspora Through Film

The African Diaspora and more importantly variations of blackness, black bodies, and black culture have long captured the imagination of audiences across the globe. Taking a cue from exciting trends in popular culture, this course bridges the world of history, film, and culture to explore where and how historical themes specific to African descended peoples are generated on screen (film and television). Fusing the film world with digital media (ie. online series and webisodes) this class will allow students to critically engage diasporic narratives of blackness that emerge in popular and independent films not only from the United States but other important locales including Australia, Brazil, Britain, and Canada. Moving across time and space, class discussions will center an array of fascinating yet critical themes including racial/ethnic stereotyping, gender, violence, sexuality, spirituality/conjuring, and education.

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

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

AFAS 3330 Beats, Rhymes & Life: A Cultural History of Hip-Hop

Once thought of as a fleeting local fad set against the backdrop of New York's decaying 1970s landscape, hip-hop has since grown into a global phenomenon. After strong-arming a place at the center of American popular culture, hip-hop quickly found an international resonance that allowed it to be adapted and (re)mixed around the world. This course offers a cultural history of hip-hop music in America. It begins in hip-hop's earliest days, when a small number of local DJs borrowed from transnational music technologies to provide the soundscape for park jams in the South Bronx. It then traces the subsequent emergence of graffiti artists, breakers and b-boys, and the eventual rise of the MC as the central iconic figure of the music. Taking students on a trip through music, the course will scrutinize lyrics, interrogate the art of beat-making, and highlight important cultural turns in history. We will examine the contours of key representative careers, canonical albums, and pivotal debates, and we will unpack the histories of key institutions, including important nightclubs, sound studios, record labels, and radio stations. In addition, we will also discuss hip-hop's influence on fashion, sports and other sectors of the global economy. Over the course of the semester, students will engage with a wide array of traditional and multimedia sources, including articles, books, interviews, magazines, music (individual songs and full albums), films, music videos, lyrics, and photography. By the end of the course, students will walk away with a working knowledge of the shifting sound, vocabulary and aesthetics of hip-hop music as it has developed across America.

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

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

AFAS 3361 Slavery, Race, and Revolution in the Atlantic World

Credit 3 units.

AFAS 3375 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 Art: SSC BU: BA, IS EN: S

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 3380 (Re)writing Slavery

This special topics course will consider black-authored texts ranging from the 18th to the 21st century to examine the ways slavery has been discussed in American literature and culture. We will pay attention to the role of slavery in creating the African diaspora, the contribution of slave narratives to the Abolitionist movement, and how the structures of American slavery did not disappear after the Civil War. We will look at the ways Civil Rights-era and contemporary African American writers such as Margaret Walker, Toni Morrison, and Charles Johnson have appropriated the slave narrative to engage and critique present day concerns. Their works will be read against nineteenth century slave narratives by ex-slaves such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. In addition to the texts, students will be asked to consider how slavery and its aftereffects have been portrayed in film and other forms of media.

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

AFAS 3385 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 Art: SSC EN: S

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 3390 Senegal: History, Politics and Culture

This course will study the history of Senegal in the modern period, beginning withthe formation by French traders and Lebou/Wolof women of the Four Communes. It will then explore Senegal's unique position as the founding place of two major Islamic brotherhoods and the legacy of French assimilation polity. As the course moves into the contemporary period, it will give some attention to the Senegalese Diaspora, particularly in large urban centers such as New York, Detroit, Paris, and Milan. It will explore themes of caste, colonialism, assimilation and identity, negritude, Islam, gender relations, the 1960's arts movement, and the cultural life of Dakar, a major center of Francophone African culture. There will be an emphasis on the relationship between Islam and politics in contemporary society. THIS COURSE IS DESIGNED FOR STUDENTS PARTICIPATING IN THE DAKAR SUMMER PROGRAM IN FRENCH AND AFRICAN STUDIES.

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

Typical periods offered: Summer

AFAS 3400 Youth, Generation, and Age in Africa

It is estimated that children and youth constitute more than 60 percent of the population in Africa. In a context of economic decline associated with neoliberal policies of structural adjustment, many of these young people will face extreme difficulty in finding work, supporting families, and taking on the social responsibilities of adults. In recent years, disaffected African youth have been increasingly blamed for political and social instability. This course examines the condition of youth in contemporary Africa. The course begins with classic anthropological texts on generation, youth, and the life cycle in Africa. Readings will address the implications of colonialism, education, wage labor, and urbanization for relations between generations. The second half of the course will examine recent research concerning the position of African youth in a context of economic and cultural globalization.

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

AFAS 3410 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 Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 3440 Modern Black Women Writers

This course examines modern black women's writing including works by Zora Neale Hurston, Paule Marshall, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison and Adrienne Kennedy.

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

AFAS 3451 Topics in African-American Literature:

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 Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 3460 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

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 3503 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

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 3540 Seminar in African Studies: Women in Africa

This seminar examines the history of women and gender in Africa. Students examine the themes of slavery, economic participation, prophetic movements, and circumcision as they dialogue with changes affecting Africa such as growth of trade, religious conversion, colonialism, market economy, the fight for independence, and creating national cultures.

Credit 3 units. Arch: HUM Art: SSC BU: IS

AFAS 3542 The Quest for Racial Reconciliation

This course is based within African and African American studies, and it explores the quest for racial reconciliation, with emphasis equally divided between the United States and racial strife in other parts of the world. Although racial considerations are inherent to central themes within this course, we explore various sources of linguistic, cultural, social, political, racial, and ethnic foundations of strife at different points in history, and in different regions of the world. Particular attention will be devoted to nonpartisan strategies to advance racial harmony within the United States, and other regions of the world that are of personal interest to students.

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

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 BU: HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 3591 Topics in African American History: Black Nationalism in the 19th Century

Black Nationalism in the 19th Century. This course introduction provides an overview of the genesis of African Americaness, historiography, and other underpinnings of such traditions. It will investigate how nation and community were defined in the 19th century, when and by whom; regional variations; gender perspective; religions influences; and Pan-Africanism.

Credit 3 units. Art: HUM BU: BA

AFAS 3601 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. Additionally, the Caribbean will be considered in a multilayered way with a view to investigating the local (actors within national boundaries), the regional (historical events that have rendered the region a unit of analysis) and the global (larger globalizing forces such as capitalism, colonialism, migration and slavery that have made the Caribbean central to world history).

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

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, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

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 Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

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

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

AFAS 3751 Resting in Power: Black Cemeteries and Unearthing Narratives of the Past

This course leverages the recent enactment of the African American Burial Grounds Preservation Act in December 2022 as a gateway to exploring the profound historical significance of Black cemeteries across the United States. Students will investigate the development and preservation of Black cemeteries. They will trace historical shifts in Black cemeteries-including the legacy of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and the Civil Rights Movement and the present. General course themes include cemeteries as reflections of African American life, death, and resistance in the face of systemic racism and segregation. Through case studies of prominent Black cemeteries both in St. Louis and nationally, students will explore how these sites have served as places of mourning, celebration, and community organization, as well as how they have been impacted by urban development, neglect, and efforts at preservation. Course readings will expose students to how scholars use the stories of individuals and communities buried in these cemeteries, highlighting the ways in which Black cemeteries provide a counter-narrative to mainstream historical accounts and offering insights into the lived experiences, spiritual practices, and cultural expressions of African Americans across centuries. Students will also engage with contemporary discussions on the preservation and restoration of these cemeteries, understanding their significance not only as historical sites but as ongoing symbols of cultural identity and heritage. While St. Louis is the focal point and setting for the class, this course will equip students with tools for understanding cemeteries as not only places of death and mourning but also of Black commemoration and memory-making.

Credit 4 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC BU: HUM

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 3752 Topics in Women's History: African-American Women

An analysis of how African American women have defined their roles in American life and within the black community: attaining literacy, the push for suffrage, anti-slavery and colonization efforts, class stratification and the Cult of Domesticity, the Civil War and reconstruction, migration and the impact of urbanization, religious attitudes, political activism and elective office, sexuality and the myth of the Black Matriarch. Prerequisites: at least 1 course in American history, women's history or African American history and permission of the instructor.

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

AFAS 3800 Black Cinema: An Introduction

This course introduces students to the films and filmmaking practices from West Africa, South Africa, and Black Britain. Central to the pedagogical goals of this class is to introduce students to the diverse societies, cultures, and perspective of people from Africa and the diaspora through cinema. Students will immerse themselves in the types of social critiques the films engage in as they tackle topics such as gender politics, race, polygamy, migration, corruption, human rights, homosexuality, economic crisis, apartheid, and Westernization. Through critical analysis of films, academic readings, and participating in the annual African Film Festival hosted at Washington University this course will fulfill the requirements set out above. Even though four weeks of the course focuses on Black British Cinema and the social, political, and economic condition of black British citizens, students will engage with the complexities of the African diaspora experience, particularly in relationship to migration, diaspora, race relations, and gender and sexuality. Given that the course as a whole focuses on filmmaking practices, aesthetics and the politics of African and African diasporic cinemas, students will definitely be exposed to a totally different world experience and the diversity of people, cultures, and aesthetics in Africa and the diaspora. Student in this class will also be required to actively participate in the annual African Film Festival hosted by Washington University and will have the unique opportunity to interact with visiting filmmakers. Required screening Thursday at 5pm. Required screening Thursdays at 5pm.

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

AFAS 3880 Terror and Violence in the Black Atlantic

From the period of bondage through the 21st century, terror and racialized violence have consistently been used as a form of social control. This course is constructed to explore the historical foundations of extreme threats of violence inflicted among populations of African descent. The fabric of American culture has given birth to its own unique brand of terrorism, of which this class spends considerable time interrogating. Yet, in recognizing that these practices are commonly found in other parts of the Black Atlantic, students will be encouraged to take a comparative view to better tease out the wider strands of violence operative in places like England, the Caribbean, and Latin America Within this course, we will explore the varied ways in which music, films, newspapers, and historical narratives shed light on these often life altering stories of the past. Some of the themes touched upon include: the use of punishment/exploitation during the era of slavery; lynching; sexual violence; race riots; police brutality; motherhood; black power; and community activism.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

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 BU: BA, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 3995 African & Afro-American Coursework Completed Abroad

Credit 12 units.

AFAS 3996 African and Afro-American Studies Elective

Credit 3 units. EN: H

AFAS 4007 Research Methods in African & African-American Studies

What is research? How does one go about conducting research? How have scholars conducted research on the experiences of people of Africa and the African Diaspora? As a field/discipline that has been interdisciplinary from its inception, African and African-American Studies has always utilized a variety of research methods to study and understand the experiences of people of Africa and the African Diaspora. This course is designed to introduce students to the various methods of conducting research in the field/discipline. It also explores the ways that power, race, and ethnicity have shaped the construction of knowledge as it relates to African descendants. Organized specifically for AFAS majors, the course is designed to provide students with the basic tools to conduct independent research, while reflecting on African and African-American Studies as a unique area of inquiry. Students enrolled in this course are required to have already completed AFAS 255 (Introduction to Africana Studies) as a prerequisite.

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

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 4009 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 BU: BA, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

AFAS 4030 Sexual Health and the City: A Studiolab Course Course On the Politics of Reproduction

This StudioLab course creates an engaged space for students to learn about and develop projects with a community agency around the topic of the politics of reproduction. The politics of reproduction refers to the intersection between politics, gender, race, and reproduction. As a StudioLab course, student teams will partner with a St. Louis reproductive and sexual health agency to explore how agencies, communities, and individuals have been affected, adjusted, and reimagine strategies to allow men and women to pursue their reproductive agency and desires. Students will use an interdisciplinary approach to understand historical, medical, legal, racialized, and sociocultural issues surrounding reproductive choice, regulation of choice, abortion, pregnancy, sex education, new reproductive technologies, and reproductive justice movements. We consider the state's regulation of biological and social reproduction wherein increasing governance of private life, intimacy, and sexuality suggests the blurring of boundaries between public and private interests. Students will also examine the complex relationship between men's and women's life goals and constraints, on the one hand, and politics and public health management of sexual and reproductive health, on the other. In collaboration with their community partner, students will develop a project that addresses an identified need of the organization and the community it serves. Course readings will draw from the fields of history, legal studies, public health, feminist studies, Black Studies, policy, and anthropology.

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

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

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

AFAS 4040 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, WI Art: SSC EN: S

Typical periods offered: Spring

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

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

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

AFAS 4044 Intermediate Graduate Level Swahili IV

Fourth semester Swahili language course emphasizes the development of the ability to discuss a wide range of cultural and literary topics. These topics are introduced by reading intermediate-level, authentic texts in the language. Grammar will be reviewed through these texts. PREREQUISITE, Swahili 4041, 4042, 4043 or permission of instructor.

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

AFAS 4070 Power and Hierarchy in Pre-Colonial Africa

Africa in the pre-colonial period was the birthplace of numerous early civilizations. This course will draw from classic and contemporary approaches to the evolution of social complexity to explore how and why such societies emerged. Focusing on the period prior to the 19th century, participants will examine the nature of such societies and common factors leading to their evolution. Attention will also be directed towards understanding variability in African complex societies, as well as factors inhibiting the development of stable political hierarchies in some regions. Examples will be drawn from ethnographic, historical and archaeological sources where relevant. A previous introductory course in Anthropology, African Studies, or African History is recommended.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC EN: S

AFAS 4090 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, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 4102 Rastafari, Reggae, and Resistance

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4104 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 BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

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 BU: BA, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4120 Topics in Afro-American Literature: Sisters and Brothers of the Spirit

This upper level course in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century African-American spiritual autobiography explores the race, class, and gendered perspectives from which early black spiritual autobiographers wrote. We will examine the significant differences and similarities between nineteenth-century spiritual autobiographers and their eighteen-century predecessors. Authors covered will include: James Albert Gronniosaw, John Marrant, Olaudah Equiano, Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, Julia A. Foote, and Maria Stewart. Prereqs: Junior or Seniors or permission of instructor. 3 units.

Credit 3 units. Art: HUM

AFAS 4121 Rainbow Radicalisms!: Ethnic Nationalism(s), the 1960s and the Politics of the New Left

The Black Panther Party remains one of the most iconic groups of the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps one of the most understudied aspects of the Panther's legacy is their radical influence upon other American racial and ethnic groups, including Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and American Indians, among others. This seminar will consider the emergence of ethnic and racial nationalism among these various groups, as a result of their contact and relationship(s) with the Black Panther Party. Considering the politics of groups like the Red Guard, the Brown Berets, the Young Lords and the American Indian Movement, this course will chart the rise and fall of rainbow radicalism as a general offspring of the Black Power Movement and part and parcel of what is commonly referred to as the New Left. It will also consider these groups in relation to the State by probing the dynamic push and pull between repression and democracy. Ultimately, this course will grant insight into the contemporary racial domain and current political landscape of America as we discuss how these groups helped to shape modern identity formations, discourses on multiculturalism and definitions of minority, diversity, and equality.

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

AFAS 4140 The Age of Integration: African American Life and Culture

We will examine African American life and culture from June 1950 (the start of the Korean War) to May 1954 when the Brown decision to desegregate public schools was announced. We will look at some of the major writers to emerge at this time including Baldwin, Ellison, and Brooks, as well as revisit a writer who had huge success earlier, Richard Wright. We will examine African American life and culture against the background of the Cold War (the Korean War introduced the principle of integrated American armed services and it was our first anti-communist war) and against the background of popular culture (a new wave of black athletes were emerging including Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and others who followed Jackie Robinson to the majors, as well as Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston). We will look briefly at the career of Miles Davis. UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS ONLY.

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

AFAS 4150 Islam, Transnationalism and the African Diaspora

This course is designed for students who are interested in religion among African immigrants and African diaspora communities living mostly, but not exclusively, in Europe and North America - especially during waves of migration to the Americas. We begin in the days of the transatlantic slave trade, where we will examine how interactions, bricolage, and influences of Christianity, Judaism, African indigenous religions, and Islam have impacted the African Diaspora living in the Americas. We will equally examine how Islam served as a means of resistance to slavery and provided a spiritual connection with the motherland.

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

AFAS 4160 Engineering Authority: Design, Architecture, and Power in Africa

Do water meters have politics? Can architects manufacture consent for political repression or engage in activism? What happens when designed systems fail? Design is everywhere. It is in the water you drink; it is in the built material and digital spaces you hang out in; and it is in the chair you are sitting in. And yet, perhaps because of its ubiquity, design receives very little attention from scholars in the humanities and even less from African studies. In this course, we will examine a number of case studies, from minor architectures and ruins in Monrovia to hydraulic engineering in Johannesburg and iconic architecture in Casablanca to DIY market spaces in Nairobi and insurgent public space-making in Kinshasa. We will explore the ways that designers, architects, and technocrats engineer authority and how (sometimes) urban residents take it apart. One potential definition (among many other potential definitions) of design could be the following: the practices that humans employ to arrange, engineer, plan and fashion their material, digital, and social environments. But designs are also artifacts -- master plans, prototypes, and brands -- that occupy social lives independent of their assigned functions. Design is often about aspirations for a better world and finding technological and aesthetic solutions to social problems. Yet the products of design -- from zoning codes and service delivery networks to iconic built structures -- seem to always invite failures, disruptions, hackings, and ruination. A central argument in this course is that understanding design is also key to understanding power, inequality, and insurgency in Africa. We will draw our texts and case studies from places that are normally left off the map of design studies -- African cities and towns -- and explore the applicability of these theories to St. Louis.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC Art: CPSC, SSC, VC BU: BA EN: S

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

AFAS 4180 Ebony & Ivory Towers: Black Experiences With the American University

Black people in America have historically held a deep reverence for education. Whether formal or informal, they have understood education to be brimming with great power, promise and possibilities. These beliefs have not only caused them to establish an array of educational institutions, but they also lay at the very core of what some scholars have referred to as the Black educational tradition. At the same time, the inequalities of America have often caused Black people to develop a deeply fraught relationship with educational institutions; they are often denied access, marginalized or exploited once inside, or subject to the will of what at times can feel like incredibly influential yet distant silos occupying prime space in a given community. This course explores the many ways Black people have engaged with the American university/college. Its starts by interrogating the intertwined histories of the institution of American slavery and the establishment of American higher education institutions. It then looks at the establishment of historically Black colleges and universities just before, but mostly after, the Civil War. Within this early period, the course will introduce students to American discourses about race (particularly Black and white identities), education, and aptitude. It then shifts to the 1920s and 1960s: two historic moments when Black students (and Black people, more generally) sought to rethink the meaning and mission of the American university. Keeping Black experiences at the center, the course will then delve into more contemporary questions confronting the American university, including issues of institutional diversity, student debt, (in)visible labor, the racial economy of collegiate sports, university-community relations, and the business of higher education.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4210 Topics in African American Literature: Stars of the Canon

The recent passing of the Nobel Prize winning Toni Morrison offers an opportunity to celebrate her work along with that of others that have similarly, if not quite as monumentally, left an impact on the literary universe. This class will offer a deep dive into a quartet of Black authors whose literary achievements build on and out from one another. Whether Morrison or Audre Lorde, Ernest Gaines or Colson Whitehead, these four writers have shaped and will continue to shape U.S. writing in the century ahead. Prerequisite: the ability and willingness to put in long hours of reading weekly, as up to twelve complete texts may be assigned; written assignments will probably include at least one short and one seminar-length essay. Familiarity with African American history and upper division courses in literature is strongly suggested although not required.

Credit 3 units. Arch: HUM Art: HUM

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4211 Race and Ethnicity in American Politics

This seminar discusses the continuing importance of race and ethnicity in American politics and the politics of racial minority groups in America. It examines the disadvantage minorities have in the American political structure including problems with political participation. It also examines how the structure and functions of the branches of government and its bureaucracy affect the aspirations of minorities. The role of pressure groups on political structure will be discussed. Additional discussion will focus on urban politics and tensions.

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

AFAS 4213 Sufism and Islamic Brotherhoods in Africa

Muslim societies are prevalent in Africa-from the Horn, the North, the East to the West, with smaller conclaves in Central and South Africa. Islam has played an influential role in these diverse societies, particularly through its Sufi form. Even though Sufism originated in the Arabian Peninsula, it has fit well with African beliefs and cultures. This course aims to explore Sufi beliefs, values, and practices in Africa. It intends to reconsider the academic constructions of African Islam by exploring education, intellectual life, economics, gender roles, social inequalities, and politics. The goal is to show that Africa is a dynamic part of the Muslim world and not a peripheral one, as it is most often portrayed by the international media or historically, through travelers and colonial accounts. African Muslim brotherhoods have served as political mediators between countries and people (i.e. the role of the Tijaniyya in the diplomatic rivalry between Morocco and Algeria, or its role in reconciliation of clanic rivalries in Sudan). In addition, the course will pay attention to hierarchy in particular tariqa. Finally, the course will examine how African Sufi orders have shaped their teachings to fit transnational demands over the 20th and 21st century. We will explore these issues through readings, current media, lectures and special guest speakers.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

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 BU: BA, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4225 Black Cultural Currents: New Conversations in Media & Popular Culture

This course will primarily use contemporary issues and ideas to explore how Blackness is expressed, complicated, and theorized in everyday media, viral videos and memes, and popular music and art. Being attentive to relevant questions within the study of Black culture, we will develop new considerations, explore alternative approaches to reading Blackness, and ponder the trends in Black cultural production.

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

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 4236 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 BU: BA, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4250 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 Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S UColl: ACS, SSC

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 4270 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, HUM, IS

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4280 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, HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4290 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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4310 Fieldwork in African-American Studies

A fieldwork project carried out under the direction of an instructor in the African and African American Studies program. Prerequisites: Permission of instructor and the Director of African and African American Studies prior to enrollment. See Program office for forms.

Credit 6 units. A&S IQ: SSC EN: S

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 4320 Advanced Seminar: A Long Road to Uhuru and Nation: The Social History of Modern Kenya

This seminar challenges the popular western view that the African continent is a single place and that Africans are homogenous or inherently tribal. Focusing on the lived experiences of imperial rule, the struggle for independence, and the process of nation building, it explores the development of an African country. The seminar focuses on how common men, women, and adolescents wrestled with the problem of turning a colony into the modern Kenyan nation. Admission to the seminar requires permission of the instructor and at least one previous upper level course in African history.

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

AFAS 4340 Seminar in Black Social Sciences

This seminar applies a deep reading to social science texts that examine the construction and experiences of black people in the United States from the point of view of black scholars. Readings include theoretical and empirical work. The seminar focuses on the influence of the disciplines of psychology, sociology, and anthropology on the policy and social practices that characterize dominant North American institutions. Advanced class level strongly advised.

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

AFAS 4350 Theorizing Blackness: A Genealogy of Radical Thought in the Black World

What are the discursive histories and futures of blackness? Taking as its point of departure this question, this advanced-level course sets out to investigate the genealogies of black critical studies and their theoretical implications on how we talk about race, gender, nationality, and political resistance. We will explore such topics as the formation of racism and blackness, the cartographies of black resistance, Afropessimism, and the critiques of historical constructions of blackness as an analytic of history. Our interlocutors include such central figures to black studies as Sylvia Wynter, Frantz Fanon, Lewis Gordon, Saidiya Hartman et al, but also more recent scholarship that aims to further complicate our study of blackness - Zakiyyah Jackson, Kevin Quashie, and others.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4402 Intersectionality

This course explores and engages the intellectual and political genealogies of intersectionality, a theory, analytic, framework, metaphor, and approach primarily employed by Black feminists and other feminists of color. We will examine intersectionality as a theoretical framework with attendant analytics, as well as the socio/political projects out of which it emerges and influences. In so doing, the scholarly materials in this course, primarily, examine the ways in which structures and categories of race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability create and maintain intersecting forms and experiences of difference that underpin overlapping social inequalities in U.S. society and abroad. Some of the other intersecting forms of social difference we will explore include, ethnicity, nation/migration, class, ability/disability, and indigeneity, reproduction, and HIV/disease status. Our approach to examining these categories/vectors of power will include feminisms of color, critical race theory/studies, queer theory/studies, queer of color critique, transgender theory/studies, and critical geography, all of which have shaped and been shaped by intersectionality.

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

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

AFAS 4433 Whos Afraid of Post-Blackness?: The Spectrum & Specter of Blackness in Post-Racial America

In 2001, Thelma Golden, the Director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, boldly claimed that a new generation of African Diasporic artists had officially heralded a new day in post-black art. Six years later a young presidential candidate, born from a White mother from Kansas and a Kenyan father, motivated a Black writer for Time magazine to ask, Is Obama Black enough? Since 2001, and in the wake of America's first Black president, both public and scholarly discourse on Blackness has virtually exploded. New terms and ideas about the end of Blackness-as conservative Debra Dickerson put it-seem to enter the popular and scholarly lexicon everyday. It is now quite common to hear the phrases disintegration, post-racial, biracial, post-Blackness, and even the end of Black politics. This course will explore this expanding discourse and attempt to pinpoint what scholars, pundits and cultural critics mean when they employ these terms. It will also unpack the socio-historical context that has given birth to these terms, asking why now? Has the social and political landscape of America changed so much that we are indeed living in a post-racial society? Or does the specter of Blackness still loom large, haunting American politics, popular culture, sexuality, media discourse, punitive measures, political economy and our understanding of Africa in African-American and African diaspora? Through the use of fictional texts, history, cultural essays and films this course will explore the intra-racial spectrum that characterizes Black America, while paying particular attention to issues of class, sexuality, ethnicity, ancestry, diaspora formation and global migration

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

AFAS 4465 Black Life and the Law

This course examines the intersection of U.S. law and Black life, exploring how legal frameworks and systems have shaped, and been shaped by, the experiences of Black people and communities historically as well as in the contemporary context. Through a combination of historical analysis, theoretical inquiry, and legal case studies, students will investigate the role of law in reinforcing, challenging, and complicating racial inequalities and injustices. Understanding the intersection of law and Black life is increasingly vital in today's socio-political climate. This course highlights the urgent need to examine how Black life is shaped and constrained by legal frameworks and policies that not only reinforce systemic racism but that give rise to Black resistance, social movements, and political strategies. It provides historical context to understand how systemic racism's legacy affects Black communities today, empowers students to advocate for equitable reforms, and fosters informed citizenship by enhancing understanding of legal processes. It also explores the intersectionality of law with various aspects of identity, sharpens critical thinking skills, and encourages dialogue and collaboration across communities. This course is taught by law students under the supervision of School of Law faculty, Adrienne Davis.

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4482 Topics in American Politics

With a decided emphasis on field work, this seminar addresses questions like: How did urban African American politicos operate in the era before there were black elected officials? How did they make their demands heard? Did methods vary between cities? Did a city's formal structure make a difference in the political socialization of emerging African American urban political elites? Prerequisites: Junior standing, 3 upper-level Political Science courses and some upper level of AFAS courses and permission of instructor.

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

AFAS 4501 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 BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4511 Race, Ethnicity, and Culture: Critical Qualitative Understandings of Urban Education

This course examines educational institutions as spaces where children are asked to comply to the norms, expectations, and values of the culture of power. We will study how forces -- such as de facto segregation, the disproportionate hyper-disciplining of students, punitive school climates, and the devaluing of certain forms of cultural and social capital -- can contribute to cycles of social reproduction among the marginalized. To address such challenges, this course introduces sociocultural theories and critical qualitative inquiry methods as mechanisms by which urban educational institutions can be positively transformed. Specifically, restorative practices, cogenerative dialogues, and participatory/co-researcher models are explored as methods that honor the voices of marginalized stakeholders and lead to catalytic, transformational impact. Leaving this course, students will have an understanding of the inequitable terrain of urban education institutions as well as a repertoire of theories and methods to assist with the conducting of critically grounded, culturally responsive, humane, and transformative research. In addition to lectures, readings, discussions, films, and actual classroom footage, students will conduct a school experience project to practice using the theories and methods introduced in this course.

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

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 Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

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

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4609 Prevention of Youth Violence Among African American Youth

This course explores youth violence development, major trends, protective and risk factors, violence as a public health problem, and models/programs for prevention of violence among African American youth. The course includes discussions of youth bullying, gangs, and delinquency as related to adolescent development issues. A framework for community action family involvement, and school intervention strategies will be explored.

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

AFAS 4610 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 BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

AFAS 4656 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 EN: S

AFAS 4711 Mourning in Haitian Literature

The Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales defines a reposoir as an altar adorned with flowers and ornate foliage erected during a funeral procession onto which a priest places the holy sacrament in a moment of rest. In Haitian Creole, arepozwa can refer to a person who provides safe harbor; it can refer to an archive or a repository; it can also designate a resting place where the remains of a person and the memories associated with them lie in repose. In this course, we will examine how Haitian literature - memoirs, novels, poetry, and theater - acts as a repozwa in all of its valences and how it can assist those left behind in the process of mourning. Taught in French.

Credit 3 units.

AFAS 4755 Queering Sexual Cultures in Africa and the Diaspora

This course examines gender and sexuality in contemporary Africa and the diaspora. We will focus specifically on queerness as a category of analysis and will examine queer identities, practices, communities, and cultures in Africa and the African diaspora. In recent years, many African countries have adopted harsh anti-homosexuality laws and much of the political and popular discourse frames expressions of same-sex desire as un-African.'' However, there is a long history of non-normative sexualities in Africa, challenging the manner in which the continent is constructed as heterosexual by both local and global forces. Similarly, black communities across the African diaspora have relied on the regulation of gender and sexuality to demarcate the boundaries of blackness, and have traditionally sought belongingness to the nation through compulsory heterosexuality. Many scholars, artists, and activists in the African diaspora continue to critique parochial definitions of Africanness and Blackness that rely on the exclusion of queer subjects. By drawing on historical, theoretical, and visual texts, we will examine the debates concerning sexuality, citizenship, and human rights on the African continent and the diaspora as well as their relationship to global issues around sexual citizenship and human rights. By focusing on the lived experiences of LGBTQ subjects in the African diaspora, we will interrogate the contested relationship between sexuality and politics. This reading intensive, interdisciplinary course will familiarize students with the debates and issues of Queer African Studies, Black Queer Studies, and Black and African Feminist Thought.

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

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 BU: BA, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

AFAS 4995 African and Afro-American Coursework Completed Abroad

Credit 0 units.

AFAS 4996 African and Afro-American Studies Elective

Credit 4 units. EN: H

AFAS 4997 Independent Work for Senior Honors: Thesis

Prerequisite: Satisfactory standing as a candidate for senior honors and permission of the Director of the African and African American Studies Program.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

AFAS 4999 Independent Study

Permission of the Director of the African and African American Studies Program and an African American Studies instructor PRIOR TO registering.

Credit 6 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring