Apr 18, 2024

Catalogue 2019-2020

Catalogue 2019-2020 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Africana Studies Program

Director: Tyrone Simpson;

Steering Committee: Tagreed Al-Haddad (Africana Studies), Patricia-Pia Célérier^a (French and Francophone Studies), Diane Harriford (Sociology), Jonathon Kahn (Religion), Candice M. Lowe Swift (Anthropology), Zachariah Cherian Mampilly^a (Political Science), Mia Mask (Film), Taneisha Means (Political Science), Mootacem Mhiri (Africana Studies), Quincy T. Mills^ab (History), Samson Okoth Opondo(Political Science), Tyrone Simpson, II (English), Jasmine Syedullah (Africana Studies), Kirsten Wesselhoeft (Religion);

Participating Faculty: Carlos Alamo (Sociology), Lisa Gail Collins (Art), Eve Dunbar^b (English), Luke C. Harris (Political Science), Eileen Leonard (Sociology), Erin McCloskey^ab (Education), Lisa Paravisini-Gebert (Hispanic Studies), Hiram Perez (English), Jasmine Syedullah (Africana Studies), Eva Woods Peiró^b (Hispanic Studies).

^a On leave 2019/20, first semester

^bOn leave 2019/20, second semester

^abOn leave 2019/20

Founded in 1969 out of student protest and political upheaval, the Africana Studies Program continues its commitment to social change and the examination and creation of new knowledge. The Africana Studies Program brings together scholars and scholarship from many fields of study and draws on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to explore the cultures, histories, institutions, and societies of African and African-descended people. Program strengths include: education and activism; literature; feminism; political thought; Arabic language and culture; critical race theory; queer studies; prison studies; visual culture; creative writing; social, cultural, and political movements; and popular culture.

Advisers: Program director and program faculty.

Programs

Major

• Africana Studies Major

Correlate Sequences in Africana Studies

The Africana Studies Program offers three correlate sequences.

Courses

Africana Studies: I. Introductory

AFRS 100 - Introduction to Africana Studies
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
What is Africana Studies? This course proposes an overview of the field of Africana Studies, emphasizing the historical and cultural connections between Africa and its global diasporas. It covers subjects and themes drawing from disciplinary traditions within the humanities and the social sciences. Articulated on distinct geographical spaces and historical time periods, it focuses on the activities of African peoples and their descendants around the world. Topics include: colonialism, slavery, nationalism and transnationalism, civil and human rights, conflict, and culture. The particular subjects and themes explored vary with each faculty teaching the course. Tyrone Simpson.

Prerequisite(s): The course is required for all majors and correlates.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 101 - Martin Luther King Jr.

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 101 ) This course examines the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. We immediately rethink the image of King who liberals and conservatives construct as a dreamer of better race relations. We engage the complexities of an individual, who articulated a moral compass of the nation, to explore racial justice in post-World War II America. This course gives special attention to King’s post-1965 radicalism when he called for a reordering of American society, an end to the war in Vietnam, and supported sanitation workers striking for better wages and working conditions. Topics include King’s notion of the “beloved community”, the Social Gospel, liberalism, “socially conscious democracy”, militancy, the politics of martyrdom, poverty and racial justice, and compensatory treatment. Primary sources form the core of our readings. Quincy Mills.

Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.

Would you like to see a more just and humane world? The SJQ courses engage you from the very start of your Vassar studies in thinking about the relationship between power and social change. A set of public lectures that address the nature of social justice accompany SJQ courses.

Two 75-minute periods.
AFRS 104 - Religion, Prisons, and the Civil Rights Movement
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 104 ) African American citizenship has long been a contested and bloody battlefield. This course uses the modern Civil Rights Movement to examine the roles the religion and prisons have played in theses battles over African American rights and liberties. In what ways have religious beliefs motivated Americans to uphold narrow definitions of citizenship that exclude people on the basis of race or moved them to boldly challenge those definitions? In a similar fashion, civil rights workers were incarcerated in jails and prisons as a result of their nonviolent protest activities. Their experiences in prisons, they exposed the inhumane conditions and practices existing in many prison settings. More recently, the growth of the mass incarceration of minorities has moved to the forefront of civil and human rights concerns. Is a new Civil Rights Movement needed to challenge the New Jim Crow? Jonathon Kahn, Quincy Mills.
AFRS 105 - Topics in Africana Studies

1 unit(s)
Two 75-minute periods.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 106 - Elementary Arabic
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course is an elementary level course offered during fall semester only. The course builds basic skills in Modern Standard Arabic, the language spoken, read, and understood by educated Arabs throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and other parts of the world. No prior experience in Arabic is necessary. The course focuses on building students’ abilities to (1) communicate successfully basic biographical information: name, place of residence, family members, and daily life activities, using memorized material; (2) understand speech dealing with areas of practical need such as highly standardized messages, phrases, or instructions, such as memorized greetings, pleasantries, leave taking, very basic questions and answers related to immediate need or personal information; (3) derive meaning from short, non-complex texts that convey basic information for which there is contextual or extra-linguistic support; (4) manage successfully a number of uncomplicated communicative tasks in straightforward social situations, such as giving basic personal information, and describing basic objects, a limited number of activities, preferences, and immediate needs. Tagreed Al-Haddad, Mootacem Mhiri.

Students who did not complete AFRS 106 may enroll in AFRS 107 , if they demonstrate equivalent knowledge by a placement test.

Yearlong course 106-AFRS 107 .

Three 50-minute periods, plus one drill period per week.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 107 - Elementary Arabic
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This is an elementary level course offered during spring semester only. The course focuses on building students’ abilities to (1) create statements and formulate questions based on familiar material in short and simple conversational-style sentences with basic word order; (2) understand basic information conveyed orally in simple, minimally connected discourse that contains high-frequency vocabulary; (3) understand fully and with ease short, non-complex texts that convey basic information and deal with personal and social topics of immediate interest, featuring description and narration; (4) ask simple questions and handle a straightforward survival situation by producing sentence-level language, ranging from discrete sentences to strings of sentences, typically in present time. Tagreed Al-Haddad, Mootacem Mhiri.

Students who did not complete AFRS 106 may enroll in AFRS 107, if they demonstrate equivalent knowledge by a placement test.

Yearlong course AFRS 106 -107.

Three 50-minute periods, plus one drill period per week.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 109 - Beyond the Veil and Islamic Terrorism: Modern Arabic Literature

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course introduces students to modern and contemporary literature emanating from North Africa and the Middle East. The authors we read write in Arabic, French, and English. However, all the course readings are in English Translation.

The themes we examine range from the seemingly unresolved tension between tradition and modernity in postcolonial MENA (Middle East and North Africa) societies to the role orientalism and islamophobia play in obstructing productive and much-needed East-West dialogues in today’s—some would call it—neocolonial and globalized world. We also zero in on the interplay between gender, religion, and politics in the MENA region as we discuss the condition of women and sexual minorities caught between the seemingly irreconcilable discourses of Islamic law and international human rights legal frameworks. In the last part of the course, we read two recent first-person narratives. The first depicts the ongoing crisis of illegal immigration from Africa and the MENA region into “Fortress Europe” and attending human cost. The second narrative is an intimate portrayal of the sectarian strife and human rights abuses promulgated in the prisons of the dictatorial regime in Syria.

Students taking this course gain an understanding of some of the salient social, political, and broadly cultural complexities of MENA societies. They also begin to appreciate the complex historical and geopolitical roots of widespread yet, sometimes, little examined propositions, like the incompatibility of Islam and Western modernity and democratic rule, and the need to liberate Muslim women from their cultures.

The course is open to first-year students only; and it satisfies the college requirement for the Freshman Writing Seminar. As such, it is a writing- intensive course! Therefore, as we explore the themes and issues noted above orally in our class discussions, you also hone your skills in finding, using, and citing evidence; building persuasive arguments; using language effectively; organizing sentences and paragraphs clearly; and developing your own prose style. Writing workshops are an integral part of the course, and you work on commenting on and revising both your own and other people’s drafts. Mootacem Mhiri.

Open only to first-year students; satisfies college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 112 - An Introduction to Islam

1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 112 ) This course introduces students to Muslim cultures, beliefs, and practices through the lens of journey, migration and quest. Voyage and migration have characterized Muslim communities ever since Muhammad sent a group of his followers to seek refuge with the Christian king of Abyssinia. Over the centuries, Islamic legal, literary, and philosophical traditions have reflected deeply on migration and journeying, and Muslim communities have settled around the world. We explore Muhammad’s miraculous journey to Jerusalem, the event of migration to Medina, the role of travel in the expansion of the Islamic world, Muslims as religious minorities in the 20th century, and the place of Islam in the contemporary global refugee crisis. Sources include scripture, theology, history, poetry and literature, ethnography, autobiography, and film. Kirsten Wesselhoeft.

Two 75-minute periods.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 141 - Tradition, History and the African Experience

1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 141 ) From ancient stone tools and monuments to oral narratives and colonial documents, the course examines how the African past has been recorded, preserved, and transmitted over the generations. It looks at the challenges faced by the historian in Africa and the multi-disciplinary techniques used to reconstruct and interpret African history. Various texts, artifacts, and oral narratives from ancient times to the present are analyzed to see how conceptions and interpretations of African past have changed over time. Ismail Rashid.

Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 175 - Mandela: Race, Resistance and Renaissance in South Africa
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 175 ) This course critically explores the history and politics of South Africa in the twentieth century through the prism of the life, politics, and experiences of one of its most iconic figures, Nelson Mandela. After almost three decades of incarceration for resisting Apartheid, Mandela became the first democratically elected president of a free South Africa in 1994. It was an inspirational moment in the global movement and the internal struggle to dismantle Apartheid and to transform South Africa into a democratic, non-racial, and just society. Using Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, as our point of departure, the course discusses some of the complex ideas, people, and developments that shaped South Africa and Mandela’s life in the twentieth century, including: indigenous culture, religion, and institutions; colonialism, race, and ethnicity; nationalism, mass resistance, and freedom; and human rights, social justice, and post-conflict reconstruction. Ismail Rashid.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 185 - Homer in the Caribbean
Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 185 ) In this six-week course we undertake a close reading of Omeros, a modern epic poem by West Indian Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott (1930-2017). In the poem Walcott both celebrates his home island of St. Lucia and the whole of the Caribbean archipelago while also confronting the histories of colonialism and slavery that shaped it. While utterly Caribbean in setting, scope and theme, the poem is positioned in close conversation with Homer and the Homeric poems, and represents, by many accounts, the most important work of Homeric reception in English since Joyce’s Ulysses. Walcott’s alter-ego in the poem is a wandering Odysseus; his St Lucian characters bear the names of figures from Greek myth— Achille, Hector, Philoctete, Helen— and Homer himself, whom Walcott calls “Omeros,” is a character in the poem who washes up on the St. Lucian shore. As we navigate the poem’s complicated narrative trajectories and follow them back and forth across temporal and spatial borders we come to inhabit Walcott’s Caribbean–a creolized space of infinite possibility— and to understand the ways in which his positioning of himself in relationship to Homer enacts his vision of a New World aesthetic. Rachel Friedman.

Second six-week course.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS

Africana Studies: II. Intermediate

AFRS 202 - Black Music
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as MUSI 202 ) An analytical exploration of the music of certain African and European cultures and their adaptive influences in North America. The course examines the traditional African and European views of music performance practices while exploring their influences in shaping the music of African Americans from the spiritual to modern times. Justin Patch.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 205 - Arab Women Writers
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as WMST 205 ) This course examines a selection of literary works by modern and contemporary Arab women writers in English translation. We will read fiction, poetry, autobiographies, short stories, and critical scholarship by and about Arab women, from North Africa and the Middle East, in order to develop a critical understanding of the social, political, and cultural context(s) of these writings, and to form an enlightened opinion about the issues and concerns raised by Arab women writers throughout the Twentieth Century, at different historical junctures, and in different locations. Our class discussions will focus—among other themes—on: (1) Arab women writers and feminism. (2) Arab Women and Islamism. (3) Arab women and the West. (4) Arab Nationalism(s), Arab Modernity(s), and Arab women. (5) Arab Women writing in the Diaspora: hyphenated identities and different routes of homecoming. The authors to be read include Assia Djebar (Algeria); Fatima Mernissi (Morocco); Nawal Sadaawi (Egypt); Hanan Al-Shaykh (Lebanon); and Sahar Khalifeh (Palestine); and many others. Mootacem Mhiri.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 207 - Intermediate Arabic
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This is an intermediate level course offered during fall semester only. The course focuses on enhancing students’ abilities to (1) create with the language and communicate personal meaning effectively; (2) satisfy personal needs and social demands to survive in an Arabic speaking environment; (3) understand information conveyed in simple, sentence-length speech on familiar or everyday topics. (4) understand short, non-complex texts that convey basic information and deal with personal and social topics. (5) build intercultural competence through exposure to authentic Arabic expressions, proverbs, and similar linguistic and cultural idioms. Mootacem Mhiri.

This course is designed for students who have completed AFRS 107 or its equivalent successfully as demonstrated by a placement test.

Three 50-minute periods, plus one drill period per week.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 208 - Intermediate Arabic
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This is an intermediate level course offered during spring semester only. The course focuses on enhancing students’ abilities to (1) write short, simple communications, compositions, and requests for information in loosely connected texts about personal preferences, daily routines, common events, and other personal topics; (2) understand simple, sentence-length speech in a variety of basic personal and social contexts and accurately comprehend highly familiar and predictable topics; (3) understand short, non-complex texts, featuring description and narration, that convey basic information and deal with basic and familiar topics; (4) handle successfully a variety of uncomplicated communicative tasks in straightforward social situations such as exchanges related to self, family, home, daily activities, interests and personal preferences, as well as physical and social needs, such as food, shopping, travel, and lodging; (5) develop their intercultural competence through increased exposure to authentic Arabic literary and journalistic audiovisual material. Tagreed Al-Haddad.

Students who did not complete AFRS 207 may enroll if they demonstrate equivalent knowledge by a placement test.

Three 50-minute periods, plus one drill period per week.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 211 - Islam in Europe and the Americas
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as INTL 211 and RELI 211 ) Various processes of migration and conversion have contributed to the development of Muslim minority communities in Europe and the Americas, dating back to the 17th century. From enslaved Muslims in the Americas, to the Nation of Islam, to colonial and post-colonial migrations, to the debates over whether and how to define “European,” “American,” and “Latin@” Islams, this course covers the history of these religious communities and movements, their relationships with European and American states, and how contemporary European and American Muslims have described and theorized the experience of being a religious minority or diaspora. Key themes include race & ethnicity, gender & sexuality, transnational media, political resistance, ethics, and spirituality. Kirsten Wesselhoeft.

Two 75-minute periods.
AFRS 212 - Arabic Literature and Culture

1 unit(s)
This reading, writing and conversation course is designed to familiarize students with various genres of classical and modern Arabic prose and poetry from the pre-Islamic period to the present. We read, discuss, and write about themes and topics which have been central to the cultural discourses in various periods of the region’s history. These topics include: religious diversity, Muslim and Arab scientists and their contribution to world culture, the arts and musical genres, among many others. Students taking this course form a more in-depth understanding of the texts examined and their significant contribution to the formation of an Arabic cultural ethos and an Arab system of values. The course also enhances students’ oral and writing skills through weekly presentations on the readings and writing assignments. Tagreed Haddad.

The course is open to any student who has taken AFRS 207 or AFRS 208 .

Three 50-minute periods.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 217 - Prisons, Community Reentry, and Critical issues in the Criminal Justice System

1 unit(s)
This course examines the prison experience in the United States and critical issues in the criminal justice system in a prison setting with Vassar students and incarcerated men. The course provides historical overviews of the role of prisons in society and critical examinations of some relevant contemporary issues in criminal justice such as the death penalty, felon disenfranchisement, juveniles in adult prisons, children of incarcerated parents, and immigrants in prison.

The course meets on Thursday evenings for two hours. A number of field trips are scheduled to local and New York City agencies usually on Fridays. Special permission required.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 219 - Queer of Color Critique
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 219 ) “Queer of Color Critique” is a form of cultural criticism modeled on lessons learned from woman of color feminism, poststructuralism, and materialist and other forms of analysis. As Roderick Ferguson defines it, “Queer of color analysis…interrogates social formations as the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class with particular interest in how those formations correspond with and diverge from nationalist ideals and practices.” This course considers what interventions the construction “queer of color” makes possible for queertheory, LGBT scholarship and activism, and different models of ethnic studies.We will assess the value and limitations of queer theory’s “subjectless critique” (in other words, its rejection of identity as a “fixed referent”) in doing cultural and political work. What kind of complications (or contradictions) does the notion “queer of color” present for subjectless critique? How might queer of color critique inform political organizing? Particular attention will be devoted to how “queer” travels. Toward this end, students will determine what conflicts are presently shaping debates around sexuality in their own communities and consider how these debates may be linked to different regional, national or transnational politics. Throughout the semester, we evaluate what “queer” means and what kind of work it enables. Is it an identity or an anti-identity? A verb, a noun, or an adjective? A heuristic device, a counterpublic, a form of political mobilization or perhaps even a kind of literacy? Hiram Perez.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 220 - Policing the Planet
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Can we imagine safety without the police? This course reflects upon the political and social implications of our reliance on policing, surveillance, and criminalization to keep the peace and promote public safety in U.S. culture. By placing policing philosophies such as broken windows theory, the war on poverty, and the war on drugs, in conversation with intersectional accounts of the casualties of state-sanctioned violence, vigilante culture, and homeland security, this course challenges students to put domestic policing practices in global perspective. In addition to drawing on science fiction, social science, film, and national histories of policing whose geographic landscapes shift in accordance with pressing political concerns of the day, students also study the emergent critical prison studies literature to better contextualize how common sense notions of care, privacy, and the common good become exclusionary constructs that shape imaginations of what keeps us safe, especially in the places we call home. Jasmine Syedullah.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 221 - Captive Genders and Methods of Survival
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as WMST 221 ) From Celia the Slave (1855) to CeCe McDonald (2011) cis, queer, and trans women (particularly of color) have been deemed unruly, deviant, and criminalized for defending themselves against gendered violence. With no selves to defend in the face of the law, how do these subjects seek justice when their survival is routinely “rewarded” with both legal and extralegal forms of punishment? While critiques of the criminal justice system often center the mechanisms of the system itself, this course is concerned with the testaments of survivors, their protocols of survival, namely the feminist, trans, and queer-of-color ethics, activisms, and intellectual histories that resist gender violence, criminalization, and punishment. This course centers histories, testimony, poetry, art, music, and social theory including activists accounts from Harriet Jacobs, Ida B. Wells, Angela Davis, Sylvia Rivera, Dean Spade, Miss Major, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and others. Jasmine Syedullah.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 227 - The Harlem Renaissance and its Precursors
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 227 ) This course places the Harlem Renaissance in literary historical perspective as it seeks to answer the following questions: In what ways was “The New Negro” new? How did African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance rework earlier literary forms from the sorrow songs to the sermon and the slave narrative? How do the debates that raged during this period over the contours of a black aesthetic trace their origins to the concerns that attended the entry of African Americans into the literary public sphere in the eighteenth century?

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 228 - African American Literature
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as DRAM 228 andENGL 228 ) Topic for 2019/20b: From the Page to the Stage: Turning Black Literature into Black Drama. This course will explore the expressive possibilities of 20th century black literature by means of critical reading, critical writing, and critical performance. Students will examine key works in their historical context, paying attention to the criticism and theory that have shaped their reception (Hayden, Giovanni, Brooks, Hurston, Baldwin, Morrison, Johnson, Whitehead). They will then attempt to transform parts of these texts into scenes as informed by past and present theories of performance and theatre making. Their work will culminate in a public performance of the pieces they have conceived. Tyrone Simpson.

Two 75-minute periods and one 2-hour lab.
AFRS 229 - Black Intellectual History
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 229 ) This course provides an overview of black intellectual thought and an introduction to critical race theory. It offers approaches to the ways in which black thinkers from a variety of nations and periods from the nineteenth century up to black modernity engage their intellectual traditions. How have their perceptions been shaped by a variety of places? How have their traditions, histories and cultures theorized race? Critics may include Aimé Césaire, Anna Julia Cooper, W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon, Paul Gilroy, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Ida B. Wells, and Patricia Williams. Diane Harriford.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 231 - Algeria/France:Race, Religion & Citizenship
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 231 ) Since the early modern era, slavery, colonialism, commerce, piracy, and migration have woven the Mediterranean together in both peace and in horrifying violence. This broad, multipolar web of conflict and communication has served as the context in which multiple French and Algerian identities have careened into modernity. Constant references to local and cross-Mediterranean “others” have shaped the very meanings of such key terms as “emancipation,” “republic,” “Islam,” “progress,” and “civilization.” Even today, debates on issues ranging from women’s clothing to secularism to immigration to anti-Semitism echo with this long and contested history. Joshua Schreier.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 232 - African American Cinema
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as FILM 232 ) This course provides a survey of the history and theory of African American representation in cinema. It begins with the silent films of Oscar Micheaux and examines early Black cast westerns (Harlem Rides the Range, The Bronze Buckaroo, Harlem on the Prairie) and musicals (St. Louis Blues, Black and Tan, Hi De Ho, Sweethearts of Rhythm). Political debate circulating around cross over stars (Paul Robeson, Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Eartha Kitt, and Harry Belafonte) are central to the course. Special consideration is given to Blaxploitation cinema of the seventies (Shaft, Coffy, Foxy Brown, Cleopatra Jones) in an attempt to understand its impact on filmmakers and the historical contexts for contemporary filmmaking. The course covers “Los Angeles Rebellion” filmmakers such as Julie Dash, Charles Burnett, and Haile Gerima. Realist cinema of the 80’s and 90’s (Do the Right Thing, Boyz N the Hood, Menace II Society, and Set it off),is examined before the transition to Black romantic comedies, family films, and genre pictures (Coming to America, Love and Basketball, Akeelah and the Bee, The Great Debaters). Mia Mask.

Prerequisite(s): FILM 210 and permission of the instructor.

Two 75-minute periods plus outside screenings.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 234 - Creole Religions of the Caribbean

1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 234 and RELI 234 ) The Africa-derived religions of the Caribbean region—Haitian Voodoo, Cuban Santeria, Jamaican Obeah, Rastafarianism, and others—are foundational elements in the cultural development of the islands of the region. This course examines their histories, systems of belief, liturgical practices, and pantheons of spirits, as well as their impact on the history, literature, and music of the region. Lisa Paravisini-Gebert.

Two 75-minute periods.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 235 - The Civil Rights Movement in the United States

1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 235 ) In this interdisciplinary course, we examine the origins, dynamics, and consequences of the modern Civil Rights movement. We explore how the southern based struggles for racial equality and full citizenship in the U.S. worked both to dismantle entrenched systems of discrimination—segregation, disfranchisement, and economic exploitation—and to challenge American society to live up to its professed democratic ideals. Lisa Collins.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 240 - Cultural Localities

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Detailed study of the cultures of people living in a particular area of the world, including their politics, economy, worldview, religion, expressive practices, and historical transformations. Included is a critical assessment of different approaches to the study of culture. Areas covered vary from year to year and may include Europe, Africa, North America, India and the Pacific.

May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.

Topic for 2019/20a: Atlantic Worlds. (Same as ANTH 240 ) To speak of the Atlantic World is to speak of the peoples who inhabit the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and its marginal seas, and who are interconnected by histories of imperial expansion, enslavement, commerce, and migration. Imperial conquest led to the displacement and decimation of indigenous peoples, while slavery, indenture, and trade led and the creation of African, European, and Asian Diasporas in the Americas. These processes gave rise to the very idea of globalization, as well as the ideals of freedom, decolonization, and universal rights. This course introduces the diasporas, networks, and economic flows that integrate the Caribbean, Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Using ethnographies, histories, narratives, music, and film, we explore the processes of migration, imperial expansion, and economic integration that continue to shape the peoples, languages, and cultures of the Atlantic World. We also critically examine the strengths and limitations of concepts and theoretical frameworks used to produce knowledge about the peoples and histories of the Atlantic world. Topics include imperialism and its legacies, (de)colonization, capitalism, slavery, indenture, marronage, piracy, revolution, abolition, creolization, race, class, and gender. Louis Römer.

Two 75-minute periods.
AFRS 242 - Brazil in Crisis: Continuity and Change in Portuguese America
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as GEOG 242 , INTL 242 and LALS 242 ) Brazil, a giant of Latin America and the Global South, has long been known as the “land of the future.” Yet frustrating political-economic crises have repeatedly followed periods of rapid growth and social progress. Taking current crises as a point of departure, this course examines Brazil’s contemporary evolution in light of the country’s historical geography, the distinctive cultural and environmental features of Portuguese America, and the political-economic linkages with the world system. Specific topics for study include: the legacies of colonial Brazil; race relations, Afro-Brazilian culture, and ethnic identities; issues of gender, youth, violence, and poverty; processes of urban-industrial growth; regionalism and national integration; environmental devastation and sustainability; controversies surrounding the occupation of Amazonia; and long-run prospects for democracy and equitable development in Brazil. Brian Godfrey.

Two 75-minute periods.
AFRS 244 - Indian Ocean
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 244 ) This course re/introduces alternative modalities of belonging through a focus on multiple cultures and peoples interacting across the Indian Ocean. Using historical works, ethnographies, travel accounts, manuscript fragments, and film, we explore the complex networks and historical processes that have shaped the contemporary economies, cultures, and social problems of the region. We also critically examine how knowledge about the peoples and pasts of this region has been produced. Although the course concentrates on northern Africa, eastern Africa, southwest India, the Arabian Peninsula, and islands are included in our consideration of the region as a cultural, economic, and political sphere whose coastal societies were especially interconnected. Topics include: imperialism, globalization, temporality, cosmopolitanism, labor and trade migrations, religious identification, and gender. Candice Lowe Swift.

Two 75-minute periods.
AFRS 245 - Making Waves: Topics in Feminist Activism
Semester Offered: Spring
1 1 unit(s)
Topic for 2019/20b: Black Women in Feminism. (Same as SOCI 245 and WMST 245 ) This course explores the role Black women played in the development and growth of feminism in the U.S. from the 19^th Century to the present. We pay particular attention to the work of Anna Julia Cooper, Audre Lorde and bell hooks. Film, poetry, music, novels as well as articles and books are among the texts for the course. Diane Harriford.

Prerequisite(s): WMST 130 or permission of the instructor.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 246 - French Speaking Cultures and Literatures of Africa and the Caribbean

1 unit(s)
(Same as FFS 246 )

Prerequisite(s): FFS 210 or FFS 212 or the equivalent.

Two 75-minute periods.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 247 - The Politics of Difference
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as POLI 247 ) This course relates to the meanings of various group experiences in American politics. It explicitly explores, for example, issues of race, class, gender, disability, and sexual orientation. Among other things, this course addresses the contributions of the Critical Legal Studies Movement, the Feminist Jurisprudence Movement, the Critical Race Movement, and Queer Studies to the legal academy. Luke Harris.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 248 - Racial and Ethnic Group Politics in Popular Culture

1 unit(s)
(Same as POLI 248 ) Popular culture often affects and depicts public opinion on prominent social and political issues, and attitudes towards racial and ethnic groups. In this course, students think critically about the ways popular culture influences and reflects U.S. racial and ethnic group politics. Students consider how popular culture portrays and provides insights into government actions and policies toward various racial and ethnic groups, race relations and prospects for political coalitions, group responses to discrimination, and Americans’ perceptions and attitudes on a number of cultural, political, social and policy dimensions. Among the topics studied are the following: aspects of the political histories of various groups in the U.S., anti-miscegenation and anti-interracial relationship attitudes, 20^th and 21^st century race relations, immigration and citizenship, political resistance, mobilization, empowerment and participation, and racial group membership, identity and consciousness. These topics are examined throughout the semester by reading scholarly texts, and analyzing music videos, television shows, motion pictures, and documentaries. Taneisha Means.

Two 75-minute periods.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 250 - Across Religious Boundaries: Understanding Differences
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 250 ) Topic for 2019/20a: African American Religions and the Practice of Social Criticism. This class introduces students to the study of African American religions. Our focus is not only the historical variety of religious practices, but equally on the way the study of African American religious practices, serve to influence, wrestle with, protest, and critique constructions of race and racial identities. By considering topics such as the religious culture of the enslaved in the antebellum South, the development of independent black churches in the late 18th and 19th centuries, expressive culture in music, sermon, and song, and the intersections of religion and black political movements, we explore the ways the category of religion functions as a contested site to think through notions of black liberation, agency, and struggle. Jonathon Kahn.

Two 75-minute periods.
AFRS 251 - Topics in Black Literatures
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 251 ) This course considers Black literatures in all their richness and diversity. The focus changes from year to year, and may include study of a historical period, literary movement, or genre. The course may take a comparative, diasporic approach or may examine a single national or regional literature.

Topic for 2019b: Afrofuturism and the Speculative in African American Literature. While many believe African American literature is bound by the generic and political expectations of American literary realism, Black Americans have lived and imagined the “un-real” from the moment of their enslavement in the Americas. This course considers how Black creatives have used and continue to use the genres of speculative fiction/afrofuturism/sci-fi to critique forms of racial difference and imagine alternatives to the here-and-now of the American experience. Over the semester, we explore narratives that feature time travel, texts that craft racial utopias only to plot their deterioration, and tales of monsters and zombies to explore key themes associated with Black speculative fiction and Black literary production. Questions of genre, its limits and expectations, are also central to this course. This course may include writings by Octavia Butler, Kiese Laymon, Victor LaValle, Colson Whitehead, and others. Eve Dunbar.

Two 75-minute periods.
AFRS 252 - Writing the Diaspora: Verses/Versus

1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 252 ) Black American Culture expression is anchored in rhetorical battles and verbal jousts that place one character against another. From the sorrow songs to blues, black music has always been a primary means of cultural expression for Afirican Americans, particularly during difficult social periods and transition. Black Americans have used music and particularly rythmic verse to resist, express, and signify. Nowhere is this more evident than in hip-hop culture generally and hip-hop music specifically. This semester’s Writing the Diaspora class concerns itself with close textual analysis of hip-hop texts. Is Imani Perry right in claiming that Hip-Hop is Black American music, or diasporic music? In addition to close textual reading of lyrics, students are asked to create their own hip-hop texts that speak to particular artists/texts and/or issues and styles raised.

Prerequisite(s): One course in literature or Africana Studies.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 255 - Race, Representation, and Resistance in U.S. Schools
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as EDUC 255 and URBS 255 ) This course interrogates the intersections of race, racism and schooling in the US context. In this course, we examine this intersection at the site of educational policy, media and public attitudes towards schools and schooling- critically examining how representations in each shape the experiences of youth in school. Expectations, beliefs, attitudes and opportunities reflect societal investments in these representations, thus becoming both reflections and driving forces of these identities. Central to these representations is how theorists, educators and youth take them on, own them and resist them in ways that constrain possibility or create spaces for hope. Kimberly Williams Brown.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 256 - Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as INTL 256 and POLI 256 ) Conflicts over racial, ethnic and/or national identity continue to dominate headlines in diverse corners of the world. Whether referring to ethnic violence in Bosnia or Sri Lanka, racialized political tensions in Sudan and Fiji, the treatment of Roma (Gypsies) and Muslims in Europe, or the charged debates about immigration policy in the United States, cultural identities remain at the center of politics globally. Drawing upon multiple theoretical approaches, this course explores the related concepts of race, ethnicity and nationalism from a comparative perspective using case studies drawn from around the world and across different time periods. Zachariah Mampilly.

Two 75-minute periods.
AFRS 257 - Genre and the Postcolonial City
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as POLI 257 and URBS 257 ) This course explores the physical and imaginative dimensions of selected postcolonial cities. The theoretical texts, genres of expression and cultural contexts that the course engages address the dynamics of urban governance as well as aesthetic strategies and everyday practices that continue to reframe existing senses of reality in the postcolonial city. Through an engagement with literary, cinematic, architectural among other forms of urban mediation and production, the course examines the politics of migrancy, colonialism, gender, class and race as they come to bear on political identities, urban rhythms and the built environment. Case studies include: Johannesburg , Nairobi, Algiers and migrant enclaves in London and Paris. Samson Opondo.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 258 - Environment and Culture in the Caribbean

1 unit(s)
(Same as ENST 258 ) The ecology of the islands of the Caribbean has undergone profound change since the arrival of Europeans to the region in 1492. The course traces the history of the relationship between ecology and culture from pre-Columbian civilizations to the economies of tourism. Among the specific topics of discussion are: Arawak and Carib notions of nature and conservation of natural resources; the impact of deforestation and changes in climate; the plantation economy as an ecological revolution; the political implications of the tensions between the economy of the plot and that of the plantation; the development of environmental conservation and its impact on notions of nationhood; the ecological impact of resort tourism; the development of eco-tourism. These topics are examined through a variety of materials: historical documents, essays, art, literature, music, and film. Lisa Paravisini.

Two 75-minute periods.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 259 - Settler Colonialism in a Comparative Perspective
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as POLI 259 ) This course examines the phenomenon of settler colonialism through a comparative study of the interactions between settler and ‘native’ / indigenous populations in different societies. It explores the patterns of settler migration and settlement and the dynamics of violence and local displacement in the colony through the tropes of racialization of space, colonial law, production/labor, racialized knowledge, aesthetics, health, gender, domesticity and sexuality. Attentive to historical injustices and the transformation of violence in ‘postcolonial’ and settler societies, the course interrogates the forms of belonging, memory, desire and nostalgia that arise from the unresolved status of settler and indigenous communities and the competing claims to, or unequal access to resources like land. Case studies are drawn primarily from Africa but also include examples from other regions. Samson Opondo.

Two 75-minute periods.
AFRS 260 - International Relations of the Third World: Bandung to 9/11
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as INTL 260 and POLI 260 ) Whether referred to as the “Third World,” or other variants such as the “Global South,” the “Developing World,” the “G-77,” the “Non-Aligned Movement,” or the “Post-Colonial World,” a certain unity has long been assumed for the multitude of countries ranging from Central and South America, across Africa to much of Asia. Is it valid to speak of a Third World? What were/are the connections between countries of the Third World? What were/are the high and low points of Third World solidarity? And what is the relationship between the First and Third Worlds? Drawing on academic and journalistic writings, personal narratives, music, and film, this course explores the concept of the Third World from economic, political and cultural perspectives. Beginning at the dawn of the 20th century with the rise of anti-colonial movements, we examine the trajectory of the Third World in global political debates through the end of the Cold War and the start of the War on Terror. Zachariah Mampilly.

Two 75-minute periods.
AFRS 264 - African American Women’s History

1 unit(s)
(Same as WMST 264 ) In this interdisciplinary course, we explore the roles of black women in the U.S. as thinkers, activists, and creators during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Focusing on the intellectual work, social activism, and cultural expression of a diverse group of African American women, we examine how they have understood their lives, resisted oppression, constructed emancipatory visions, and struggled to change society. Lisa Collins.

Two 75-minute periods.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 265 - Slavery and Freedom in the U.S.

1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 265 ) This course explores the history of American slavery and freedom from the Atlantic slave trade through Reconstruction. We examine the history of African-descended people to understand key developments and regional differences in the making of race and slavery as a commodity form and foundation of an emerging nation-state in North America, resistance movements among enslaved and free Blacks (such as rebellions and the abolitionist movement), black institutional and economic development, and the multiple ways gender, race, and slavery informed the meanings of freedom. In addition to reading secondary sources, we analyze such primary sources as slave voyage records, legal records, slave narratives, and speeches and essays from free Blacks. Quincy Mills.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 266 - Art, Urgency, and Everyday Life in the United States
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 266 and ART 266 ) An interdisciplinary exploration of how a range of U.S. based creators–through their artistic practices, aesthetic choices, and expressive interventions–are grappling with urgent issues of our time. Lisa Collins.

Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or coursework in Africana Studies, American Studies, Women’s Studies, or permission of the instructor.

Two 75-minute periods.
AFRS 270 - The Black Power Movement
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 270 ) This course examines the Black Power Movement as a burgeoning social movement in the post World War II period, while also placing it in the long traditions of black political thought and radicalism within American democracy. In addition to studying black radicalism in the early twentieth century, the course explores the philosophies and tactics of civil rights activism; questions of feminism and masculinity; radicalism and conservatism; violence, nonviolence, and self-defense; and community control, nationalism, and internationalism. Major sites of inquiry include education, arts and media, police brutality, welfare rights, electoral politics, and economic empowerment. By engaging the ideologies, politics, and culture of the Black Power Movement, we gain a deeper understanding of how people claim their rights and personhood against seemingly insurmountable odds. Quincy Mills.

Two 75-minute periods.
AFRS 271 - Perspectives on the African Past: Africa Before 1800

1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 271 ) A thematic survey of African civilizations and societies to 1800. The course examines how demographic and technological changes, warfare, religion, trade, and external relations shaped the evolution of the Nile Valley civilizations, the East African city-states, the empires of the western Sudan, and the forest kingdoms of West Africa. Some attention is devoted to the consequences of the Atlantic slave trade, which developed from Europe’s contact with Africa from the fifteenth century onwards. Ismail Rashid.

Two 75-minute periods.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 272 - Modern African History
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 272 ) Africa has experienced profound transformations over the past two centuries. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Africans lost and regained their independence from different European colonial powers. This course explores the changing African experiences before, during, and after European colonization of their continent. Drawing on primary sources, film, memoirs, and popular novels, we look at the creative responses of African groups and individuals to the contradictory processes and legacies of colonialism. Particular attention will be paid to understanding how these responses shape the trajectories of African as well as global developments. Amongst the major themes covered by the course are: colonial ideologies, African resistance, colonial economies, gender and cultural change, African participation in the two world wars, urbanization, decolonization and African nationalism. We also reflect on some of the contemporary developmental dilemmas as well as opportunities confronting post-colonial Africa. Ismail Rashid.

Two 75-minute periods.
AFRS 275 - Caribbean Discourse

1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 275 and LALS 275 ) Study of the work of artists and intellectuals from the Caribbean. Analysis of fiction, non-fiction, and popular cultural forms such as calypso and reggae within their historical contexts. Attention to cultural strategies of resistance to colonial domination and to questions of community formation in the post-colonial era. May include some discussion of post-colonial literary theory and cultural studies.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 277 - Global Literatures in English

1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 277 ) This course explores themes, concepts, and genres that span literary periods and/or national boundaries. The focus varies from year to year. Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 279 - Spaces of Exception

1 unit(s)
(Same as INTL 279 , PHIL 279 and POLI 279 ) This course charts and critically examines a series of exceptional spaces in which inclusion in the political community is possible only by mechanisms of exclusion and intensified precarity that place vulnerable subjects at the outskirts of political legibility. We map the mechanisms of identification, exclusion, dispossession, penalization, and abandonment through a number of theoretical sources as well as the history of sovereign claims, territoriality, resistance, community, and transformations in bio and necropolitics.

Practices of capture as well as regimes of death and penalization are analyzed in their entanglements with the history of the Colony, citizenship, manhunting, jurisprudence, and the humanitarian logic of care. We engage these thematics through literary and cinematic texts in conversation with theorists such as Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, Etienne Balibar, Grégoire Chamayou, Achille Mbembe, Angela Davis, Jacques Derrida, Franz Fanon, Paul Gilroy, and Suvendrini Perera among others.

By confronting the psychological, physical, moral, and political ways in which violence inscribes itself on the body, both individual and collective, this course discloses the pivotal role played by the biologization of subjectivity, achieved through biometrics, therapeutics, the power of extra-territorial formations, immunization, and technologies of capture, enclosure, penalization, and encampment. Ultimately, our immanent critique of spaces of exception brings us to examine the ethical dimensions of practices that draw new maps, create new archives, and foster everyday enactments of hospitality, life, and co-habitation. Giovanna Borradori and Samson Opondo.

Two 75-minute periods.

Not offered in 2019/20.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 280 - The Futures of Africana Studies

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 280 ) Diaspora is both a condition and a process. Diaspora carries the sense of being dispersed and transported from an origin. It also carries the possibility of sustaining ties to that point of origin and to others who share that point of origin and that experience of dispersal. The project of Africana Studies is to track and make meaning of the dispersal of peoples of African descent from the continent and the various social, political, and artistic legacies that have emerged out of this experience. In some respects, the field is also a condition and a process. It exists—and has done so for decades in the United States—it is also in process—still developing and honing its protocols and its modes of inquiry.

This fall, the Africana Studies Program is commemorating its 50th year at Vassar College by hosting a conference that accounts for the past and present work of the Field of Africana Studies. An international cast of scholars will assemble in Poughkeepsie to account for how it has chronicled and analyzed the black experience in sites across the globe. The intensive course aims to familiarize students with the work of these scholars and with how scholarship develops over a lifetime. It also supports students to arrive at their own definition of Africana Studies as they ferret out the harmonies and tensions that exist between the work of these scholars. Tyrone Simpson.

Course Format: INT
AFRS 284 - Africa: Development and Environment
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENST 284 and GEOG 284 ) Africa often appears in the news as a hungry continent, plagued by civil conflict and environmental crisis, and left behind by increasing global integration. Such framings obscure the continent’s great ecological, political, cultural, and religious diversity and its rich histories of powerful empires and trans-continental economic and botanical exchange. Employing a political ecology approach, the course explores the origins and making of Africa’s highly unequal relationship with the Global North, one shaped by the transatlantic slave trade, colonization, and neoliberalism, among other factors. In doing so, the course investigates, from various theoretical perspectives, a wide range of themes, including agriculture; hunger and poverty; gender and women’s roles in development; the scramble for mineral resources and land; urbanization; and South-South investment. As part of its goal to develop a broad understanding of Africa’s important place in the world, the course also examines African-led innovations and initiatives for environmental and climate justice, resource conservation, and sustainability. Ashley Fent.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 290 - Community-Engaged Learning
Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Individual or group field projects or internships. The department.

Unscheduled. May be selected during the academic year or during the summer.

Course Format: INT
AFRS 298 - Independent Work
Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Individual or group project of reading or research. The department.

Unscheduled. May be selected during the academic year or during the summer.

Course Format: OTH
AFRS 299 - Research Methods
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
An introduction to the research methods used in the disciplines represented by Africana Studies. Through a variety of individual projects, students learn the approaches necessary to design projects, collect data, analyze results, and write research reports. The course includes some field trips to sites relevant to student projects. The emphasis is on technology and archival research, using the Library’s new facilities in these areas. The course explores different ideas, theories and interdisciplinary approaches within Africana Studies that shape research and interpretation of the African and African diasporic experience. Students learn to engage and critically utilize these ideas, theories and approaches in a coherent fashion in their own research projects. They also learn how to design research projects, collect and analyze different types of data, and write major research papers. Emphasis is placed on collection of data through interviews and surveys as well as archival and new information technologies, using the facilities of Vassar libraries.

The course includes some field trips to sites relevant to student projects. Required of majors and correlates, but open to students in all disciplines.

Africana Studies: III. Advanced

AFRS 300 - Senior Thesis or Project
Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
1 unit(s)
Course Format: INT
AFRS 307 - Upper-Intermediate Arabic
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Upper-intermediate language and culture course in Modern Standard Arabic. Designed to consolidate students’ reading and listening comprehension, and their oral skills at the intermediate-mid level of proficiency; and to help them reach intermediated- high level proficiency by the end of the course. Tagreed Al-Haddad.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 308 - Upper-Intermediate Arabic
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Upper-intermediate language and culture course in Modern Standard Arabic. Designed to consolidate students’ reading and listening comprehension, and their oral skills at the intermediate-mid level of proficiency; and to help them reach intermediated- high level proficiency by the end of the course. Tagreed Al-Haddad.
AFRS 311 - Advanced Arabic

1 unit(s)
This is an advanced level course offered during fall semester only. The course focuses on enhancing students’ abilities to (1) Read and understand various types of discourses, such as newspaper articles (descriptive, narrative, argumentative, etc.), essays and short stories on various topics; (2) Listen to and understand the main ideas of a speech, lecture or news broadcast; (3) Present personal opinion and construct a nuanced argument about a range of topics about literature, history, politics, culture and society in various parts of the Arab World; (4) Write cohesive and articulate summaries and critical reports about the same topics. Students will continue to develop their communicative skills (speaking, listening, writing and reading) in Modern Standard Arabic through different types of course assignments aimed at helping them reach advanced levels of proficiency. Tagreed Al-Haddad.

This course is designed for students who have successfully completed two courses in upper intermediate Arabic or its equivalent as demonstrated by a placement test.

Two 75-minute periods.

Not offered in 2019/20.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 319 - Race and its Metaphors

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 319 ) Re-examinations of canonical literature in order to discover how race is either explicitly addressed by or implicitly enabling to the texts. Does racial difference, whether or not overtly expressed, prove a useful literary tool? The focus of the course varies from year to year.

Topic for 2018/19a: “Blacks and Blues: Blues as Metaphor in African American Literature” Ralph Ellison wrote of the blues that it is “an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism.” This course takes the blues as a metaphor and follows it through canonical African American writing to consider multiple themes: black sonics, black vernacular traditions, sexuality and freedom, social critique, joy, pain, and futurities of blackness. Students interested in this course need not have a musical background, but interest in the links between sound and black literature is expected. Eve Dunbar.

One 2-hour period.
AFRS 320 - Abolitionist Theory
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Some of the most radical demands for freedom emerge from the most confining spaces of containment. This seminar immerses students in the thought, witness, and writings of outlaws, captives, and exiles – to ask how prophetic figures learn to tell the time of freedom against conventional narratives of modern progress. Readings include selections from David Walker and Nat Turner’s antebellum abolitionism, Assata Shakur and Grace Lee Boggs’s contributions to Cold War era liberation movements, and reflections from the leaderful movements for Black Lives. Students learn to analyze the transformative power of testimony and identify protocols of fugitive acts through the living archive of the abolitionist tradition to closely consider the implications of its speculative ideas of freedom not yet realized. Jasmine Syedullah.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 326 - Challenging Ethnicity

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
An exploration of literary and artistic engagements with ethnicity. Contents and approaches vary from year to year.

Topic for 2018/19b: Racial Melodrama. (Same as AMST 326 and ENGL 326 ) Often dismissed as escapist, predictable, lowbrow or exploitative, melodrama has also been recuperated by several contemporary critics as a key site for the rupture and transformation of mainstream values. Film scholar Linda Williams argues that melodrama constitutes “a major force of moral reasoning in American mass culture,” shaping the nation’s racial imaginary. The conventions of melodrama originate from popular theater, but its success has relied largely on its remarkable adaptability across various media, including print, motion pictures, radio, and television. This course investigates the lasting impact of such fictions as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Fannie Hurst’s Imitation of Life, the romanticized legend of John Smith’s encounter with Pocahontas, and John Luther Long’s Madame Butterfly. What precisely is melodrama? If not a genre, is it (as critics diversely argue) a mode, symbolic structure, or a sensibility? What do we make of the international success of melodramatic forms and texts such as the telenovela and Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain? How do we understand melodrama’s special resonance historically among disfranchised classes? How and to what ends do the pleasures of suffering authenticate particular collective identities (women, the working-class, queers, blacks, and group formations yet to be named)? What relationships between identity, affect and consumption does melodrama reveal? Hiram Perez.

One 2-hour period.
AFRS 330 - Religion, Critical Theory and Politics

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Advanced study in selected aspects of religion and contemporary philosophical and political theory. May be taken more than once for credit when content changes.

Topic for 2019/20b: Race and Political Theology. (Same as RELI 330 ) In recent years, “political theology” has emerged as a crucial notion in the humanities. Most narrowly, political theology refers to Carl Schmitt’s claim that all “significant political concepts” of the modern nation-state have theological and religious roots. Until very recently, theorists of political theology have ignored the ways in which race functions as a significant political concept of the state. This seminar explores the intersection between race and political theology. We examine multiple conceptions of political theology. And we ask most centrally: In what ways are constructions of race rooted in theological concepts and histories? We ask this question both from the perspective of the state as well as from accounts of African American experience in historical and literary texts. We consider writings by Carl Schmitt, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, Albert Raboteau, and Toni Morrison. Jonathon Kahn.

Topic for 2019/20b: Islam, Decolonization and Reform. (Same as INTL 330 and RELI 330 ) In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a groundswell of reform in Islamic thought emerged, taking up the challenges, anxieties, and injustices posed by colonial and imperial politics. The meaning of Islam in the twentieth century, to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, was shaped by these social theorists and the political movements that they participated in. Reformist Islamic thought was entangled with processes of decolonization and revolution in Muslim-majority lands around the world – not only the gaining of national sovereignty by formerly colonized territories, but the decolonization of minds, communities, societies, morals, gender relations, & patterns of thought. How did political projects of revolution and resistance relate to projects of theological and moral revival in Islam? How did Muslim intellectuals around the world draw on the US Black radical tradition to theorize colonization and race? How did these projects contribute to the emergence of the “Muslim world” as an idea? This course surveys the development of modernist Islamic reform movements during the period of political decolonization, and explores the relationship between Islamic social theory and decolonial thought in the contemporary context. Kirsten Wesselhoeft.

Prerequisite(s): One course in Religion or Africana Studies or permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 346 - Race and Gender in Judicial Politics
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as POLI 346 ) This seminar explores the centrality of race/ethnicity and gender in the American judicial process and system. The course is designed to promote and facilitate healthy discussions and debates about the level, nature, and importance of judicial diversity in the American justice system. After examining the diversity levels on the state and federal bench and how those levels have changed over the last century, students consider factors that improve and/or limit judicial diversity such as the selection process and evaluations of judicial performance. Afterwards, students explore the value of judicial diversity. Special attention is given to judicial decision-making behavior, and the extent to which the courts protect minority rights and provide redress for historical injustices. The course concludes with students considering the issues presently facing our legal system such as mass incarceration, the proliferation of for-profit prisons, racial and gender bias in the criminal justice system, and demands for criminal justice reform. Taneisha Means.

Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 351 - Africana Studies Seminar
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as POLI 351 ) This seminar explores both historical and contemporary debates within the field of Africana Studies. Students examine a variety of subjects and themes encompassing different disciplinary and interdisciplinary works drawn from the humanities and social sciences. The critical perspectives that the seminar engages draw attention to the political, representational and explanatory value of a variety of genres of expression and knowledge practices. By delving into philosophical, historical, aesthetic and political analyses of Africa and African Diaspora societies, subjects and practices, students acquire a deep understanding of Africana research methods culminating in a substantive research project. The particular subject and themes explored vary with the faculty teaching the course. Samson Opondo.

Prerequisite(s): AFRS 100 or permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 352 - Redemption and Diplomatic Imagination in Postcolonial Africa
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as POLI 352 ) This seminar explores the shifts and transformations in the discourse and practice of redemptive diplomacy in Africa. It introduces students to the cultural, philosophical and political dimensions of estrangement and the mediation practices that accompany the quest for recognition, meaning and material well-being in selected colonial and postcolonial societies. Through a critical treatment of the redemptive vision and diplomatic imaginaries summoned by missionaries, anti-colonial resistance movements and colonial era Pan-Africanists, the seminar interrogates the ‘idea of Africa’ produced by these discourses of redemption and their implications for diplomatic thought in Africa. The insights derived from the interrogation of foundational discourses on African redemption will be used to map the transformation of identities, institutional forms, and the minute texture of everyday life in postcolonial Africa. The seminar also engages modern humanitarianism, diasporic religious movements, Non-Governmental Organizations and neoliberal or millennial capitalist networks that seek to save Africans from foreign forces of oppression or ‘themselves.’ Samson Opondo.

Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.
AFRS 362 - Text and Image

1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 362 )

One 2-hour period.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 365 - Race and the History of Jim Crow Segregation

1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 365 ) This seminar examines the rise of racial segregation sanctioned by law and racial custom from 1865 to 1965. Equally important, we explore the multiple ways African Americans negotiated and resisted segregation in the private and public spheres. This course aims toward an understanding of the work that race does, with or without laws, to order society based on the intersection of race, class and gender. Topics include: disfranchisement, labor and domesticity, urbanization, public space, education, housing, history and memory, and the lasting effects of sanctioned segregation. We focus on historical methods of studying larger questions of politics, resistance, privilege and oppression. We also explore interdisciplinary methods of studying race and segregation, such as critical race theory. Music and film supplement classroom discussions.

Quincy Mills

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 366 - Art and Activism in the United States
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 366 , ART 366 , and WMST 366 ) Exquisite Intimacy. An interdisciplinary exploration of the work and role of quilts within the US. Closely considering quilts–as well as their creators, users, keepers, and interpreters–we study these integral coverings and the practices of their making and use with keen attention to their recurrence as core symbols in American history, literature, and life. Lisa Collins.

Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.
AFRS 373 - Slavery and Abolition in Africa

1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 373 ) The Trans-Saharan and the Atlantic slave trade transformed African communities, social structures, and cultures. The seminar explores the development, abolition, and impact of slavery in Africa from the earliest times to the twentieth century. The major conceptual and historiographical themes include indigenous servitude, female enslavement, family strategies, slave resistance, abolition, and culture. The seminar uses specific case studies as well as a comparative framework to understand slavery in Africa. Ismail Rashid.

Prerequisite(s): Standard department prerequisites or permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 374 - The African Diaspora
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 374 ) This seminar investigates the social origins, philosophical and cultural ideas, and the political forms of Pan-Africanism from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It explores how disaffection and resistance against slavery, racism and colonial domination in the Americas, Caribbean, Europe, and Africa led to the development of a global movement for the emancipation of peoples of African descent from 1900 onwards. The seminar examines the different ideological, cultural, and organizational manifestations of Pan-Africanism as well as the scholarly debates on development of the movement. Readings include the ideas and works of Edward Blyden, Alexander Crummell, W. E. B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, Amy Garvey, C.L.R. James, and Kwame Nkmmah. Ismail Rashid.

Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 378 - Black Paris

1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 378 and FFS 378 ) This multidisciplinary course examines black cultural productions in Paris from the first Conference of Negro-African writers and artists in 1956 to the present. While considered a haven by African American artists, Paris, the metropolitan center of the French empire, was a more complex location for African and Afro-Caribbean intellectuals and artists. Yet, the city provided a key space for the development and negotiation of a black diasporic consciousness. This course examines the tensions born from expatriation and exile, and the ways they complicate understandings of racial, national and transnational identities. Using literature, film, music, and new media, we explore topics ranging from modernism, jazz, Négritude, Pan-Africanism, and the Présence Africaine group, to assess the meanings of blackness and race in contemporary Paris. Works by James Baldwin, Aime Césaire, Chester Himes, Claude McKay, the Nardal sisters, Richard Wright. Ousmane Sembène, Mongo Beti, among others, are studied.

One 2-hour period.

Not offered in 2019/20.
AFRS 380 - English Seminar
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 380 ) Topic for 2019/20a: Then Whose Negro Are You?: On the Art and Politics of James Baldwin. When interviewers sought out some sense of James Baldwin’s ambition, the artist often responded, “I want to be an honest man and a good writer.” The forces constellated around Baldwin’s career made this hardly a simple declaration. The issue of becoming a writer was an arduous task in itself, so much so that Baldwin felt he had to leave the United States, particularly his adored Harlem, to do so. Getting in the way of his artistry was the nation’s troubled negotiation with its own soul: the US was trying to figure out what it wanted to be—an apartheid state? A nuclear dreadnought? A den of prudish homophobes? An imperial power? A beloved community? A city on the Hill? This course looks at all things Baldwin, or at least as many things as we can over a four-month period. It certainly indulges his greatest hits-his essays, Notes of A Native Son; his novel, Giovanni’s Room; his play, Blues for Mr. Charlie’s–and several other writings both published and unpublished. It does so with an eye toward understanding Baldwin’s circulation as a celebrated author and a public intellectual both in the mid-twentieth century and the present day. Tyrone Simpson.

One 3-hour period.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 381 - Race and Popular Culture
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 381 and SOCI 381 ) This seminar explores the way in which the categories of race, ethnicity, and nation are mutually constitutive with an emphasis on understanding how different social institutions and practices produce meanings about race and racial identities. Through an examination of knowledge production as well as symbolic and expressive practices, we focus on the ways in which contemporary scholars connect cultural texts to social and historical institutions. Appreciating the relationship between cultural texts and institutional frameworks, we unravel the complex ways in which the cultural practices of different social groups reinforce or challenge social relationships and structures. Finally, this seminar considers how contemporary manifestations of globalization impact and transform the linkages between race and culture as institutional and intellectual constructs. Carlos Alamo.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 383 - Creolizing the World: Language, Empire, Globalization
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 383 ) This course focuses on creole languages and the communities who speak them as a window to understand how historical processes—imperial expansion, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, racist domination, the plantation system, anti-colonial resistance, and post-colonial nation-building—impact language genesis, change, and shift. This course also traces how colonial legacies continue to inform dominant attitudes about language in the current global political economy. Themes include multilingualism, language revitalization, the relationship between language and ethnonationalism, the role of language in anti-imperialist social movements, the aesthetics and politics of creolization, the role of language in the upholding and challenging racism, as well as the role of language in creating cosmopolitan and diasporic communities and identities. Louis Romer.

One 3-hour period.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 389 - Armed Avengers of Africa and the Caribbean
Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 389 ) The exploitation and subjugation of African peoples by Europe was central to the development of colonial-capitalism on a world-scale. Understanding how this system came into being and was resisted, through the perspectives of peoples of African descent, will be our task. This class offers a world-historical analysis of the anti-slavery and anti-colonial struggles of people of African descent in the Caribbean and Africa. The Haitian Revolution, whose conclusion created the first politically independent African nation-state, the self-defined Black state of Haiti, is an event we spend significant time exploring. From Haiti we then travel across the Atlantic to explore how others on the continent began to mobilize and organize against the growing threat of European colonization during the 19^th century. The second half of the course focuses on the African Liberation struggles of the post-WWII period after Europe’s colonization of Africa was complete with special focus being given to Algeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Mozambique. Attention is also paid to the Black Power movement in the Americas with emphasis being placed on its reverberations in the Caribbean. The politics of the Cold War, in particular Cuba’s role in Africa, is also explored in order to demonstrate the international character of this era that simultaneously opened and restricted the strategies and tactics utilized by various liberation movements. As is customary in my classes, music and documentaries form a central component of how we learn in this class. At the end of the course, it is hoped that we emerge with a better understanding of how our current colonial-capitalist world-system was violently created by Euro-North Americans and simultaneously resisted by the Black avengers of the African and Caribbean world. Toivo Asheeke.

One 3-hour period.

Course Format: CLS
AFRS 395 - Thinking Africa: Conversations on the Thought of Achille Mbembe
Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as FFS 395 and POLI 395 )
The Intensive examines a select number of texts by Achille Mbembe, the Cameroonian postcolonial theorist and author of De La Postcolonie: Essai sur l’Imagination Politique dans L’Afrique Contemporaine (2000) [On The Postcolony (2001)], “Necropolitics” (2003), Sortir de la Grande Nuit (2010), Critique de la Raison Nègre (2013) [Critique of Black Reason (2016)]. Charting Mbembe’s intellectual history, the major debates and concepts he engages, and their implication for thinking with and about Africa, we discuss the complexity of an African thinker reflecting on the condition of a continent (and humanity at large).

A goal of this Intensive is to develop a greater critical fluency on what it means to think, read and write the world from Africa. With insights from Mbembe’s corpus and the work of his interlocutors, the Intensive explores the stakes of Mbembe’s thought and relates them to other lines of inquiry, reflection, and creativity. Working individually and collaboratively, the students undertake a large writing, translation, or creative project which engages an element of Mbembe’s work and relates it to an area of their intellectual interest.

This intensive is organized as a peer-to-peer, inter-disciplinary conversation hinging on three main activities: 1. Textual exegesis, translation (from French to English) of interviews, podcasts, and conference presentations, and critique. 2. Participation in two student-organized workshops with Mbembe’s interlocutors from different disciplines, e.g., Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Philosophy/French, Columbia University) and Abdourahman Waberi (Literature and Creative Writing, George Washington University). 3. Ongoing conversation and guided independent studies with the two professors teaching the intensive as they edit a volume on the themes of this intensive.

Working in English and French, this team-taught intensive allows students to collaboratively explore Mbembe’s ideas in ways that might not be possible in a traditional senior seminar. Our discussions will take place in English, with the French and Francophone Studies students reading some of the texts and writing their assignments in French for FFS credit. Patricia-Pia Celerier and Samson Opondo.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: INT
AFRS 399 - Senior Independent Work
Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Senior independent study program to be worked out in consultation with an instructor. The department.

Course Format: OTH

Contract All Courses | Print this page.

Print this Page

Africana Studies Program

Programs

Courses

AFRS 100 - Introduction to Africana Studies

AFRS 101 - Martin Luther King Jr.

AFRS 104 - Religion, Prisons, and the Civil Rights Movement

AFRS 105 - Topics in Africana Studies

AFRS 106 - Elementary Arabic

AFRS 107 - Elementary Arabic

AFRS 109 - Beyond the Veil and Islamic Terrorism: Modern Arabic Literature

AFRS 112 - An Introduction to Islam

AFRS 141 - Tradition, History and the African Experience

AFRS 175 - Mandela: Race, Resistance and Renaissance in South Africa

AFRS 185 - Homer in the Caribbean

AFRS 202 - Black Music

AFRS 205 - Arab Women Writers

AFRS 207 - Intermediate Arabic

AFRS 208 - Intermediate Arabic

AFRS 211 - Islam in Europe and the Americas

AFRS 212 - Arabic Literature and Culture

AFRS 217 - Prisons, Community Reentry, and Critical issues in the Criminal Justice System

AFRS 219 - Queer of Color Critique

AFRS 220 - Policing the Planet

AFRS 221 - Captive Genders and Methods of Survival

AFRS 227 - The Harlem Renaissance and its Precursors

AFRS 228 - African American Literature

AFRS 229 - Black Intellectual History

AFRS 231 - Algeria/France:Race, Religion & Citizenship

AFRS 232 - African American Cinema

AFRS 234 - Creole Religions of the Caribbean

AFRS 235 - The Civil Rights Movement in the United States

AFRS 240 - Cultural Localities

AFRS 242 - Brazil in Crisis: Continuity and Change in Portuguese America

AFRS 244 - Indian Ocean

AFRS 245 - Making Waves: Topics in Feminist Activism

AFRS 246 - French Speaking Cultures and Literatures of Africa and the Caribbean

AFRS 247 - The Politics of Difference

AFRS 248 - Racial and Ethnic Group Politics in Popular Culture

AFRS 250 - Across Religious Boundaries: Understanding Differences

AFRS 251 - Topics in Black Literatures

AFRS 252 - Writing the Diaspora: Verses/Versus

AFRS 255 - Race, Representation, and Resistance in U.S. Schools

AFRS 256 - Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism

AFRS 257 - Genre and the Postcolonial City

AFRS 258 - Environment and Culture in the Caribbean

AFRS 259 - Settler Colonialism in a Comparative Perspective

AFRS 260 - International Relations of the Third World: Bandung to 9/11

AFRS 264 - African American Women’s History

AFRS 265 - Slavery and Freedom in the U.S.

AFRS 266 - Art, Urgency, and Everyday Life in the United States

AFRS 270 - The Black Power Movement

AFRS 271 - Perspectives on the African Past: Africa Before 1800

AFRS 272 - Modern African History

AFRS 275 - Caribbean Discourse

AFRS 277 - Global Literatures in English

AFRS 279 - Spaces of Exception

AFRS 280 - The Futures of Africana Studies

AFRS 284 - Africa: Development and Environment

AFRS 290 - Community-Engaged Learning

AFRS 298 - Independent Work

AFRS 299 - Research Methods

AFRS 300 - Senior Thesis or Project

AFRS 307 - Upper-Intermediate Arabic

AFRS 308 - Upper-Intermediate Arabic

AFRS 311 - Advanced Arabic

AFRS 319 - Race and its Metaphors

AFRS 320 - Abolitionist Theory

AFRS 326 - Challenging Ethnicity

AFRS 330 - Religion, Critical Theory and Politics

AFRS 346 - Race and Gender in Judicial Politics

AFRS 351 - Africana Studies Seminar

AFRS 352 - Redemption and Diplomatic Imagination in Postcolonial Africa

AFRS 362 - Text and Image

AFRS 365 - Race and the History of Jim Crow Segregation

AFRS 366 - Art and Activism in the United States

AFRS 373 - Slavery and Abolition in Africa

AFRS 374 - The African Diaspora

AFRS 378 - Black Paris

AFRS 380 - English Seminar

AFRS 381 - Race and Popular Culture