First-Year Courses in Afroamerican and African Studies (Division 311)

Fall Term, 1999 (September 8 - December 22, 1999)

To see what first-year courses have been added or changed in Afroamerican and African Studies this week go to What's New This Week.

Introductory Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Hanes Walton

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course introduces and provides a general overview of the area of Afroamerican Studies. It employs a multidisciplinary perspective which combines elements from conventional historical, political, sociocultural, and behavioral orientations in the analysis of Afroamerican culture and institutions. The course format is a lecture-discussion with two weekly lectures. Students meet with GSIs once weekly to discuss course readings and lectures. The course will be supplemented by guest lecturers, selected CAAS colloquia, films, and special projects.

Independent Study and Special Topics

Section 001 – Barrel of A Pen: African Politics in Literature.

Instructor(s): Yaw Twumasi (yawt@umich.edu)

First-Year Seminar,

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Africans have lived in an intensely political era since the end of World War II. They have struggled for independence, charted plans for decolonization, promoted and suffered the rise of authoritarian regimes, and debated and experimented with a wide variety of political frameworks for economic and social development. This course looks at the central role played by African writers in shaping the politics of this era. Readings will be selected from the works of writers, men and women, from throughout the continent, including Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ayi Kwei Armah, Mariama Ba, Camara Laye, Ngugi wa Thiongo, and others.

Independent Study and Special Topics

Section 001 – Black Multiculturalism. Meets with English 140.002.

Instructor(s): Ifeoma Nwankwo (icn@umich.edu)

First-Year Seminar,

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

By examining key African-American and Caribbean (Latino, Haitian, and West Indian) literary, musical, and filmic texts we will gain insight into the battles fought and the bridges built in the creation of Black culture and identity in the U.S. Both Caribbean immigrants and African-American migrants from the South brought their own culture, music, and dreams of a utopian North (America). These cultures and dreams have clashed and blended, resulting in a variety of definitions and expressions of Blackness. We will analyze the development of these definitions and expressions in relation to each other, considering questions such as: Are African-American and West Indian equivalent in the U.S.? Should works written by African-Americans that are set in the Caribbean be categorized as Caribbean or as African-American? Is the music of Wyclef Jean and/or Lauryn Hill African-American or is it Caribbean? Are the portrayals of Caribbean Blacks in How Stella Got Her Groove Back stereotypical? Is or can Latinidad be Blackness? (At key points we will also reference African-Canadian, Caribbean-Canadian, and Black British texts and cultures.)

Required texts: Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory
Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent
Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of Frederick Douglass
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones
Claude McKay, Home to Harlem
James Baldwin, Go Tell It On The Mountain

Coursepack with excerpts and articles – authors include Zora Neale Hurston, Louise Bennett, Nicolas Guillen, Stuart Hall, and Carole Boyce Davies

Course Requirements: Short weekly essays, Midterm Exam, Individual and Group Presentations, Final Research Paper

Independent Study and Special Topics

Section 001 – Performance, Art, and Power in Africa.

Instructor(s): Kelly Askew

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course will offer students an anthropological perspective on the cultural and aesthetic diversity of Sub-Saharan Africa. We will explore both current and historical art forms with an eye and ear to how their performance and production are intimately related to power relations. Among the topics to be discussed are: cross-cultural understandings of art and aesthetics, art in the service of power (royal regalia, praise-singers, colonialism), art as a mode of resistance, art and development, commercialization, and syncretism in African art forms. While we will explore a wide variety of genres (drama, music, dance, painting, masking, sculpture, poetry, and film), the course is not meant as a survey of African performing and non-performing arts. Instead we will seek to unravel the interconnections between art, culture, and society by asking how art constitutes a potent means of maintaining, contesting, and negotiating power.

Historical Perspectives

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Mitchell

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See History 275.001.