Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (SS).
Credits: (4; 2 in the half-term).
Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.
Contemporary Africa has certain striking cultural, social, political, and economic characteristics. These characteristics range from cultural diversity and creativity, colonially-created national boundaries, high rates of population growth, and economic underdevelopment to passion for development and political stability. This course is designed to address the basic question: Why and how did African countries acquire these characteristics? We will seek to provide, in a broad and wide-ranging survey, a coherent explanation for the transformation of African cultures, societies, politics, and economies, in relation to internal developments and to the effects of external forces. Special emphasis will be placed on major historical and social processes and their relation with one another. The historical evolution of Africa will be traced, but this will be done as a means of shedding light on the conditions and circumstances of contemporary Africa. The underlying approach is to seek to integrate whatever is known of the pre-colonial and colonial past (as revealed by archaeology, anthropology, history, etc.) with an understanding of post-colonial societies and politics.
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Prerequisites & Distribution: CAAS 360. (3). (Excl).
Credits: (3).
Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.
This course is a continuation of AAS 360, an accelerated course which provides an interdisciplinary overview of Afro-American culture and art. AAS 361 develops further information and dialogue for a closer examination of the interrelationship of the arts, and of how they influence and are influenced by society. The approach continues to be interdisciplinary, and Afrocentric. The Afro-American cultural experience and its various forms of existence and encounters are brought under close scrutiny in a variety of contexts: these will range from the historical and political to the philosophical, the religious, and the aesthetic. In the process, this course also examines the relationship of West African cultures to both South and North American insistencies. The course also recognizes and will examine the controversies surrounding the impact of the Afrocentric aesthetic on Western culture and lifestyles. Slides, films, and guest appearances will supplement lectures. But this course is also designed to be interactive and communal and to create opportunities for students to strengthen their skills and establish a clearer, more substantial concept of identity, focus, and direction.
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Prerequisites & Distribution: Two courses in political science. (3). (Excl).
Credits: (3).
Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.
See Political Science 419.001.
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Prerequisites & Distribution: Junior standing. (3). (Excl).
Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).
Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.
See Cultural Anthropology 411.001.
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Prerequisites & Distribution: CAAS 450 recommended. (3). (Excl).
Credits: (3).
Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.
This course is the second half of a two-course sequence on the constitutional and legal history of African Americans. It covers the phase of this history beginning with the advent of the Modern Civil Rights Movement and extending to the present. In this course, we will approach law as an institution which is constantly shaping and being shaped by the cultural, economic, political, and social environments around it. In looking at the interaction between law, race, and historical process in the latter half of the twentieth century, the course will explore the reciprocal relationship between law and the societal order, the role of law in the philosophical and social discourse of African Americans, and the function of law in the developmental strategies adopted by them. This course will routinely examine the constitutional and legal experience of African Americans as a case study in how ideas are transformed by historical forces in malleable principles of law.
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Prerequisites & Distribution: One introductory course in the social sciences. (3). (Excl).
Credits: (3).
Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.
See Cultural Anthropology 453.001.
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Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of six credits.
Credits: (3).
Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.
We will explore writings by several Black diaspora intellectuals who either elected to become expatriates or were political exiles during the Cold War, the African American freedom movement, and movements for African liberation from colonialism. We will examine the precedents for Black international intellectual communities in Harlem, Washington D.C., London and Paris, setting a context for our close textual readings of this body of political writing. Authors include Richard Wright, James Baldwin, William Gardner Smith, Maya Angelou, Frantz Fanon, Maryse Conde, Kamau Brathwaite, Jan Carew, Florence Ladd, John A. Williams.
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Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of six credits.
Credits: (3).
Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.
Through selected readings and visuals, this course will look at the politics of arts and performance in representing the past and the experience of encountering the other, the European and the Asiatic.
The class will look at social constructions of memory in masquerades, masks, paintings, memorials and commemorations, festivals, museum installations, autobiography and fiction, theatre, and many other activities dealing with representing the human experience. Key concepts such as: shared memory – context and contextualization – interpretation – adaptation – inception – reproduction – inscription of meanings will be discussed. The students will take turn in interrogating and critiquing the reading and visual materials. A final original research paper dealing with issues and debates raised in class is required for the end of the term.
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Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of six credits.
Credits: (3).
Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.
Over the course of the academic term, we will investigate one of the major ongoing conflicts in among Black political leaders – the battle over the relevance of the Caribbean and Africa to U.S. Black Nationalism. We will consider key African-American and Caribbean figures' answers to such questions as: should African-Americans just focus on struggles here or should they view their struggles here as part of an international Black struggle? What should African American's connection with Caribbean and African Blacks be? Is racial identity more important than national affinity?
To help us in our investigation, we will explore the writings and speeches of four fathers of Black Nationalism –
Students will also learn or hone archival research skills by analyzing historical documents, contemporaneous newspaper articles, personal and official correspondence, and diaries. Course requirements: short essay, research project (on any aspect of the topic using literature, music, and/or film), and a presentation (sharing your research with the class).
Marcus Garvey (Jamaican born Back-to-Africa movement leader);
W.E.B. DuBois (The Souls of Black Folk);
Frederick Douglass (slave narrator and consul to Haiti); and
Martin Delany, (author of "the first pan-African novel").
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Prerequisites & Distribution: Junior standing. (1-2). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of six credits.
Mini/Short course
Credits: (1-2).
Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.
Through selected readings and visuals, this course will look at the politics of arts and performance in representing the past and the experience of encountering the other, the European and the Asiatic. What is the relationship between memory and African arts and performance. What is the relationship between performance (and writings) of historical events and the historical records? How do Africans and African-Americans remember? What is at stake in remembering and forgetting the past? Who has the right to formulate what counts as group memory? To what extent are memories embodied or recalled? The class will look at social constructions of memory in masquerades, masks, paintings, memorials and commemorations, festivals, museum installations, autobiography and fiction, theatre, and many other activities dealing with representing the human experience. Key concepts such as: shared memory – context and contextualization – interpretation – adaptation – inception – reproduction – inscription of meanings will be discussed. The students will take turn in interrogating and critiquing the reading and visual materials. A final original research paper dealing with issues and debates raised in class is required for the end of the term.
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Prerequisites & Distribution: Graduate standing or permission of instructor. (3). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of six credits.
Credits: (3).
Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.
If there is one concept inextricably linked in popular imagination to the continent of Africa it is drumming. Yet African soundscapes are home to a variety of instrumental traditions (kora, 'ud, mbira, and marimba, to mention but a few) and vocal traditions – each of which is embedded in its own sociocultural, geographical, and historical milieu. How a single facet of African music came to be synonymous with the vast array of cultures that live within this enormously diverse region is quite perplexing, but will nonetheless constitute the departure point for our discussion. We will review the background literature on African music and read recent analyses that relate music to the aesthetics, politics, social relations, and economics of its production and reproduction.
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Prerequisites & Distribution: Graduate standing or permission of instructor. (3). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of six credits.
Credits: (3).
Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.
This course examines the ways in which African textiles, their styles, and associated production techniques relate to particular social, religious, political, and economic contexts. In the first part of the course, distinctive textile technologies, relations of production, and the economics of consumption found in several West and Central African societies are considered. These distinctive production technologies are reflected in contemporary textile aesthetics, as exemplified by strip-woven textiles. The second section focuses on the symbolic, social, and political aspects of African textiles, based on their use in funeral, kingship, and marriage ritual and in masquerade performances among people in Zaire, Madagascar, Nigeria, Ghana, and Mali. In the final section of the course, the history of the intersection of African and European textile traditions is discussed, with an examination of "traditional" African textiles made by European textile firms or manufacturing techniques, contemporary African-style dress fashions, and textiles produced for the tourist trade. The course evaluation will be based on two short essays (40% of grade), a research paper (40% of grade), and class participation (20%).
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This page was created at 4:13 PM on Mon, Jan 31, 2000.