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Transfer Student Courses in CAASThis page was created at 7:08 PM on Mon, Jan 21, 2002. Winter Academic Term, 2002 (January 7 - April 26)Open courses in CAAS Wolverine Access Subject listing for CAAS Winter Academic Term '02 Time Schedule for CAAS.
CAAS 211. Dynamics of the Black Diaspora.
Section 001.Instructor(s): Ifeoma C Nwankwo (icn@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: CAAS 111. (3). (HU). Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. This course is intended to help students sort through social and theoretical questions concerning Black Diasporan identities by foregrounding the influential notion of Africa as a mythic geographic site, the significance of Black as a label of social identification, and the varied approaches to self-definition taken by African-American and Caribbean peoples in disparate national contexts. Because the multicultural history and present of Black Diasporan culture and identity are so historically exposed as obviously possessing multiple African, European, and Native American influences, Black Diasporan identity is also conspicuously intermixed. Whether it is a matter of language, religion, food, or music, the "mixed" nature of the identity cannot be avoided. At the same time, particular Black Diasporan identities have become encrusted with national, racial, linguistic, and other cultural stereotypes continually re-formed in mass culture. Notions of the Jamaican, the Cuban, the African-American, for instance, show up in a variety of contemporary contexts, sometimes spread by African-American or Caribbean peoples intentionally and/or unintentionally but most frequently shaped by mass media apparatus not fully in the control of these African-descended people. Historical debates over national interests versus global identification among the African-American and Caribbean peoples have continued to reverberate in the ways that these African descended people are sometimes clumped together as a single group despite their obvious differences in language, tradition, politics, and culture, and yet at other times their differences are showcased such that Afro-Cubans as categorized as Hispanics or Latinos but African-Americans as Blacks in U.S. culture, for instance. Because emigration, immigration, and remigration have played such a vital role in the formation and deformation of Black Diasporan identities, this course will pay particular attention to the questions of how such resettlements help to rigidify and disturb settled notions of what constitutes Black Diasporan identity in general, and African-American and Caribbean identity in particular. How do we gauge the identity-location of someone like Sidney Poitier or Colin Powell, whose influences on U.S. and global cultures have been so prominent. Is Poitier, for instance, Bahamian, Caribbean, Bahamian American, African American? At one point does an identity slip from being identified with a particular nation to being identified with the final country of settlement to being identified with a global Black culture? How does one locate the African versus the British versus the American versus the Native American influence on and impact of "Poitier" as a mass cultural phenomenon? Moving beyond individual subjects to collective ones, we'll ask similar questions about such cultural expressions as Reggae, Calypso, Dancehall, Ska, and Hip Hop. While the course focuses on the intermixed multicultural manifestations in films, music, fiction, and other cultural forms, it also requires students to study some key theoretical reflections on the problem of Black Diasporan identity formation in the contemporary diaspora. Readings from Michael Omi and Howard Winant's "Racial Formation," Edwidge Danticat's Farming of Bones, Thomas Hylland Erikson's "Ethnicity, Race and Nation: What is Ethnicity," Antonio Benitez-Rojo's The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective, Angelyn Mitchell's Within the Circle, Present. Kamau Brathwaite's Contradictory Omens: Cultural Diversity and Integration in the Caribbean, Carole Boyce Davies' Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject, and Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd's Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Intended Audience This course is aimed at a broad undergraduate audience. It is intended also as an introductory level course for CAAS concentrators and minors who have or are completing CAAS 111, "Intro to Africa & Its Diaspora," to satisfy the requirement for a cross-area course (one focusing on issues across Caribbean and African American Studies) at the 200 level. Because this is a discussion-intensive course, students will be required to participate in class discussion individually and through small-group activities, as well as to do individual and group presentations. Several short essays (1 to 3 pages), two longer essays (5 to 6 pages), and a final paper (12 to 15 pages) are included in the written assignments. There will be a final exam, and perhaps a midterm.
CAAS 327 / PSYCH 315. Psychological Aspects of the Black Experience.
African-American StudiesSection 001 – The Development of Social Psychological Research in Africa.Instructor(s): Denis C Ugwuegbu (dcugwueg@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: One course in psychology or Afroamerican and African Studies. CAAS 201 recommended. (3). (SS). (African-American Studies). Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. The primary objective of this course is to equip students, through lectures, group discussions, and discovery, with the necessary theoretical and practical knowledge, skills, and technique that will enable them to carry out social psychological research in African environment. The course is aimed at the upper-level undergraduate students in Psychology, African-American and African Studies, and other related social science disciplines. The principles underlying the collection of scientific research data remain the same but the cultural influence under which scientific research data is collected must be taken into consideration if a researcher is to collect valid and reliable research information. The discussion begins with examination of the status of psychology and social psychological research in Africa, factors that impede the development of psychology and social psychological research in the African setting, and the responsibilities of a social psychological researcher to the African subjects. We also will discuss the traditional African approaches to the generation of knowledge. The student will further learn how to plan psychological and social research in Africa, the use of sampling techniques in African setting, how to recruit and train field workers, interviewers, and how to obtain data that are reliable, valid, and have external validity from a non-Western population such as Africa. Finally, the course will assess the contributions of social psychological research to social change in Africa. A textbook and course pack will be used for the course. Student assessment will comprise of attendance, class participation, midterm and final examinations, and field research experience.
CAAS 394. Junior Seminar.
Cross-Area CoursesSection 001 – Social and Political Changes in African Literature.Instructor(s): Yaw Twumasi (yawt@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: Upperclass standing. (4). (Excl). (Cross-Area Courses). May be repeated for a total of eight credits.
Credits: (4). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. This course offers a general introduction to the social and political transformation that has occurred in Africa since the early years of the twentieth century. The transformation has been profound and African writers have not escaped its impulse, and have sought to give expression to it in their writings. We will thus seek to understand various aspects of the musical and political changes through the eyes and words of African novelists who live and write in Africa. We will focus on: significant cultural changes resulting from the contact between African peoples and European traders, missionaries, and colonial officials; the popular struggle to make sense of the European presence; social inequalities, concentration of power at the center, wealth accumulation and the conflicts it generates, all in the post-colonial period. African writers have shed a great deal of light on these issues, and their writings thus provide us with a rare opportunity to think critically about the constantly changing wider context of African politics. We will select, for intensive study, novels written by African men and women from different parts of the continent and at different time periods. We will discuss one novel each week, and every student will be responsible for leading the discussion for one class period. Active class participation will be encouraged. Several writing assignments will constitute the main requirements for this seminar course.
CAAS 405 / ANTHRCUL 400. Field Studies.
Section 001.Instructor(s): Augustin HollPrerequisites & Distribution: Junior standing. (8). (Excl). Credits: (8). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. See Cultural Anthropology 400.001.
CAAS 406 / ANTHRCUL 401. Archaeology Laboratory Studies.
Section 001.Instructor(s): Augustin HollPrerequisites & Distribution: Junior standing; concurrent enrollment in Anthro. 400. (6). (Excl). Credits: (6). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. See Cultural Anthropology 401.001.
CAAS 451. Law, Race, and the Historical Process, II.
African-American StudiesSection 001.Instructor(s): Ronald C Woods (rcwoods@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: CAAS 201 and 450 recommended. (3). (Excl). (African-American Studies). 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.
CAAS 454 / ANTHRCUL 453. African-American Culture.
African-American StudiesSection 001.Instructor(s): Melvin D Williams (mddoublu@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: One introductory course in the social sciences. CAAS 201 recommended. (3). (Excl). (African-American Studies). Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. See Cultural Anthropology 453.001.
CAAS 458. Issues in Black World Studies.
Cross-Area CoursesSection 002 – 19Th CENTURY AFRICAN- AMERICAN HISTORY. Meets with History 468.002.Instructor(s): Martha Jones (msjonz@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl). (Cross-Area Courses). May be repeated for a total of six credits.
Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted.
CAAS 458. Issues in Black World Studies.
Cross-Area CoursesSection 003 – SEMINAR IN PSYCHOLOGY OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN AFRICAInstructor(s): Denis C Ugwuegbu (dcugwueg@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl). (Cross-Area Courses). May be repeated for a total of six credits. Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. When economists discuss the development of Africa, they often forget the psychological component of social and economic development. "The Psychology of Underdevelopment in Africa" is a seminar course that is designed to lead students through lectures, discussions, and demonstrations to explore the psychological causes of the contemporary underdevelopment of the nations of Africa. Emphasis will be placed on the behavioral aspect of development, and will cover topics such as colonial underdevelopment policies in Africa, neo-colonial theories of development, the new nations of Africa and their alternative plan for development, and psychological principles of development. Special considerations will be given to topics such as attitudes, motivation, and trust and development. Finally, the place of education and human resources planning as important aspects of development efforts will be examined. Since this course will attract students with various educational backgrounds, students who are ready to make insightful and innovative contributions to the understanding of the causes and possible eradication of development problems of Africa are encouraged to register for it.
CAAS 458. Issues in Black World Studies.
Cross-Area CoursesSection 004 – RALPH ELLISON AND THE BLUES AESTHETIC.Instructor(s): Paul A Anderson (paanders@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl). (Cross-Area Courses). May be repeated for a total of six credits. Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. "I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber, and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and anything expect me." So begins Ralph Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN (1952), certainly one of the most influential and widely discussed African American novels of the twentieth century. This senior seminar will dedicate considerable time to reading Ellison's classic novel and to interpreting it in historical context. We also will survey the non-fiction writings of Ellison (1914-1994), paying particular attention to his theories about African American and American cultural identity as reflected in the languages and rhythms of literary, political, and musical expression (especially the blues and jazz). INVISIBLE MAN, for example, addressed these issues through a strikingly imaginative and controversial depiction of the unnamed main character's "progress" through a series of African American and American political, educational, and cultural institutions and social worlds in the mid-twentieth century. Using Ellison as a partial guide to mid-20th century African American intellectual life, we also will explore the multi-ethnic roots of Ellison's intellectual world, controversies surrounding his writings and ideas, and his impact on later writers. Other authors and critics discussed or read here will include assorted Harlem Renaissance writers, Black leftists, separatists, and liberals, Nation of Islam spokesmen, writers and activists from the 1960s Black Arts movement, and more recent literary artists and postmodernist critics. Grades will be determined on the basis of attendance, active participation, short reading quizzes or written commentaries, two short papers (4-6 pp. each), an in-class midterm, and a take-home final exam. There are no specific prerequisites, but it is expected that students will have done some prior relevant coursework in African American Studies, cultural studies, or U.S. literature. Enrollment limited to 20 students.
CAAS 458. Issues in Black World Studies.
Cross-Area CoursesSection 005 – REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, GENDER, AND POLITICS IN AFRICA: A SOUTHERN AFRICA PERSPECTIVE.Instructor(s): Shingairai A Feresu (sferesu@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl). (Cross-Area Courses). May be repeated for a total of six credits.
Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. This course will consider reproductive health of women, gender inequalities, and politics of health in Africa with a special focus on Southern Africa. The course is designed for mid-level to upper level undergraduate Afro-American and African studies, women studies, social science courses, and students planning international careers or internships. This course will discuss the background, dynamics, and underpinnings of health practices in Africa in the broader social context. Comparisons of Southern Africa to other parts of Africa will be made throughout the course. The course will explore how gender relations and cultural practices influence health. The macroeconomic and political context and their impact on health in this continent also will be considered. The course will focus on the AIDS crisis in Southern Africa and strategies necessary to compact the epidemic as a specific case study. Other reproductive health issues including sexually transmitted diseases, other reproductive tract infections, family planning, and maternal mortality and morbidity also will be discussed in this course. The main questions we will address are: is the African woman uniquely vulnerable to poor access to health care? Is there a way the African woman can be meaningfully empowered in a sustainable way to promote and control her reproductive health without creating dependency? How can we as ambassadors of health or activists help create improved health status of mothers and their families in a cost effective manner? The course will use techniques from public health, the medical sciences, and epidemiology in articulating health problems and strategies by engaging students in dialogue and problem solving techniques through lectures, group discussions, and case studies. No prior knowledge of Africa or the health sciences is assumed. Required text will posted on the web prior to beginning of class. Assessment of student performance in the course will be through a case study, group project, and a small student end-of-term paper.
CAAS 458. Issues in Black World Studies.
Cross-Area CoursesSection 006 – Cultural Psychology of Immigrants. Meets with Psychology 401.004Instructor(s): Ram Mahalingham (ramawasi@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl). (Cross-Area Courses). May be repeated for a total of six credits.
Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted.
CAAS 477 / NRE 477. Women and the Environment.
Cross-Area CoursesSection 001.Instructor(s): Dorceta Taylor (dorceta@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: Junior standing. (3). (Excl). (Cross-Area Courses). Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. This course explores issues related to gender, race, class, and environmental inequality. It looks at the historical role of women in the environment in the U.S., explores the development of environmental ideologies, and looks at the relationship between women, environment, and social justice. It examines environmental sub-movements like ecofeminism and environmental justice. The course also examines gender and inequality in the international context. In particular, it focuses on women and development issues.
CAAS 489 / ENGLISH 479. Topics in Afro-American Literature.
African-American StudiesSection 001.Instructor(s): Michele Simms-Burton (mlsimms@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: CAAS 201, 274 and/or 338 strongly recommended. (3). (Excl). (African-American Studies). May be repeated for a total of six credits.
Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted.
CAAS 490. Special Topics in Black World Studies.
Cross-Area CoursesSection 001 – Telling their Stories: Black Autobiography and Identity Politics in the Americas. (1 Credit).Instructor(s): Lesley Feracho (ferachol@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: Junior standing. (1-2). (Excl). (Cross-Area Courses). May be repeated for a total of six credits. Mini/Short course Credits: (1-2). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. This class will look at the autobiographies of Blacks of the Americas in order to answer important questions about identity politics and nation building:
In order to answer these questions this course will look at autobiographies from Cuba and Brazil. As countries whose very identities are made up of multiple racial groups and ethnicities we will study the ways in which this diversity affects how its citizens define themselves. The autobiographies chosen will include the only slave narrative written to date in Latin America by Juan Francisco Manzano, Esteban Montejo's accounts of his life during the war for Cuban independence, Maria Castillo's accounts of her life as a Black Cuban woman in the 20th century, and Carolina Maria de Jesus' diary of a Black woman's survival in a Brazilian favela. Our discussions of these texts will be supplemented by cultural information, video, and music that expand on each country's social and political history. Students will be expected to give occasional presentations on a specific text and present a final written investigation of a text of their choice discussed in class.
CAAS 490. Special Topics in Black World Studies.
Cross-Area CoursesSection 002 – Regionalism, Racial Identity, and Conspicuous Consumption. (1 credit). Meets March 5-April 4.Instructor(s): Jack Kerkering (jackk@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: Junior standing. (1-2). (Excl). (Cross-Area Courses). May be repeated for a total of six credits. Mini/Short course Credits: (1-2). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. This course examines how racial identity serves as a marker of elevated class status by enabling "conspicuous consumption," or the social display of wealth and leisure. Commencing with recent accounts of this phenomenon, the course then turns to the American 1890s, the period when the drive for conspicuous consumption first began to make identity a luxury item. The first identities to be consumed as luxuries were the regional identities marketed to the leisure class through regionalist fiction. In the work of later African-American writers the conventions of regionalism were adapted to display the identity not just of a place but also of a race, thereby making racial identity available as an object of conspicuous consumption. Readings for this course will include contemporary criticism by Adolph Reed, Kenneth Warren, Richard Broadhead, and Roberto Dainotto; primary readings will include Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), Charles Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman (1899), W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk (1903), and Pauline Hopkins' Of One Blood (1903). Course requirements include class attendance and participation, weekly response papers, and a 6-8 page final paper.
CAAS 490. Special Topics in Black World Studies.
Cross-Area CoursesSection 003 – Defining Freedom in the Post-slavery British Caribbean. (1 credit). March 4 to April 1.Instructor(s): Juanita De Barros (debarros@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: Junior standing. (1-2). (Excl). (Cross-Area Courses). May be repeated for a total of six credits. Mini/Short course Credits: (1-2). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. The legal end of slavery in the British Caribbean is a significant historical moment, an event that marked the end of one era and the beginning of another. Yet the freedom that arrived in 1838 was elusive and contested. This course examines the attempts of former slaves to ensure that de jure freedom became freedom in fact. By exploring the process by which freed Afro-Creoles attempted to realize freedom - establishing free villages, engaging in peasant agriculture, and tentatively organizing themselves as a working class - in three British Caribbean colonies (Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados), this course charts the efforts of the emancipated population to define freedom and, in the process, to define a new post-emancipation political, economic, and cultural order. We will focus our readings on three major works that examine these colonies during the first hundred years of freedom in the British Caribbean: Thomas Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938; Walter Rodney, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905; Bonham Richardson, Panama Money in Barbados, 1900-1920. These books will be supplemented by articles that will be provided in advance. To prepare for the course, students should have some background in Caribbean history or have read Franklin Knight's The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism or Eric William's From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean, 1492-1969 or some other overview. As well as regular attendance and participation, the course requirements include one seminar presentation and one final essay (6-8 pages).
CAAS 533 / AMCULT 533 / HISTORY 572. Black Civil Rights from 1900.
African-American StudiesSection 001 – The Origins of Black StudiesInstructor(s): Kevin Gaines (gainesk@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: CAAS 201 recommended. (3). (Excl). (African-American Studies).
Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. We will discuss a selection of the more influential texts for the formation and development of the field of Black Studies. Texts include: Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis; Requirements: regular attendance and active participation, one 5-8 page book review, one 15-20 page review essay discussing a minimum of three texts.
CAAS 558. Seminar in Black World Studies.
Cross-Area CoursesSection 001 – Comparative Slavery in a Circum-Atlantic Perspective. Meets with History 604.001, American Culture 699.001, Women's Studies 698.003.Instructor(s): Carroll Smith-Rosenberg (csmithro@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: Graduate standing or permission of instructor. (3). (Excl). (Cross-Area Courses). May be repeated for a total of six credits.
Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted.
CAAS 558. Seminar in Black World Studies.
Cross-Area CoursesSection 002 – READINGS IN BLACK LABOR HISTORY.Instructor(s): Kenneth Brown (krbrown@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: Graduate standing or permission of instructor. (3). (Excl). (Cross-Area Courses). May be repeated for a total of six credits. Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. This seminar will investigate the alchemy of race, class, and gender as they related to the history of African American labor. Exactly what 'the' dominate force driving Black labor history is hotly contested terrain. Many scholars believe in a Marxist dialectical interpretation of the dynamics of Black labor. Traditional "race men/women" adhere to the ever-present reality of racism as the true determinant motivating the historical environment in which Black labor history has developed. Black womenist scholars have complicated this discourse with a significantly modified interpretation of labor history in general and Black labor in particular emphasizing a gender oriented analysis in order to gain a comprehensive understands of the subject. This course will engage each of these arguments. Students will attempt to select and defend a position that answers the question of which dynamics is dominant or, if not which one, than which combination of these dynamics drives the phenomenon. This is a readings course, and students will be required to read a book per week on average with short weekly e-mail reviews and commentary. There will be several videos and a small course pack of selected articles to view and read. Classroom participation is mandatory in order to facilitate the student lead dialogue. The final will be a 15-25 page paper on topic chosen be the student and approved by the instructor.
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