ABD 100 | INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN AND BLACK DIASPORA STUDIES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This interdisciplinary introductory course examines the many ways in which African and diasporic peoples have created robust lives for themselves and contributed to the creation of the modern world. Our investigation will pay special attention to how social, economic, and political institutions, geographical factors, and the cultural forces of modernity have influenced African contributions to the modern world.
ABD 144 | AFRICAN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
A survey of the varieties of African religious practice and thought.
ABD 200 | AFRICA: PEOPLES, CULTURES, IDEAS AND MOVEMENTS | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This interdisciplinary course introduces Africa in all its beauty, diversity, and complexity. This course will offer an overview of the history, social, economic, political, environmental conditions of Africa. It will begin by exploring the creation of cultures and empires that emerged in Africa before European colonial invasion and how colonialism has affected those sociocultural forms. We will take a close look at contemporary African societies focusing on topics in economic development, natural resource extraction, political power, gender relations, urbanization, the physical geography, environmental sustainability, climate change, and food security. Lastly, we will focus on modern African culture, where we will explore popular music, the arts, and the belief systems in selected societies.
ABD 202 | AFRICA, 1750-1900 | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The Age of Conquest. The origins of Afro-European relations and the political, economic and military causes of the European partition and occupation of the continent. Cross-listed with HST 132.
ABD 203 | AFRICA, 1900-PRESENT | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The workings of the colonial system, the rise and course of independence movements, and the history of individual African states since independence. Cross-listed with HST 133.
ABD 206 | AFRO-CARIBBEAN AND AFRO-LATIN AMERICA: PEOPLES, CULTURES, IDEAS AND MOVEMENTS | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course introduces students to the study of peoples of African descent in the Caribbean and Latin America through lenses of history, politics, and culture. Students will learn how racial identities are constructed and interpreted in the Americas and the ways these identities have shaped Latin American and Caribbean cultures, politics, and societies. This course will explore broad patterns, changes, and continuities in the history of the African Diaspora in the hemisphere through an analysis of various topics such as conquest, colonization, slavery, independence struggles, nation-building, imperialism, neo-colonialism, revolution, violence, social movements, and inter-American relations.
ABD 208 | AFRICAN AMERICA: PEOPLES, CULTURES, IDEAS AND MOVEMENTS | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course is intended to acquaint the student with a range of texts that illustrate some of the major themes in African American studies while emphasizing the development of students' critical reading, writing, and analytical skills. The course will serve as an introduction to African American historical, literary, political, and cultural study. This course is meant to introduce students to some of the issues, debates, and questions that have shaped the study and development of Black Americans in the United States and the broader world.
ABD 209 | RACE AND RACISM | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Although it is common for us to talk about race, very few of us have an understanding of what the term means, much less how it came to signify human diversity. Race is not an objective scientific category that reliably conveys information about people or groups of people; it is a set of ideologies and practices that originated in modern Europe and has a traceable intellectual history. In this course we will study the origin of race as an intellectual and scientific project designed to organize humanity into discrete and hierarchical groups, and the implications of racial thinking, i.e. racial discrimination perpetuated by rhetorical and pictorial stereotypes, discriminatory behavior and institutional practices. We will utilize racial formation theory which links race and racism by showing the dynamic connections between stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination and privilege.
ABD 210 | AFRICA ON FILM | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Africa is a continent with a rich and growing repertoire of film. This course explores this repertoire, focusing primarily on films made about Africa by filmmakers of African descent. This class will feature fiction and non-fiction films (full-length and shorts) by well-known filmmakers of African descent. In addition to screenings, students will read essays that illuminate the background necessary to intelligently interpret and critique film. Topics for discussion include the funding, distribution, and presentation of African Films as well as modes of criticism appropriate to film made by Africans and the relation of filmmaking to history. Film directors include Souleymane Cisse, Bassek ba Kobhio, Jean-Marie Teno, Djibril Dio Mambety, Mohamad Camara, and Ousmane Sembene.
ABD 211 | AFRICA TO 1800: AGE OF EMPIRES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
A study of African history from earliest times, concentrating on the political, social and religious aspects of major African states and empires. Cross-listed with HST 131.
ABD 214 | ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Africans have been on the move since the dawn of humanity. Anthropology is one discipline that can inform us about the presence and influence of Africans throughout the world. Topics include: the history of anthropology and its role in the construction of race and modernity; patterns of migration and displacement of African peoples across the world and their socio-cultural implications; and the evolution of the Black anthropological tradition.
ABD 215 | THE AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course will examine the religious experience of African Americans and its African precursors through historical and literary resources, reflecting African Americans' distinctive past and interaction with other elements of American culture. Cross-listed with REL 115.
ABD 218 | AFRICAN AMERICAN POLITICS | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course explores the evolution of African-American political participation from the mid-1800's to the present. Topical areas include black political leadership and involvement in social movements (including abolitionism, nationalism, civil rights and the black power movements), electoral politics, political parties, urban politics, public policies, political culture, and as elected officials. Special attention will also be given to the influence of laws and the courts on African-Americans' political participation.
ABD 220 | BLACKS AND LOVE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course employs cultural criticism, race and ethnic studies, and women's and gender studies to examine the visual representations of blacks and love in art, film, and literature. The course begins by examining the construction of race in eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth-century European and American philosophy and body politic and with an examination of art, art history, film, and literature. Section two explores the definition of love; it examines Christian definitions of love as well as secular definitions from black intellectuals, cultural critics, and scholars. Section three examines a range of genres in search of progressive, transformative, positive images that depict blacks in loving relationships, rediscovering what it means to love oneself and others in spite of/because of our human differences (in race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality).
ABD 221 | ROMANCE, GENDER, AND RACE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course examines how writers represent gender and race in the romance genre. The course begins with a study of the literary elements that comprise popular romance novels. It also examines the design elements for their covers used primarily to attract women readers from varied racial/ethnic backgrounds, who, as major consumers of this genre, generate over a billion dollars in revenue annually. Next, attention will be devoted specifically to examining women writers and black readers of romance novels, who make up 25% of the billion dollar publishing industry. Questions to be addressed include: How does a writer's gender and racial/ethnic identity shape the representations of race and gender in romance fiction and cover design? How have writers complicated the popular romance plot to address the issues of gender, race, class, and age? How do writers utilize the romance novel during specific historical periods to address social, political, and health issues? The course concludes by examining how the internet has transformed the writing, publishing, purchasing, and reading practices for the writers, publishers, and readers of romance novels with black characters.
ABD 229 | RACE, SCIENCE AND WHITE SUPREMACY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Recently, scientists have come to question the concept of "race" as a reliable or accurate description of human populations, but the term is still understood to signify innate and essential biological difference. The concept of race originated in the 18th century with the work of European and American natural scientists. Although their original intention was to apply a taxonomic structure to human populations, the concept was quickly appropriated and used to support the domination and exploitation of people of color. Science provided a lens of objectivity that perpetuated biases, reinforced stereotypes and countenanced racism. This class will explore the tangled legacy of racial thinking and how scientists have marshaled evidence for and against ideologies of White supremacy and Black inferiority. We will discuss how Black bodies in particular have been scrutinized by natural scientists and medical professionals who sought to identify the physical traits the defined racial categories. Topics include the origin and use of race in science, phrenology, Eugenics, and the use of people of African descent as objects of scientific display and medical experimentation.
ABD 230 | STEREOTYPES AND BLACK IDENTITY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Stereotypical representations of people of African descent have pervaded Western culture throughout the modern era. These images were disseminated along the trade routes of colonialism, from Africa to Europe, the Americas and Asia. Stereotypes of people of African descent have been a part of popular culture, commercial advertising, and scientific literature. This course will examine the origin and dissemination of the dehumanized image of "the Black body". We will discuss the perpetuation of Black stereotypes and how these images have shaped Black identity in the post colonial world.
ABD 231 | PHILOSOPHY AND THE QUESTION OF RACE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
A philosophical inquiry into the history of the concept of race. Cross-listed with PHL 231.
ABD 232 | MIXED RACE AMERICAN IDENTITY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The 1967 Supreme Court decision in the case of Loving vs. the State of Virginia overturned laws that prohibited individuals from different racial backgrounds from marrying. Since then, people from mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds have advocated for legal recognition of their status as members of more than one racial group. This course explores the transformation of these "interracial intimacies" from a cultural taboo to a source of personal identity. By placing their lives and experiences in the appropriate historical and cultural context, we will explore how people who identify as "mixed" negotiate the rigid boundaries of race in the United States.
ABD 233 | SURVEY OF AFRICAN DIASPORIC INTELLECTUAL THOUGHT | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This survey course examines the philosophical and critical thought from African American, Caribbean, and African philosophers, feminists, political, and radical intellectuals. The thinkers to be studied include, but are not limited to, Du Bois, Garvey, James, Lamming, Williams, Senghor, Fanon, Hodge, Wynter, Lorde, Soyinka, hooks, Emecheta, and Conde. Cross-listed with REL 218.
ABD 234 | BLACK AESTHETIC THOUGHT | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course will examine the aesthetic thought and artistic movements that have emerged from Black creative intellectuals in the U.S. and globally. The course will examine Black aesthetics through various creative forms such as visual arts, cinema, music, and others. Figures examined in this course may include: W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Zora Neale Hurston, Stuart Hall, bell hooks, Larry Neal, among others.
ABD 235 | HARLEM RENAISSANCE AND NEGRITUDE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This interdisciplinary course will examine the diasporic literary and cultural movements known as the Harlem (or New Negro) Renaissance and the Negritude Movement. Through close attention to the essays, novels, and poetry from these movements, students will explore the connections between these two multifaceted cultural movements and their contributions to the growth of a global Black political and cultural consciousness. Authors to be studied include: Du Bois, Hughes, Locke, McKay, Cesaire and Senghor, among others.
ABD 236 | BLACK FREEDOM MOVEMENTS | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course examines the movement for freedom by Black people in the US and throughout the African diaspora. Students will analyze the struggle for liberation in cultural, historical, and political contexts through the study of as anti-slavery and abolition movements, the Civil Rights movement, anti-colonial struggles, the Black Power movement, Black Lives Matter/Movement for Black Lives and the work of activists and scholars throughout the diaspora.
ABD 239 | PHILOSOPHIES OF AFRICA | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
A study of the patterns of philosophical thinking from the African continent. Cross-listed with PHL 239.
ABD 240 | BLACK MUSIC IN AMERICAN CULTURE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course will focus on the historical development, cultural significance, political commentary, and social effects of Black music in the U.S. from the 1960s to the 1980s. Beginning with the rise of R&B and Soul in the 1960s, the course will continue on to examine innovations such as funk, disco and the emergence of hip hop. It considers the aesthetics and themes of black music and how they reflect the Black experience in the U.S. during the latter half of the 20th century, as well as the ways that the music, the themes, and the people evolve over that period.
ABD 241 | RELIGIOUS DIMENSIONS OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA | 4-8 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course explores the dynamics of African religions throughout the Diaspora and the Atlantic world. It will pay particular attention to the variety of historical experiences and sacred institutions of those of African descent. Questions of the course include: how were these religions and their communities created?; how have they survived?; and how are African-based traditions perpetuated through ritual, song, dance, drumming, and healing practices? Specific attention will be given to one or more of the following: Yoruba religion and its New World offspring, Santeria, Voodoo and Candomble; Africanisms in American religion; gospel music; Islam; urban religions; and/or Vodun and Voodoo.
ABD 243 | BLACK RELIGION AND CHICAGO | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Chicago has been the site of a Black religious renaissance that rivals the most vibrant literary and cultural renaissances of the 20th century. The range of Black religious traditions, beliefs, and practices - from enslavement to the Great Migration, Civil Rights, Black Power, and 21st century justice movements - illuminate the ongoing desire of Africana communities to re-imagine Black identity, re-think the function of religion, and re-invent the self to evacuate the anti-Black imaginaries that have conditioned white supremacist world frames. By integrating multiple voices into the study of Black religion - source material, guest practitioners, artist visits, etc. - this course places Black Chicago on center stage as the premier site for Black religious innovation in the modern United States.
ABD 244 | AFRICAN DIASPORA WOMEN WRITERS | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course examines fiction, poetry, drama, and other creative writings by African diaspora women writers with the purpose of studying how the writers from Africa and its diaspora configure themselves in literature. Students will engage how these writers engage topics such as literary form, feminism, gender, identity, politics, and community. Authors who studied in this course may include Aidoo, Emecheta, Danticat, Cliff, Kincaid, Brand, Head, Hurston, Adichie, Lorde, among others.
ABD 245 | RACE AND ETHNICITY IN LITERARY STUDIES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course examines various ways in which race is constructed and, concurrently, how race as a "fiction" operates in literary studies. Literature presents and explores the ways in which the world is viewed and experienced by individuals in a particular society or social group. Since literature provides unique insights into different historical and cultural movements, studying how race is understood and deployed (explicitly and implicitly) in a text provides a powerful way to examine the fluidity of race and to compare how it is understood in different parts of the Black diaspora.
ABD 246 | INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN ART | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course is based on a series of important issues in the study of African art, such as medium and color, portraiture, the artist and innovation, relationships with language, royal patronage, divination, gender, aesthetics, Othering, and authenticity. The course will explore each of these concepts through a variety of artistic traditions from the continent. In this manner, students will gain basic theoretical tools which will enable them to work with art from across Africa.
ABD 247 | ANCIENT AFRICAN ART | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course surveys a selection of artistic traditions from across the African continent beginning with the earliest attempts by humanity to visually represent complex thought until the Portuguese began trading along the coast of West Africa in the mid-fifteenth century. Emphasis is placed on demonstrating connectedness with a larger cultural environment, while also suggesting connections to future artistic traditions. Cross-listed with HAA 201.
ABD 248 | CLASSICAL AFRICAN ART | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course surveys a selection of artistic traditions from across the African continent beginning with the arrival of the Portuguese along the coast of West Africa in the mid-fifteenth century until the age of African independence in the 1960s. While the impact of a European presence helps define the boundaries of this course, artistic response to that presence is but one theme. Interactions between African cultures and the impact of Islam are equally important considerations. Cross-listed as HAA 202.
ABD 249 | JAZZ AND THE DIASPORIC IMAGINATION | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course will examine the role jazz has played in the cultural imagination of people across the African Diaspora. What does jazz symbolize for authors and artists, and how have they adapted jazz to fit their own aesthetic, ideological, and political needs? How has it been used in literature, visual art, politics, sociology (among others)? What are the different ways in which 'jazz' (itself a multifaceted idea) has been imagined, presented, and manipulated? Figures to be examined include: Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Romare Bearden, Langston Hughes, Jackson Pollock, Billie Holiday, Ralph Ellison, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, among others.
ABD 251 | WORLD REFUGEE CRISIS | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This is a survey of global refugee crisis and internal displacement between 1945 and the present. The course will focus on the following issues and challenges: human rights, definitions and causes of crisis, internal/external displacements, 'environmental' refugees, protection and integration, refugee children, and conflict resolutions in post-war societies. Cross-listed with HST 241.
ABD 252 | POST-COLONIAL AFRICAN ART | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course surveys African art from the age of African independence in the 1960s until the present day. The meaning of the term contemporary as it applies to African art is questioned in this course. The position of the artist between African artistic tradition and the global art market is also of vital importance. Cross-listed with HAA 203.
ABD 253 | FOOD JUSTICE IN BLACK COMMUNITIES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course begins with the basic premise that all people, at all times, have a right to nutritious foods that meet their dietary needs for an active and healthy life. Achieving global food security not only calls for addressing food availability and accessibility, but a close examination of the racial inequalities that impact the ways in which food is produced, distributed, and consumed. In this course, we will address topics in human rights, equity, food apartheid, environmental issues, food policies, colonization, local food production, and activism. Specifically, we will address questions including, but not limited to, how certain groups of people have experienced the effects of lack of fresh foods more than others and how African and diasporic populations have organized to demand environmental justice in their food systems.
ABD 254 | AFRICAN POLITICS | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
An introduction to African politics. The course will focus on the basic concepts, issues, and theoretical models used in studies of the dynamics of government and politics in Africa from the pre-colonial era to the contemporary period. Cross-listed with PSC 254.
ABD 255 | ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Low-income communities of color have historically been disproportionately exposed to fumes, toxic waste, and contamination. As a result, they have faced an increased risk of health problems such as cancer, respiratory illnesses, and shorter life expectancy. In this course, we will explore the multidisciplinary theoretical frameworks of environmental racism and trace the uneven distribution of environmental hazards across communities of color. Using a broad range of historical and current case studies, we will analyze how environmental problems exacerbate social inequality and the impacts of failed government responses following an environmental crisis. In addition, we will also survey environmental racism as a global phenomenon by investigating diverse topics such as the impacts of climate change and the illegal exportation of plastic waste to the Global South. Lastly, we will explore the emergence of the environmental justice movement and how it's seeking to protect all people from environmental hazards. This course will have a strong focus on the experiences of people of African descent.
ABD 256 | AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY TO 1800 | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course focus primarily on the colonial era with an emphasis on topics such as the construction of race and gender, the Black Atlantic, the emergence of African diasporic cultures in the Americas, slavery, black political thought, resistance, and the Revolutionary War. Cross-listed as HST 246.
ABD 257 | AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY, 1800-1900 | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The African experience in America beginning in the colonial era and lasting through the present day. This course will focus on a portion of that history that spanning the 19th century. The course is organized thematically, with an emphasis on topics such as resistance, the construction of race, slavery and the law, gender and slavery, the nature of antebellum free black life, abolition, the Civil War, Reconstruction. Cross-listed as HST 247.
ABD 258 | AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY, 1900 TO PRESENT | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The African experience in America is expansive, beginning in the colonial era and lasting through the present day. This course will focus on only a portion of that history-1900 to the present. This course is organized thematically with an emphasis on topics such as migration, urbanization, segregation, 20th century constructions of blackness, arts & culture, African Americans and the World Wars, black political thought, freedom movements, and criminalization.
ABD 259 | THE GREAT MIGRATION AND BLACK IDENTITY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The largest internal migration in US history took place in the early 20th century when three million African Americans fled racial terrorism in the South to pursue economic opportunities in the North. They were joined by people of African descent from the Caribbean, leading to what is now known as the Great Migration. The movement had profound political, social and economic ramifications. It changed how White Americans saw African Americans and how African Americans saw themselves. This course will explore how the Great Migration shaped Black cultural identity in the 20th century. Topics will include racial terrorism in the South, education and political philosophies, and social movements.
ABD 260 | DIMENSIONS OF BLACK FAMILY LIFE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course will introduce students to the study of Black family life in Africa and its Diaspora. Special attention will be given to the ways in which values and patterns of living and thought are communicated across generations (time) and transported across geography (space).
ABD 261 | RADICAL AESTHETICS OF HIP HOP | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course engages the interrelated art forms that comprise hip hop, a culture conceived by African American, Afro-Caribbean and Latino youth in the 1970s. In this course, students will explore hip hop culture's aesthetic strategies through a survey history of its four elements--emceeing, deejaying, bboying/bgirling, graffiti--and traces their wide influence in music, visual culture, dance, theatre, and politics. This course is interested in how hip hop culture has negotiated inequality through aesthetic practices that portray the fissures of the American dream while modeling alternatives.
ABD 262 | WHAT IS BLACK CINEMA? | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
What makes a black film a black film? Is a black film one made by a black director with a majority black cast and made for black audiences? What if the director of the film is non-black or it is made for a multicultural audience? Are these films still "black films?" Is black film a genre, a mode, or something else entirely? Do black filmmakers make films that are different than non-black filmmakers? These questions guide this course?s investment in the idea of black film from the 1960s to the present. Throughout the course, students will consider the formal, cultural, historical, industrial, and political ramifications at stake when we assume the existence and relevance of the idea of the black film. We will address topics such as genre, class, gender, sexuality, authorship, spectatorship, both individually and intersectionally.
ABD 263 | IDA B. WELLS: GENDER, POLITICS & ACTIVISM | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course examines the intellectual, political, and social contributions of the African American journalist, activist and educator, Ida B. Wells. Using Black feminist frameworks, students will understand Wells' struggle against oppression as a Black woman and analyze the relationship between her life experiences and activism. Through a close reading of Wells-Barnett's original scholarship and secondary sources, students will reflect on her use of empirical data and grassroots organizing to mobilize around various social issues. Finally, students will evaluate the implications of her intellectual contributions in the context of contemporary U.S. society.
ABD 274 | WOMEN IN AFRICAN RELIGION AND CULTURE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
A study of the role of religion and culture in the lives of women in Africa, introducing students to an "emic" (insider) interpretation of beliefs and practices of the triple religious heritage (Indigenous religions, Christianity and Islam), and critically evaluating their implications for women.
ABD 275 | BLACK FEMINIST THEORIES IN A U.S. CONTEXT | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course surveys the major figures, statements, and movements that shape Black feminist thinking, writing and activism in the United States. Figures examined include: bell hooks, Ida B. Wells Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, Angela Davis, Michelle Wallace, Audre Lorde, and Mark Anthony Neal, among others. Cross-listed with WGS 275.
ABD 285 | AFRO-HISPANIC LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course explores how race, class, politics and culture find expression in Afro-Hispanic literature. We will read works that have been translated into English from their original Spanish versions and analyze how the use of language, imagery and narrative voice reflect the experience of people of African descent in the Spanish-speaking world.
ABD 290 | SPECIAL TOPICS | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course explores various issues stemming from African and Black peoples being gendered and racialized subjects. Specific topics may vary.
ABD 300 | AFRICAN ISLAM: ISLAMIC ART & ARCHITECTURE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Focused study of the impact of Islam on the artistic traditions of sub-Saharan Africa. Rather than necessarily replacing previous art forms, this course investigates in what circumstances preexisting visual culture might be integrated with the requirements and needs of Islam. This approach necessitates an understanding that neither Islam nor African art are monolithic entities, but rather their interactions represent a wide variety of negotiations across the continent. Likewise, this course will consider specific historical circumstances to which Islamic art in sub-Saharan Africa has responded in terms of form and content. Cross-listed with HAA 302.
ABD 301 | AFRICAN ARCHITECTURE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course examines a wide variety of issues pertinent to the study of architecture in Africa, highlighting above all else the diversity of traditions across the continent. Weekly themes are defined at times by materials, technology, type, geographical region, culture, or specific architectural elements. Examples of subjects studied include: earthen mosques of Mali; subterranean residences in Burkina Faso; nomadic tents; impluvial and courtyard traditions of Nigeria and Senegal; mural painting in Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and South Africa; Ethiopian rock cut churches; imperialist exploitation of Great Zimbabwe's legacy; and coral architecture of the Swahili Coast. Art history and related disciplines. Cross-listed with HAA 301.
ABD 303 | THEMES IN AFRICAN DIASPORA STUDIES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Recent scholarship argues that Africa is not limited to geography, but is found in the traditions and identities of many peoples around the world. This course will examine different major themes in the study of the African and Black diaspora. Specific topics may vary.
ABD 305 | PAN-AFRICANISM | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The course will examine the often ambivalent place of Africa in the imaginations, cultures and politics of people in the African diaspora. Students will explore the contributions of African, African-American and Caribbean intellectuals in the formation of diasporic movements and Pan-African thought. We will ask, to what degree was the ideology of Pan-Africanism and the iconography of Africa employed to mobilize masses of black people around local and domestic issues? How important has a consciousness of Africa been to the construction of cultural identities in the diaspora, and how have class, gender, and race shaped or constrained those identities? Our goal is to develop further insights into how people of the African diaspora have continually reinvented and imagined the home of their ancestors, in turn reinventing and imagining themselves.
ABD 320 | AFRICAN AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course studies the science fiction by Black writers as well as critical responses to these novels and writers. The course explores the treatment of gender, oppression and empowerment, historical implications (past, present, future) of the middle passage, chattel slavery, and the struggle for freedom.
ABD 336 | AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Considers black political thought through a variety of ideological, political, legal and historical perspectives. First explores early efforts by blacks to challenge the racialized limitations of America's core principles of liberty, equality and democracy in the contexts of abolitionism, the women's suffrage movements, Manifest Destiny, and American industrialism. Then concentrates on the evolution of contemporary black political thought, with an emphasis on both conceptual diversity and continuity over time. Cross-listed with PSC 336.
ABD 345 | THE LITERATURE OF IDENTITY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Cross-Cultural Study of self-discovery and identity as manifested in the literatures of self-awareness and self-definition. Authors to be studied include: Michael Anthony, Frantz Fanon, Jamaica Kincaid, George Lamming, V. S. Naipaul, and Jane Rhys.
ABD 348 | RELIGIONS IN AFRICA AND THE DIASPORA | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
An advanced examination of the indigenous religions of Africa as they encounter other religious traditions throughout the world.
ABD 351 | RECONSTRUCTION AND THE RISE OF JIM CROW | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Covers the problems of reunion between the North and the South after the Civil War, including the struggle for African-Americans' civil and political rights, the transition to a free labor economy in the South, and the eventual end of reconstruction and establishment of racial segregation in the South and the nation. Cross-listed with HST 379.
ABD 208 or consent of the instructor is a prerequisite for this course.
ABD 365 | VOTING, REPRESENTATION, AND THE LAW | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course explores the struggles of African Americans and women, as individuals who were excluded from the franchise on the basis of their being an African American, a woman, or both, to gain access to the ballot. The relation of women and African Americans to the ballot is worthy of investigation for two reasons. First, with the exception of 18 year olds, women and Black Americans are the two groups who have required amendments to the Constitution to secure their right to vote. Second, they share a history, often contentious, of political struggle. In addition, the course will investigate what this history of political struggle can tell us about American law, politics, and society.
ABD 369 | TOPICS IN PUBLIC LAW | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course engages the research and analyses in the field of public law - how do political scientists, public policy analysts and others develop informed public policy and law. Topics vary from year to year.
ABD 370 | FEMINIST THEOLOGIES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
An exploration of women's experience as a primary resource and norm for theology, focusing on themes of inclusion, exclusion, representation and liberation in particular social, political and historical contexts.
ABD 371 | AFRICAN- AMERICAN FICTION | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Selected novels and short fiction by twentieth-century African-American writers. Cross-listed with ENG 371.
ABD 372 | AFRICAN AMERICAN DRAMA AND POETRY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Survey of Black poetry and drama from 1865 to the present.
ABD 373 | TOPICS IN AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY 1940-1960 | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
African-American Poetry 1940 - 1960.
ABD 374 | THE BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course looks at the intersection between political and artistic movements of the Black Power and Black Arts Movements. We will survey the aesthetic and political aspects of this era, including poetry, novels, drama, music, visual arts and film.
ABD 375 | RACE, MEDIA, AND REPRESENTATION | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course examines signal representations of blackness in American media from the 19th century to the present. Students will probe the media's influence on perceptions of and possibilities afforded black people in the United States and abroad as well as black media makers attempts to proffer new visions.
ABD 379 | BLACK FEMINIST THEORY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course engages with the multiple versions of woman-centered theory and practice developed in the writings; activism, and other creative work of Black, particularly African American women, from the mid-nineteenth century to the twenty-first. While not all of these theorists would use the word feminist; all have in common the aim of empowering women's lives, advocating for women for equal economic, political, and cultural access.
ABD 380 | TOPICS IN AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course examines figures, texts, cultures or issues in African American studies. Specific topics may vary by term.
ABD 382 | TOPICS IN AFRICAN DIASPORA STUDIES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Topics vary. See schedule for titles and department website for specific descriptions.
ABD 386 | BLACK WOMEN'S LIVES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course is a variable topics course directed to the examination of topics such as black women's cultural criticism, Black women in the arts, Black lesbian rights, Black women's participation in social movements, representation in the media, etc. Cross-listed with WGS 386.
ABD 390 | TOPICS IN POPULAR CULTURE IN THE BLACK DIASPORA | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course explores various topics in popular culture studies through the lens of the African Diaspora, including music, film, television, popular literature and subcultural practices. Specific topics may vary by quarter.
ABD 391 | CAPSTONE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This senior seminar engages students in a synthesis of what they have learned through coursework. The capstone course will involve reading, writing, discussion, as well as the preparation by students of a substantive piece of work (e.g., a senior thesis, a research paper, or a creative work.)
ABD 397 | INTERNSHIP | 1-4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
By arrangement. Variable credit.
ABD 399 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | 1-6 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Independent study. Variable credit.