Course Listings - Fall 2010
Our roster of cross-listed courses is updated frequently; students should visit individual department sites for the most current listings.
AAS 201
Introduction to the Study of African American Cultural Practices
Lecture L01: 3:30 pm – 4:20 pm MW
Cornel West
This course examines the past and present, the doings and the sufferings of Americans of African decent from a multidisciplinary perspective. It highlights the ways in which serious intellectual scrutiny of the agency of black people in the United States help redefine what it means to be American, new world, modern and post modern.
AAS 311/WOM 313
Introduction to Black Women Studies
Seminar S01: 7:30 pm – 10:20 pm M
Noliwe Rooks
An interdisciplinary introduction to the study of women of African descent in the United States, 1830 to the present, through sociology, history, law, religion, and film. This course discusses black women's identity as reflected in community, stereotype, and individuality.
AAS 321/REL 321
Black Power and Its Theology of Liberation
Lecture L01: 10:00 am – 10:50 am MW
Eddie Glaude
This course examines the various pieties of the Black Power Era. We chart the explicit and implicit utopian visions of the politics of the period that, at once, criticized established black religious institutions and articulated alternative ways of imagining salvation. We also explore the attempt by black theologians to translate the prophetic black church tradition into the idiom of black power. Our aim is to keep in view the significance of the Black Power era for understanding the changing role and place of black religion in black public life.
AAS 325/ENG 393
African American Autobiography
Seminar S01: 1:30 pm – 4:20 pm M
Valerie Smith
Autobiography has long played a pivotal role in the development of African American literary, cultural and intellectual history. This course will survey major fictional and non-fictional texts in the evolution of African American autobiography. We will read these texts both as representative of literary and cultural trends in the history of the genre, and for their individual significance.
AAS 340/AMS 340/ENG 391
Shades of Passing
Seminar S01: 1:30 pm – 2:50 pm MW
Anne Cheng
This course studies the trope of passing in 20th century American literary and cinematic narratives in an effort to re-examine the crisis of identity that both produces and confounds acts of passing. We will examine how American novelists and filmmakers have portrayed and responded to this social phenomenon, not as merely a social performance but as a profound intersubjective process embedded within history, law, and culture. We will focus on narratives of passing across axes of difference, invoking questions such as: To what extent does the act of passing reinforce or unhinge seemingly natural categories of race, gender, and sexuality?
AAS 362/POL 338/WWS 497
Race and the American Legal Process: Emancipation to the Voting Rights Act
Lecture L01: 11:00 am – 12:20 pm TTh
Imani Perry
This course examines the dynamic and often conflicted relationships between African American struggles for inclusion, and the legislative, administrative, and judicial decision-making responding to or rejecting those struggles from Reconstruction to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. In tracing these relationships we will cover issues such as property, criminal law, suffrage, education, and immigration, with a focus on the following theoretical frameworks: equal protection, due process, civic participation and engagement, and political recognition.
AAS 365/REL 362/ENG 394
Migration and the Literary Imagination
Seminar S01: 7:30 pm – 10:20 pm W
Wallace Best
This course will explore the various meanings of The Great Migration and mobility found in 20th century African American literature. Through careful historical and literary analysis, we will examine the significant impact migration has had on African American writers and the ways it has framed their literary representations of modern black life.
AAS 384/PSY 384
Prejudice: Its Causes, Consequences, and Cures
Seminar S01: 1:30 pm – 4:20 pm W
Stacey A. Sinclair
Prejudice is one of the most contentious topics in modern American society. There is debate regarding its causes, pervasiveness, and impact. This goal of this course is to familiarize students with the psychological research relevant to these questions. We will review theoretical perspectives on prejudice to develop an understanding of its cognitive, affective, and motivational underpinnings. We will also discuss how these psychological biases relate to evaluations of, and behavior toward, members of targeted groups. In addition, research-based strategies for reducing prejudice will be discussed.
AAS 500
Introduction to African-American Intellectual Tradition
Seminar S01: 1:30 pm – 4:20 pm T
Eddie Glaude and Imani Perry
This interdisciplinary seminar introduces graduate students from many departments to the African-American intellectual tradition. The perspective concentrates on African-America and the African Diaspora, with attention to issues of class and gender as well as race. A broad set of topics, including race, racism, religion, and slavery are discussed. The course presupposes a familiarity with issues in African-American studies.
ENG 411/AAS 413
Major Author(s): August Wilson: African American Life in the 20th Century
Seminar S01: 11:00 am – 12:20 pm MW
Robert N. Sandberg
August Wilson completed what many consider the most ambitious project of any American playwright. His cycle of ten plays, one for each decade, chronicles African American life in the 20th century. We will explore all ten plays as individual drama and depictions of history. We will read standard histories to gain background and context.
HIS 387/AAS 367
African American History from Reconstruction to the Present
Lecture L01: 1:30 pm – 2:20 pm TTh
Joshua B. Guild
This course offers an introduction to the major themes, critical questions, and pivotal moments in African American history since emancipation. It traces the social, political, cultural, intellectual, and legal contours of he black experience in the United States from Reconstruction to the rise of Jim Crow, through the World Wars, Depression, and the Great Migrations, to the long civil rights era and the contemporary period of racial politics. Using a wide variety of texts, images, and creative works, the course situates African American history within broader national and international contexts.
HIS 577/AAS 577
Readings in African American History
Seminar S01: TBA
Tera Hunter
This course is designed to introduce graduate students to the literature of African-American History, from the colonial era up to more recent times. Major themes and debates will be highlighted. The course should help students to define interests within the field to pursue further study and research and also to aid preparation for examinations.
SOC 562/AAS 562
Race & Ethnicity
Seminar S01: 9:00 am – 12:00 pm M
Edward Telles
An overview of important theories and theorists of race and ethnicity, that exposes students to fundamental concepts and equips them for subsequent independent study. The primary focus of the Race/Ethnicity Field is: 1) to understand the nature and persistence of race and ethnic identity as meaningful social groupings in contemporary society, and 2) to explain the social significance of these group identities - that is, how these groupings are related to social stratification, to socio-cultural relations, and to the political and economic dynamics in a society.