Course Listings - Spring 2011
Our roster of cross-listed courses is updated frequently; students should visit individual department sites for the most current listings.
AAS 308/WOM 308
Introduction to Black Queer Studies: Queer Aesthetics in the Black Diaspora
Seminar S01: 1:30 pm – 2:50 pm MW
Lyndon K. Gill
This interdisciplinary course explores over two decades of work produced by and about black queer subjects throughout the circum-Atlantic world. While providing an intro to various artists and intellectuals of the black queer diaspora, this seminar examines the distinct socio-cultural, historical and geographical contexts in which "black queerness" as a concept is embraced or contested. We will use the prism of artistry to highlight the dynamic relationship between Black Diaspora and Queer Studies.
AAS 318/REL 318
Black Women and Spiritual Narrative
Seminar S01: 7:30 pm – 10:20 pm W
Wallace Best
This course will analyze the narrative accounts of African American women since the 19th century. Drawing on the hypothesis that religious metaphor and symbolism have figured prominently in black women's writing (and writing about black women) across literary genres, we will explore the various ways black women have used their narratives not only to disclose the intimacies of their religious faith, but also to understand and to critique their social context. We will discuss the themes, institutions, and structures that have traditionally shaped black women's experiences, as well as the theologies black women have developed in response.
AAS 337/ENV 337
Liberation Ecology: Politics and Policy in the Creation of a Just, Green Economy
Seminar S01: 1:30 pm – 4:20 pm M
Van Jones
This course explores how the United States might help birth a just, green economy--one characterized by less poverty and less pollution, more opportunity and less inequity. This course examines the political challenges inherent in achieving the policy goals that would allow a just, green economy to flourish. It encourages students to develop their own critiques and to imagine new paths forward. Students will be encouraged to imagine, design and present their own strategies for a renewed ecological politics in the U.S.
The application period for this course is now closed.
AAS 351/WOM 351
Law, Social Policy, and African American Women
Lecture L01: 11:00 am – 11:50 am TTh
Imani Perry
Journeying from enslavement and Jim Crow to the post-civil rights era, this course will learn how law and social policy have shaped, constrained, and been resisted by black women's experience and thought. Using a wide breadth of materials including legal scholarship, social science research, visual arts, and literature, we will also develop an understanding of how property, the body, and the structure and interpretation of domestic relations have been frameworks through which black female subjectivity in the United States was and is mediated.
AAS 359/ENG 366
African American Literature: Harlem Renaissance to Present
Lecture L01: 11:00 am - 11:50 am MW
Valerie A. Smith
This course explores the relationship between cultural production and historical phenomena (such as the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights Movement, for example) in 20th- and 21st-century African American literature. Additionally, we will consider the place of African American literature and cultural production in a global narrative that encompasses decolonization, multiculturalism and globalization. Primary texts include novels, short stories, poetry and video and performance art.
AAS 403/ANT 403
Race and Medicine
Seminar S01: 1:30 pm – 4:20 pm M
Carolyn M. Rouse
In 1998, then-President Clinton set a national goal that by the year 2010 race, ethnic, and gender disparities in six disease categories would be eliminated. While the agenda, called Healthy People 2010, was a noble effort, many of the goals were not met. This course examines what went wrong. For a final project, students will be asked to propose their own solutions for eliminating health disparities.
AAS 407/SOC 407
Race, Social Inequality, and Education
Seminar S01: 1:30 - 4:20 pm T
Angel L. Harris, Noliwe M. Rooks
Education is becoming increasingly important for upward social mobility in the U.S. and abroad. Education has been linked to societal inequalities in health, income, and other life-chance measures. This course will focus on the role of education in both the production and amelioration of social inequality. Particular attention is given to racial achievement gaps. By engaging both quantitative and qualitative studies, you will acquire 1) knowledge of the historical trends and understanding of racial differences in achievement, and 2) a broad understanding of the current issues/debates in the literature.
AAS 477/HIS 477
The Civil Rights Movement
Seminar S01: 1:30 pm – 4:20 pm W
Joshua B. Guild, Imani Perry
This interdisciplinary course examines the evolution of African American social and political mobilization from World War II through the 1970s. Through an analysis of historical scholarship, oral history, sermons, works of literature, film and music, it explores the various ways that African Americans articulated their political demands and affirmed their citizenship using the church, grassroots organizations, workers' rights, feminism, education, war, the federal bureaucracy, and the law as tools for political action. The course also considers the ways these movements have been remembered, memorialized, and appropriated in more recent times.
CROSS LISTED BY AAS
DAN 211/AAS 211
The American Dance Experience and Africanist Dance Practices
Studio U01: 2:30 pm – 4:20 pm MW
Dyane Harvey Salaam
A studio course introducing students to American dance aesthetics and practices, with a focus on how its evolution has been influenced by African American choreographers and dancers. An ongoing study of movement practices from traditional African dances and those of the African diaspora, touching on American jazz dance, modern dance, and American ballet. Studio work will be complemented by readings, video viewings, guest speakers, and dance studies.
MUS 262/AAS 262
Introduction to the Evolution of Jazz Styles
Lecture L01: 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm TTh
Staff
This course seeks to stimulate an informed appreciation of American jazz within broad historical, social, and musical frames. Focusing on the time period from its so-called "birth" in New Orleans around 1900 to Ornette Coleman's infamous break with tonality heralded by the album Free Jazz in 1960, we will trace the evolution of jazz style and its cultural context.
SOC 315/LAS 316/AAS 315
Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism in Latin America
Lecture L01: 2:30 pm - 3:20 pm MW
Edward E. Telles
Examines a wide range of issues regarding race, ethnicity and nationalism in Latin America. We will explore the basic sociological, political and cultural concepts of nation, race and ethnicity, emphasizing how they are used in the region. Race and ethnicity have taken on special meanings in Latin America that are distinct from other regions. Much of the course will focus on how that came about and how race is manifested. We will emphasize comparisons to the U.S. as well as across countries within Latin America. The course will cover populations of African and indigenous origins.
REL 315/ AAS 316/ JDS 314
Athens and Jerusalem: Philosophical, Theological, and Political Implications
Seminar S01: 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm W
Leora F. Batnitzky, Cornel R. West
This course explores the meanings and implications of claims that "Athens" and "Jerusalem" constitute the two poles of Western Civilization. Focusing on classical and pre-modern philosophical, literary, and religious texts, the first part of the course considers the history of the distinction between Athens and Jerusalem for understanding different conceptions of reason, revelation, justice, evil, and free will. The second part of the course turns to modern political appropriations of "Athens and Jerusalem" in arguments about the meanings of modernity, social justice, multiculturalism and higher education, and definitions of the "West."
WWS 317/SOC 312/AAS 317
Race and Public Policy
Lecture L01: 11:00 am - 11:50 am MW
Douglas S. Massey
Analyzes the historical construction of race as a concept in American society, how and why this concept was institutionalized publicly and privately in various arenas of U.S. public life at different historical junctures, and the progress that has been made in dismantling racialized institutions since the civil rights era.
HIS 393/AAS 364
Race, Drugs, and Drug Policy in America
Lecture L01: 11:00 am - 11:50 am TTh
Keith A. Wailoo
From "Chinese opium" to Oxycontin, and from cocaine and "crack" to BiDil, drug controversies reflect enduring debates about the role of medicine, the law, the policing of ethnic identity, and racial difference. This course explores the history of controversial substances (prescription medicines, over-the-counter products, black market substances, psychoactive drugs), and how, from cigarettes to alcohol and opium, they become vehicles for heated debates over immigration, identity, cultural and biological difference, criminal character, the line between legality and illegality, and the boundaries of the normal and the pathological.
HIS 485/AAS 409
History of African American Families
Seminar S01: 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm T
Tera Hunter
This course covers the history of African-American families. It traces the development of family life, meanings, values, and institutions from the period of slavery up to recent times. The course engages long-standing and current debates about black families in the scholarship across disciplines and in the society at large. The course will look at the diversity of black family arrangements and the way these have changed over time and adapted to internal and external challenges and demands. It will also situate the history of black families within a broader cross-cultural context.
ATL 497/AAS 497/VIS 497
Princeton Atelier - The Big Picture: Mural Arts in Philadelphia and Trenton
Seminar S01: 1:30 pm – 4:20 pm M
Staff
Students will collaborate with Jane Golden, Director of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, along with muralists Shira Walinsky and David Guinn and with local community members on a new mural project in Trenton. Students will study the history of mural art, formal issues of design and formal functions of place in public art. The course will explore how the mural process has been a powerful tool for social change and investigate how identity, perception and power shift when communities are part of creating and writing their own histories through murals and other public art. Students will help paint the final mural design in Trenton.
ENROLLMENT BY APPLICATION OR INTERVIEW. DEPARTMENTAL PERMISSION REQUIRED
ENG 556/AAS 556
African-American Literature - Race and Property
Seminar S01: 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm M
Valerie A. Smith
In this course we will read works of fiction, cultural history and critical race theory that explore the relationship between property ownership and citizenship rights. We will also consider texts that question the role of property in the constitution of racialized identities.
HIS 578/AAS 578
The Making of the Modern African Diaspora
Seminar S01: TBA
Joshua B. Guild
This course considers the political, cultural, social, and intellectual history of the modern African diaspora, from the collapse of the Atlantic slave system through the late 20th century. Focus is on the historical construction of the diaspora and the shifting relationships between the continent and African-descended people in the Americas, Europe, and other regions. The course also tracks the evolution of diaspora as an idea and analytical framework, particularly its intersections with African-American history, transnational/world history, and postcolonial studies.