Center for African American Studies
Director
Valerie A. Smith
Professor
Wallace D. Best, also Religion
Anne A. Cheng, also English
Eddie S. Glaude Jr., also Religion
Tera W. Hunter, also History
Valerie A. Smith, also English
Cornel R. West
Associate Professor
Daphne A. Brooks, also English
Melissa V. Harris-Lacewell, also Politics
Carolyn M. Rouse, also Anthropology
Stacey Sinclair, also Psychology
Assistant Professor
Wendy Belcher, also Comparative Literature
Joshua B. Guild, also History
Angel L. Harris, also Sociology
Chika Okeke-Agulu, also Art and Archaeology
Alexandra T. Vazquez, also English
Lecturer
Noliwe M. Rooks
Associated Faculty
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Philosophy, University Center for Human Values
Edwardo L. Cadava, English
Paul J. DiMaggio, Sociology, Woodrow Wilson School
Mitchell Duneier, Sociology
Simon E. Gikandi, English
William A. Gleason, English
Hendrik A. Hartog, History
Albert J. Raboteau, Religion
Judith L. Weisenfeld, Religion
Founded in 2006, the Center for African American Studies is an expansion of the visions and strengths of the Program in African American Studies, which was created in 1969. The center was founded on the assumption that the study of African American history and culture and of the role that race has played in shaping the life and the institutions of the United States is central to an American liberal education. Given the continuing and evolving centrality of race in American political, economic, social, and cultural life, and indeed, in every region of the world, reflection on race and on the distinctive experiences of black people is indispensable for all Princeton students as global citizens. Drawing on a core of distinguished faculty in areas such as anthropology, art and archaeology, English, history, philosophy, psychology, religion, and sociology, the center promotes teaching and research on race with a focus on the experience of African Americans in the United States. During the next four years, the center faculty will expand through additional appointments and continue to build an innovative curriculum that reflects the complex interplay between the political, economic, and cultural forces that shape our understanding of the historic achievements and struggles of African-descended people around the world.
In addition to offering a certificate program, the Center for African American Studies provides an array of courses, open to all students, that allows them to explore and build upon fundamental facts about race in the country and the world. Through a distinguished visiting professorship and a postdoctoral program, we invite scholars engaged in innovative scholarly work to spend a year at Princeton conducting research and sharing their work with students and faculty. In addition, through lectures, conferences, performances, and symposia, the center provides opportunities for members of the Princeton community to engage issues of race, politics, and culture.
Requirements for Admission
Students may apply for formal admission at any time once they have taken and achieved a satisfactory standing in the core course, AAS 201.
Requirements for a Certificate
In addition to satisfying departmental requirements and passing AAS 201, a student seeking a certificate in African American studies (awarded at graduation) must take and pass three additional courses or seminars either originating in the center or formally cross-listed by the center. Lastly, concentrators are expected to treat some aspect of African American studies in their senior thesis.
Courses
AAS 201 Introduction to the Study of African American Cultural Practices — Fall SA
An interdisciplinary examination of the complex array of African American cultural practices from slavery to postmodern times. Close readings of classic texts will seek to provide a profound grasp of the dynamics of African American thought and practices. Two lectures, one preceptorial. C. West
AAS 202 Introductory Research Methods in African American Studies (also SOC 202) — Not offered this year SA
The purposes of this course are to assist the student in developing the ability to evaluate critically social science research on the black experience and actually to do certain kinds of research. To accomplish these goals, the course will acquaint students with the processes of conceptualization and basic research techniques, and some of the unique issues in conducting research on the black experience. A variety of appropriate studies will be utilized. One three-hour seminar. Staff
AAS 207 Introduction to African American Literature (also ENG 207) — Fall LA
A survey of literary materials produced within the African American experience, from the 18th century through the contemporary period, with special emphasis on genre, theme, and context. The course will investigate dominant and marginalized literary histories and the importance of gender, region, and sensibility. Two lectures, one preceptorial. S. Gikandi
AAS 209 Introduction to African American Literature: Harlem Renaissance to Present (also ENG 209) — Spring LA
This introductory course surveys literature from the early 20th century to the present; it covers Harlem Renaissance prose and poetry from writers including Countee Cullen, W. E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Nell Larsen, Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer; modernist poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks and Robert Hayden; drama by Lorraine Hansberry; novels by Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison; and nonfiction by James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Richard Wright. The course analyzes aesthetic forms and locates literary texts in social and political contexts. H. Beavers
AAS 211 The American Dance Experience and Africanist Dance Practices (see DAN 211)
AAS 262 Evolution of Jazz Styles (see MUS 262)
AAS 305 The History of Black Gospel Music (also REL 391) — Fall LA
This course will trace the history of black gospel music from its origins in the American South to its modern origins in 1930s Chicago and into the 1990s mainstream. Critically analyzing various compositions and the artists that performed them, we will explore the ways the musichas reflected and reproached the extant cultural climate. We will be particularly concerned with the four major historical eras from which black gospel music developed: the slave era; Reconstruction; the Great Migration, and the era of Civil Rights. Two lectures, one preceptorial. W. Best
AAS 308 Great Moments in Black Existentialism (also AMS 338) — Fall LA
Using novels, plays, essays, and occasional forays into film and music, we’ll examine shifting concepts of black male identity in 20th-century pop culture. The people in these texts are outlaws, exiles, and iconoclasts. Gangsters, hipsters, and reluctant heroes. How do these different versions of the outsider tackle ideas of North and South, the City, the role of the artist in society? How does the face of rebellion change in the 1920s, the ’50s and the ’90s? One three-hour seminar. Staff
AAS 309 From Negro to Black: African Americans and the 1970s (also AMS 359) — Fall
Using film, primary documents, literature, art, and secondary sources, this course explores the 10-year period between the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 and 1978, when the Supreme Court case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action. This decade marks one of the most turbulent periods in American history when radical changes impacting the political, religious, artistic, legal, and educational cultures of black people occurred. One three-hour seminar. N. Rooks
AAS 311 An Introduction to Black Women’s Studies (also WOM 313) — Not offered this year SA
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. One three-hour seminar. N. Rooks
AAS 317 Race and Public Policy (see WWS 317)
AAS 320 African American Religious History (see REL 320)
AAS 321 Black Power and Its Theology of Liberation (also
REL 321) — Fall HA
This course examines the various pieties of the Black Power era. It charts 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. It also explores the attempt by black theologians to translate the prophetic black church tradition into the idiom of black power. The 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. Two lectures, one preceptorial. E. Glaude
AAS 322 Black Women’s Political Activism (also POL 300) — Fall EM
The history of African American women’s political activism is used to illuminate questions of participation in American politics. Examining the intersection and interaction of gender, race, sexuality, and class with politics in the United States, this course reconceptualizes both politics and political science. By moving black women from their historically marginal position in the curriculum to the center of our attention, we will begin to explore ways of transforming knowledge about American politics. Specific readings, discussion, and writing will explore topics such as feminism, labor activism, and the civil rights movement. One three-hour seminar. M. Harris-Lacewell
AAS 325 African American Autobiography (also ENG 325) — Spring LA
Highlights the autobiographical tradition of African Americans from the antebellum period to the present as symbolic representations of African American material, social, and intellectual history and as narrative quests of self-development. Students will be introduced to basic methods of literary analysis and criticism, specifically focusing on cultural criticism and psychoanalytic theory on the constructed self. One three-hour seminar. Staff
AAS 326 The Foreigner’s Home: Studies in the Literature of Dispossession (also ENG 391) — Fall LA
This course examines the literary strategies employed in select mid- to late-20th-century fictional representations of the gaze of “the foreigner” in narratives of dispossession. The primary sources include (a) novels driven by characters defined as “foreign” in their own homes, (b) those estranged and/or excluded within their chosen countries, (c) those mediating their status between longing subjects to belonging objects, transforming ideas of “self.” By close examination of the language, imagistic, and structural choices and their consequences in these narratives, the course will solicit meanings of and agendas for embodying foreignness. One three-hour seminar. T. Morrison
AAS 329 Chinatown USA (also ENG 415) — Fall LA
This course registers the tension between the domestic and the foreign that has long since haunted the ideal of American integration. We will look at the construction of “Chinatown”—as historic reality, geographic formation, cultural fantasy, even architectural innovation—in the making of the American nationalism. We will study novels, plays, films, and photography that focus on or use Chinatown as a central backdrop in ways that highlight the complex relationship between material history and social imagination when it comes to how America incorporates (or fails to digest) its racial or immigrant “other.” Two lectures, one preceptorial. A. Cheng
AAS 330 Black Metropolis: African American Urban History (also HIS 455) — Fall HA
In this seminar, we will examine historically the transformation of African Americans from a population rooted in the rural South to one overwhelmingly located in the cities of the North and West. Beginning in the period following the Civil War, and spanning the course of the 20th century, we will explore critically the impact of urbanization on African American social relations, political expression, family life, and cultural production. Throughout the course we will be concerned not only with the “where” and “who” of the migration narrative, but the “how” and the “why” as well. One three-hour seminar. J. Guild
AAS 334 Educating a New Majority (also SOC 334) — Not offered this year SA
This course examines minority education in the United States in the context of the sociology of education and intergroup relations from a historical perspective and the most recent conditions facing African Americans and other minorities. It will study the impact of changing demographic characteristics of these groups on the quality of their education, and the consequences of those changes for urban America and educational institutions in the 21st century. One three-hour seminar. R. Hope
AAS 336 Race and American Politics (see POL 336)
AAS 346 The American Jeremiad and Social Criticism in the United States (see REL 367)
AAS 352 Black Protest in 20th-Century America (also HIS 483) — Not offered this year HA
Examines the evolution of African American political mobilization in the 20th century. Explores the various ways that African Americans articulated their political demands and affirmed their citizenship, using worker’s rights, the church, feminism, education, war, grassroots organizations, the federal bureaucracy, international allies, and the law as tools for political action. Prerequisite: HIS 387 recommended. One three-hour seminar. Staff
AAS 356 Migration, Urban Space, and African American Culture (also AMS 356) — Not offered this year SA
From 1910 until 1940, African Americans migrated from rural to urban areas. This interdisciplinary course will focus on cultural geography, or how the resulting changes and realignments of place and space have shaped and continue to shape American society and affect understandings of African American identity and culture. One three-hour seminar. N. Rooks
AAS 366 African American History to 1863 (see HIS 386)
AAS 367 African American History from Reconstruction to the Present (see HIS 387)
AAS 368 Topics in African American Religion (also REL 368, POL 424) — Not offered this year EM
Assesses the value of religion and its impartations of the historical, ethical, and political in African American life. Courses will also critique African American religion from a broader contextual basis by establishing commonalities and differences across historical and cultural boundaries. Two lectures, one preceptorial. M. Harris-Lacewell
AAS 370 History of Criticism (see ENG 370)
AAS 371 Africa in the African American Literary Imagination (also COM 391) — Fall LA
This seminar will explore how African Americans have written about and imagined Africa in their work, with a particular focus on writing about Ethiopia. Africa has appeared in African American literature in a variety of forms: as origin, possible homeland, longed-for utopia, and synecdoche of African American freedom and identity. Students will explore the use of Africa to construct and question African American identity as well as representations of African music, art, literature, religion, sexuality, community, and family. One three-hour seminar. Staff
AAS 373 History of African American Art (see ART 373)
AAS 386, 387 Topics in Black Literature (see ENG 386, 387)
AAS 388 Studies in African American Popular Culture — Not offered this year SA
Explores the production, reception, aesthetics, and politics of black popular culture in the United States. Examines current and historical media images and exchanges while interrogating the dynamics, tensions, and personalities shaping the reception and circulation of popular cultural texts. Two lectures, one preceptorial. N. Rooks, M. Petty
AAS 389 Women Writers of the African Diaspora (see ENG 389)
AAS 390 African American Intellectual History (also HIS 481) — Not offered this year HA
An examination of the ways in which African American intellectualism is constructed in the history of Africans in the United States; the written and oral works of recognized black intellectuals; and the economic, cultural, historical, social, and political conditions under which such works are created and remembered. Two lectures, one preceptorial. Staff
AAS 391 Race, Class, and Intelligence in America (also SOC 391) — Not offered this year EC
The course explores relationships among race, class, and intelligence measurements. The history of the measurement of intelligence is analyzed. Historical and contemporary conceptualizations of race, ethnicity, and social class in America, including gender inequality, are examined. The “nature versus nurture” IQ heritability controversy is given thorough examination, as are analyses of works such as The Bell Curve. Attention is given to the educational system in America, expectancy and labeling effects, stereotype threat, and to public policy. One two-hour lecture, one preceptorial. Staff
AAS 392 Topics in African American Literature (also ENG
392) — Spring LA
A historical overview of black literary expression from the 19th century to the present day. Will emphasize a critical and analytical approach to considering the social, cultural, and political dimensions of African American literature. Two lectures, one preceptorial. D. Brooks
AAS 393 Contemporary African American Poetry — Fall LA
What questions and answers do 21st-century black poets inherit from black poetry at the middle of the 20th century? After racing through the timeline of 20th-century poetry at break-neck speed, this course begins its study with Gwendolyn Brooks and Robert Hayden at the middle of the 20th century, when the politics of black form and content came to a head. It continues to the present day, landing on persistent themes and forms—including those found in poems of war and survival, praise poems, poems on the politics of love and sex, poems of place, and poems about music and language. One three-hour seminar. M. Obadike
AAS 407 Race, Social Inequality, and Education (also SOC
407) — Spring SA
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. Two lectures, one preceptorial. A. Harris
AAS 411 Art, Apartheid, and South Africa (also ART 471) — Fall
Apartheid, the political doctrine of separation of races in South Africa (1948–90), dominated the (South) African political discourse in the second half of the 20th century. While it lasted, art and visual cultures were marshaled in the defense and contestation of its ideologies. Since the end of apartheid, artists, filmmakers, dramatists, and scholars continue to reexamine the legacies of apartheid, and the social, philosophical, and political conditions of non-racialized South Africa. Course readings examine issues of race, nationalism, and politics, art and visual culture, and social memory in South Africa. Two lectures, one preceptorial. Staff
AAS 422 Race and Sport (also HIS 482) — Not offered this year HA
Explores the connections between race, class, and gender and organized sports in 20th-century America. Looks at how athletics and team sports mirror broader social and political debates on race in American society. One three-hour seminar. S. Mathieu
AAS 477 The Civil Rights Movement (also HIS 477) — Spring HA
This course examines the evolution of African American political mobilization from 1945 to 1975. It explores the various ways that African Americans articulated their political demands and affirmed their citizenship, using worker’ rights, the church, feminism, education, war, grassroots organizations, the federal bureaucracy, and the law as tools for political action. The readings for this course draw heavily from personal narratives, oral testimonies, and historical scholarship. One three-hour seminar. J. Guild