AFRS BC 3004x Introduction to Africana Studies: Africa Past, Present and Future

Interdisciplinary and thematic approach to the study of Africa, moving from pre-colonial through colonial and post-colonial periods to contemporary Africa. Focus will be on its history, societal relations, politics and the arts. The objective is to provide a critical survey of the history as well as the continuing debates in Africana studies.

AFRS BC 3005x Introduction to Caribbean Societies

Multidisciplinary exploration of the Anglophone, Hispanic and Francophone Caribbean. Discusses theories about the development and character of Caribbean societies; profiles representative islands; and explores enduring and contemporary issues in Caribbean studies (race, color and class; politics and governance; political economy, the struggles for liberation; cultural and identity and migration.)

AFRS BC 3006y Introduction to Africana Studies: The African Diaspora

Interdisciplinary and thematic approach to the African diaspora in the Americas: its motivations, dimensions, consequences, and the importance and stakes of its study. Beginning with the contacts between Africans and the Portuguese in the 15th century, this class will open up diverse paths of inquiry as students attempt to answer questions, clear up misconceptions, and challenge assumptions about the presence of Africans in the "New World."

AFRS BC 3020y Harlem Crossroads

This course studies Harlem in the context of African-American and African diaspora culture and society as well as American urbanization. Primarily focusing on Harlem of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the course offers students opportunities to discuss political economy, immigration, migration and the role of the city in social life.

AFRS BC 3100x (Section 01) Medicine and Power in African History

Examines medical discourse and practice in Africa, emphasizing relationships between power and medical knowledge. Topics include: medicine and empire, tropical medicine, colonial public health and social control, labor, reproductive health, and HIV/AIDS.

AFRS BC 3109y Junior Colloquium: Critical Race Theory

Engages social constructions of race and racial identity through literary representations. Our conversations will draw upon a number of articulations of race theory, including specific post-1980s Critical Race Theory. In negotiating the persistent links between concepts of race and racialized discursive practice, we will also draw into our discussions anthropological and linguistic theories about race.
General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC). General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT). Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points

AFRS BC 3110x Junior Colloquium: Post Colonialism & Beyond

Introduces students to the origins and development of postcolonial theory, to the historical and political contexts in which postcolonial theory emerged, and to some of the central historical texts and debates in postcolonial studies. Among other topics, we will examine the Marxist analysis of imperialism; race and/in the negritude and the indigène movements; decolonization, nationalism, and gender; the critique of Orientalism; and feminism, the postcolonial state, and globalization.

AFRS BC 3120y History of African-American Music

Survey interrogates the cultural and aesthetic development of a variety of interconnected musical genres - such as blues, jazz, gospel, soul, funk, R&B, hip-hop, classical and their ever changing same/names - viewed as complex human activities daringly danced at dangerous discourses inside and outside the American cultural mainstreams.

AFRS BC 3122y Ethnography of Black Americans In the United States

Interdisciplinary survey of writings, film and music on and by black Americans from the 17th-20th century. Examines theories of race and gender constructions, performance and power, as well as systems of image construction in popular culture. Also explores the dynamic nature of notions of authenticity and author.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
3 points

AFRS BC 3148y Literature of the Great Migration

(Also ENGL BC 3148) Examination of fiction, poetry, essays and films about the Great Migration (1910-1950) of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North, focusing on literary production in New York and Chicago. (This course satisfies the Harlem Requirement for the Africana Studies major).

AFTH BC 3150y Race and Performance In The Caribbean

Analysis of the shifting place and perception of Afro-Caribbean performance in Caribbean societies. This course takes a cross-cultural approach that examines performance through the lens of ethnography, anthropology, music and literary criticism.

AFRS BC 3560x Human Rights and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa

Examines the evolution of the ideas, institutions and practices associated with social justice in Africa and their relationship to contemporary international human rights movement and focuses on the role of human rights in social change. A number of themes will re-occur throughout the course, notably tensions between norms and reality, cultural diversity, economic and political asymmetries, the role of external actors, and women as rights providers. Countries of special interest include Liberia, Senegal, South African and Tanzania.

AFRS BC 3570y Black Baghdad: How Haiti's Story Tells the West

Looking at a variety of literary texts from France, the United States and the Caribbean, students will consider the manner in which Haiti has been reconfigured to meet the discursive needs and fill the racial fantasies of the colonial and postcolonial "Western" world.

AFRS BC 3590x The Middle Passage

In addition to learning about the history of the Middle Passage, students will examine literary and political responses to this forced immigration out of Africa. Identifying responses to slave holding pasts, the seminar culminates in a visit to an historic site of importance in the Middle Passage.

AFRS BC 3998x-BC3999y Senior Seminar

A two-semester program of interdisciplinary research leading to the writing of the senior essay. Senior Seminar is not an independent study, but a structured seminar on methodology and criticism, which in the first semester results in an approved and substantial thesis proposal and annotated bibliography, and in the second semester produces the final thesis. In some cases, a senior seminar in one of the departments contributing to the program may be substituted for the first semester of the Senior Thesis.