ARTH 141B.  Africana Cinema:  Through the Documentary Lens.  P. Jackson.  This course examines documentary films and videos created by filmmakers from Africa and African Diaspora in United States, Britain, and the Caribbean.   Topics include: history and aesthetics of documentary filmmaking, documentary as art, the narrative documentary, docu-drama, cinema verite, biography, autobiography, and historical documentary.  back to course listing

ARTH 178BK.  Black Aesthetics and the Politics of (Re)presentation.  P. Jackson.  Survey of the visual arts produced by people of African descent in the USA, from the colonial era to the present.  Emphasis of Black artists and changing relationship to African arts and cultures.  Examines the emergence of an oppositional aesthetic tradition that interrogates visual constructions of “blackness” and “whiteness,” gender and sexuality as a means of re-visioning representational practices.   back to course listing

ENGL  42e BK.  Girl-Worlds:  Female “Coming of Age” Literature.  L. Harris.  Through fiction, autobiography, film, popular culture and feminist theory this course examines representations of young women of diverse color/class/sexual identities in “coming of age” narratives of a post-WWII U.S.A context. In exploring the intersections of ethnicity/race, class, sexuality, gender and intellectual/creative agency in the narratives we examine how the authors/female protagonists revise and resist prescriptive notions of female “coming of age.”  back to course listing

ENGL 125BK. Introduction to African American Lit.  J. Rhyne. Survey of 18th and 19th Century Black writers including slave narratives, early novels and poetry with attention to cultural and political contexts.   back to course listing

ENGL 196BK.  Major Figures in 20th-Century American Literature: James Baldwin.  L. Harris.  This course explores the work of one of America’s greatest writers whose importance resides in part in his calling into question national practices and injustices in regards to race, sexuality, religion, civil rights struggles and other political matters. Baldwin was a frequent expatriate with an enormous literary talent for capturing the pathos of being American across a range of social identities and issues. This course examines the themes and nuances of Baldwin’s essays, novels and plays.   back to course listing

HIST 40BK.  African History to 1800.  S. Lemelle.  History of Africa from the earliest times to the beginning of the 19th Century.  Attention given to the methodology and theoretical framework used by the Africanist, the development of early African civilizations, and current debates and trends in the historiography of Africa.  back to course listing

HIST 143BK.  Slavery and Freedom.   S. Lemelle.  Survey course covering the history of Africans and their descendants in the Americas from the epoch of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade until the end of the 19th Century.  Divided into two general sections: the slave epoch, and emancipation (and aftermath).  back to course listing

ID 152BK.  Black Women Feminism(s) and Social Change.  P. Jackson.  Introduction to the theoretical and practical contributions of African American feminists who maintain that issues of race, gender, sexuality, and social class are central, rather than peripheral, to any history, analysis, assessment, or strategy for bringing about change in the United States.   back to course listing

LIT 117BK.  Novel and Cinema in Africa and the West Indies (in French).  M. Shelton.  Examination of works by writers and filmmakers from French-speaking countries of Africa (Senegal), Cameroon, and Van Burkina Faso) and the Caribbean (Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Haiti).  Special emphasis will be placed on questions of identity, the impact of colonialism, social and cultural values, as well as the nature of aesthetic creation.  Prerequisite: French 44 or equivalent.   back to course listing

PSYC 75BK.  African American Mental Health.  M. Christian.  Examines issues in the definition and assessment of mental health and addresses special topics such as spirituality, stress and hypertension, delivery of mental health services, and controversies in the psychoanalytic literature.  Examines empirical, theoretical and therapeutic approaches to African American mental health.  back to course listing

PSYC 188BK.  Seminar:  African American Psychology.  H. Fairchild.  Critically examines contemporary literature in African American psychology.  Emphasizes the ideas of leading theorists (e.g., Na’im Akbar, Wade Nobles, Linda Myers) and the research literature on contemporary problems (e.g., teen pregnancy, gangs).  Prerequisites:  Psychology 10 and Psychology 12 (or permission of instructor).   back to course listing

SOC  71.  Sociology of Popular Music.  D. Basu.  Through the use of popular music, in particular (but not exclusively) hip hop, reggae, dance (house, jungle, drum ’n’ bass) as well as jazz we sill consider how music acts as a sociological prism.  How do these musical genres shed light on the social, political and cultural implications of music as an art from, a commodity and a phantasm of race, class and gender, within and beyond the United States?   back to course listing

SOC 142. The Transatlantic Black & Asian Experience.  D. Basu.  A course designed to aid the understanding of the Black and Asian experience in the United States and in Britain.  The course provides a contextualized comparative analyses of several key aspects of the Black and Asian Experience in each nation.  We will concentrate on the impact of “racialization” in the institution, media, and popular culture of each nation as well as forms of resistance and resilience historically demonstrated by Asian and Black people in both countries.  Prerequisite: Sociology 1 or 35.  back to course listing