Courses

Courses

Fall 2005 Courses

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010. Racism
H. Partridge W 1:00 - 3:55 Adams-104
Examines issues of racism in the United States, with attention to the social psychology of racism, its history, its relationship to social structure, and its ethical and moral implications.
102. Performing Race: Blackness in America
Daniel Moos T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25 Searles-215
This class will examine the conscious construction of black identity in American culture, especially as it pertains to the consumption of that identity. In this way, we will begin by exploring the tradition of minstrelsy in America, a kind of racial representation that seems to not have any direct referent, and move towards a discussion of the present where we engage debates of the 1990s regarding representations of African-American urban life in gangsta rap. In unpacking these various constructions, we will pay careful attention to representations of gender, sexuality, and class as well as their transformations over time. At base, this class questions how particular material signs represented blackness, how both blacks and whites performed these signs, and how performance itself may reveal the constructedness of various racial identities. We will engage a variety of texts (novels, poems, films, paintings, music) covering both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and explore the performance of blackness with reference to the changes in social, political, and economic structures of American life.
121. History of Jazz I
James McCalla M 1:00 - 2:25, W 1:00 - 2:25 Gibson-101
A survey of jazz’s development from its African American roots in the late nineteenth century through the Swing Era of the 1930s and 1940s, and following the great Swing artists—e.g., Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Benny Goodman—through their later careers. Emphasis on musical elements, but much attention to cultural and historical context through readings and videos.
226. African American Art: From Emancipation to Civil Rights
Julie McGee T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25 VAC-Beam Classroom
Surveys African American art from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s. This course examines the lives and careers of African American artists within the contexts of art, history and theory. Topics include race and representation through eras of slavery, Emancipation, Primitivist Modernism, the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro, the Civil Rights movement and emergent Black Nationalism. Artists considered include Robert Duncanson, Henry O. Tanner, Edmonia Lewis, Aaron Douglas, James VanDerZee, Palmer Hayden, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden and Faith Ringgold.
227. Modern and Contemporary African Art
Julie McGee T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25 VAC-Beam Classroom
An introduction to modern and contemporary art from Africa and the discourses that frame its history, the artists, and their works. Issues considered include authenticity, tradition, modernity, nationality, and African diasporic art. Also examines the complex relationship of African art to colonialism, European art, and its discourse, and the influence of globalization and popular culture. Students are not expected to have prior knowledge of African art, but some background in either Africana studies (theoretical discourses) or art history (historical and stylistic traditions) is recomended.
241. The Civil Rights Movement
Daniel Levine T 8:30 - 9:55, TH 8:30 - 9:55 Searles-315
Concentrates on the period from 1954 to 1970 and shows how various individuals and groups have been pressing for racial justice for decades. Special attention is paid to social action groups ranging from the NAACP to the SNCC, and to important individuals, both well known (Booker T. Washington) and less well known (John Doar). Readings mostly in primary sources. Extensive use of the PBS video series “Eyes on the Prize.”
245. Bearing the Untold Story: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States
Jennifer Scanlon M 8:00 - 9:25, W 8:00 - 9:25 Searles-217
Women of color are often ignored or pushed to the margins. There is a cost to that absence, obviously, for women of color. As Zora Neale Hurston put it, “There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” There is also a cost to those who are not women of color, as women of color are encountered as objects, rather than subjects. Addresses the gaps and explores the histories and contemporary issues affecting women of color and their ethnic/racial communities in the United States.
262. Village to Kingdom: Africa and the Atlantic World, 1400-1880
David Gordon M 8:00 - 9:25, W 8:00 - 9:25 Searles-215
A survey of historical developments before conquest by European powers, with a focus on west and central Africa. Political, social, and cultural changes that accompanied the intensification of Atlantic Ocean trade. The course revolves around a controversy in the study of Africa and the Atlantic World: What influence did Africans have on the making of the Atlantic World? In what ways did Africans participate in the Atlantic slave trade? How were African identities re-made across the Atlantic World and on the slave plantations of the Americas? The course ends by considering the contradictory effects of the abolition of the slave trade on Africa.
269. After Apartheid: Southern African History and Historiography
David Gordon M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55 CT-2 South
Intermediate Seminar. An investigation into the varied representations and uses of the past in South Africa. A study of the rise and fall of apartheid and the changing academic and popular representations of the South African past. Themes of identity and memory from the perspective of South Africa’s various peoples, partly through reading biographies and memoirs, ranging from the life of Nelson Mandela to that of a struggling sharecropper. The course ends with the difficulties in developing a critical and conciliatory version of the past in post-apartheid South Africa during and after the much-discussed Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

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