Courses

Courses

Spring 2006 Courses

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101. Political Economy of Race in America
Randolph Stakeman T 8:30 - 9:55, TH 8:30 - 9:55
Investigates the political and economic contexts surrounding racism in America. Looks at the historical roots of that context, the historical and contemporary effects of racism, and the implications of it for our society.
205. Motown to Hip Hop: Black Culture and Society in the Post-Civil Rights Era
Randolph Stakeman T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
A look at the relationship between music and social conditions from the apex of the Civil Rights Movement in 1963 to the present. Considers both the political economy of music production and the cultural meanings of the music and its relation to social conditions.
217. Overcoming Racism
H. Partridge W 1:00 - 3:55
Explores and critiques a variety of proposed solutions for healing racism in the United States. A working definition of racism is developed through a careful examination of the social structures that support the continuance of racism and discrimination based on race in the United States. The dominant/subordinate relationships of European Americans with African Americans, Latino/a Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans are reviewed.
220. Dance Genres: African American Cultures in Action
June Vail T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
Studio technique and theory, focusing on three African American dance genres: swing dance/Lindy hop, modern, and hip-hop. Students learn and practice these forms and some others, including step dance, and examine their meaning as art and cultural expression.
223. He Loved Us Madly: The Music and Life of Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
James McCalla M 1:00 - 2:25, W 1:00 - 2:25
A detailed study of the life and work of one of America’s greatest composers and musicians in the context of twentieth-century music and contemporary social history. Ellington disliked the term “jazz” and preferred (among other labels) “African American music.” Examines his works’ antecedents, its stylistic elements, its cultural work within United States society from the Harlem Renaissance through the Civil Rights era, and its presentation by the government as a symbol of the United States overseas. Also considers Ellington’s almost thirty-year collaboration with Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967); the extraordinary range of his band’s and small groups’ work from secular Hollywood films to the late Concerts of Sacred Music; and his projects with such guest artists as John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus, and others.
233. Peoples and Cultures of Africa
A MacEachern T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
Introduction to the traditional patterns of livelihood and social institutions of African peoples. Following a brief overview of African geography, habitat, and cultural history, lectures and readings cover a representative range of types of economy, polity, and social organization, from the smallest hunting and gathering societies to the most complex states and empires. Emphasis upon understanding the nature of traditional social forms; changes in African societies in the colonial and post-colonial periods are examined, but are not the principal focus of the course.
239. Civil War and Reconstruction
Thomas Desjardin T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
What were the true causes of the war? Why did soldiers on both sides fight? What kind of leader was Abraham Lincoln? How did the war change the lives and roles of women? How did the post-war period affect race relations in the United States? Explores these and other questions in order to give students a background of knowledge and analystical skill about this critical period in United States history. Also examines the perceptions of the Civil War that have become part of our popular culture, and how historians, artists, novelists, and others have helped create these perceptions.
264. Conquest, Colonialism, and Independence: Africa since 1880
David Gordon M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55
Focuses on conquest, colonialism, and its legacies in sub-Saharan Africa — the violent process of colonial “pacification,” examined from European and African perspectives; the different ways of consolidating colonial rule and African resistance to colonial rule, from Maji Maji to Mau Mau; and African nationalism and independence, as experienced by Africa’s nationalist leaders, from Kwame Nkrumah to Jomo Kenyatta, and their critics. Concludes with the limits of independence — mass disenchantment, the rise of the “predatory” post-colonial state, and the wars of the Great Lakes and Sudan.
271. Returning the Gaze: Issues in Black Photography
Julie McGee T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
An examination of issues, ideas, and creativity with respect to African American photography from the nineteenth century to the present day. An introduction to the history of blacks as subjects, producers, and theorists of photography. Topics range from portraiture and documentary photography to considerations of race and representation, black consciousness, strategies of resistance and identity formation, class, sex, and gender. Comparative studies with artists of African descent are also included.
275. African American Fiction: Counterhistories
Elizabeth Muther W 2:30 - 3:55, F 2:30 - 3:55
Novels, short stories, and personal histories since 1850. Focuses on strategies of cultural survival as mapped in narrative form—with a special interest in framing structures and trickster storytellers, alternative temporalities, and double-voicing. Authors include Douglass, Brown, Jacobs, Chesnutt, Dunbar, Hurston, West, Wright, Morrison, Bambara, Meriwether, Gaines, Wideman, Walker, and Butler. Note: This course fulfills the Literature of the Americas requirement for English majors.
277. Topics in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Peter Coviello T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
A study of the relations between sentiment and belonging across the American nineteenth century. Considers both how a language of impassioned feeling promised to consolidate a nation often bitterly divided, and some of the problems with that promise. Centers on a reading of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Other authors may include Jefferson, Wheatley, Melville, Hawthorne, Wilson, Harper, and Du Bois.
280. Race, Biology and Anthropology
A MacEachern T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
Critically examines the biological justifications used to partition humanity into racial groups. Investigates the nature of biological and genetic variability within and between human populations, as well as the characteristics of human biological races as they have traditionally been defined. Considers whether race models do a good job of describing how human populations vary across the earth. Critically appraises works by a variety of authors, including Phillippe Rushton, Charles Murray, and Michael Levin, who claim that racial identity and evolution work together to structure the history and the potentials of human groups in different parts of the world.
305. Critical Race Theory
Dan Moos W 6:00 - 8:55
Examines the concept of race and ways this construction operates in the political, legal, and cultural arena. Advance interrogation of the history of race as a concept — particularly in the United States — evaluates the shift from biological determinism to cultural construction of race definition through intellectual history, literary studies, sociology, philosophy, and legal studies. Explores the shifting tensions between race and gender, class, ethnicity, and nation, as well as interrogating whiteness as normative and addressing the problem of consciousness. Readings include W.E.B. DuBois, bell hooks, Cornel West, Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon, Paul Gilroy, and others.
368. Visuality and Ethnicity in Contemporary Art
Julie McGee T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
An exploration of cultural identity and artistic practice in contemporary art with particular focus on ethnicity, identity, and “otherness.” To what end do artists embrace or dislodge constructions and aspects of cultural identity and difference, nativism and indigene, nation and diaspora, globalism or internationalism? Begins with and includes a core group of American artists, but other artists and accompanying readings are international in scope. Among the many artists considered are Chris Ofili, Roshini Kempadoo, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Coco Fusco, Carrie Mae Weems, Kara Walker, Jimmie Durham.