Courses

Courses

Spring 2007 Courses

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025. The Civil War in Film
Patrick Rael M 11:30 - 12:55, W 11:30 - 12:55 Kanbar Hall - 109
Explores the American Civil War through an examination of popular films dedicated to the topic. Students analyze films as a representation of the past, considering not simply their historical subject matter, but also the cultural and political contexts in which they are made. Films include The Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, Glory, and Cold Mountain. Weekly film screenings are held in the evening.
LAB
Patrick Rael M 6:30 - 9:25 Searles-315
Explores the American Civil War through an examination of popular films dedicated to the topic. Students analyze films as a representation of the past, considering not simply their historical subject matter, but also the cultural and political contexts in which they are made. Films include The Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, Glory, and Cold Mountain. Weekly film screenings are held in the evening.
108. Introduction to Black Women's Literature
Guy Foster T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55 Adams-208
Examines the twin themes of love and sex as they relate to poems, stories, novels, and plays written by African-American women from the nineteenth century to the contemporary era. Explores such issues as Reconstruction, the Great Migration, motherhood, sexism, group loyalty, racial authenticity, intra- and interracial desire, homosexuality, and the intertextual unfolding of a literary tradition of black female writing, as well as how these writings relate to canonical African American male-authored texts and European American literary traditions. Students are expected to read texts closely, critically, as well as appreciatively. Authors may include Harriet Jacobs, Nella Larsen, Jessie Faucet, Ann Petry, Ntozake Shange, Suzan-Lori Parks, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Gayle Jones, Jamaica Kincaid, Terry McMillan, Sapphire.
137. Music of Brazil
Dan Sharp M 1:00 - 2:25, W 1:00 - 2:25 Gibson-101
An introduction to the musics of Brazil that examines musical practice as a kind of cultural behavior. Students learn about the traditional roots of current modern popular styles and explore the role of music in a society divided along lines of class, race and gender. Special emphasis is given to Afro-Brazilian musical genres.
217. Overcoming Racism
H. Partridge W 1:00 - 3:55 Searles-223
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.
237. The History of African Americans from 1865 to the Present
Patrick Rael M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55 Adams-208
Explores the history of African Americans from the end of the Civil War to the present. Issues include the promises and failures of Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, black leadership and protest institutions, African American cultural styles, industrialization and urbanization, the world wars, the Civil Rights movement, and conservative retrenchment.
241. The Civil Rights Movement
Daniel Levine T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25 Druckenmiller-004
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.
242. Music of the African Diaspora in Latin America
Dan Sharp T 8:30 - 9:55, TH 8:30 - 9:55 Gibson-101
A survey of the musical practices of members of the African Diaspora living in Latin America. Focuses on specific case studies, such as Afro-Peruvian, Afro-Cuban, and Afro-Colombian musical communities, as well as themes relevant throughout the region, such as histories of social exclusion, legacies of slavery, and ideologies of cultural and racial mixture. The details of musical styles will be studied in conjunction with their cultural contexts.
264. Conquest, Colonialism, and Independence: Africa since 1880
David Gordon T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25 Kanbar Hall - 107
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.
275. African American Fiction: Short Stories
Elizabeth Muther F 1:30 - 4:25 Mass-Faculty Room
Explorations of short fiction by African American writers from fugitive narratives to futurist science fiction. Focuses on strategies of cultural survival as mapped in narrative form—with special interest in trickster storytellers, alternative temporalities, and double-voicing. Close attention paid to the exigencies of the short form, the experimental ground of the short story and its role for emerging writers, and notable anthologies and the role of stories in movement-making.
281. African-American Utopias: Colonization, Emigration, and Black Nationalisms
Dan Moos T 11:30 - 12:55, TH 11:30 - 12:55 Sills-205
As early as 1773, African Americans petitioned whites in power for their removal from America so that they might start a community or nation of their own. Examines the impulses toward colonization and emigration in African-American history, including movements that looked to Africa as an African-American state. Looks at historical documents, essays, and speeches, but focuses primarily on the speculative possibilities offered by African-American authors such as Oscar Micheaux, Martin R. Delany, Surron Griggs, and Toni Morrison. Explores real and fictional black nations, black towns, and even secret black governments and tries to determine the impulse for this departure, as well as the ideological import of black separation from the American nation.
339. Interracial Narratives
Guy Foster T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25 Kanbar Hall - 109
Violence and interracial sex have long been conjoined in U.S. literary, televisual, and filmic work. The enduring nature of this conjoining suggests there is some symbolic logic at work in these narratives, such that black/white intimacy functions as a figural stand-in for negative (and sometimes positive) commentary on black/white social conflict. When this happens, what becomes of “sex” as a historically changing phenomenon when it is yoked to the historically unchanging phenomenon of the “interracial”? Although counter-narratives have recently emerged to compete with such symbolic portrayals, i.e. romance novels, popular films, and television shows, not all of these works have displaced this earlier figural logic; in some cases, this logic has merely been updated. Explores the broader cultural implications
344. African American Cinema to 1950
Dan Moos W 6:30 - 9:25 Mass-McKeen Study
This class will examine early African-American cinema from its inception in the first two decades of the twentieth century to 1950. We will look primarily at all-black cast films, many from African-American directors and producers, but we will begin the class with a look at how African Americans were depicted by the burgeoning white film industry. Early in the semester we watch D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) and discuss it’s reception by both white and black audiences to understand the images that black film makers insisted on countering over the next decades. Our study will engage issues of technique, content, and audience. For example, we will look at how funding affected technique and the overall quality of early African-American cinema. We will also examine the relationship between Hollywood and independently produced black films, investigating how major motion picture productions such as Hallelujah or Cabin in the Sky affected black audiences’ responses to less flashy black-produced films.
LAB
Dan Moos T 6:30 - 8:25 Cleaveland-151
This class will examine early African-American cinema from its inception in the first two decades of the twentieth century to 1950. We will look primarily at all-black cast films, many from African-American directors and producers, but we will begin the class with a look at how African Americans were depicted by the burgeoning white film industry. Early in the semester we watch D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) and discuss it’s reception by both white and black audiences to understand the images that black film makers insisted on countering over the next decades. Our study will engage issues of technique, content, and audience. For example, we will look at how funding affected technique and the overall quality of early African-American cinema. We will also examine the relationship between Hollywood and independently produced black films, investigating how major motion picture productions such as Hallelujah or Cabin in the Sky affected black audiences’ responses to less flashy black-produced films.
360. Religion and Popular Politics in African History
David Gordon W 1:00 - 3:55 CT-16 Whiteside Room
Religion in African history since the colonial period, with a focus on Islam in Saharan Africa and Christian movements in south and central Africa. Examines popular anti-colonial religious movements and the relationship between religious movements and post-colonial political parties and states. Includes missionary influences and independent African Christianity in south and central Africa; Sufi Brotherhoods in Senegal; and Islamic rebellion and fundamentalism in Nigeria, Algeria, and Sudan.