African-American Studies Minor

Offered autumn. Same as HSTA 141H. This course introduces students to the primary questions, themes, and approaches to African-American Studies. In addition to examining key historical periods such as Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights era, students will encounter Hip-Hop, African-American film, African-American religion, and contemporary identity politics. This course concludes by discussing the reasons for and new directions in African-American studies, including diaspora studies, Pan-Africanism, and post-colonial studies. Overall students will gain new insight into the social, cultural, political, and intellectual, experiences of a diverse people and into the history and contemporary experience of the United States.

Offered intermittently. Same as HSTA 342H. Survey of the African-American experience from the African background to the end of the Civil War. Focus on Black American quest for the American Dream, and how Blacks attempted to deal with the challenges of enslavement and racism.

Offered intermittently. Same as HSTA 343H (HIST 379H). Study of the African-American experience since the Civil War. Change and continuity in the African-American experience, the fight against Jim Crow, the struggle for civil rights, and post-civil rights economic, political, social and cultural developments and challenges.

(R-6) Experimental offerings of visiting professors, experimental offerings of new courses, or one time offerings of current topics.

Offered intermittently. Interdisciplinary study of the history of pre-colonial Africa, focusing on social, economic, political, and cultural institutions and traditions including the wealth, diversity, and complexity of ancient and classical African civilizations and cultures.

Offered Fall, even years. Same as NAS 260. A study of the broad scope of relations between African Americans and Native Americans in colonial and United States history. Topics explored through history, sociology, and cultural anthropology.

Offered spring.  Same as HSTA 262 Interdisciplinary, historical perspective on the early 19th century movement to abolish slavery and racial discrimination in the United States.

(R-6) Offered intermittently. Experimental offerings of visiting professors, experimental offerings of new courses, or one-time offerings of current topics.

Spring, odd years. The African-American religious experience encompasses Islam, Christianity, Santería, voodoo, and many others. In this course, students will examine the history of religious expression within the African-American community from the colonial era through the twentieth century. Central to the course is the question, “How did religion shape the experience of the African-American community?” Students will also examine the ways in which religious practice influenced social, political, and cultural changes in American history.

Offered autumn. Interdisciplinary course designed to explore and illuminate the multifaceted nature and development of African-American group and individual identity.

(R-9) Prereq., consent of instr. Experimental offerings of visiting professors, experimental offerings of new courses, or one time offerings of current topics.

(AM) Offered autumn, odd years. From slave revolts through to the Move rebellion in Philadelphia, this course examines how the African-American community has engaged in radical efforts to change the status quo in the name of seeking justice.

(AM) Offered autumn, even years. This course explores the meaning of public prayer in the Civil Rights Movement.  Built around the question, "Does religion help or hinder the pursuit of social change?" this class combines historical and religious studies inquiry to trace changes in civil rights activists' efforts to make use of religion.  By focusing on a particular religious practice - in this case prayer - in a specific, but limited period of time, this course challenges students to consider how meaning is formed through historical action and study the social significance of religious practice.  This formed through historical action and study the social significance of religious practice.  This course complicates prevailing ideas about the normalcy of  African-American religious practitioners' prayer, invites students to examine their assumptions about the nature of prayer, and traces how religion spilled out of sanctuaries into the streets during the civil rights era.

Offered intermittently. Same as HSTA 420. This course explores the period in American history from the close of the Mexican War through the conclusion of the Civil War.  Topics include slavery and sectionalism; race and racism; immigration and ethno-religious conflict; military mobilization and wartime dissent; the meaning of freedom in the age of emancipation. This course is intended to hone skills fundamental to the historical discipline: the critical analysis of primary sources; independent primary research and historical writing; engagement with and assessment of historical scholarship; the construction of a historiographical essay.

(R-9) Prereq., consent of instr. Experimental offerings of visiting professors, experimental offerings of new courses, or one time offerings of current topics.

(AM) Offered alternate years. This course will examine the development and demise of slavery in the early modern Atlantic world, from the late fifteenth to the late nineteenth centuries. Specifically, we will explore the ways the transatlantic slave trade forged economic and cultural connections between Europe, Africa, and the Americas, thereby causing immeasurable suffering while conditioning conceptions of race, reshaping politics and religion, and transforming the ecology of nearly a third of the globe.

Offered autumn. Analysis of the development and concept of race as a social category and the processes of cultural change within and between ethnic groups.

(R-9) Offered autumn and spring. Study of the peoples of various geographic regions and their cultures.

Offered autumn, odd-numbered years. Prereq., ANTY 220S or consent of instr. Study of the processes of change, modernization and development.

Offered intermittently. Prereq., ECNS 201S. Study of the processes of economic growth and development in the less developed world.

(R–9) Offered intermittently. Experimental offerings of visiting professors, experimental offerings of new courses, or one–time offerings of current topics.

Offered autumn even numbered years. A survey of the biophysical and cultural geography of Sub Saharan Africa. Emphasis is on the region's cultural historical development and current ecological, demographic, and economic patterns.

(AM) Offered intermittently.  Social history of the American South with particular attention to race, class, and gender.

(AM) Offered intermittently. Issues in the social history of law from the colonial period to the present.

(AM) Same as WGS 418. Offered intermittently.  Prereq., upper-division standing.  Study of the connection between women's status and slavery in antebellum America, looking at slave women, slaveholding women, and antislavery women. Upper division writing course for the history major.

(AM) Same as WGS 419. Offered intermittently.  Examination of the connections between race, class, and gender in the South.  Conflict and cooperation among black and white women in politics, reform, and work. Upper division writing course for the history major.

(AM) Offered intermittently.  Same as AAS 420.  This course explores the period in American history from the close of the Mexican War through the conclusion of the Civil War.  Topics include slavery and sectionalism; race and racism; immigration and ethno-religious conflict; military mobilization and wartime dissent; the meaning of freedom in the age of emancipation.  This course is intended to hone skills fundamental to the historical discipline: the critical analysis of primary sources; independent primary research and historical writing; engagement with and assessment of historical scholarship; the construction of a historiographical essay. Upper division writing course for the history major.

(WRLD) Offered autumn. A concise history of the Islamic world from the 6th century to the fall of the Abbasid Empire in the 13th century, focusing primarily on the teachings of Islam and the causes for the rapid expansion of the Islamic empire.

Offered intermittently. Prereq., LIT 300 or consent of instr. Selected works by African-American authors. Course may define a narrowed focus such as poetry, women writers, etc.

(R-9) Offered autumn or spring. Prereq., LIT 300 and six credits in literature courses numbered 300 or higher or consent of instr. Study and application of one or more theoretical approaches to interpreting texts (e.g., aesthetic post-structural, new historicist, classical, Renaissance, Romantic, narrative, psychoanalytic, formalist, neo-Marxist, feminist, gender, cultural studies and reader-response theory).

Offered autumn. The development of jazz in the 20th century with emphasis on critical listening and the recognition of important trends and people in its history.

Offered autumn. Prereq., junior standing or consent of instr. Development of the political systems of sub-Saharan Africa. Analysis of the interaction between African and Western social, political, and economic forces. Consideration of African political thought.

Offered autumn. Same as WGS 220S. Analysis of the intersecting structure and dynamics of race, gender and class. Focus on power relationships, intergroup conflict and minority-group status.

Offered intermittently. Prereq., SOCI 101S or SOCI 220S or SOCI 275S. The origins, institutionalization and change of class, status, prestige, power and other forms of social inequality. Special attention to the effects of stratification on individuals.

Offered autumn. Prereq. SOCI 101S, or consent of instr. An examination of the roots, prevalence, and social characteristics of poverty. Analysis of policies intended to end poverty.