Undergraduate Courses: 2017 - 2018

African American Studies Department

Undergraduate Course Listing

Fall 2017 - Sprint 2018

Fall 2017

AFAM 015a/ANTH 015, BLACK GIRLS IN THE AMERICAN CITY.  Aimee Cox
Tuesday and Thursday, 1:00 – 2:15 p.m.
In Black Girls in the American City, we explore the various ways Black Girlhood has been presented in the realms of popular culture, political discourse, and literature in comparison to the ways in which Black girls represent themselves and their lived experiences. The time period covered is from the Great Migration to the present. Hu

AFAM 055a/AMST 026a/THST 096, PROTEST MUSIC IN AMERICA AND THE BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLE.  Daphne Brooks
Monday and Wednesday, 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Exploration of the history, politics, and cultures of protest music across three centuries, including the multiple genres, aesthetics, and performance strategies innovated as forms of black liberation. Topics include uniquely subversive vocal strategies, lyrical tropes, and instrumental disturbances, as well as African American literature that interrogates the radical dimensions of black music in the context of captivity, the post-Reconstruction era, the Jim Crow era, the long Civil Rights, and Black Power movements. Hu

AFAM 125a/AMST 125a/HIST 136, THE LONG CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT.  Crystal Feimster
Monday and Wednesday, 10:30-11:20 a.m.
Political, social, and artistic aspects of the U.S. civil rights movement from the 1920s through the 1980s explored in the context of other organized efforts for social change. Focus on relations between the African American freedom movement and debates about gender, labor, sexuality, and foreign policy. Changing representations of social movements in twentieth-century American culture; the politics of historical analysis. Hu

AFAM 179a/FILM 387a, THE WIRE.  Rizvana Bradley
Tuesday and Thursday, 1:00 – 2:15 p.m.
This course will examine the journalistic, novelistic and dramatic roots of the HBO series, The Wire.  Treating the entire series as the core text, we will think what The Wire teaches us about the structure of serial television. Hu, SS

AFAM 193a/MUSI 278a, DUB AND HIP-HOP, MUSICAL TECHNOLOGIES OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC.  Michael Veal, John Klaess
Tuesday and Thursday, 2:30 – 3:45 p.m.
Historical and music-analytical survey of the history of two genres that transformed the sound and structure of global popular music in the 1970s and beyond: Jamaican dub music and African-American hip-hop music. Narrative focuses on specific recording studios, producers and engineers, and successive forms of music production technology. Hu, SS

AFAM 196a/AMST 196a/ER&M 226a/EVST 196a/SOCY 190a, RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER IN AMERICAN CITIES.  Laura Barraclough
Tuesday and Thursday, 10:30 – 11:20 a.m.
Examination of how racial, gender, and class inequalities have been built, sustained, and challenged in American cities. Focus on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Topics include industrialization and deindustrialization, segregation, gendered public/private split, gentrification, transit equity, environmental justice, food access, and the relationships between public space, democracy, and community wellbeing. Includes field projects in New Haven.  SS

AFAM 197a/AMST 219a/ER&M 246a/HIST 326a/WGSS 346a, RACE, EMPIRE AND ATLANTIC MODERNITIES.  Dixa Ramirez, Anne Eller
Monday, 1:30 – 3:20 p.m.
Interdisciplinary examination of the colonial modernities of the Atlantic world, with focus on the production of racism and colonial difference, as well as popular responses to those discourses. Hu

AFAM 202a/HIST 103Ja, LIFE AND WRITINGS OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.  David Blight
Wednesday, 1:30 – 3:20 p.m.
The life, times, and works of Frederick Douglass, African American abolitionist and leader of the nineteenth century. Douglass’s writings, including autobiographies, oratory, and editorials, and his role as a historical actor in the antislavery and early civil rights movements. Deep inquiry into the craft of biography.Hu, Wr

AFAM 206a/ENGL 234a, LITERATURE OF THE BLACK SOUTH.  Sarah Mahurin
Monday and Wednesday, 11:35 – 12:50 p.m.
Examination of the intersections between African American and Southern literatures, with consideration of the ways in which the American South remains a space that simultaneously represents and repels an African American ethos. Hu

AFAM 208a, AFRICAN AMERICAN THEATER AND DRAMA.  Tina Post
Thursday, 9:25 – 11:15 a.m.
This class offers an introduction to the works of African American dramatists and theater makers. Our study will begin in the 1850s, though the vast majority of theatrical works are situated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will largely approach plays from a literary and theatrical-historical perspective, but black visual artists and black intellectuals will help to inform our study, as will the occasional white playwright. Critical questions include: How have the themes of African American theater changed or remained static over time? How do its theatrical concerns track with or against African American social movements? Hu

AFAM 230a/AFST??a/CLCV 239a/LITR??a, CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN ANCIENT GREECE, AFRICA, AND THE BLACK DIASPORA.  Emily Greenwood
Tuesday, 1:30 – 3:20 p.m.
Investigation of the ways that black diasporic artists have engaged with, revised, and re-imagined Greco-Roman Classics, in order to both expose and critique discourses of racism, imperialism, and colonialism, and as a fertile source of mythological material. Students engage with a diverse array of materials, including collage, graphic novels, novels, oral literature, poetry, and film. Hu

AFAM 252a/FILM 273a, CINEMA OF THE BLACK DIASPORA.  Rizvana Bradley
Wednesday, 2:30 – 4:20 p.m.
The politics, aesthetics, and social conditions that inform film movements across the black diaspora, including Caribbean, African, and especially black British cinema. Students consider the visualization of desire, sexuality, and erotic identification, and the political implications of exploring these themes with respect to black embodiment onscreen; and how this knowledge can be brought to bear on the aesthetic significance and cultural growth and development of a black diasporic film tradition. Hu

Prerequisite: One AFAM course, or a course on race, gender, sexuality, or instructor permission

AFAM 279a/AMST 273a/ENGL 298a/WGSS 342a, BLACK WOMEN LITERATURE.  Jacqueline Goldsby
Tuesday and Thursday, 9:00 – 10:15 a.m.
Examination of black women’s literary texts, with a focus on the post–civil rights era. Exploration of the ways writers construct and contest the cultural, ideological, and political parameters of black womanhood. Topics include narrative strategy, modes of representation, and textual depictions of the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, color, ethnicity, nationality, class, and generation. Texts placed within the context of black women’s literary legacies. Hu

AFAM 313a/THST 319a, EMBODYING STORY.  Renee Robinson
Tuesday and Thursday, 1:30 – 3:30 p.m.
The intersection of storytelling and movement as seen through historical case studies, cross-disciplinary inquiry, and studio practice. Drawing on eclectic source materials from different artistic disciplines, ranging from the repertory of Alvin Ailey to journalism, architectural studies, cartoon animation, and creative processes, students develop the critical, creative, and technical skills through which to tell their own stories in movement. No prior dance experience necessary. Hu

AFAM 338a/ENGL 335a/LITR 280a, CARIBBEAN POETRY.  Anthony Reed
Thursday, 1:30 – 3:20 p.m.
Survey of major twentieth-century Caribbean poets such as Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, and Aimé Césaire. Hu, Wr

FAM 390a/ER&M 419a/SOCY 319a, ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY.  Elijah Anderson
Monday, 1:30 – 3:20 p.m.
An ethnographic study of the African American community. Analysis of ethnographic and historical literature, with attention to substantive, conceptual, and methodological issues. Topics include the significance of slavery, the racial ghetto, structural poverty, the middle class, the color line, racial etiquette, and social identity. SS

AFAM 420a/AFST ??/FREN 417a/MMES 349a, COLONIAL NARRATIVE, POSTCOLONIAL COUNTERNARRATIVE.      Christopher Miller
Tuesday, 1:30 – 3:20 p.m.
Critical study of literature and film that charts urban spaces in the French colonial empire and the Francophone postcolonial world. Readings and topics include: Paris as imperial capital and site of anti-imperial movements; Dakar, Senegal in Sembene Ousmane’s “Black Girl” (novel and film); Fort-de-France, Martinique in Césaire’s Notebook and Chamoiseau’s Solibo magnifique; Algiers in Assia Djebar’s Women of Algiers and Samir Toumi’s Alger le cri; Tunis in Abdelwahhab Meddeb’s Talismano; Casablanca in Mahi Binebine’s Les étoiles de Sidi Moumen; and Abderrahmane Sissako’s film Timbuktu. Hu, For. Lang.

AFAM 425a/AMST 453a/ENGL 425a/THST 417a, LITERATURE AND PERFORMANCE IN NEW ORLEANS.  Joseph Roach
Tuesday and Thursday, 11:35 – 12:50 p.m.
Through perspectives and approaches of English literature, American studies, African-American studies, comparative literature, and theater and performance studies, students explore the sources of creative inspiration that writers and performers find in NOLA, including its cultural mystique, its colonial history, its troubled assimilation into Anglo-North America, its tortured racial politics, its natural and built environment, its spirit-world practices, its raucous festive life, its eccentric characters, its food, its music, its predisposition to catastrophe, and its capacity for re-invention and survival. Hu, Wr

AFAM 428a/THST 406a, DANCE AND BLACK POPULAR CULTURE.  Brian Seibert
Monday, 3:30 – 5:20 p.m.
Examination of dance in black popular culture and of black dance in American popular culture, more generally, from 19th-century slave dances and blackface minstrelsy through MTV and Beyoncé’s Lemonade. Course materials include primary source documents from the white and black press, theoretical and historical essays, and film. Hu

AFAM 442a/ANTH 442a, PERFORMANCE ETHNOGRAPHY: THEORY & METHODS.  Aimee Cox
Thursday, 7:00 – 8:50 p.m.
Students in this seminar become familiar with the theoretical framework that defines performance ethnography as well as the methodologies developed and utilized by research practitioners. This seminar will integrate close reading and discussion with both in and out of class assignments that utilized performance ethnographic inquiries and methods. Hu, SS

AFAM 446a/AFST 424a/ENGL 424a, AFRICAN URBAN CULTURES: LITERATURE OF THE CITY.  Stephanie Newell
Tuesday, 9:25 – 11:15 a.m.
Approaches the study of African cities and urbanization through the medium of diverse texts, including fiction, non-fiction, popular culture, film and the arts as well as scholarly work on African cities. Hu, Wr

AFAM 471a, Independent Study: African American Studies.  Anthony Reed
Independent research under the direction of a member of the department on a special topic in African American studies not covered in other courses. Permission of the director of undergraduate studies and of the instructor directing the research is required. A proposal signed by the instructor must be submitted to the director of undergraduate studies by the end of the second week of classes. The instructor meets with the student regularly, typically for an hour a week, and the student writes a final paper or a series of short essays.  May be elected for one or two terms.

AFAM 480a, Senior Colloquium: African American Studies.  Crystal Feimster
Monday, 1:30 – 3:20 p.m.
A seminar on issues and approaches in African American studies. The colloquium offers students practical help in refining their senior essay topics and developing research strategies. Students discuss assigned readings and share their research experiences and findings. During the term, students are expected to make substantial progress on their senior essays; they are required to submit a prospectus, an annotated bibliography, and a draft of one-quarter of the essay. Sr. Essay

AFAM 491a or b, The Senior Essay. Anthony Reed
Independent research on the senior essay. The senior essay form must be submitted to the director of undergraduate studies by the end of the second week of classes. The senior essay should be completed according to the following schedule: (1) end of the sixth week of classes: a rough draft of the entire essay; (2) end of the last week of classes (fall term) or three weeks before the end of classes (spring term): two copies of the final version of the essay.

Spring 2018

AFAM 060b/AMST 060b/HIST 016b, SIGNIFICANCE OF AMERICAN SLAVERY.  Edward Rugemer
Tuesday and Thursday, 1:00 – 2:15 p.m.
The history of American slavery, its destruction during the nineteenth century, and its significance today. Topics include the origins of slavery, the development of racism, the transatlantic slave trade, the experience of enslavement, resistance to slavery, the abolitionist movement, the process of emancipation, and the perpetuation of slavery and other forms of unfree labor in the twenty-first century. Hu, Wr

AFAM 150b/HSAR 380b/WGSS 377b, THE BODY IN ART SINCE 1945.  Kobena Mercer
Tuesday and Thursday, 1:00 – 2:15 p.m.
The image of the body in art from 1945 to the present. Themes include identity and changing models of personhood; constructions of gender, race, and sexuality; embodied perception as it is mediated by technology and ecology; issues of medium and materials in painting, sculpture, performance, photography, film, and installation; and the corporeal dimensions of aesthetic experience. Hu

AFAM 198b/CGS 277b/EP&E 494b/PHIL 177b, PROPAGANDA, IDEOLOGY, AND DEMOCRACY.  Jason Stanley
Monday and Wednesday, 11:35 – 12:25 p.m., 1 HTBA
Historical, philosophical, psychological, and linguistic introduction to the issues and challenges that propaganda raises for liberal democracy. How propaganda can work to undermine democracy; ways in which schools and the press are implicated; the use of propaganda by social movements to address democracy’s deficiencies; the legitimacy of propaganda in cases of political crisis. Hu

AFAM 213b/HIST??/HSHM??, RACE, AND THE SLAVE TRADE.  Carolyn Roberts
Day(s) and Time: TBA
Course Description: TBA

AFAM 232b/ENGL 233b, CONSTRUCTIONS OF WHITENESS.  Claudia Rankine
Day(s) and Time: TBA
An interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of whiteness. Discussion of whiteness as a culturally constructed and economic incorporated entity, which touches upon and assigns value to nearly every aspect of American life and culture. Hu

AFAM 251b/AMST 397b, CRITICAL RACE THEORY.  Crystal Feimster
Monday, 1:30 – 3:20 p.m.
Introduction to critical race theory, a radical critique of relations among race, law, and power in U.S. politics and society. Intellectual foundations of the field, with emphasis on African American perspectives; key juridical acts. The centrality of U.S. law in producing social hierarchies of race and racial difference, gender, sexuality, and class. The extension of critical race theory to global analysis of race, immigration, and cultural difference. Hu

AFAM 256b/FILM 399b, THE MIGRANT IMAGE.  Rizvana Bradley
Thursday, 1:30 – 3: 20 p.m.
Cinematic as well as post-cinematic representation of both the migrant and the immigrant body; authorship of the anticolonial struggle. Focus on migrants, refugees, and immigrants, and the emergence of the “global citizen” with respect to digital artistic practices. Hu

Prerequisites: FILM 150 or 160; or permission of instructor.

AFAM 270b/PLSC 280b, POVERTY, POLITICS, AND POLICY IN THE AMERICAN CITY.  Cynthia Horan
Day(s) and Time: TBA
Examination of how politics informs the formulation and implementation of policies to address urban poverty. Consideration of alternative explanations for poverty and alternative government strategies. Focus on efforts by local organizations and communities to improve their situations within the context of government actions. SS

AFAM 305b, AFRICAN AMERICAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.  Sarah Mahurin
Monday and Wednesday, 11:35 – 12:50 p.m.
This course will examine the genre of African American autobiography, from slave narratives to contemporary memoirs, and how the genre approaches the project (and problem) of “knowing” – through reading – our fellow humans. What makes African American autobiography distinctive, and how do its individual narratives (that is, the narratives of individual black lives) relate to – or create – a larger literary tradition? How do writers use the first person to retrospectively confront the knotty issues of family, identity, geography, and memory (or “re-memory,” to borrow a phrase from Toni Morrison)?  Moving chronologically, we will consider a range of narratives and their representations of race, of space, of migration, of violence, of self, and of other, as well as the historical circumstances that inform these representations. Hu

AFAM 340b/AMST 303b/ER&M 320b/LAST 320b/LITR 332b, NARRATIVES OF BLACKNESS IN LATINO AND LATIN AMERICA.  Dixa Ramirez
Tuesday, 1:30 – 3:20 p.m.
Focus on the cultural and literary treatments of Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latina/o subjectivity in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Latin America and in the United States through the study of literature, historical first-hand accounts, film, and scholarship produced from the 16th century to the present. Themes include slave insurrections, the plantation system, piracy and buccaneering, the black roots of several Latin American musical genres, miscegenation, and the central role of sexuality in race-based social hierarchies. Hu, Wr

AFAM 349b/AMST 326b/HIST 115Jb/WGSS 388b, CIVIL RIGHTS AND WOMEN’S LIBERATION.  Lauren Meyer
Monday, 9:25 – 11:15 a.m.
The dynamic relationship between the civil rights movement and the women’s liberation movement from 1940 to the present. When and how the two movements overlapped, intersected, and diverged. The variety of ways in which African Americans and women campaigned for equal rights. Topics include World War II, freedom summer, black power, the Equal Rights Amendment, feminism, abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights. Hu

AFAM 391b/AMST 309b/ER&M 310b/LITR 334b/WGSS 310b, ZOMBIES, PIRATES, GHOSTS, AND WITCHES.  Dixa Ramirez
Wednesday, 2:30 – 4:20 p.m.
Study of the literature and history of the Atlantic Caribbean region (including the U.S. Northeast and Deep South) through its most subversive and disturbing icons—zombies, pirates, ghosts, vampires, and witches. Texts include Francis Drake on piracy, Katherine Dunham on zombies, Lauren Derby on vampires (chupacabras), Maryse Condé and Sandra Cisneros on witchcraft, and Toni Morrison and William Faulkner on ghosts. Films include documentaries and several horror classics, including White Zombie (1932), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), The Witch (2015), and Get Out (2017). Hu, Wr

AFAM 394b/THST 389b. “TWICE MILITANT” PERFORMANCES: LORRAINE HANSBERRY, NINA SIMONE, JAMES BALDWIN.  Daphne Brooks
Tuesday, 2:30 – 4:20 p.m.
This class will also pay close attention to the archives of all three figures. We’ll make course excursions to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and New York Cities Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture so as to examine informal and unpublished documents, memorabilia, photographs, diaries, notes, and epistolary exchanges that broaden and deepen our understanding of their intramural networks of black love and liberation. Hu

AFAM 401bG/AMST 411bG/FILM 453b, INTRODUCTION TO DOCUMENTARY STUDIES.  Matthew Jacobson, Anna Duensing
Monday and Wednesday, 2:30 – 3:45 p.m.
An introduction to documentary film, photography, and radio for students interested in doing documentary work, as well as for those who simply wish to study the history of the documentary as a cultural form. Ji

AFAM 410b/AMST 310b/WGSS 410b, INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES.  Anthony Reed
Thursday, 2:30 – 4:20 p.m.
An interdisciplinary, thematic approach to the study of race, nation, and ethnicity in the African diaspora. Topics include class, gender, color, and sexuality; the dynamics of reform, Pan-Africanism, neocolonialism, and contemporary black nationalism. Use of a broad range of methodologies. Hu

AFAM 423bG/AMST 384bG/ENGL 306bG, AMERICAN ARTISTS AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN BOOK.  Robert Stepto
Wednesday, 1:30 – 3:20 p.m.
Visual art in African American books since 1900. Artists include Winold Reiss, Aaron Douglas, E. S. Campbell, Tom Feelings, and the FSA photographers of the 1930s and 1940s. Topics include Harlem Renaissance book art, photography and literature, and children’s books. Research in collections of the Beinecke Library and the Yale Art Gallery is encouraged. Hu

AFAM 437bG/AMST 420bG/ENGL 445bG, RALPH ELLISON IN CONTEXT.  Robert Stepto
Monday, 1:30 – 3:20 p.m.
The complete works of Ralph Ellison and related works (in various art forms) of his contemporaries, including Wright, Baldwin, Bearden, and Louis Armstrong. Hu, Wr

AFAM 440b/FREN 421b, INTERCULTURAL LITERARY HOAXES.  Christopher Miller
Tuesday, 1:30 – 3:20 p.m.
Study of literary works that test the bounds of propriety by borrowing or stealing an alien identity and passing the imposture off as authentic. Cases in Anglo-American and French-Francophone literature, ranging from the hilarious to the reprehensible. Attention to issues in the ethics of representation. Works include Diderot, Mérimée, George Eliot, pseudo-slave narratives, Camara Laye, Romain Gary, Forrest Carter, JT LeRoy, Paul Smaïl, Margaret B. Jones, Misha Defonseca. Hu

AFAM 450b/HIST??/HUMS 460b/WGSS 468b, NEW ORLEANS IN THE AMERICAN IMAGINARY.  Crystal Feimster, Joseph Fischel
Wednesday, 2:30 – 4:20 p.m.
Exploration of historical and contemporary New Orleans through the city’s literature, scholarship, theater, music, and food. New Orleans as both outlier and representative case of United States neoliberal economic reforms, racialized policing, casino capitalism, and hedonism. Hu

AFAM 469b/EDST 271b/ECON 171b, URBAN INEQUALITIES AND EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY.  Gerald Jaynes
Tuesday and Thursday, 10:30 – 11:20 a.m.
Analysis of contemporary policy problems related to academic under performance in lower income urban schools and the concomitant achievement gaps among various racial and ethnic groups in United States K-12 education. Historical review of opportunity inequalities and policy solutions proposed to ameliorate differences in achievement and job readiness. Students benefit from practical experience and interdisciplinary methods, including a lab component with time spent in a New Haven high school. SS

AFAM 472b, Independent Study:  African American Studies.  Anthony Reed
Independent research under the direction of a member of the department on a special topic in African American studies not covered in other courses. Permission of the director of undergraduate studies and of the instructor directing the research is required. A proposal signed by the instructor must be submitted to the director of undergraduate studies by the end of the second week of classes. The instructor meets with the student regularly, typically for an hour a week, and the student writes a final paper or a series of short essays.  May be elected for one or two terms.

AFAM 491a or b, The Senior Essay.  Anthony Reed
Independent research on the senior essay. The senior essay form must be submitted to the director of undergraduate studies by the end of the second week of classes. The senior essay should be completed according to the following schedule: (1) end of the sixth week of classes: a rough draft of the entire essay; (2) end of the last week of classes (fall term) or three weeks before the end of classes (spring term): two copies of the final version of the essay.