History 291A - S-AfrAmerHist:Africa-Civil War

This 4-credit General Education course introduces students to the study of African American History. It begins with a discussion of the social and political conditions that prompted early twentieth-century Black intellectuals to pioneer the field of African American history and how the field has grown and changed over the past century. The course then charts the history of the African and African American experience, mainly in North America/United States from the late 17th Century through the US Civil War (1861-1865). This course also includes lectures and readings that highlight other geographic locations and major events in the African Diaspora, such as the Haitian Revolution, and will identify the ways in which they are connected to the people and events in the United States. Topics and events covered in this course include: trans-Atlantic slave trade; colonial legal categories of race/gender and slave status; identity formations; cultural creations and syncretism; slavery and the US Constitution; free Black communities in antebellum US; southern slavery and the domestic slave trade; slave resistance and religion; Black intellectual and artistic traditions; Black men?s and women?s political activism; colonization and emigration movements; Black soldiers in the Civil War; emancipation and the end of slavery in the United States. (Gen.Ed. HS, U)

Open to Seniors, Juniors & Sophomores only.