This course is designed for Black Studies majors (and prospective Black Studies majors) working on Black Studies theses and other intensive research projects in African American studies and African and African diaspora studies. The course is intended to provide a scholarly community for students as they embark on the writing of their theses and research projects.
(Offered as BLST 330 [CLA], SWAG 334, LLAS 312 and ENGL 312) This course offers a comprehensive study of selected Caribbean literature from the perspective of postcolonial and globalization studies. Writers include Dionne Brand, Achy Obejas, Edwidge Danticat, and Kai Miller. Themes include colonization, migration, diasporas, gender and sexuality, immigration, and the experiences of the urban residents. Limited to 15 students.
Spring semester. Prof. C. Bailey
How to handle overenrollment: Black Studies, SWAG and English majors, seniors
(Offered as HIST 318, BLST 318 [US] and EDST 318) This course will delve into the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural factors that affected the lives of Black youth in the United States during the 1980s.
(Offered as ENGL 274, BLST 274, and POSC 274) This course investigates how dictatorships take shape, operate in practice, and erode democratic life. Rather than simply cataloging authoritarian regimes, we will ask three guiding questions: How is the stage set for dictatorship? How do charisma, fear, and the cult of personality sustain authoritarian power? How do oppression, censorship and self-censorship, propaganda, and corruption deepen its hold?
(Offered as BLST 270[US] and HIST 270) All around us are examples of Americans misunderstanding slavery—framing slavery as beneficial to the enslaved, minimizing its significance, ignoring what historians describe as its “afterlives.” Failure to understand slavery has led to all sorts of problems, from ordinary citizens who do not know that power and wealth discrepancies are rooted in history, to more dangerous ones who enact violence on Black people motivated by racist ideas born during slavery.
(Offered as BLST 268 [CLA], HIST 268 [LA/TE/TR/TSP], and LLAS 268) Students will gain in-depth knowledge of the experiences of Africans and their descendants, slave and free, from the time the first captives were brought to Hispaniola in 1503 until the time of abolition in Cuba in 1886 in this course. Regions to be covered include the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America, and the Andean and Southern Cone regions.
(Offered as BLST 223 and RELI 223) This course explores the structure, beliefs, and practices of West African indigenous religions with an eye to their deeper philosophical and mystical meanings. We will examine several West African religions from the perspective of experts and practitioners who present the underlying philosophy of these traditions, exploring their epistemology (how knowledge works) and metaphysics (the nature of being).
[R] In this course students will focus closely on major debates that have animated the field of Black Studies, addressing a wide range of issues from the slave trade to the present. Each week will focus on specific questions such as: What came first, racism or slavery? Is African art primitive? Did Europe under develop Africa? Is there Caribbean History or just history in the Caribbean? Should Black Studies exist? Is there a black American culture? Is Affirmative Action necessary? Was the Civil Rights Movement a product of government action or grass-roots pressure?
[R] This interdisciplinary introduction to Black Studies combines the teaching of foundational texts in the field with instruction in reading and writing. The first half of the course employs How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren as a guide to the careful reading of books focusing on the slave trade and its effects in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. Important readings in this part of the course include Black Odyssey by Nathan Huggins, Racism: A Short History by George Frederickson, and The Black Jacobins by C. L. R. James.
