This course introduces some of the exciting and innovative approaches to cultural analysis that have emerged over the last three decades. Students apply these methods to a variety of texts and practices (stories, movies, television shows, music, advertisements, clothes, buildings, laws, markets, bodies) in an effort to acquire the tools to become skillful readers of American culture, and to become more critical and aware as scholars and citizens. AMS 201 is recommended but not required.

This course examines the mores, rules, and regulations that presently exists in African societies with regards to sex, sexual activity, and sexualities. Using an intersectional, decolonial, African, feminist perspective, it examines the social justification behind the establishment of such rules. Are these rules and norms instituted to safeguard vulnerable populations or are they based on the subjugation of entire classes of persons? Enrollment limited to 18. (E)

What is the nature of the Black radical imagination? This course on the Black Radical Tradition draws on the thought and marronage emblematic of the Black experience of New World coloniality, through speech acts, poetry, essays, historical studies and cultural criticism, students immerse themselves in an intensive examination of the meaning of Blackness at the beginning of the third decade of an unsettled century. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required.

How does gender matter in a black context? That is the question this course asks and attempts to answer through an examination of works by such authors as Harriet Jacobs, Frances Harper, Nella Larsen, Zora Hurston, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange and Alice Walker.

This course considers the possibilities, pleasures, and politics of joy with particular attention to Black interiority and worldmaking. By examining a diverse range of cultural representations, literature, music, film, and scholarly works from the 18th century through the present day, the course explores how people of African descent in the United States and across the diaspora have grappled with, redefined, and practiced joy in societies shaped by chattel slavery, coloniality, antiblackness and intersectional hierarchies of power. Cannot be taken S/U. Enrollment limited to 25.

This course examines the social and historical construction of blackness in Europe with particular attention to the impact of European colonialism, racist ideology and antiblack policies on the experiences of people of African descent. Topics of inquiry include: What is the relationship between the Black Mediterranean, the Black Atlantic and Black Europe? How have transnational migrations, political transformations and intellectual exchange shaped African diasporic identities, activism and cultural productions in Europe?

Offered as AFR 175 and ENG 236. A survey of the evolution of African American literature during the 20th century. This class builds on the foundations established in AFR 113. Writers include Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Paule Marshall.

This is a Test case