Spring 2002

African-American and African Studies

AAS 102 - Afro-American Culture (4)

T R 1100-1215 MRY 209

Instructor : Hanan Sabea

This introductory course builds upon the histories of people of African descent in Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean surveyed in AAS 101. Drawing on disciplines such as Anthropology, History, Religious Studies, Political Science, and Sociology, the course focuses on the period from the late 19th century to the present and is comparative in perspective. It examines the links and disjunctions between communities of African descent in the United States and in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. The course begins with an overview of AAS, its history, assumptions, boundaries, and topics of cultural experience; community formation; comparative racial classification; language and society; family and kinship; religion; social and political movements; arts and aesthetics; and archaeology of the African Diaspora. Discussion section required.

AAS 250-Health of Black Folks (3)

T R 1700-1815 CAB 345

Instructor: Wende Marshall

"The Health of Black Folks" is a course in medical anthropology which will analyze the relationship between black bodies and biomedicine, both historically and in the present. Co-taught by Norm Oliver, M.D-a physician (Department of Family Medicine, UVA Health Systems) and anthropologist (Department of Anthropology) and Wende Marshall-a medical anthropologist, the course will offer both political economic, and post-structuralist lenses with which to interpret the individual and social health and disease of African-Americans. Selected topics include the black female body in the middle passage and slavery; the use of race in the human genome project; black bodies as research subjects for biomedical science and the epidemic of cancer and HIV among African Americans.

AAS 352 - The American South in the Twentieth Century (3)

M W 1200-1250 RSH 202

Instructor: Scot French

The American South has long stirred the emotions and imaginations of those who lay claim to its storied past. Even today, this much-celebrated "melting pot" of racial, regional, and national identities threatens to combust, from time to time, over such issues as the Confederate flag, affirmative action, and reparations for slavery. This course will survey the social, cultural, and political landscape of the eleven former Confederate States of America, with a particular emphasis on the Commonwealth of Virginia. Topics will include: Heritage vs. History; Jeffersonian Origins of the South's Herrenvolk Democracy; Life and Labor After Emancipation; White Supremacy and the 'Negro Question'; Black Leadership and the Rise of Booker T. Washington; Jim Crow and the Perverse Logic of Southern Progressivism; World War I and the Great Migration; the Southern Renaissance in Arts and Letters; Labor Organizing and Union-Busting in the Depression Era; the New Deal and World War II as Agents of Change; Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Women's Movement in the South; the War on Southern Rural Poverty; the Rise of the Republican Party and the New Christian Right; Southern Cultures in the Age of the Internet; and the Enduring Legacies of Slavery, Civil War and Reconstruction. Lectures will be interspersed with sounds and images from the period. Grades will be based on participation in weekly discussion sections, three short writing assignments (5-7 pages each), in-class quizzes, a midterm exam, and a final exam. Readings may include selections from the following: W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903); Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery: An Autobiography (1901); Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw; William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936); James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1939); William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son (1941); Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, The Making of a Southerner (1946); C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1954); Sarah Patton Boyle, The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition (1962); Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968); Robert Penn Warren, Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back (1980); Melissa F. Greene, Praying for Sheetrock (1991); Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (1998).

AAS 401 - Independent Study (3)

TBA

AAS 406A - Culture, Politcs, and Society in the African Diaspora, 1600 to 1850 (4)

M 1300-1530 CAB 331

Instructor: Frederick C. Knight

This course will provide students with an opportunity to explore a wide range of themes in the history of Africans in the Americas. Among the topics to be considered include the rise of trans-Atlantic slave trade, the evolution of slaveholding societies in the Americas, the development of African-American cultures and identities, and the formation of race, class, and gender. Students will be responsible for class discussion of articles, book chapters, and other assigned texts. Also required is a twenty-page research paper, due at the end of the semester, on a topic of the students' choice and approved by the instructor. Books will include Black Rice by Judith Carney, Exchanging Our Country Marks by Michael Gomez, Black Jacks by Jeffrey Bolster, and Blind Memory by Marcus Wood.

AAS 406B - Remembering Trouble: Race, Memory, and Recovery in Africa and the African Diaspora ( 3)

W 1300-1530 CAB 331

Instructor: Chris Colvin

There is no shortage of painful material, of experiences of violence, violation and turmoil for African peoples throughout the world to draw from when they undertake to remember their troubles. Slavery, colonialism, decolonization, civil and regional wars, migration, exile, globalization, industrialization, racism and racial violence, poverty, even democratization and liberalization have all produced painful memories in a variety of ways for African people. In this course, we will examine the diverse ways and reasons these memories have been expressed in literature, in law, in art and music, in oral histories and in museums. We will ask if there are particular modes of remembering that are specific to local African experiences and cultural contexts. We will also consider what social, political, personal and cultural purposes telling stories of past trouble serve in the present context. We will look to film, literature, oral history, ritual, poetry, music, theater, the visual arts, court transcripts, legislation, museums, memorials, journalism and interviews in considering the problems of remembering and recovering from painful pasts. Texts: Country of My Skull, Antjie Krog; Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zair, Johannes Fabian; Purity and Exile, Liisa Malkki; Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade, Phillip Curtin; Heart of Redness, Zakes Mda. A coursepack will also be prepared by the instructor for use in class. Class Requirements: Besides attendance and active participation in discussions, students will be asked to prepare a one-page written response to each week's readings for the first seven weeks. Thereafter, we will concentrate on preparing, drafting and revising a major research paper that will serve as the principle product of the course. In addition, each student will be asked once during the semester to prepare to lead the discussion on that week's reading. The majority of class time will be devoted to discussion of the weekly readings. We will also view several films and make time on the last two days for each student to present a short, five-minute presentation on the topic they explored in their term paper. This course fulfills the AAS major requirement for a 400-level seminar with research paper.

Department of Anthropology

ANTH 250 - The Health of Black Folks (3)

T R 1700-1815 CAB 345

Instructor: Wende Marshall

This course is cross-listed as AAS 250

ANTH 256 - Peoples & Cultures of Africa (3)

M W F 1000-1050 RSH 202

Instructor: Adria LaViolette

This course engages the human landscape of modern Africa, through the close reading of a selection of monographs and African feature films. The main texts, drawn from fiction, ethnography, and social history, are taught against a backdrop of economic strategies, different forms of social organization, cultural expressions, and challenges facing modern African women and men. An edited volume on Africa will provide relevant essays to combine with and contextualize the monographs and films. We will focus on rural and urban dwellers, the elite and poor, and the forces that draw all of them together; transnational migration; and belief systems. How relationships between men and women are contextualized and negotiated is a theme found throughout the readings and films, as well as the struggle of people in different circumstances to build new relationships with older beliefs and practices, and with changing forms of government. This course does not attempt to survey all issues and peoples in modern Africa, but rather to distill and feature certain themes of especially wide relevance. This is a lecture and discussion course.

ANTH 543 - African Linguistics (3)

M W 1400-1515 CAB 318

Instructor: David Sapir

The course will cover the classification of African languages, selected grammatical typologies, African lexicography, and examples of oral literature. Students will give presentations on these topics with respect to specific languages. The intention of the course is to investigate the considerable variety of linguistic types present in sub-Saharan Africa. The permission of the instructor and a background in linguistics is required.

Department of Drama

DRAM 307 - African American Theater (3)

M W F 1400-1450 GIL 141

Instructor: Ishmail Conway

This course on African-American Theater will provide an opportunity for students to learn about this rich, distinctive American International art form. This particular theatrical experience emanates out of the experience of Africans in America. The course will explore the theatrical experience that enriches audiences, builds Thespians, communicates history and futures. Specifically, this course will explore the personalities, the literature and plays; the great companies, management and advancement; the socio-cultural implications, the technical contributions to theater.

Department of English Language and Literature

ENLT 247 - Survey of African American Literature (3)

T R 1400-1515 BRN 332

Instructor: Deborah McDowell

The Harlem (or New Negro) Renaissance refers to that efflorescence of African-American arts and letters occurring roughly between 1920 and 1935, although its chronological boundaries tend to shift depending on the literary historian's persuasion. This course will quarrel with that popular and largely taken-for-granted notion of an artistic movement of Black Americans identified exclusively with one district in New York City. Principal texts will include photographs by Carl Van Vechten and James Vander Zee; poems by Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Helene Johnson, Sterling Brown, and Langston Hughes; Alain Locke's The New Negro, Claude McKay's Home to Harlem, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Nella Larsen's Passing, recordings by Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey; Duke Ellington's film short Black and Tan Fantasy, and The Emperor Jones, starring Paul Robeson; and book jackets, advertisements, illustrations, and a range of critical essays. We will begin by exploring the construction of Harlem as city myth, as work of art and will examine the place it occupied in the cultural imagination of the l920s and 30s. We'll want to ask why Harlem was considered an exotic-erotic pleasure/tourist zone for some and for others, the emblem of a utopian ethos of racial renewal and political progress. We will address the generational tensions among the writers associated most popularly with the movement, as well as the economics of literary production. We will examine specifically how artists were patronized and marketed to the American public/s and the corresponding effects of the patronage system on black artistic production, and reception. Course Requirements: Three essays and a final examination.

ENAM 482B - The Harlem Renaissance (3)

T R 1100-1215 CAB B026

Instructor: Deborah McDowell

The Harlem (or New Negro) Renaissance refers to that efflorescence of African-American arts and letters occurring roughly between 1920 and 1935, although its chronological boundaries tend to shift depending on the literary historian's persuasion. This course will quarrel with that popular and largely taken-for-granted notion of an artistic movement of Black Americans identified exclusively with one district in New York City. Principal texts will include photographs by Carl Van Vechten and James Vander Zee; poems by Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Helene Johnson, Sterling Brown, and Langston Hughes; Alain Locke's The New Negro, Claude McKay's Home to Harlem, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Nella Larsen's Passing, recordings by Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey; Duke Ellington's film short Black and Tan Fantasy, and The Emperor Jones, starring Paul Robeson; and book jackets, advertisements, illustrations, and a range of critical essays. We will begin by exploring the construction of Harlem as city myth, as work of art and will examine the place it occupied in the cultural imagination of the l920s and 30s. We'll want to ask why Harlem was considered an exotic-erotic pleasure/tourist zone for some and for others, the emblem of a utopian ethos of racial renewal and political progress. We will address the generational tensions among the writers associated most popularly with the movement, as well as the economics of literary production. We will examine specifically how artists were patronized and marketed to the American public/s and the corresponding effects of the patronage system on black artistic production, and reception. Finally, we will try to sort through the various assessments of the Harlem Renaissance in literary history, including those that question the validity of designating it a "movement," since the artists generally caught under this umbrella held such disparate aesthetic and ideological aims. We will read the likes of Nathan Huggins who claims that the Harlem Renaissance was an "historical fiction." And Harold Cruse, who argues that if this was a movement, then it was one defined by "inspired aimlessness," one that "lacked a cultural philosophy" and continued a "tradition of white cultural paternalism." For David Levering Lewis, the Harlem Renaissance was an "exercise in black bourgeois egocentrism and meliorism." There are even those inclined to assess the Harlem Renaissance as did Ralph Ellison "The Lost Generation:" "Looked at coldly . . . [it] was a literary conceit of such major proportions that today it seems like a swindle." Judge for yourself next semester.

ENAM 482D- Black Women Writers 1950s to the Present (3)

T R 1230-1345 BRN 312

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

This seminar explores the range of Black women's writings from mid-century to the present. We will focus closely on the text's adherence to its contemporary literary and social conventions. We will also consider patterns of representation established in the 1950s and watch how they develop, disintegrate, or evolve into the present day. Do certain issues or themes remain important in Black women's writing of the last fifty years? How has the literature adapted in response to a specific cultural or historical moment? Writers include, but are not limited to, Ann Petry, Alice Walker, Jewelle Gomez, Dorothy West, Tananarive Due, Barbara Neely, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Toni Morrison. Class requirements include active class participation, discussion leading, response papers, long and short essays.

ENAM 482E - Mark Twain and His Times (3)

M W 1400-1515 BRN 203

Instructor: Stephen Railton

We\'ll read all Mark Twain\'s major works, and selected examples of his other literary and public performances. We\'ll be equally interested in what his works say about America and what Americans in his time had to say about him. We\'ll make extensive use of internet resources, especially the website "Mark Twain In His Times" that I\'ve been building for several years. Interested students will have the option of doing a web project instead of a final essay, though neither knowledge about nor enthusiasm for electronic technology is a prerequisite for the course. What I will expect you to bring to class is a willingness to participate, to help shape the discussions, and a curiosity about what the well-known, always controversial but also widely and deeply beloved image Sam Clemens created as Mark Twain can tell us about his times, our culture and even ourselves. If the class fills up and you\'re interested in taking it, I will be keeping a waiting list. To get on it you can e-mail me at

ENAM 482F -Violence in America: Slavery and Civil War (3)

T R 1100-1215 BRN 332

Instructor: Franny Nudelman

In this course, we will study representations of suffering, death, and mourning in the contexts of slavery and civil war. Most broadly, we will investigate how years of debate over slavery influenced the way that people perceived the crisis of war. Here are some questions we will ask: How do wartime renderings of the deaths of soldiers draw on prewar representations of slave suffering and rebellion? What strategies do artists use to convey pain and sorrow, or to show that suffering cannot be communicated? How did racial violence, as well as efforts to resist it, change with emancipation? Why is wartime violence so often portrayed as beneficial, the basis for a renewed sense of national identity and belonging? The syllabus will be interdisciplinary: as well as reading important literary texts like Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Thomas Gray's The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Walt Whitman's Drum-Taps, we will also examine a wide-range of sources such as music and photography, cemeteries and monuments--with an eye to historical context.

ENTC 353-Aesthetics and Politics in African American Literature (3)

T R 0930-1045 MIN 130

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

What tensions underlie the creation of African American literature? How do writers reconcile aesthetic possibility with the social pressures that confront them? What socio-political circumstances do these writers face and how are they presented in their literature? These are some of the questions that will guide our study of selected African American literature this semester. Writers include, but are not limited to, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt, Ralph Ellison, Ron Karenga, James Baldwin, and Ernest Gaines. Class requirements include active class participation, periodic response papers, quizzes, mid-term and final exams.

ENTC 482B - Post Colonial Drama (3)

T R 1530-1645 BRN 310

Instructor: Lotta Lofgren

The weakening of colonial power worldwide has called to our attention a rich and varied drama previously hidden or suppressed. In this course we will conduct a comparative study of plays from many cultures, working toward a viable definition of postcolonial drama, investigating the playwrights varied paths of divergence from the colonizing power. Casting a wide net, we will examine plays by ethnic playwrights in the United States, and by playwrights from Africa, India, the Caribbean, the former Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and possibly others. We will read works by Baraka, Kennedy, Hwang, Parks, Walcott, Soyinka, Havel, Devlin, Highway, Malouf, and others. Requirements: frequent written responses to the readings, class participation, a research paper.

ENTC 482D - African American Historical Fiction (3)

T 1400-1630 BRN 312

Instructor: Caroline Rody

This seminar will investigate a vibrant contemporary literary genre: African-American texts about slavery. Reading novels and poems and viewing films that reimagine this core story of New World African culture, we will consider the meanings of the contemporary project--literary, historical, political, psychological--to rewrite a people's founding trauma. Thematic concerns will include the representation of slave communities, plantation character types, literacy and literary authority, freedom, memory and imagination, power, gender, race and color, sexuality, and the possibilities and limits of cross-race relations. We will consider these texts' engagement with conventional "histories," oral and literary traditions, and 20th century developments in narrative form, as well as their experiments in genre ("neo-slave narrative," epic, picaresque, satire, gothic, science fiction, magic realism) and in uses of rhetoric and humor. The course will begin with 19th century slave narratives (Douglass, Jacobs, others) and continue with 20th century rewritings, many post-1975, including Margaret Walker, Jubilee; Alex Haley, Roots; Octavia Butler, Kindred; Charles Johnson, Oxherding Tale; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Sherley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose; and others. Films will include Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind (excerpts), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Roots, and Daughters of the Dust. Requirements include vigorous class participation, one short paper, a long seminar paper, and weekly paragraph responses.

Department of French Language and Literature

FREN 346 Litterature Africaine (3)

M W F 1000-1050 CAB 325

Instructor: Suzanne Houyoux

Ce cours est une introducion à la littérature francophone d' Afrique noire, en particulier le roman. Après quelques présentations, développant les contextes historique et idéologique de cette littérature, des exercices collectifs de lecture et d'analyse conduiront à des travaux et présentations de groupe. L'évaluation étant permanente, une présence assidue et participation active sont impératives ; l'examen final est remplacé par l'analyse thématique d'un roman.

Department of Government and Foreign Affairs

GFAP 344 - Urban Politics (3)

T R 0930-1045 CAB 324

Instructor: Glenn Beamer

Prerequisite: any course in GFAP, GFCP, or economics. Analyzes the structure, politics, and problems of American cities. The meaning and scope of "urban crisis" receive extensive attention. Examines the growing ties between the federal government and cities, central city-suburban conflict, machine politics, and welfare and housing policies. A significant part of the course will focus on race and the politics of Chicago, New York, Atlanta, and Detroit.

GFAP 351 - Minority Politics (3)

M W 1300-1350 CAB 345

Instructor: Lynn Sanders

The most entrenched divisions, largest conflicts and most persistent problems in American politics center around race. This course is devoted to an analysis of how attributions of racial difference shape American politics. Through the course, our animating question will be: is the American liberal democratic polity -- a polity which instituted and abolished slavery based in race -- basically sound apart from its unfortunate anti-democratic episodes, or is the racial order a fundamental element structuring this polity? Though the American racial order has deep historical roots, we will concentrate our attention on its recent manifestations. We will investigate the role of race in national elections, public policy remedies for racial inequality, and public opinion about these policies and other racial issues. We will attend to how racial politics implicates ideas about class and gender, and to differences in scholarship on race produced by people of different races. We will consider the implications for an increasingly racially diverse and complicated polity of defining race primarily in terms of black/white conflict. Discussion section required.

GFIR 582 - Africa and the World (3)

W 1530-1800 HAL 123

Instructor: Layi Abegunrin

Prerequisite: some background in international relations and/or the history of Africa. Overview of the international politics of sub-Saharan Africa, including inter-African relations as well as Africa's relations with the major powers, and the international dimensions of the Southern African situation. Explores alternative policy options open to African states. Considers a number of case studies which illustrate the policy alternatives.

GFCP 583 - Politics of South Africa (3)

W 1230-1515 CAB 247

Instructor: Layi Abegunrin

Prerequisite: GFCP 212, GFCP 581 or instructor permission. Studies the socio-political structures of white supremacy and the political transition to majority rule. Emphasizes the confrontation between African and Afrikaaner nationalisms, the consequences of economic growth on the patterns of racial stratification, and the complicated process contributing to the creation of the multi-racial democratic society.

Department of History

HIAF 202 - Africa from Imperialism to Independence (4)

T R 1530-1645 GIL 141

Instructor: John Mason

This course spans the years from the decline of the Atlantic slave trade in the early nineteenth century to the present. The focus of the first part of the course is on the slave trade and its consequences. The effects of the trade in human beings lingered long after its abolition. Many African societies were weakened, setting the stage for colonial conquest, while others were strengthened, often at the expense of their neighbors. The second part of the course looks at the conquest of much of Africa by European nations and at the dynamics of colonial rule. It is especially concerned with the ways in which colonialism affected ordinary Africans and with the many ways in which Africans resisted European domination. The final section of the course is devoted to the post-colonial period, studying first violent and non-violent forms of anti-colonial struggle and then the position of independent African nations in the contemporary world. The course is structured around lectures and readings. Additional course materials include novels and films.HIAF 202 is an introductory course and requires no prior knowledge of African history. Discussion section required.

HIAF 302 - History and (Auto) Biography from Modern South Africa (3)

T R 1100-1215 RFN 283

Instructor: Robert T. Vinson

This course is an introduction to both the modern history of South Africa and to individual South African lives, some famous, some "ordinary folk." The course begins with a brief survey of major pre-20th century themes such as the construction and reconstruction of African states, societies and ethnicities, Dutch and British settlement and conquest, slavery, the discovery of gold and diamonds, subsequent rapid industrialization and the South African War. The course then turns to the extraordinary autobiographies, biographies, essays, novels and personal testimonies of South Africans, black, white, "colored", Jewish and Indian, female and male, urban and rural, to further enliven the turbulent history of 20th century South Africa. From colorful, but dangerous urban townships, to the beautifully haunting countryside, these personal accounts detail how South Africans shaped, and were shaped by, rural impoverishment, rapid industrialization, segregation, apartheid, anti-apartheid organizations and the "negotiated" revolution that culminated in the country's first democratically elected government, that of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress. We will also interrogate the claim that there is a "new" post-apartheid South Africa-noting contrasts and continuities with the old segregationist and apartheid regimes. Readings include Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa; Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom; Mpho 'M'atsepo Nthunya, Singing Away the Hunger; Stephen Biko, I Write What I Like; Winnie Mandela, Part of My Soul Went With Him; Peter Abrahams, Mine Boy; Ahmed Kathrada, Letters from Robben Island; Sol Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa; Gillian Slovo, Every Secret Thing; Don Mattera, Gone With theTwilight: Story of Sophiatown; Shula Marks, Not Either An Experimental Doll; David Goodman, Fault Lines: Journeys into the New South Africa; and Eugene De Kock, Prime Evil. Grades will be determined from two 5-to 7-page analytical essays that situate individual accounts within the larger thematic concerns (land dispossession, urbanization, segregation, apartheid, the resilience of anti-apartheid activity, the "negotiated revolution" etc.) of the course. Each of these essays will be worth 20% of your grade. One of these essays can be extended into the 15-to 20-page final paper that will be worth 40% of your grade. The remaining 20% will be determined by the quality of your class participation. Undergraduates may use the course to meet the Second Writing Requirement.

HIAF 403 History of Pan-Africanism (4)

W 1530-1800 CAB B028

Instructor: Robert T. Vinson

This course surveys the history of Pan-Africanism, from its roots in the trans-Atlantic slave trade to present times and is particularly concerned with three particular themes: 1) Pan-Africanist thought and action within the context of African political and intellectual history; 2) The interactions between Africans and African diasporic communities in the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe and how such exchanges injected a specifically Pan-Africanist consciousness into locally-based political movements and; 3) The centrality of gender-both in masculinist conceptions of African nationhood and in relations between female and male Pan-Africanists-in Pan-African movements. This seminar will be discussion-oriented and based on readings that will include 1st person testimonies from Pan-Africanists like Marcus Garvey, Adelaide Casely Hayford and W.E.B. Du Bois, historical accounts and primary documents from key persons and organizations and from the seven Pan-African Conferences held in the 20th century. A preliminary list of readings include: Lemelle and Kelley eds., Imagining Home: Class, Culture and Nationalism in the African Diaspora; Von Eschen, Race Against Empire; Wamba, Kinship; Abdul-Raheem, Pan-Africanism; Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi in Africa; Harris, Afro-American Reactions to War in Ethiopia; Adi, West African Students in Britain; Esedebe, Pan-Africanism: The Idea and Movement; 1776-1991, Hill ed. Pan-African Biography; Harris ed. Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora; Langley, Ideologies of Liberation in Black Africa 1856-1970 and Adeleke, Un-African Americans. On average, students will be expected to read 150-175 pages per week and to be prepared to effectively discuss the readings in seminar discussions. Grades will be determined by the quality of the individual's contribution to weekly discussions (20%), by two 5-to 7- page position papers (20% each), and by one 15-20 page final paper (40%), which can be a more detailed analysis of a theme developed in one of the position papers. Undergraduates may use this course to fulfill their second writing requirement.

HIAF 503 Gender, Sexuality, and Family in African History (3)

R 1530-1800 MCL 2009

Instructor: Robert T. Vinson

Gender, Sexual and Familial relations, because they are central to understanding Africa's diverse societies and its historical processes, are fundamental to any examination of Africa. Throughout this graduate-level course, we will use these themes as an analytical lens to uncover fresh perspectives on such familiar topics in African history such as state formation, slavery and slave trading, "legitimate commerce", colonialism, nationalism and the post-colonial state. Within this thematic framework, we will also examine controversial and contemporary issues such as female circumcision and HIV/AIDS. The course will be interdisciplinary, utilizing the various perspectives of historians, anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, archaeologists, filmmakers and novelists. A preliminary list of course readings include Bay, Wives of the Leopard; Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands; Gruenbaum, The Female Circumcision Controversy; Greene, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast; Hunt ed., Gendered Colonialisms; Morrell ed., Changing Masculinities; Scully, Liberating the Family?; Van De Walle and Renne ed. Regulating Menstruation; Grinker, Houses in the Rainforest; Emecheta, The Slave Girl; Murray and Roscoe eds. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands; Cohen and Atieno-Odhiambo, Burying SM; Hodgson and McCurdy, Wicked Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa; and Wright ed. Strategies of Slaves and Women. Grades will be determined by the quality of your discussion and by a comprehensive final paper of at least twenty pages on a topic relevant to course readings and agreed upon by the instructor. Advanced undergraduates, who feel themselves capable of engaging in graduate-level work, may use this course as a second writing requirement.

HIST 403 - Culture, Politics, and Society in the African Diaspora, 1600 to 1850 (4)

M 1300-1530 CAB 331

Instructor: Frederick C. Knight

This course is cross-listed as AAS 406A

HIUS 100A - Religion and American Public Life Since World War II (3)

M 1530-1800 WIL 140

Instructor: Byron Hulsey

This reading seminar, which fulfills the second writing requirement, is primarily an examination of religious change, continuity, and conflict in this nation's public life since World War II. In particular, we will explore how different groups of Americans have used their religious faiths to justify contested beliefs and actions as they have confronted the momentous events and issues that have shaped modern American culture. We will devote particular attention to the Cold War, civil rights, Vietnam, the rise of the religious right, and the religious and political dilemmas Americans face in contemporary culture. Students will read approximately 200 pages per week for eight weeks, write five essays of five pages each for five weeks, and participate actively in class discussions during each of the fourteen sessions. The essays will comprise 75% of the final course grade, with the remaining 25% being devoted to class participation. There will be no mid-term or final examination. A complete reading list will be posted at the end of November on the bulletin board of Randall 128. Readings will include: Stephen J. Whitefield, The Culture of the Cold War; Robert S. Ellwood, 1950: Crossroads of American Religious Life; Charles Marsh, God's Long Summe; Adam Fairclough, Martin Luther King, Jr; James Carroll, An American Requiem.

HIUS 366 - Introduction to African American History, 1860-Present (4)

M W 1100-1150 CAB 345

Instructor: Dylan Penningroth

This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in the United States from the age of emancipation to the present. The course explores some of the major problems, events, structures, and personalities that shaped their lives, paying particular attention to how black people themselves shaped their experiences. Readings average about 150 pages per week and may include the following: W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; New York, 1989); Nat Love, The Life and Adventures of Nat Love (Univ. Nebraska Press, 1995); J. T. Trowbridge, The South (1866; Arno 1969); JoAnn Gibson Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It (Knoxville, 1987); Michele Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. Grades will be determined from section participation and three papers.

HIUS 367 - History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)

T R 1400-1450 GIL 130

Instructor: Julian Bond

This lecture course will examine the history, philosophies, tactics, events, and personalities of the Southern movement for civil rights from 1900 through the late 1960s, with special concentration on the years from the mid-'40s forward. The Southern movement--variously called the black struggle, the freedom fight, or the civil rights movement--was a black-lead mass movement which effectively ended legal segregation in the South by the middle 1960s. Lectures will outline the movement's three over-lapping phases--lobbying, litigation and protest. In the first phase, from 1910 to the middle '30s, it developed a campaign of propaganda, education and lobbying to shape public opinion and create a climate favorable to civil rights. In phase 2, from the '30s to the '50s, it sought and won important test cases in housing segregation, the denial of the right to vote, and attacking separate and unequal schools. The last phase, lasting a decade from '55 to '65, was a period of protest--boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations--as well as organizing campaigns that lay the groundwork for minority electoral victories in the late '60s and '70s. Through the leadership of various national and local organizations, and through anti-segregation campaigns directed by indigenous and extra-communal leadership figures who built on extensive pre-existing networks of church, fraternal, social and labor organizations, drawing strength from a protest community rooted in black America and created in response to white supremacy, the movement succeeded in eliminating legal segregation in the United States. The movement's well-and lesser-known proponents and opponents and their stratagems will be examined. Grades will be determined from a final examination, student participation in sections, and two five-to-seven page papers. Texts: Wilkins, Roy, with Tom Matthews, Standing Fast, Da Capo Press; Forman, James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Open Hand Press; Bond, Julian and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit At The Welcome Table, American Heritage. Videos: Eyes On The Prize -- America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, # 1 -6; America at the Racial Crossroads, 1965-1985, #1 & 2; PBS Video, Blackside, Inc. Boston; The Road to Brown, William Elwood, Producer, California Newsreel Discussion section required.

HIUS 401-The Black Family (4)

W 1300-1530 BRN 330

Instructor: Dylan Penningroth

"The black family" may be one of the most talked-about and least-understood institutions in America. From the powerful lineages of Ghana to the complexities of families under slavery, to Puff Daddy and the Family, black kinship has been a place of power, flexibility, symbolism, and criticism. This course aims to foster a conversation about family life in Africa and the United States: What was it? Who is and who isn't part of the family? Why is kinship so important to people? One way to get at these questions is to study how people who lived in or around black families represented their experiences in diaries, memoirs, letters, court cases, newspapers, and government documents. Students will write a 25-page research paper based on sources like these. During the first month or so, readings of about 200 pages per week will provide students with background on African and African American history and introduce them to the range of available sources. Students will work with the instructor to choose a topic and then do independent research. A complete draft of the paper will be due in mid-November. We will meet again as a group to hear reports about the status of each student's research. Final drafts will be due at the last meeting of the semester, during which students will also be expected to present an oral report to the class on his or her findings. This course fulfills the history thesis and the second writing requirements. Some of the texts we read during the first six weeks may include: Carol Stack, All Our Kin; Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, Introduction and chapter 9; Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present; Brenda Stevenson, Life in Black and White; Roger Gocking, Competing Systems of Inheritance Before the British Courts of the Gold Coast Colony (1990). Some background in history would be helpful, but not required.

HIUS 403B African-American Culture to1865 (3)

R 1300-1530 CAB 224

Instructor: Reginald Butler

From a historical perspective, this course will examine how African American cultures and societies developed in the north and south. How did forcibly transported Africans respond to the different agricultural economies, the conditions of enslavement, and European and native American cultures that they encountered during the colonial period? The course will begin in the early period during which large numbers of Africans arrived in British North America. It will then shift its focus to mature African American communities in which the vast majority of persons were American born. We will examine issues of African ethnicity and geography; family and kinship; religious practice; and diverse forms of aesthetic expression. Readings may include selections from the following: Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Low Country; David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine, eds., More Than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas; Ira Berlin, Many Thousand Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America; Stephan Palmie, ed., Slave Cultures and the Culture of Slavery, Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South; Kathleen M. Brown, Goodwives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia; William D. Piersen, Black Legacy: America's Hidden Heritage; Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and Foundations of Black America; Eugene D. Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made. Grades will be based on class participation, group projects, and a major research paper.

Department of Media Studies

MDST 256- Africa and Africans in the US Media (3)

T R 1230-1345 CAB 247

Instructor: Lisa Shutt

This course will address the role the media has played in creating images and understandings of "Africa" and "Blackness" in this country. We will focus primarily on the context of the present-day United States. However, we will also briefly address pre-colonial and colonial periods and touch on the role of popular media in particular contemporary African contexts. This class will explore how different media, including feature films, popular television, documentaries, popular fiction, academic writing, and radio, television, and print news media create "Africa" in different ways for Americans - each media encapsulating its own markers of legitimacy and expertise - each negotiating its own ideas of authorship and audience. Students will collect examples each week from various sources (print, television, film, etc.) for discussion. We will concentrate on the particular ways various media produce, display, and disseminate information. Finally, we will ask what responsibilities those who create and circulate information about such a mis- and under- represented area of the world have - and whether or not the viewing public shares in any sort of responsibility. Students will assemble a fifteen to twenty-page portfolio/research paper.

Deparmtent of Music

MUSI 212 - History of Jazz Music (3)

T R 1230-1345 OCH 101

Instructor: Matthew Butterfield

Prerequisite: No previous knowledge of music is required. This course is a survey of the history of jazz from its beginnings around 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century. Important instrumental performers, vocalists, composers, and arrangers are listened to and discussed. NOTE: This course meets the Non-western perspectives requirement. Lab, F, 9:00 - 9:50, Rm. 107 OCH (Jeff Decker) Lab, F, 11:00 - 11:50, Rm. 107 OCH (Jeff Decker) Lab, F, 12:00 - 12:50, Rm. 107 OCH (Jeff Decker)

MUSI 369 - African Drumming and Dance (2)

T R 1715-1930 OCH 107

Instructor: Eric Gertner

Prerequisite: Permission of instructor by audition on first day of class. A practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (BaAka pygmies), with the intention of performing at the end of the semester. Though no previous experience with music or dance is required, we will give special attention to developing tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, and faithful attendance are required of each class member, the goal being to develop an ongoing UVA African Drumming and Dance Ensemble.

MUSI 412 - Jazz and Race: The Cultural Politics of Musical Criticism (3)

T R 0930-1045 OCH S008

Instructor: Matthew Butterfield

Prerequisite: Music 312 or consent of the instructor. This seminar will explore the issue of race in jazz music and criticism in a variety of historical contexts, ranging from the music's origins in New Orleans to its present institutional canonization via Wynton Marsalis's Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Topics will include authenticity and musical value as they relate to race, the problem of white hipness, and the relationship between jazz improvisation and vernacular linguistic practices such as Signifyin(g). Students will write several one-page responses to the listening and reading assignments and complete a research paper on a topic of their choice.

Department of Religious Studies

RELA 278 - GENDER IN AFRICAN RELIGIONS (3)

T R 0930-1045 CAB 431

Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora

By drawing information from African Religions, this course deals with topical questions of interest to anyone wishing to analyze the ways in which ideas or beliefs can impact on human behavior. The course runs as follows (i) a study of the Bantu religious language where ideas about male and female sexuality are used in a complementary fashion to try and express belief in God as creator of the heavens, earth and humanity as gendered realities. An attempt will be made to show the extent to which a traditional African cosmology explains the roles of men as leaders and women as producers in most African traditional societies. (ii) a study of how gender imagery was used in the spectrum of Christian and Gnostic religious movements found in North Africa during late antiquity. Students will be welcome to look at various ways in which gender imagery featured in early Christian talk about God, the creation process and depictions of evil and so on. Since the ancient cosmology in which North Africans used gender imagery made an impact on orthodox Christianity, this section of the course should be of interest to anyone wishing to learn about the emergence of Christianity as a patriarchal religion. (iii) a study of how gender imagery from African traditional religions and Christianity combine is a new discourse on gender in the new religious movements of Africa, otherwise known as independent churches. Since Christianity is the dominant religion of Africa today, it is appropriate to end with a quick survey of the way the traditional religions of Africa continue to shape people's attitudes to sexuality in independent Africa. This way one revisits the religious traditions of Africa in a way that encourages greater sensitivity in matters of gender in today's world by drawing lessons from a part of the world where Christianity is the most popular religion around which Africans are creating new identities.

RELA 390 - Islam in Africa (3)

T R 1230-1345 RFN G004C

Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

This course offers an historical and topical introduction to Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa. After a brief overview of the central features of the Muslim faith, our chronological survey begins with the introduction of Islam to North Africa in the 7th century. We will trace the transmission of Islam via clerics, Sufis and Berber jihads to West Africa. We shall consider the medieval Muslim kingdoms; the development of Islamic scholarship and the reform tradition; the growth of Sufi brotherhoods; Fulbe ethnic nationalism and Islamic militancy; and the impact of colonization and de-colonization upon Islam. Our overview of the history of Islam in East Africa will cover: the early Arab and Asian mercantile settlements; the flowering of classical Swahili courtly culture; the Omani sultanates and present-day Swahili society. Readings and classroom discussions provide a more in-depth exploration of topics encountered in our historical survey. Through the use of ethnographical and literary materials, we will explore questions such as the translation and transmission of the Qur'an, indigenization and religious pluralism; the status of women in African Islam; and African Islamic spirituality.

RELC 323 - Pentacostalism: Origins and Development (3)

T R 1100-1215 CAB 323

Instructor: Wallace Best

This course will analyze the Pentecostal movement of the past 20th century as a transcultural religious phenomenon. Looking to a wider international context, we will explore the development of Pentecostalism in such countries as Mexico, Brazil, Korea, and China. We will also concern ourselves with the way ethnic minorities within the United States have reshaped the practice and the meanings of Pentecostalism, as well as Evangelicalism in general, particularly with regard to race and gender. Because the course is about a religious movement, our analytical approach will be historical, anthropological, and theological. Using various Pentecostal texts and articles, we will work toward a clearer understanding of the basic tenets of Pentecostalism, namely "divine healing," "baptism in the Holy Spirit," and "speaking in tongues." We will also investigate how the most recent internationalist shift within the Pentecostal movement has renewed millennialist thought and efforts for Christian ecumenism.

RELG 528 - Black Women's Narratives (3)

W 1530-1800 CAB 320

Instructor: Wallace Best

This course will analyze the Pentecostal movement of the past 20th century as a transcultural religious phenomenon. Looking to a wider international context, we will explore the development of Pentecostalism in such countries as Mexico, Brazil, Korea, and China. We will also concern ourselves with the way ethnic minorities within the United States have reshaped the practice and the meanings of Pentecostalism, as well as Evangelicalism in general, particularly with regard to race and gender. Because the course is about a religious movement, our analytical approach will be historical, anthropological, and theological. Using various Pentecostal texts and articles, we will work toward a clearer understanding of the basic tenets of Pentecostalism, namely "divine healing," "baptism in the Holy Spirit," and "speaking in tongues." We will also investigate how the most recent internationalist shift within the Pentecostal movement has renewed millennialist thought and efforts for Christian ecumenism.

Department of Sociology

SOC 341 - Race and Ethnicity (3)

T R 1400-1515 CAB 325

Instructor: Milton Vickerman

The terms "race" and "ethnicity," and issues associated with them are, to say the least, problematic. The meanings of these - and related - terms are unclear and policies that address "racial" issues are usually very contentious. Why is this the case? Why is race, seemingly, a source of unending conflict? This course will address these questions by examining the general issue of race from a historical and comparative perspective.

SOC 410 - African American Communities (3)

T R 1530-1645 CAB 338

Instructor: Rick Turner

The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear, comprehensive understanding of the history, struggles and diversity of the African-American community. Emphasis will be placed on salient contemporary public issues as well as on the historical role of the African-American community within urban society and on the need for students to obtain knowledge of the cultural history of African-Americans. The course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for African-American people's sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. By means of discussion, lectures, videos, reading, writing, and class presentation, this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamics of the African-American community.

University Seminar

USEM 171/0014 - The 60s in Black and White (2)

T 1530-1720 CAB 122

Instructor: Julian Bond

The 1960's saw a generation of young people begin to build movements which would stop a war abroad and start a war at home. What made these movements for peace and equal rights possible? What events triggered them? Who were participants? What is their legacy in the present? This seminar - through biographies activists in the movements - attempts to answer these and other questions as we examine personalities, events, and culture of the 1960s. Students will be required to write a comprehensive paper on a 60's subject - a participant, an organization, a movement.