Fall 2003

African-American and African Studies Program

AAS 101 - Introduction to African-American and African Studies (4)

T R 1230-1345 WIL 301

Instructor: Reginald D. Butler and Scot French

This introductory course surveys the histories of people of African descent in Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean from approximately the Middle Ages to the 1880s. Emphases include the Atlantic slave trade and its complex relationship to Africa; the economic systems, cultures, and communities of Africans and African-Americans in the New World, in slavery and in freedom; the rise of anti-slavery movements; and the socio-economic systems that replaced slavery in the late 19th century.

AAS 305/RELC 305 - Black Theology (3)

T R 1400-1515 CAB 337

Instructor: Corey D. B. Walker

This lecture and discussion course will introduce students to a few of the significant topics and themes in the field of black theology. Among some of the major topics to be discussed include the emergence and academic codification of black theology, its challenge to other Christian theologies, its doctrinal orientations, and its relation to other theologies of liberation. Readings will primarily be drawn from the foundational texts of James H. Cone. We will also consult texts by Dwight Hopkins, William R. Jones, Deloris Williams, and others.

AAS 323/ HIUS 323 - Rise And Fall Of The Slave South (3)

M W 1100 -1150 MIN 125

Instructor: Edward L. Ayers

This course will explore the emergence and destruction of the most powerful slave society of the modern world: the American South. It will begin with the sixteenth century and extend through the Civil War and Reconstruction. We will examine the lives of slaves and slaveowners, small farmers and large planters, men and women, soldiers and civilians.
Readings will be diverse, including original documents, materials on the Web, fiction, and secondary accounts. Requirements include a midterm and final as well as a substantial research paper; the course fulfills the Second Writing Requirement. Energetic participation in a weekly discussion section is a central part of the course.

AAS 365/HIUS 365 – African-American History To 1865 (3)

T R 1230-1345 WIL 301

Instructor: Reginald Butler and Scot French

This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in British colonial North America and the United States through 1865. We will examine changing constructions of race, gender, and class, as well as the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities associated with this period. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the intersection of the "local" and the "global." Weekly reading assignments will average about 150-175 pages. Grade will be based on participation, weekly reading responses, one short paper, a midterm, and a final.

AAS 401 - Independent Study (3)

TBA

AAS 405A/HILA 403 – Thinking From Cuba (4)

R 1300-1530 CAB B029

Instructor: Brian Owensby

What is it to try to see the world from another perspective? Can we ever do it? Is classroom experience enough? With these questions front and center, this course will explore the history of Cuba, from the colonial period to the contemporary era. Chronologically we will cover conquest, slavery, Spanish colonialism, US neocolonialism, and Revolution. Thematically, we will be concerned to understand the structures of slavery, the culture of race in a multi-racial society, the experience of living under colonial and neocolonial powers, the efforts to define a national identity in part through Afro-Cuban culture, and the meaning of an egalitarian revolution in relation to Cuba's past. This class will be unusual in that it will begin here at UVa and finish on site in Havana, Cuba. After a full semester's worth of academic work here, the class will move to Havana in early January for a 7-day extension of the semester. During that week we will hear from Cuban scholars, activists, and government officials, read and discuss works of history and fiction, hold nightly seminars, explore Havana for clues to how everyday life is lived and probably hear some Cuban music. Instructor permission is required for this course. Enrollment limited to 10. If interested, please see Prof. Owensby in Randall 122, W 1330-1430 or Th 1100-1200. Preference for those with some knowledge of Spanish.

AAS 405B – African Modernity: Readings In African Studies (3)

M 9:30-12:00 MIN 108

Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora

This course is designed to allow students an opportunity to spend the first six weeks of the semester examining two well-known books that further understanding of the political, social, and religious dimension of living in Africa today. Augmented by lecture material based on other African writers and seminar discussions that require active student participation, the first book to be looked at is entitled The Idea of Africa by Victor Mudimbe, followed by In My Fathers's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture by Anthony Appiah. Students will be required to read these two books in the first six weeks of the semester before time is allocated for independent research that draws on the extra literature by African writers such as John Mbiti, Kwasi Wiredu, Paulin Hountondji and others responding to the challenges of Western hegemony. Written assignment is a 20-page paper on a selection of topics agreed in class. This class satisfies the following AAS major requirements -- 1) course in humanities, 2) course on Africa, and 3) 400-level or above course with term paper.

AAS 451 - Distinguished Majors Program/ Directed Research (3)

TBA

AAS 452 - Distinguished Majors Program/Thesis (3)

TBA

AAS 529 – Topics In Race Theory (3)

M 1900-2130

Instructor: Wende Marshall

This course will examine theories and practices of race and otherness, in order to analyze and interpret constructions, deconstructions and reconstructions of race (particularly whiteness) from the late 18th to the 21st centuries. Central to our discussion will be the "progress" paradigm, so essential to positivism and western social science, and the relationships between race/whiteness, culture, nation, gender, and history.

Department of Anthropology

ANTH 529A – Topics In Race Theory (3)

M 1900-2130 CAB 432

Instructor: Wende Marshall

This course will examine theories and practices of race and otherness, in order to analyze and interpret constructions, deconstructions and reconstructions of race (particularly whiteness) from the late 18th to the 21st centuries. Central to our discussion will be the "progress" paradigm, so essential to positivism and western social science, and the relationships between race/whiteness, culture, nation, gender, and history.

Department of English Language and Literature

ENCR 481B – Race, Space, And Culture (3)

W 1830-2100 CAM 108

Instructors: K. Ian Grandison and Marlon Ross

This multi-disciplinary course explores racial and other cultural identities in relation to the built environment and other conceptions of space. How has the concept of race helped to shape our interactions with space in both conscious and unconscious ways? How have our historical constructs of space helped to determine, in both articulated and inarticulate ways, what it means to identify with, or against, one cultural identity or another? Co-taught by Marlon Ross of English and African-American Studies and K. Ian Grandison of Landscape Architecture and American Studies, the course draws from and beyond the disciplines represented by its instructors to synthesize ways of interrogating the written, graphic, filmic, and field resources necessary for broadening our understanding of space. The course provides a forum for weekly discussion hinged on targeted readings (such as James Weldon Johnson's Black Manhattan, Oscar Newman's Defensible Space: Crime Prevention Through Urban Design, Philip Deloria's Playing Indian, Leslie Kanes Weisman's Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment, and Marc Leepson's Saving Monticello: The Levy Familys Epic Quest to Rescue the House that Jefferson Built), films (such as National Geographic's Gorilla and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing), and local field trips (such as to Woolen Mills, Monticello, and Vinegar Hill). Relating to the inter-disciplinary thrust of the course, students will have the opportunity to work in small teams to lead selected class sessions, to complete a research project, and to participate in a final Open-House that serves as the capstone for the course.

ENAM 313-Early African American Literature I (3)

T R 1400-1515 CAB 332

Instructor: Deborah McDowell

This course surveys pivotal moments and texts in the history of African-American prose, from l760, the date of Briton Hammon's Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings to l901, the year of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery. We will work our way through canonical and non-canonical texts and through multiple genres-- captivity narratives, spiritual autobiographies, slave narratives, sermons, execution sermons, criminal narratives, speeches, novels--and will explore a number of issues related to literary history, culture, aesthetics, authorship, audience, genre, and narratology. Among the questions to be explored? How have literary historians given shape to or "storied" this tradition? How do black women's writings complicate these "fictions" of literary history? What is the relation between the black vernacular tradition and the black "literary" text? How do the white abolitionists and editors involved in the production of slave narratives trouble traditional conceptions of authorship? Who "authors" a speech by Sojourner Truth that is stenographically transcribed and appears in multiple versions? What confluence of factors and ideologies explain the "canonical" version of "Ain't I a Woman?" Other texts include Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Harriet Wilson's Our Nig; Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom; David Walker's Appeal; Pauline Hopkins's Contending Forces, and Thomas Gray's Confessions of Nat Turner. We will work to situate these and other selections in the political, cultural, and critical controversies of their time and ours.

ENAM 481A - African-American Women Writers (3)

T R 0930-1045 CAB B020

Instructor: Angela Davis

We will read several novels and short stories by African-American Women, examining in particular how the authors portray black women as individuals and in the context of American society. This course requires active class participation, four written responses to readings (each one typed page long) and a formal essay (ten to twelve pages long). The reading list is: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls...; Toni Morrison, Sula, and Tar Baby; Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble; Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones; Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place.
Prerequisite: The course is restricted to fourth year majors in English, Women's Studies and African-American and African Studies.

ENAM 481B – Early African-American Literature (3)

T R 1100-1215 BRN 332

Instructor: Deborah E. McDowell

This course surveys pivotal moments and texts in the history of African-American prose, from l760, the date of Briton Hammon's Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings to l901, the year of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery. We will work our way through canonical and non-canonical texts and through multiple genres-- captivity narratives, spiritual autobiographies, slave narratives, sermons, execution sermons, criminal narratives, speeches, novels--and will explore a number of issues related to literary history, culture, aesthetics, authorship, audience, genre, and narratology. Among the questions to be explored? How have literary historians given shape to or "storied" this tradition? How do black women's writings complicate these "fictions" of literary history? What is the relation between the black vernacular tradition and the black "literary" text? How do the white abolitionists and editors involved in the production of slave narratives trouble traditional conceptions of authorship? Who "authors" a speech by Sojourner Truth that is stenographically transcribed and appears in multiple versions? What confluence of factors and ideologies explain the "canonical" version of "Ain't I a Woman?" Other texts include Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl;
Harriet Wilson's Our Nig; Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom; David Walker's Appeal; Pauline Hopkins's Contending Forces, and Thomas Gray's Confessions of Nat Turner. We will work to situate these and other selections in the political, cultural, and critical controversies of their time and ours.

ENAM 481C – Representations Of Slavery (3)

M W 1400-1515 CAB 247

Instructor: Stephen F. Railton

Slavery was a fact of American life for the first 250 years of the country's existence, but we'll be studying it at one remove. Our focus will be on how slavery has been imagined, conceived or re-presented by American writers, black and white, and by American culture, during the last 150 years. We'll start with Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and end with Morrison's Beloved. In between we'll read novels and stories by Twain, Cable, Chesnutt, Mitchell, Faulkner and a few others. We'll study theatrical and cinemagaphic enactments of slavery, from minstrelsy to the "Tom Shows" derived from Stowe's novel to films like Gone with the Wind. Assignments will include a couple short pieces, an oral report, and a seminar essay.

Department of French Language and Literature

FREN 346 – Topics In African Culture (3)

M W 1300-1350 CAB 236

Instructor: Majida Bargach

La littérature francophone marocaine prend ses racines dans l'Afrique, la France coloniale mais aussi dans le monde arabo-musulman et dans les cultures berbères et judéo-arabe. C'est cette extraordinaire mixité culturelle et ethnique que des auteurs marocains d'expression française vont illustrer dans leurs ouvrages, depuis l'époque coloniale jusqu'à nos jours. Après avoir étudié des œuvres écrites durant le protectorat français au Maroc ou relatant cette période, nous aborderons la littérature contemporaine expression des rêves, des mythes et des aspirations politiques et sociales.

FREN 443 – Africa In Cinema (3)

T R 0930-1045 CAB 235

Instructor: Kandioura Drame

Study of the representation of Africa in American, Western European and African films. Ideological Constructions of the African as "other". History of African cinema. Sociological and ideological filmmakers from different cultural backgrounds and studies the ways in which their perspectives on Africa are often informed by their own social and ideological positions as well as the demands of exoticism. It also examines the constructions of the African as "other" and the kinds of responses such constructions have elicited from Africa's filmmakers. These filmic "inventions" are analyzed through a selection of French, British, American, and African films by such directors as John Huston, S. Pollack, J-J Annaud, M. Radford, Ngangura Mweze, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Souleymane Cisse, Gaston Kabore, Amadou Seck, Dani Kouyate, Brian Tilley, Jean-Marie Teno on a variety of subjects relative to the image of Africa in cinema. The final grade will be based on 2 short papers (4 pages/each), a final paper (7-10 pages), an oral presentation and contributions to discussions. Each oral presentation will lead to a written paper on the subject of the presentation; the paper will address suggestions made during discussions in class. Papers should be analytical, written in clear and grammatical French using correct terminology supplied with this description.

Department of History

HIAF 201- Early African History Through The Era Of The Slave Trade (4)

T R 0930-1045 CAB 345

Instructor: Joseph C. Miller

Early African History draws Africans' distinctive achievements in culture, politics, and economic strategies out from the mists of the once-dark continent's unwritten past. Starting with the dawn of history and taking the story up in detail from the millennium before the Present Era, HIAF 201 follows the sometimes-surprising ways in which village elders, women, merchants, kings, cattle lords, and ordinary farmers pursued meaningful lives without the technologies that modern Americans take for granted. The last third of the course examines the ironic interplay of tragedy and achievement in a continent increasingly trapped in exiling its own people in slavery to Europeans, until the Atlantic slave trade began to wind down after about 1800. (A second semester of African history, HIAF 202, taught in the spring, narrates subsequent events down through twentieth-century colonialism and the post-1960 era of independence and impoverishment.)
HIAF 201 is a lower-division introductory survey. The instructor presents the major themes of early African history in lectures twice each week. Students meet additionally in discussion sections for review of readings, quizzes, and preparation for written assignments. Requirements include weekly map quizzes, a mid-term examination (only the better of two tries counts), three short papers (4-5 pages) rehearsing historical questions for the mid-terms and considering the written sources on Africa's past, and a final examination (format to be negotiated with the class). The course belongs to the African-American and African Studies curriculum, meets the "non-western" requirement for the major in History, and qualifies for the College "non-western perspectives" area requirement. Students may rewrite one of the papers to fulfill the College Second Writing Requirement.
Readings revolve around weekly assignments in a text (Shillington, History of Africa), for a total of about 225 pages. Other assigned chapters and professional articles introduce the distinctive methodologies of doing history without written sources (including the famous Mande oral epic Sundiata), highlight interpretive ("historiographical") issues, and consider concepts relevant to understanding early Africa. The total number of assigned pages runs at approximately 1200.
No formula determines final marks. Students are graded according to their "highest consistent performance" in all aspects of the course, including attendance at lectures and participation in discussions, with allowance made for the unfamiliarity of the subject matter early in the term; a number of options allow students to devise a combination of graded work that will accommodate other academic commitments and reflect specialized abilities most accurately.
HIAF 201 presumes no prior knowledge of Africa or experience with the study of history. Since the subject is new to nearly everyone in the course, consistent application and preparation is expected, particularly early in the term. Students in all four years of their undergraduate careers and in all colleges of the University complete the course with success.
Most find it a challenging opportunity to discover and examine assumptions about modern Americans -- themselves included -- they did not know they held.

HIAF 302 – History Of Southern Africa (3)

T R 0930-1045 CAB 423

Instructor: John Mason

HIAF 302 is a lecture and discussion course on the history of southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, emphasizing South Africa. The course begins with a look at the precolonial African societies of the region, before moving on to a study of the conquest, colonialism, the rise and fall of apartheid, and the recent rebirth of African independence.
By the end of the nineteenth century, all of the African peoples of southern Africa had been conquered by European powers and incorporated into Dutch, British, Portuguese, and German colonial empires. Conquest did not come easily. Every society in the region resisted European domination fiercely, sometimes for many decades before being finally defeated. Colonialism and African responses to it dramatically reshaped societies in southern African, transforming political and economic systems, gender and class relations, and even religious beliefs.
Resistance to colonialism assumed new forms in the twentieth century, as Africans began to bridge ethnic divisions to create multi-ethnic trade unions, political parties, and liberation movements. Particularly in South Africa, multi-ethnic nationalism evolved into nonracialism, uniting blacks and progressive whites in the ultimately successful struggle against apartheid.
HIAF 302 is an introductory course and assumes no prior knowledge of African history.

HIAF 402- What’s Wrong With Africa (4)

T R 1400-1515 PV8 108

Instructor: John Mason

War, famine, disease, and unending poverty... This is the Africa that we too often read about in newspapers and magazines and see on TV. While this sort of coverage is misleading--Africa is not simply a continent-wide disaster area--there is enough truth in the images of human suffering to cause Africans and non-Africans alike to ask, What's wrong with Africa?
HIAF 402 explores the roots of Africa's multiple crises, focussing primarily on Africa's relations with the rest of the world, especially the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. Topics include the overseas slave trade, conquest and colonialism, anti-colonial liberation struggles, and post-colonial politics and economics. Course materials include African novels and movies and current scholarship from Africa and the west.

HIAF 404-Independent Study In African History (3)

TBA

Instructor: Staff

In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors.

HIST 504 – Monticello Intership (3)

Day: TBA 0930-1045

Instructor: Phyllis Leffler

Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. Directed research, largely in primary source materials, on topics relating to Jefferson's estate, life, and times. Directed by senior members of the Monticello staff. The internships are restricted to graduate students in history and to fourth year undergraduate history majors. A maximum of two students each semester can be admitted to the course.

HIST 511-Slavery In World History (3)

M 1300-1530 PV5 109

Instructor: Joseph C. Miller

HIAF 511 is a small seminar-style class for graduate students and advanced undergraduates (with instructor's
permission) that will explore historical approaches to the study of one of the world's oldest, most ubiquitous, and most tragic, institutions. Most Americans are familiar with slavery only as it developed in the Old South in the decades before the Civil War. In fact, Greeks, Roman, Muslims, Africans, Renaissance Italians, Brazilians, West Indian planters, Buddhists, Maori, and many others also held significant numbers of people -- by no means all of them African -- in bondage. Most also treated slavery as a way to assimilate foreigners, not as the racially exclusive dead end that American laws of slavery prescribed. The objective of HIAF 511 is to move beyond static stereotypes and consider the enslavement as a process of its many distinctive times and places in world history.
Recent major works in this enormous field (some 700-800 academic studies appear each year focused primarily on slavery) will form the basis for weekly class discussions. In addition, each member of the class will select one region and prepare a substantial term-paper (i.e. based on secondary authorities) setting its experiences with slavery in the relevant historical context. The background reading for the modern portions of the course will be Robin Blackburn's The Making of New World Slavery. Other, extremely varied readings will develop the history of slavery in the ancient Mediterranean, the Islamic world, Africa, medieval Europe, Brazil, the Caribbean, and colonial North America, and the United States.
HIAF 511 carries no specific pre-requisites, but its broad setting presumes a general familiarity with several parts of the globe, or a willingness to assimilate a considerable quantity of new material during the semester.
All stages of writing a polished term paper (a preliminary paper proposal, an interim draft, a revised draft, and the final submission) will receive close editorial attention, with the object of developing clarity and efficiency in writing; students will be expected to prepare each one of these steps sufficiently in advance of deadlines to revise before submitting, on time. The paper will constitute the final examination for the course.
Students will also be graded on their grasp of the readings as demonstrated in contributions of relevant insight from them to class discussions.
The instructor will work with students to define paper topics that will support special interests in given times or places and will support petitions to count this course toward appropriate area and other requirements within the history major or, for graduate students, to support history fields or programs in other departments. Undergraduates may use the course to meet the Second Writing Requirement.
Please contact the instructor (<>, 924-6395) if you are considering enrolling in the course, in order to understand its learning strategy and to plan your participation in it in ways that will develop your broader educational goals.

HIUS 323/AAS 323 – Rise And Fall Of The Slave South (3)

T R 0930-1045 MIN 125

Instructor: Edward L. Ayers

This course will explore the emergence and destruction of the most powerful slave society of the modern world: the American South. It will begin with the sixteenth century and extend through the Civil War and Reconstruction. We will examine the lives of slaves and slave owners, small farmers and large planters, men and women, soldiers and civilians.
Readings will be diverse, including original documents, materials on the Web, fiction, and secondary accounts. Requirements include a midterm and final as well as a substantial research paper; the course fulfills the Second Writing Requirement. Energetic participation in a weekly discussion section is a central part of the course.

HIUS 328 – History Of Virginia To 1865 (3)

M W F 1100-1150 GIL 190

Instructor: William Thomas

This course covers the social, political, and economic development of Virginia up to 1865. The course examines key subjects in Virginia's colonial and antebellum history: the life and culture of Virginia's Native Americans, the colonial experience at Jamestown and white colonial settlement, the development of slavery in the Chesapeake region, the establishment of colonial society, the Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, Nat Turner's Rebellion, and the secession of Virginia in 1861.
Requirements for the course include three 5-7 page papers and a final exam. One of the papers will include research in Alderman Library's Special Collections. The course will feature both lecture and discussion during the weekly meetings. The course will use a reader of primary source readings from the period, such as Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia and other documents, autobiographies, and texts. In addition, the course will include some of the following readings:
T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, Myne Own Ground
Charles Dew, Apostles of Disunion
Joseph Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
Rhyss Issac, The Transformation of Virginia
Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom
Helen Rountree, The Powhatan Indians of Virginia

HIUS 365/AAS 365 -African-American History, Through Reconstruction (3)

T R 1230-1345 WIL 301

Instructor: Reginald Butler and Scot French

This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in British colonial North America and the United States through 1865. We will examine changing constructions of race, gender, and class, as well as the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities associated with this period. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the intersection of the "local" and the "global." Weekly reading assignments will average about 150-175 pages. Grade will be based on participation, weekly reading responses, one short paper, a midterm, and a final. (Cross-listed with HIUS 365.)

HIUS 367 - History Of The Civil Rights Movement (3)

T R 1400-1450 MIN 125

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. Discussion section required. 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.

Department of Music

MUSI 212 - History Of Jazz Music (3)

M W 1300-1350 OCH 101

Instructor: Scott Deveaux

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. Lab section is required.

MUSI 307 – Worlds Of Music (3 )

T R 1530-1645 OCH 107

Instructor: TBA

Prerequisite: Major in music or anthropology, or permission of instructor.
To understand the complexities of global musics, we must begin at home appreciating the diversity of musics within the U.S.-"the global is in the local" (Fabian 1998, 5). This course is an introduction to ethnomusicology primarily for music majors featuring case studies of contemporary musical traditions from the twentieth century.
The study of ethnomusicology is a study of understanding otherness and understanding not only how other people make music, but also the way we tend to perceive other musics as less complex than ours, and we tend to appreciate the music but not the people.

MUSI 369 – African Drumming And Dance (1-2)

T 1715-1930 OCH 107

Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk

Prerequisites: 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.

Department of Politics

PLPT 320 – African-American Political Thought(3)

M W 1400-1515 CAB 324

Instructor: Lawrie Balfour

This course aims to introduce you to both the critical and the constructive dimensions of African American political thought in the past two centuries. Through our readings and discussions, we will assess the claims that black Americans have made upon the polity, how they have defined themselves in the face of efforts to demean and exclude them, and how they have sought to redefine the basic terms of American public life. Among the themes that we will explore are the relationship between slavery and democracy, the role of historical memory in political life, and the meaning of such core political concepts as freedom, equality, justice, and progress. As we focus our attention on these issues, we will be mindful of the complex ways in which the concept of race has been constructed and deployed and its interrelationship with other elements of identity such as gender, sexuality, and class.

Department of Psychology

PSYC 487-The Minority Family: A Psychological Inquiry (3)

M 0900-1130 GIL 225

Instructor: Melvin Wilson

This course examines the current state of research on minority families, focusing on the black family. Emphasizes comparing "deficit" and "strength" research paradigms.
Format: Lecture discussion presentations. No. and type of exams: TBA. Papers or projects: TBA
Prerequisites: PSYC 306 and at least one course from each of the following groups: PSYC 210, 215 or 230, and PSYC 240, 250, or 260, and students in the African-American and African studies or studies in women and gender programs. Telephone Enrollment Restrictions: PSYC majors. If this course is full through ISIS: keep trying through ISIS.

Department of Religious Studies

RELC 305/AAS 305 – A Black Theology Of Liberation(3)

M W 1400-1515 CAB 337

Instructor: Corey D.B. Walker

This lecture and discussion course will introduce students to a few of the significant topics and themes in the field of black theology. Among some of the major topics to be discussed include the emergence and academic codification of black theology, its challenge to other Christian theologies, its doctrinal orientations, and its relation to other theologies of liberation. Readings will primarily be drawn from the foundational texts of James H. Cone. We will also consult texts by Dwight Hopkins, William R. Jones, Deloris Williams, and others.

RELA 389/RELC 389 Christianity In Africa (3)

M W 1400-1515 CAB 424

Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

Well known theologians such as Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian and St. Augustine from North Africa have been claimed in contemporary African Church history to be forefathers of both African and western theology. This lecture series begins with the history of Christianity in Africa from late antiquity to the present, paying particular attention to African agency in mission, but also taking into account the histories of conquest surrounding the missionary enterprise. It will be shown how Greco-Roman imperialism and European colonialism beginning with the Portuguese adventures of the14th century have shaped the African response to Christianity. The emergence of African Indigenous Churches will be looked at against this background colonial conquest, missionary paternalism and independency in Africa. Historical, theological and sociological issues will be brought together in this general introduction to Christianity in Africa.

RELC 511 – Black Theology: Theories, Methods, Sources

M W 1530-1800 MCL 2008

Instructor: Corey D. B. Walker

This seminar provides an in-depth historical and systematic study of the field of black theology. Specific and sustained attention will be given to theological implications of the category of "experience" as it relates to the work of several theologians in this area, particularly the early thought of James H. Cone. We will also closely examine some new trajectories in the field, most notably the turn to American pragmatism and to the wide and disparate field of cultural studies. Readings will include analytical as well as constructive texts and will cut across fields and disciplines.

Department of Sociology

SOC 341 – Race And Ethnic Relations (3)

T R 1400-1515 CAB 319

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 216

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.

SOC 442 – Sociology Of Inequality (3)

M W 1400-1515 CAB 134

Instructor: Bethany P. Bryson

A survey of basic theories and methods used to analyze structures of social inequality. Includes comparative analysis of the inequalities of power and privilege, both their causes and their consequences for social conflict and social change.

SOC 464 – Urban Sociology( 3)

T R 1100-1215 CLK 101

Instructor: Marakova

The course explores changing urban life in different cultural, social and historical settings. It examines both classic and contemporary debates within urban sociology and relates them to the wider concerns of social theory. Among the topics to be discussed are theories of urban development and decline, social segregation and urban inequality, cultural meanings of the city, problems of urban policy and planning.

University Seminar

USEM 171/0020 – The 60s In Black & White (2)

T 1530-1730 PV8 108

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 a paper on a 60’s subject – a participant, an organization, a movement.