Spring 2003

Afro-American and African Studies Program

AAS 102 - Introduction To Afro-American Studies II (4)

T R 1230-1345 MIN 125

Instructor: Corey D. B. Walker

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/ANTH 250 - Health Of Black Folks (3)

TR 1700 - 1750 RSH 202

Instructors: Wende Marshall and M. Norman Oliver

"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 M. Norman 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. This course is cross listed as ANTH 250.

AAS/ANTH 306 - African Interlocuters (3)

TR 930-1045 MIN 130

Instructor: Hanan Sabea

The course explores how a group of Africans, working primarily as assistants to Europeans interested in Africa during the late 19th and early 20th century, participated in the process of knowledge production about the Continent. We will juxtapose works (textual and otherwise) composed by African assistants to those produced by anthropologists, explorers, missionaries, and administrators to examine if there is a difference in the descriptions and interpretations about Africa and its people. Ethnographies produced by Africans will constitute our third body of texts. Our analysis will focus on an examination of who these Africans and Europeans were, how they came to participate in this process, and how their different positions are reflected in the categories deployed, the methodologies followed, and the assumptions embedded in the accounts. This course satisfies college second writing, non-western perspective and Anthropology majors' cultural diversityrequirements. This course is cross listed as ANTH 306

AAS/HIUS 366 - African American History Since 1865 (3)

MW 1100 - 1150 CAB 138

Instructors: Reginald D. Butler and Scot A. French. 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. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the "local" (sometimes, but not necessarily, this locality). Readings will include the following: Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow; Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw; Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class; Gena Caponi, Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin', & Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expressive Culture. Grades will be based on section participation, research project, midterm, and final exam. This course is cross-listed as HIUS 366.

AAS 401 - Independent Study (3)

TBA

AAS 406 - Violence And American Democracy (3)

M 1300-1530 PV 5 109

Instructor: Corey D. B. Walker

Contemporary engagements of violence and democracy are typically reserved for discussions of emerging democratic regimes and movements in such places as the "Third World" and former socialist countries. However, there is a general hesitancy in examining the theoretical and historical relationships of violence and American democracy. This seminar will critically examine how and in what ways violence physical, psychological, and symbolic has informed and continues to inform constructions, articulations, and practices of American democracy. Seminar readings will come from selected works of a wide and diverse collection of thinkers, including Thomas Jefferson, Maria Stewart, Alexis de Tocqueville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Anna Julia Cooper, W.E.B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, Judith Butler, and Thomas Dumm. By illuminating the complex and changing relationships of violence and democracy in the United States, it is hoped that seminar participants will come to a deeper understanding of the American experiment with democracy.

AAS 406B - Religion And Diaspora (3)

W 1000-1230 MIN 108

Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora

This course combines in a study of a book that is in the process of being prepared for publication, the way ideas of displacement in Africa have led to the rise of a "diaspora" type of Christianity and Culture in Southern and Central Africa. It is hoped that the students who take part in this seminar come prepared to dialogue with other views of the meaning of diaspora, especially in the African American uses of the word diaspora today. Students need to come prepared for a lot of discussion because this is course takes the format of a seminar with a lot of students involvement.

AAS 406C – Politics Of Culture In Modern South Africa (3)

R 1300-1530 CAB B020

Instructor: Brenna Munro

In this course we will look at the connection between aesthetics and politics in several modern South African cultural arenas, examining the debates that have raged there about race and writing, struggle and art. We will begin with a section on the vibrant urban culture of 1950s Sophiatown, then turn to the "protest writing" of the 70s and 80s, and finish with a section on the new nation and the dilemmas of writing in "transition"; atoning and accounting for the past, and imgaining new futures. Texts may include Bloke Modisane's memoir, Blame Me on History, Miriam Makeba's township jazz, Drum and Staffrider magazine, worker's performance poetry, Dennis Brutus' poems on exile and imprisonment, Athol Fugard's play Blood Knot, Njabulo Ndebele's contentious essays, J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace and Antjie Krog's account of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa. There will be short papers on each section, presentations, and a longer final paper.

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

TBA

AAS 452 - Distinguished Majors Program/Thesis (3)

TBA

Department of Anthropology

ANTH 235 - Introduction To Folklore (3)

TR 1400-1515 BRK B001

Instructor: Charles Perdue

Introduction to the materials and methods of folklore study. The course is also intended to be an introduction to folklore scholarship and to the history of the discipline. Materials used as examples in this course-narratives, songs, etc.-are drawn about equally from Anglo and African-American sources. Course Meets Second Writing Requirement

ANTH 281 - Human Origins (3)

MWF 1000-1050 RSH 202

Instructor: Jeffrey Hantman

The course is intended to provide an overview and assessment of the theory, methods, and data used by anthropologists to reconstruct human physical and cultural evolution. Chronologically, the course spans the time from the initial appearance of hominids (ca 4.5 million years ago) to the period prior to the rise of urbanism and early state formation (ca 10,000 B.C.). The course is divided into three topical components: 1) a review of evolutionary theory, and the controversy surrounding that theory; 2) an in-depth survey of the data used to support current models of the pattern of human evolution, and 3) a study of the origins of modern human adaptations in the relatively recent past, with respect to uniquely human behaviors such as complex language, ritual, religion and art.

ANTH 565 -- Creole Narratives (3)

TR 1530-1645

Instructor: George Mentore

This course sets as its principal task -- within the parameters of Caribbean ethnography -- an examination of social being as narrative. Caribbean stories about cultural identity become the analyzable material not only for understanding these regionally and historically distinct societies, but also for forming an anthropology of personhood. We will move through the plots of such characters as Olaudah Equiano, the slave trade, the peasant village, race, nationalism, mimesis, masculinity, femininity, motherhood, and healing. The idea will be to confront and understand (and not be threatened by) the various intertwined identities made vital in the Antilles.

Department Of Art History

ARTH 345 - African Art (3)

TR 0930 - 1045

Instructor: Benjamin Ray

Each student will design an exhibition of African art for presentation on the Web that will incorporate the results of the student's study of African art. The exhibitions will contain an introductory explanation of the exhibit's theme, images of selected African art objects, relevant field-context images, descriptive labels, and other explanatory textual materials. The images of African art will be taken from collections at the Bayly Museum of the University of Virginia, the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, the Hampton University Museum, and The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and are used with copyright permission. The course includes the following curricular components: a brief history of African art studies; African ritual and cosmology; analysis of African art exhibition catalogues; library research on selected art objects; the exhibition of African art in museum contexts; training in Web skills and image processing. The aim of the course is to create exhibitions of African art that attempt to be true to the objects themselves while placing them in an educational environment of value to the exhibitor and the viewer alike.

Department Of Drama

DRAM 307 - Contemporary African American Drama (3)

MWF 1400-1450 CAB 119

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

ENAM 314- African American Survey II (3)

T R 1100-1215 CAB 323

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

A continuation of ENAM 313, African American Literature I, this course concentrates on twentieth and twenty-first century African American novels, short stories, prose essays, and poetry. This lecture and discussion based class will address literature from pivotal cultural and political moments in African American life, such as the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement. Writers include, but are not limited to, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Carolyn Ferrell, and Terry McMillian. Mandatory assignments include weekly response paragraphs, four response papers, quizzes, midterm and final exams.

ENAM 332- Contemporary African American Drama (3)

TR 1530-1645 BRN 328

Instructor: Lotta Lofgren

This course will study contemporary African American drama from the 1950's to the present. We will examine how the playwrights rework old and invent new forms to express a unique world view in a theatrically viable way. We will ask such questions as: How much should any artist compromise his or her vision in order to be heard? What kind of audience does each playwright write for? How do African American male and female playwrights differ in their outlook and even in their interpretation of the genre? What is their sense of responsibility to the past and to the future? How does the double need to define oneself as an individual and as a member of a group affect the playwrights and their art? We will read works by Alice Childress, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Ed Bullins, Charles Fuller, Adrienne Kennedy, Ntozake Shange, August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, and others.

ENAM 382 - Black Protest Fiction (3)

T R 1530-1645 CAB 337

Instructor: Marlon Ross

This course explores the relation between modern racial protest and African American fiction and autobiography from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. The modern "protest" tradition emerges in response to the Great Depression, World War II, and the early Civil Rights movement. Protest narratives are influenced by a variety of trends - including Soviet communism, industrial labor unionization, the second wave of the Great Migration, Pan-Africanism, the fight against European fascism, the promise of New Deal policies, and the emergence of mass street demonstrations as a vehicle of racial protest. As well as examining the social, political, and economic contexts of protest narratives, we'll probe their aesthetic, formal, and ideological structures, and assess how protest writers represent controversial topics of the time, such as lynching, segregation, sharecropping, disenfranchisement, anti-Semitism, unemployment, migration, urbanization, religion, sexuality, military participation, strikebreaking, cross-racial coalitions, and the role of the individual in social change. We start with the most famous protest narrative, Richard Wright's Native Son, then study other narratives written before and after, many of which challenge Wright's forms and ideas. Other authors include Angelo Herndon, William Attaway, Ann Petry, Chester Himes, James Baldwin, and Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as pertinent readings in history, literary criticism, journalism, and social science.

ENAM 482B – The Souls Of Black Folk (3)

T R 1400-1515 CAB 330

Instructor: Deborah McDowell

April 2003 marks the 100th anniversary of W. E. B. DuBois's THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK, which many regard as the African-American "Ur-text." This course is devoted entirely to this book--its reception history, its encyclopedic roots and sources, its surrounding contexts, as well as the range of its influence on African-American literature and intellectual history. We will obviously linger over the book's structuring metaphors and concepts-"souls," "folk," "veil," and "double-consciousness"-and pursue the various manifestations of DuBois's most famous aphorism: "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." We will also address matters concerning the construction of black masculinity in the post-Emancipation South, the psychological complexities of identity, theories of race, and the poetics and politics of mourning. Texts will include the following essays by DuBois: "What is the Negro Problem?" "The Conservation of Races," "The Concept of Race," "The Negro as He Really Is" (with accompanying photographic illustrations), and "Phillis Wheatley and Africam American Culture." Other selections include Aeschylus's The Oresteia (excerpts), Negro spirituals (what DuBois termed "the sorrow songs"), Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (selections), Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, Tennyson's "In Memoriam," Emerson's "Fate" and "The Transcendentalist," Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil," William James's The Principles of Psychology (excerpts), William Dean Howells's An Imperative Duty, Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, Pauline Hopkins's Of One Blood, Tennyson's "In Memoriam," Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice from the South, Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition and James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, as well as DuBois's correpondence with Williams James, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Jessie Fauset, and others. Near the end of the course, students will be invited to address the international dimension of DuBois's work and influence, particularly the Pan-African connection.
Undergraduate students are eligible for the 400 level class only.

ENAM 482D – Fictions Of Black Identity (3)

T R 930-1045 PV8 B003

Instructor: Lisa Woolfork

This senior seminar will explore the dual meaning of the title "Fictions of Black Identity." The first implication suggests the literary inventions (novels, essays, critical works) that address the meanings of blackness in an American context. The second meaning is heavily invested in the first: that Black identity is a fiction, not necessarily in the sense of falsity, but in its highly mediated, flexible, and variable condition. Questions to consider include: how does one make and measure Black identity? Can one be phenotypically White and still be Black? What is the value of racial masquerade? What does it mean to be legitimately Black? Readings include, but are not limited to, McBride's The Color of Water, Walker's Black, White, and Jewish, Beatty's White Boy Shuffle, and a range of critical essays. Mandatory assignments include weekly response papers, comparative essays, leading class discussion, midterm and final exams.

Department of History

HIAF 202 - Africa Since 1800 (4)

T R 1400 - 1515 CHM 304

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 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, 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.

HIUS 366 - African American History Since 1865 (3)

MW 1100 - 1150 CAB 138

Instructors: Reginald D. Butler and Scot A. French

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. We will devote some portion of each class to the close examination of primary sources, with a particular focus on the "local" (sometimes, but not necessarily, this locality). Readings will include the following: Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow; Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw; Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class; Gena Caponi, Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin', & Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expressive Culture. Grades will be based on section participation, research project, midterm, and final exam. This course is cross-listed as AAS 366.

HIAF 404-Independent Study In African History (3)

TBA

Instructor: TBA

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 Internship (3)

Instructor: Charles McCurdy

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. Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. 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.

HIUS 202 - American History Since 1865 (4)

T R 1230-1345 MCL 1020

Instructor: William Thomas

This course covers the history of the United States from the Civil War to present. The course examines social, political, economic, and cultural changes in American history and focuses on several major themes-the struggle to fulfill the nation's commitment to equality and justice, the development of large-scale industrial capitalism, the rise of the United States as a world power and its responsibility in global affairs. The course examines in detail such important topics as the course of racial justice since Reconstruction, the growth of businesses and the consumer market, and the fighting and consequences of the Cold War. We will explore some of the most dramatic problems in modern American history: racial conflict, urban growth, suburban expansion, international engagement, demographic change, and political contest. Readings will include Edward Ayers, et al. American Passages text and its accompanying web site of documents, audio, video, and interactive maps, as well as Lewis Sinclair's Babbitt and Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi. The course will also use several documentary and feature films--including Vietnam, a Television History 1945-1970, Dr. Strangelove, and Berkeley in the Sixties. The course is a four credit course, and students attend two lecture classes and one discussion section class each week. Students are required to take a mid-term and a final exam, write two 5-7 page essays, and participate actively in discussion sections.

HIUS 324 – 20th Century South (3)

M W 1000-1050 RFN G004A

Instructor: Lorraine Schuyler

This course will explore the social, cultural, political, and economic history of the South in the twentieth century. Major themes of the course will include the rise and fall of legalized segregation, the development of a viable Republican party in the region, the role of southern reformers and activists, and the importance of historical memory. We will examine major events in the twentieth century South from the perspectives of black southerners and white southerners, men and women, sharecroppers and landowners, Republicans and Democrats, moderates and activists. Grades will be based on participation in weekly discussion sections, as well as one five-page paper, a midterm and a cumulative final exam.
Assigned Readings will include a mix of fiction, autobiography, and scholarly monographs.
Required titles may include:
Paul Gaston, The New South Creed: a Study in Southern Mythmaking
Tera Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom
Katharine DuPre Lumpkin, The Making of a Southerner
W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk
Grace Lumpkin, To Make My Bread
Pete Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s
Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi
Dan Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics

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.

Department of Music

MUSI 212 - History of Jazz Music (3)

M W 1400-1515

Instructor: Scott Deveaux

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

MUSI 215 - Intro to African Music (3)

M W 1100-1215 TR OCH 107

Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk

This course is meant as a first exposure to African rhythm, movement, and concepts of performance. We will explore several African music cultures in-depth (West and Central Africa) and survey several others to get a sense of the breadth and variety of African musical life. There will be a course packet of reading assignments, in-class rhythm and movement workshops, listening and video-viewing, discussion (of reading), and brief writing assignments. There will be a midterm and final exam.

MUSI 309 – Performance In Africa (4)

TR 1715-1930 OCH 107

W 1530 - 1700 OCH 107

Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk

This course meets jointly with MUSI 369, African Drumming and Dance Ensemble. Students registered for MUSI 309 receive 4 academic credits, those only in MUSI 369 receive 2 "performance" credits. You may only register for ONE of these courses, not both.
Meeting jointly with MUSI 369 (African Drumming and Dance Ensemble, but with an extra hour of discussion) this course explores performance in Africa through in-depth reading, discussion, audio and video examples, and hands-on practice. The course will explore both "traditional" and "popular" styles, leading us to question those categories. With a few exceptions, we will focus mostly on areas of West and Central Africa, though students may choose other areas to focus on for their research projects. We will explore music/dance styles and their sociomusical circumstances and processes, as well as performed resistances and responses to the colonial and post/neo-colonial encounter. In addition, we will address the issues and politics involved in translating performance practices from one cultural context to another.
Attendance at all class meetings is required, as is careful reading, film viewing, and preparation for discussion. Students will keep a weekly response journal (handed in to the instructor via email) with brief entries for each week responding to the reading, discussions, performance labs, and listening. Every week (by Sunday, 5 p.m.) each student will choose at least one recording from the music library (via the web catalogue) to listen to and respond to in their journal. There will be a mid-term paper (8-10 pages, typed) and a final exam (open book, essay and short answer).

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

TR 1715-1930 OCH 107

Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk

Prerequisite: Permission of instructor by audition on first day of class. Note: This semester, this course meets jointly with MUSI 309, Performance in Africa. Students registered for 309 receive 4 academic credits, those in 369 receive 2 "performance" credits. You may only register for ONE of these courses, not both.
This is a practical, hands-on course focusing on several music/dance forms from West Africa (Ghana, Togo) and Central Africa (BaAka pygmies and Bagandou farmers), with the intention of performing informally throughout the semester and in a final concert in April. We will give special attention to continuing to develop tight ensemble dynamics, aural musicianship, and a polymetric sensibility. Concentration, practice, high attention, interaction, and faithful,/prompt attendance are required of each class member. Each member is also respectfully expected to help prepare the classroom (move chairs, sweep, set up drums/sticks) and to restore the space to classroom style at the end of each meeting. Participation in public performance is also expected.
Students are strongly encouraged to bring a cassette tape recorder to class and to dress comfortably. Several readings are recommended, but not required.

Department of Politics

PLAP 370 – Racial Politics (3)

MW 1100-1150 CAB 345

Instructor: Lynn Sanders

This course examines how attributions of racial difference have shaped American Politics. Topics include how race affects American political partisanship, campaigns and elections, public policy, public opinion, and American political science. 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 examine how the political thinking and choices of people of different races differs, how racial politics implicates ideas about class and gender, and how scholarship on race depends on the race of the person conducting it. We will consider the implications for an increasingly racially diverse and complicated polity of defining race primarily in terms of black/white conflict.

Department of Religious Studies

RELA 275- Intro To African Religions (3)

M W 1100-1150 RFN G004C

Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

An introductory survey of African religions. The course concentrates on African traditional religions but Islam and Christianity are also discussed. Topics include indigenous mythologies and cosmologies, sacrifice, initiation, witchcraft, artistic traditions and a brief introduction to African-derived religions in the New World.
Readings include: Ray, African Religions; Stoller & Olkes, In Sorcery's Shadow; Soyinka, Death and the King's Horseman; Ijimere, The Imprisonment of Obatala; Salih, The Wedding of Zein; and a packet of readings.
Requirements: regular attendance and participation in discussion, two in-class exams, and a cumulative final exam.

Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

LNGS 222 - Black English (3)

MW 1100-1150 MRY 104

Instructor: Mark Elson

An introduction to the history and structure of Black English. The goal of this course is to introduce students to the history and structure of what has been termed Black English vernacular or Black Street English. We will also be concerned with the sociolinguistic factors which led to the emergence of this variety of English, as well as its present role in the African-American community and its relevance in education, employment, and racial stereotypes

Department of Sociology

SOC 341 – Race and Ethnic Relations (3)

MW 1400-1515 CAB 341

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 - Afro-American Communities (3)

T R 1530-1645 CAB 338

Instructor: Rick Turner

The purpose of this course is to provide students with a 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 acquire knowledge of the cultural history of African Americans. This course will approach these topics from a framework of analysis with consideration for the African-American people's sociological and historical relationship to the political and economic system in America. This class is organized around the premise that there is a distinctive, coherent, persistent African-American Sociological perspective frame of reference, world view, or cultural ethos that is evident in the behavior, attitude, feelings, life styles, and experience patterns of Black America. By means of discussion, lecture, video, reading, writing, and class presentations this course will provide new insights and perspectives into the dynamics of the African-American community.

University Seminar

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

T 1530-1730 CAB 320

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.