Spring 2004

African-American and African Studies Program

AAS 102 – Introduction io African-American and African Studies II: Cross-Currents in the African Diaspora (3)

T R 12:30-1:45 PHS 204

Instructor: Corey D.B. Walker

This team-taught course builds upon and expands on the subjects and themes developed in AAS 101: Introduction to African-American Studies and African Studies. With a temporal focus on the 20th century, we will critically explore and analyze the links and disjunctions in the cultural, economic, political, and intellectual practices and experiences of people of African descent throughout the African diaspora. This course features an interdisciplinary approach in developing conceptual, theoretical, and analytical frameworks for understanding the depth and range of experiences of people of African descent in the Americas, Caribbean, Europe, and Africa. Beginning with an overview of the history, theoretical questions, and methods of the Black Studies Project, the course is divided into three units that examine African diasporic social and political thought and expression; identity formation and comparative racial classification; and literary, cultural, and aesthetic currents in the African diaspora.

AAS 366 – African-American History Since 1865 (3)

M W 2-2:50 RFN G004A

Instructor: Reginald D. Butler and Scot A. French

This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in the United States. We will examine some of the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities, paying particular attention to how African Americans 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 intersection of the “local” and the “global.” Course requirements include weekly reading responses, a short paper, midterm, and final. Texts may include: Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow; Richard Wright, Black Boy; Theodore Rosengarten, All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw; and Deborah McDowell, Leaving Pipe Shop. (Cross-listed with HIUS 366)

AAS 401 - Independent Study (3)

TBA

AAS 406A – Black Modernity (3)

M 1:00-3:30 MIN 108

Instructor: Davarian Baldwin

This class interrogates the text and contexts of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man to create a working definition of a “Black modernity.” Specifically, bringing historical and cultural analysis to bear on a single work of fiction, this course will survey key themes in the Black modern experience from 1899 to 1950 including migration, urbanization, the black modern aesthetic, black radicalism and black nationalism. While modernity has been generally understood to consist of secularization, mass production, and consumption, scientific rationalization and democratization, black people in the West have had an uneven relationship to these processes. With W.E.B. DuBois’ concept of “double-consciousness” in mind, this course explores the uneven relationship the black subject has had as both outside of, yet central to the modern experience. It should be noted that neither literary, film, nor social scientific texts take on a primary position in this critical reading, thinking and writing intensive course. All texts are used in a fully interdisciplinary framework where the conceptualization of a Black modernity becomes the primary focus of analysis. Those looking to get basic African American history or to simply read the novel should not take this course. As an upper-level seminar that only meets once a week, this is a reading, writing, thinking and participation intensive course. Requirements include two 3-5 page film critiques, five 4-6 page papers (every other week), two 2-3 page conceptual reflection papers, and a take-home final exam.

AAS 406B – Beyond Black And White: Race In 20th Century America (3)

W 1:00-3:30 MIN 108

Instructor: Peter Flora

How is race lived and understood in America? How has each new generation of Americans remade race for its own time from the experiences and ideas of earlier generations? This seminar will tackle these questions by examining the history of racial thought in America since the late nineteenth century. Students' grades will be based on participation in weekly discussions of assigned readings (200-250 pgs/wk), a 4-5-page review essay, and a 20-page research paper on a course-related topic supervised by the instructor. Course readings will include both primary and secondary sources, and will draw from authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Richard Rodriguez, Barbara Fields, and Cornel West, among others.

AAS 406C – Religion And Diaspora (3)

M 930-1200 MIN 108

Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora

The aim of this seminar course is to compare and contrast three functions of the term Diaspora that can be discerned from history. The course begins with an in depth study of the meaning of the term Diaspora given by the rise of the Jewish nation in biblical history. This will be followed by case studies of other uses of the term, for example a) in Rastafarianism in a cultural matrix of the transatlantic world of former African slaves and b) in the rise of Apartheid in South African history. Each student will write a 20 page essay based on material presented in class as part of preliminary research to be carried out while the seminar series runs. Basic reading material will be made available on toolkit to be supported by literature to be identified in the library through working on the 20-page essay.

AAS 406D – The Color Of Work: Labor, Race, And History In South Africa And The United States (3)

R 1-330 RFN 173

Instructor: Clare Terni

How do social constructions of race shape and legitimate peoples? Working lives? This course will explore comparative histories of South Africa and the United States in order to critically consider what it means to be black, white, and working in each of these countries. Special attention will be paid to the mining industries of South Africa and West Virginia, comparisons between Jim Crow and the apartheid system, and the impact of working conditions on the lives of people associated with male workers: their families, age-mates, prostitutes, and others. Students' grades will be based on participation in weekly discussions of readings (ca. 200 pages/wk), a 4-5 page review essay, one class presentation of a reading, and a 20-page research paper on a topic related to the course and supervised by the instructor. Course readings will include material from both history and anthropology, from authors such as Leonard Thompson, John Cell, David Roediger, and Talal Asad, accompanied by primary source materials from both South Africa and the US.

AAS 406E - Afra-Amer-Indians:Constructions Of Race, Identity, And Memory (3)

R 930-1045 PV8 (Pavilion 8) 103

Instructor: Anjana Mebane-Cruz

For many, this class will the their introduction to the concept of "Black-Indians" and the history of mixed race Indians in the US. The course will explore some of the constructs of race categories, perceptions and history building from the colonial period to the present. The course will attend to the ways in which people resist and subvert categorization and legitimacy while even while constructing and preserving memory and identity. There will be guest lecturers from/associated with Afra-Amer-Indian groups. Requirements: Two ten-page papers as well as two or three one page response papers to critical articles/papers. There will be a fifteen page midterm. Final to be decided.

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

TBA

AAS 452 - Distinguished Majors Program/Thesis (3)

TBA

Department of Anthropology

ANTH 401D - The Color of Work: Labor, Race, And History In South Africa And The United States (3)

R 1-330 RFN 173

Instructor: Clare Terni

(Cross-listed as AAS 406D; see course description above.)

ANTH 401E - Afra-Amer-Indians (3)

R 930-1045 PV8 (Pavilion 8) 103

Instructor: Anjana Mebane-Cruz

(Cross-listed as ANTH 401E; see course description above.)

ANTH 256 – African Cultures (3)

M W F 9-9:50 RFN G004C

Instructor: Lisa Shutt

Through this course, students will gain an understanding of the richness and variety of African life. While no course of this kind can hope to give more than a broad overview of the continent, students will learn which intellectual tools and fundamental principles are necessary for approaching the study of the hundreds of cultures that exist today on the African continent. Drawing from ethnographic texts, literary works and documentary and feature films, specific examples of African peoples and their lifeways will be selected in order to sample the cultural richness and diversity of the African continent. Fills the Non-Western Perspectives Requirement

ANTH 267 – How Others See Us (3)

M W 10-10:50 RFN G004C

Instructor: Ira Bashkow

This course examines how America, the West, and the white racial mainstream are viewed by "others" in different parts of the world and introduces anthropological perspectives on culture, colonialism, identity, race, and discourses of otherness. Readings and films deal with topics such as the views of Islamist extremists, African perspectives on European colonialism, American Indian responses to Anglo-Americans, Chinese writings about America, Papua New Guinean constructions of white expatriates, the portrayal of whites in Japanese advertising, and critiques of the "invisibility" of whiteness in the U.S. We will ask what others' views can (and can't) teach us about the anthropology of our own lives, as well as about the possibilities and problems of cross-cultural understanding in general. Course requirements center on extensive reading assignments and an interview-based field research project to be conducted in local communities.

ANTH 388 – African Archaelogy (3)

M W F 9-9:50 GIL 141

Instructor: Adria LaViolette

This course surveys the archaeological knowledge currently available about the African continent. The emphasis will be on the Late Stone Age, when fully modern humans dominate the cultural landscape, and the subsequent Iron Age, but will also briefly cover pre-modern humans and the archaeology of the colonial period. We will discuss the great social, economic, and cultural transformations in African history known primarily through archaeology, and the most important archaeological sites and discoveries on the continent. Throughout the course a theme will be the politics of the past, and the changing role of the practice of archaeology in Africa.

ANTH 565 – Creole Narratives (3)

T R 12:30-1:45 PHS 205

Instructor: George Mentore

We begin with 18th- and 19th-century Caribbean intellectual life. We do so from the perspective of European imperialism and its influences upon colonized values, slavery, race, class and color. We examine the persistence of these major themes through the 20th century, formalized in the battle of ideas between the elite of the mother country and the Creole upper classes. We will attempt to read the images of the Creole self and explore their claims for a crisis of identity. We will also focus on the so-called spiritual character of the Creole personality. We shall conclude by looking at the way in which the specifics of island culture have directed nation building and how they appear to have helped in the perpetuation of ideological and political dependencies.

Department of Economics

ECON 415 – Economics Of Labor (3)

T R 11-12:15 RSH 104

Instructor: William Johnson

Prerequisite: ECON 301 (or 311) and 371 (or its equivalent), or permission of instructor
Economic analysis of employment and wages, including the economics of education, unemployment, labor unions, discrimination and income inequality.

Department of English Language and Literature

ENAM 314: African American Survey II (3)

M W 2-3:15 PHS 205

Instructor: Marlon Ross

A continuation of ENAM 313, African American Literature I, this course concentrates on twentieth- and twenty-first century African American literature and culture. Focusing on the changing notions of racial identification, this lecture and discussion based class will address a wide array of genres - including fiction, poetry, drama, polemical prose, autobiography, music, photography, and film - shaping and shaped by pivotal cultural and political movements, such as the "New Negro," the Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights, Black Arts/Black Power, womanism, as well as current debates over matters like hip hop, same-sexuality, affirmative action, incarceration, and "premature death." Writers include, but are not limited to, Charles Chesnutt, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, Anne Spencer, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Margaret Walker, Amiri Baraka, Huey Newton, Carolyn Rodgers, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. Mandatory assignments include two response papers, quizzes, midterm and final exams.

ENAM 382: The Black College Campus (3)

M W 2-3:15 CAU 134

Instructor: K. Ian Grandison

A student-centered, reading, seeing, discussion, and communication course, we consider the ways in which identity politics are implicated spatially in built environments. Focusing on how the campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities were shaped by—and shaped—the struggle over African-American education particularly during the Jim Crow Period, we explore built environments as arenas of cultural conflict and negotiation. How do built environments such as college campuses assign and assert the “proper” place of individuals and groups in social hierarchies? How do subordinated groups resist these processes? From the uncomfortable union of “agriculture” and “industry” and “education”—such as connoted by the label “Cow School” for land-grant institutions—to the cultural uses of gothic architecture in avowing the high status of “Ivy League” institutions, we open up discourse on built environments to engage the politics that circumscribe built environments. We will tease out working concepts and methods that help de-center the paradigm of interpreting built environments art-historically—in relation to rigorously policed canons of accepted types and styles. This will be accomplished through discussion of short readings drawn from within and beyond the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and environmentalism and through occasional field trips, workshops, and lectures. In addition to studying readings in time for class discussion, students will be also required to complete two quizzes, four group exercises, and a semester long group-project. The course will help students engage built environments by integrating knowledge gained from experiencing them with our senses, from studying them by mapping and diagramming spatial relationships, and from interrogating primary and secondary written and oral accounts.

Department of History

HIAF 202- Africa Since 1800 (4)

T R 9:30-10:45 CAB 138

Instructor: John Mason

HIAF 202 examines the last 200 years of African history, beginning with the suppression of the Atlantic slave trade, in the early nineteenth century. The course is divided into four parts. The first is an overview, touching on the slave trade and its consequences, the European conquest of most of the African continent, African resistance to colonial rule, and the reestablishment of Africa independence. We will then retrace these themes, in depth, as they emerge in the history of three specific regions: West Africa, especially Nigeria, Central Africa, especially the Congo and Rwanda, and southern Africa, especially South Africa and Zimbabwe. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which colonialism affected ordinary Africans and with the various strategies Africans employed to resist European domination. HIAF 202 is an introductory course and requires no prior knowledge of African history. Course materials include textbooks, novels, autobiographies, and films.

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.

HILA 330 – South Atlantic Migrations (3)

M 3:30-6 CAB 319

Instructor: Pablo Davis

Throughout its history, the South Atlantic region of the United States (Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Puerto Rico, and US Virgin Islands) has experienced enormous, sometimes wrenching, often creative, and always significant movements of people. Native American life, European settlement (especially Spanish and English), African immigration (most of it involuntary), and the forced exodus of Cherokee and other peoples are all among the most important movements prior to the 20th century. In the past hundred-plus years, Black and White northward migration; the Cuban expatriate community; Puerto Rican migration to the mainland, and other Caribbean and Latin American (im)migration have transformed the cultural, social, economic, and political life not only of the South Atlantic but of the United States as a whole. Increasingly, movement has assumed more complex shapes, at times circular. The course amounts to a collective exploration of why people have moved within, into, and out of the South Atlantic region, and how it has mattered, with particular focus on the past 150 years.

HIST 504 – Monticello Internship (3)

TBA

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.

HIUS324 – 20TH Century South (3)

M W 10-10:50 MRY 209

Instructor: Grace Hale

This course examines the broad history of the American South in the twentieth century, with special emphasis on racial violence, the creation of segregation, class and gender relations within the region, the cultural and economic interdependence of black and white southerners, and the Civil Right Movement and its aftermath. Sources examined will include film, fiction, and music as well as more traditional historical sources like newspapers and court opinions. Students interested in American Studies, African American Studies, and Gender Studies are also welcome. Grading: midterm 25%; paper (5-7 pp) 25%; final exam 30%; participation in discussion sections and attendance at film and documentary screenings 20%.

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

M W 2-250 RFN G004A

Instructor: Reginald D. Butler and Scot French

This lecture course explores the history and culture of African Americans in the United States. We will examine some of the major themes, problems, events, structures, and personalities, paying particular attention to how African Americans 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 intersection of the “local” and the “global.” Course requirements include weekly reading responses, a short paper, midterm, and final. Texts may include: Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow; Richard Wright, Black Boy: A record of Childhood and Youth; Theodore Rosengarten, All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw; and Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi.

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

T R 2-2:50 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 1-1:50 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 3:30-4:45 OCH 107

Instructor: Natalie Serrazin

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 309 – Performance In Africa (3)

T R 3:30-4:45 OCH 107

Instructor: Michele Kisliuk

Prerequisite: instructor permission.
Explores music/dance performance in Africa through reading, hands-on workshops, discussion, and audio and video examples. The course covers both "traditional" and "popular" styles, leading us to question those categories. Class meetings focus not only on musical repertoire, sociomusical circumstances, and processes, but also on the problems and politics of translating performance practice from one cultural context to another. Major in music or anthropology, or permission of instructor. 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.

Department of Politics

PLAP 370 – Racial Politics (3)

M W 11-11:50 CAB 345

Instructor: Lynn Sanders

Racial Politics is about how race shapes American politics. We will look at race in elections, public policy, and public opinion. 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. Our goal is to see how citizens, politicians and scholars draw on ideas about race, to appreciate when these ideas are reinforced or challenged by our politics, and to become sensitive to the ways in which contemporary social scientific scholarship on race itself informs the politics of race in the U.S. Though American political science is built around models of black/white difference, we will work to criticize and extend these models as we consider the enduring and evolving problem of race in the United States. Above all, our goal is to talk with each other about race both critically and democratically.

PLAP 382 – Civil Liberties And Civil Rights (3)

M W 1-1:50 WIL 301

Instructor: David O’Brien

The course focuses on freedom of speech and religion, the rights of the accused, the right of privacy, and struggles over equality and the equal protection of the law.

PLIR 424 – The International Political Economy Of Africa (3)

T R 2-3:15 PV8 103

Instructor: Andrew Lawrence

This course provides a critical overview of the political economy of Africa, at the local, national, regional and
transnational levels. These multiple perspectives provide a context for analyzing some of the major issues confronting Africa. These include the requisites for economic growth; the politics of AIDS and other diseases; and the crisis of transnational wars and militarized conflicts and their accompanying internal and international
refugee crises. An analysis of these and other issues enables students to address key debates: Is state-led economic development possible in contemporary Africa? What are the prospects for regional integration and African Union? How decisive are international organizations, NGOs, and the transnational ideological context for developments in Africa?

Department of Religious Studies

RELA 276 – African Religions in Americas (3)

M W 12-12:50 CAB 337

Instructor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton

This course explores the African religious heritage of the Americas. We will concentrate on African-derived religions in Latin America and the Caribbean, such as Cuban Santeria, Haitian Vodou, and the Jamaican Rastafari movement. North American slave religion, the black church, and African-American Islam will also be considered. We will seek to identify their shared religio-cultural "core" while developing an appreciation for the distinctive characteristics and historical contexts of each "New World" tradition. We will address topics such as ideas of God and Spirit; the significance of ritual sacrifice, divination, and initiation; the centrality of trance, ecstatic experience and mediumship; and the role of religion in the struggle for liberation and social justice. Final, Midterm, periodic quizzes on the readings, participation in discussion.

RELA 276 – African Art (3)

T R 9:30-10:45 CAB 210

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.

RELC 310 – Third World Christianity (3)

T R 9:30-10:45 RSH 110

Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora

This course focuses issues of Christian thought in third world histories sharing a colonial past. This is an opportunity to examine various kinds of arguments for Liberation Theology that have come with the translation and adaptation to Latin America, Africa and Asia. Literature that exposes students to writers such as Segundo, the Boff brothers, Desmond Tutu, Allan Boesak, Kwame Bediako and others will be on toolkit to read alongside The Cambridge Companion on Liberation Theology (Edited by Christopher Rowland) The main aim in class meetings is to discuss these articles and the issues they raise in student led discussion, while lectures are used to define Liberation Theology in the light of the impact of Christianity in cultures beyond the western world.

Department of Sociology

SOC 341 – Race And Ethnicity (3)

M W 2-3:15 CAB 316

Instructor: Milton Vickerman

This course provides a graduate level introduction to the field of Race and Ethnicity. As such, it attempts to cover a broad spectrum of topics, focusing on the theoretical and consequential aspects of conceptions of race and ethnicity. Of necessity, the course also has a historical focus, since modern-day debates over race are strongly conditioned by the past. Moreover, to really understand issues of race and ethnicity, we must take a cross-cultural perspective, since these debates have often been skewed by a focus on the wrenching problems produced by racial/ethnic conflict in the United States. By adopting these perspectives, the course seeks to provide insight into the complexities that surround issues of race and ethnicity.

SOC 410 - African American Communities (3)

T R 3:30-4:45 CAB 123

Instructor: M. 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)

W 1-4:30 CAB 338

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.

Studies in Women and Gender

SWAG 325 – Gender and African Religions (3)

T R 11-12:15 BRN 328

Instructor: Isabel Mukonyora

The aim is to bring together reading material on different religious traditions of Africa including (Christianity and Islam) from which we can learn about some of the ways religion shapes attitudes to gender in contemporary African societies. African creation myths and examples of ritual behavior, will be used to shed light on concepts of gender that explain both the oppression and ritual 'power' in traditional societies. This will be followed by seminar work led by students on different chapters of Mukonyora's forthcoming book on the impact of colonial conquest on changing attitudes to sexuality in the modern African society of Zimbabwe. Group discussions led by students will be a regular feature of this class that ends with an overview of the challenges that face women in modern African societies where religious movements are widespread.

Swahili

SWAH 101 – Introductory Swahili (3)

M W F 10-10:50 PV8 103

Instructor:

Introduces the most widely spoken indigenous language of East-Central Africa. Focuses on speaking, comprehension, reading and writing skills, and the language in its cultural context.

SWAH 102 – Intermediate Swahili (3)

M W F 12-12:50 PV8 103

Instructor:

No description available.

University Seminar

USEM 171/0020 – The Black and White 60’s (2)

T 3:30-5:30 PV8

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.