Spring 2012 Courses

African-American and African Studies Program

AAS1020 Crosscurrents in the African Diaspora(4)

Instructor: Claudrena Harold

Tues/Thurs. 12:30-1:45PM

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 inquiry, and then proceeds to focus on a number of inter-related themes: patterns 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.

AAS 3250 Motherlands: Landscapes of Hunger, Futures of Plenty(3)

Combined with SWAG/AMST/GDS 3250

Instructor: Kendra Hamilton

Mon./Wed. 11:00-11:50AM (Discussion section required) 

This course explores the legacy of the "hidden wounds" left upon the landscape by plantation slavery along with the visionary work of ecofeminist scholars and activists daring to imagine an alternative future. Readings, guest lectures, and field trips illumine the ways in which gender, race, and power are encoded in historical, cultural, and physical landscapes associated with planting/extraction regimes such as tobacco, mining, sugar, and corn.

AAS3500 South African Literature(3)

Instructor: Barbara Boswell

Tues./Thurs. 11:00AM-12:15PM

This course critically examines key South African novels in English, noting the ways in which selected writers engaged racial segregation and the growing disenfranchisement of black citizens during apartheid, and write the new South Africa during the transition from apartheid to democracy. It focuses on prominent South African texts published throughout the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st Century, noting how writers have critiqued apartheid, as well as emerging nationalisms and the nation-building projects of post-apartheid South Africa. Novels may include: Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi (1913), Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country (1948), J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), Njabulo Ndebele’s Fools and Other Stories (1984), Lauretta Ngcobo’s And They Didn’t Die (1989), Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying (1995), Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother (1998), Zoë Wicomb’s David’s Story (2000), and Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow (2001).

AAS 3559-001 African Worlds Through Biography and Autobiography(3)

Instructor: Lisa Shutt

Thurs. 3:30-6:00PM

This course examines an array of African cultural worlds from the perspective of a variety of different life story genres. We will be addressing biography, autobiography, autofiction, memoirs, diaries, biographical documentary film and various artistic representations. Some critics claim that such genres, concentrating on the “individual” in Western terms, are not appropriate for representing African experiences of personhood. While critically examining these genres as well as the authorship of texts, we will also be examining representations of worldviews, social and political structures and organization, conceptualizations of time and space, social change, gender, kinship, ritual, etc. through the lens of each life history and joined by supplemental historical and ethnographic readings.  For each life narrative we examine, we will ask what authors are seeking to transmit. Reality? Truth? Or something else?  We will also ask what reading audiences expect to receive from such narratives. We will discuss whether the narratives we address are stories expressing the uniqueness of particular individuals or whether they are representative lifeways of members of particular socio-political groups.

AAS 3559-002 Black Protest Narrative(3)

Instructor: Marlon Ross

Tues./Thurs. 9:30-10:45AM

This course studies modern racial protest expressed through African American narrative art (fiction, autobiography, film) from the 1930s to 1980s, focusing on Civil Rights, Black Power, Black Panthers, womanism, and black gay/lesbian liberation movements.  We explore the media, forms, and theories of modern protest movements, how they shaped and have been shaped by literature and film.  What does it mean to lodge a protest in artistic form?  What is the relation between political protest and aesthetic form?  Some themes include lynching, segregation, sharecropping, anti-Semitism, black communism, migration, urbanization, religion (including Nation of Islam), crime and policing, normative and queer sexualities, war and military service, cross-racial coalitions, and the role of the individual in social change.  Some major works include Richard Wright’s Native Son, Angelo Herndon’s Let Me Live, Ann Petry’s The Street, James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Stride toward Freedom, Alice Walker’s Meridian, Bobby Seale’s Seize the Time, and Audre Lorde’s Zami, as well as pertinent readings in history, literary criticism, journalism, and sociology.  We’ll study the cross-over film No Way Out, the black exploitation film Superfly, and black independent films Killer of Sheep and Tongues Untied.   Requirements include heavy reading schedule, midterm, final exam, and reading journal.

AAS 3559-003 Martin Luther King Jr.'s Political Thought(3)

Instructor: Justin Rose

Tues./Thurs. 2:00-3:15PM

The course would be an interdisciplinary examination of King's speeches, sermons and writings in order to explicate his political thought. In order to better understand King's thought, we would explore the historical traditions that he was a part of including: African-American Christianity; African-American political thought; American political thought and the African diasporic tradition. Furthermore, we would place him in conversation with his contemporaries to compare and contrast his views with moderates, militants and women. The course would conclude by thinking about the importance of King's political thought for our current political moment.

AAS 3559-004 Insiders and Outsiders in Africa(3)

Instructor: Lisa Shutt

Wed. 3:30-6:00PM

This course deals with different kinds of insiders and outsiders throughout the African continent. We will examine the multiplicity of ways that different cultural worlds understand "belonging." By examining topics such ideas as citizenship, colonization, ethnicity, race, work, migration, the construction of the urban/rural relationship, and borders and boundaries, we will explore how group membership is differently constructed and understood in different African spaces. We will also examine the way exclusion and ostracization has been used as a tool in constructing identity and understandings of personhood in contrast to outsider groups within various African cultural worlds.

AAS 4500 Racial Geographies(3)

Instructor: K. Ian Grandison

Thurs. 6:30-9:00PM

Combined with AMST 4500

This course focuses on how geographic knowledge has been shaped by the negotiation of power among social groups. It delineates the notion of "racial geography" using the state of Virginia—in its past and present configurations—as a frame of reference. How have concepts of race shaped the rise of Virginia, as a crown colony and a commonwealth? Assignments include readings; map interpretation; individual and group projects; midterm & final essay.

AAS 4501 Black Power (3)

Instructor: Claudrena Harold

Tues. 3:30-6:00PM

Over the course of the semester, students will examine African Americans’ multidimensional struggle for cultural, economic, and political empowerment during the second half of the 20th century. Much of the class will focus on the 1960s and 1970s; however, previous and subsequent periods will also be analyzed.  Students should leave this class with not only a broader knowledge of  “Black Power” as a cultural, political, and ideological movement, but also with a more nuanced understanding of the research methods and interpretive frameworks utilized by historians, as well as other social scientists, interested in Black Power in particular and the Black freedom struggle in general.   Students will also have the opportunity to further develop their research skills and techniques through a series of assignments designed to assist them in identifying research topics and questions, interpreting primary and secondary texts, and substantiating arguments with “sound” evidence.

This course will also focus on the local dimension of Black Power by engaging student activism on UVA’s campus between 1968 and 1984. Significant attention will be given to students’ fight for a Black Studies department at UVA, their massive demonstrations against racial apartheid in South Africa, and their general struggle to make the University a more egalitarian place.

AAS 4570 That's Ghetto!: Blackness and the Modern American City(3)

Instructor: Kwame Holmes

Tues. 3:30-6:30PM

This course explores the relationship between black identity and urbanization during the long "modern" era in United States history.  We will engage a mixture of fiction, film, music, primary documents and interdisciplinary secondary readings to investigate the tension between the idea of the "big city" as the center of American modernity and the racialization of American cities as Black territory over the course of the 20th century.  As we explore scholarly and popular treatments of the "Great Migration," interwar Black urbanization, postwar suburbanization, the coming of the "urban crisis" and the consequences of contemporary gentrification our class will also engage the critical role urbanization has played within contemporary imaginings of Black identity.  Students will be responsible for a 20-25 page primary research paper that focuses on a city of their choosing, but which explores one of the class's central themes.

AAS 4570 Popular Cultures of Black Atlantic(3)

Instructor: Tyler Fleming

Mon. 3:30-6:00PM

This course examines the development of diverse forms of black poplar cultures – including music, dance, film, literature, theatre, sports and visual arts – across Africa and throughout the African Diaspora.  Over the course of the semester, the course traces the development of popular cultures across the Black Atlantic from the 18th century to the ubiquitous cultures of today.  One particular emphasis will be on how popular cultures transcend borders and foster creative dialogues between black peoples throughout Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe. .

AAS 4993 - Independent Study (1-3)

Allows students to work on an individual research project. Students must propose a topic to an appropriate faculty member, submit a written proposal for approval, prepare an extensive annotated bibliography on relevant readings comparable to the reading list of a regular upper-level course, and complete a research paper of at least 20 pages.

American Studies

AMST 2220 - Race, Identity and American Studies Visual Culture(3)

Carmenita Higginbotham

Tues./Thurs. 9:30-10:45AM

This course surveys the role that visual culture played in constructing racial and ethnic identities in the United States from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. Debates about immigration, nationalism, labor and urbanism will be explored through an examination of critical texts and images (including advertisements, cartoons, films, paintings and photographs.) Importantly, the course will encourage students to engage with theoretical, ideological and aesthetic concerns regarding ethnicity, race, class and gender across media.

Department of Anthropology

ANTH 2156 PEOPLES AND CULTURES OF AFRICA (3)

Instructor: Ivar Hultin

Tues./Thurs. 12:30-1:20PM

This course draws on critical theory to examine social issues and development in Africa. It explores the general contours of European colonialism, national independence, and the position of African states in today's global economic order. The course exposes students to various theories of underdevelopment and draws on case studies (Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa) to discuss issues related to race, class, labor, gender, trade & HIV/AIDS.

ANTH 3880 AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGY (3)

Instructor: Adria Laviolette

Mon./Wed./Fri. 11:00-11:50AM

In this class we survey archaeological knowledge that spans the enormous chronological range of human life on the African continent, from the underpinnings of the Early Stone Age over 2 million years ago, up through European and Arab colonization, the Atlantic diaspora, and post-apartheid South Africa. The class will feature socioeconomic, technological, and cultural transformations in the African past that we know through archaeology, as they inform us about everything from daily life to belief systems to the emergence of states. We will feature important archaeological sites and discoveries that changed our understanding of the African past. The politics and ethics of doing archaeology in Africa, and a multidisciplinary approach to the African past, are topics discussed throughout the course.

Architectural History

Art History

Department of Drama

DRAM 3070 - African American Theatre (3)

Instructor: Theresa Davis

Tues./Thurs. 2:00-3:15PM

Presents a comprehensive study of “Black Theatre” as the African-American contribution to the theatre. Explores the historical, cultural, and socio-political underpinnings of this theatre as an artistic form in American and world culture. Students gain a broader understanding of the relationship and contributions of this theatre to theatre arts, business, education, lore, and humanity. A practical theatrical experience is a part of the course offering.

Department of English

ENLT 2547 Black Writers in America--Black Migration(3)

Instructor: Sonya Donaldson

Mon./Wed. 5:00-6:15PM

Farah Jasmine Griffin uses the term “migration narratives” to discuss texts that embody the African-American experience of migration from the South to the North (and West). This course expands on Griffin’s concept to examine texts that address the migration experience of the African Diaspora to and within the United States.

ENLT 2457 Black Writers in America--Black Women Writers(3)

Instructor: Jean Franzino

Tues./Thurs. 11:00AM-12:15PM

Beginning with Thomas Jefferson’s infamous words on enslaved woman poet Phillis Wheatley--“Religion, indeed, has produced a Phillis Wheatley; but it could not produce a poet”--this course will trace the trajectory of black women’s writing in America and its relation to the nation’s political, social, and literary milieu. We will explore a range of genres, from slave narrative, to novel, to poetry, to drama, to personal essay, with some supplementary readings from the fields of literary and cultural studies. The focus throughout will be on honing close reading, argumentation, and discussion skills. Along the way, we will consider such questions as: What can these texts tell us about the canons of “American,” “African-American,” and “women’s” literature? How do their stylistic devices convey, critique, or challenge elements of American history and culture? How do the racial and gendered identities depicted in these works intersect with ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and disability? Finally, what do these texts have to say about issues as varied as passing, reproduction and mothering, authorship, citizenship, and work? Possible authors include Harriet Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ntozake Shange, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison, and Jamaica Kincaid.

ENMC 3500 - South African Literature During Apartheid and Beyond

Instructor: Barbara Boswell

Tues./Thurs. 11:00AM-12:15PM

This course critically examines key South African novels in English, noting the ways in which selected writers engaged racial segregation and the growing disenfranchisement of black citizens during apartheid, and write the new South Africa during the transition from apartheid to democracy. It focuses on prominent South African texts published throughout the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st Century, noting how writers have critiqued apartheid, as well as emerging nationalisms and the nation-building projects of post-apartheid South Africa. Novels may include: Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi (1913), Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country (1948), J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), Njabulo Ndebele’s Fools and Other Stories (1984), Lauretta Ngcobo’s And They Didn’t Die (1989), Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying (1995), Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother (1998), Zoë Wicomb’s David’s Story (2000), and Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow (2001).

ENAM 3559 - Black Protest Narrative(3)

Instructor: Marlon Ross

Tues./Thurs. 9:30-10:45AM

I This course studies modern racial protest expressed through African American narrative art (fiction, autobiography, film) from the 1930s to 1980s, focusing on Civil Rights, Black Power, Black Panthers, womanism, and black gay/lesbian liberation movements. We explore the media, forms, and theories of modern protest movements, how they shaped and have been shaped by literature and film. What does it mean to lodge a protest in artistic form? What is the relation between political protest and aesthetic form? Some themes include lynching, segregation, sharecropping, anti-Semitism, black communism, migration, urbanization, religion (including Nation of Islam), crime and policing, normative and queer sexualities, war and military service, cross-racial coalitions, and the role of the individual in social change. Some major works include Richard Wright’s Native Son,Angelo Herndon’s Let Me Live,Ann Petry’s The Street, James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Stride toward Freedom, Alice Walker’s Meridian, Bobby Seale’s Seize the Time, and Audre Lorde’s Zami, as well as pertinent readings in history, literary criticism, journalism, and sociology. We’ll study the cross-over film No Way Out, the black exploitation film Superfly, and black independent films Killer of Sheep and Tongues Untied. Requirements include heavy reading schedule, midterm, final exam, and reading journal.

ENCR 4500- Race in American Places (3)

Instructor: K. Ian Grandison

Mon. 6:30-9:00PM

Combined with AAS 4500

This interdisciplinary seminar uses the method of Critical Landscape Analysis to explore how everyday places and spaces, “landscapes,” are involved in the negotiation of power in American society.Landscapes, as we engage the idea, may encompass seemingly private spaces (the inner precincts of a suburban bungalow or of a government subsidized apartment) to seemingly public spaces (the “occupied” vest-pocket park in downtown Manhattan); the pedestrian mall-- with its many privately operated outdoor cafes--that occupies the path where East Main Street once flowed freely in Charlottesville; the airwaves--FM and AM radio signals that the FCC is supposed to regulate in the public’s interest. We unearth the ways in which places are planned, designed, constructed, and mythologized to assert and sustain social (especially racial) distinctions, deference, and hierarchy. You will be moved to understand, for instance, how publicly financed freeways represent for some citizens modern progress and for other citizens a means of denying rights, protections, and opportunities we usually think of as "American." We interrogate written and non-written representations of landscapes. Most important we interrogate our direct sensory, intellectual, and even emotional experience of landscapes during three mandatory field trips to such local places as the Foster/Canada memorial park on the South Lawn. You will never again experience places you encounter from day to day as merely familiar!

Department of French Language & Literature

FREN 4811 - Francophone Literature of Africa(3)

Instructor: Kandioura Drame

Mon./Wed./Fri. 11:00-11:50AM

This course is an introduction to the Francophone literature of Africa, a survey with special emphasis on the post-World War II poets, novelists, and playwrights of Africa. The role of cultural and literary reviews (Légitime Défense, L'Etudiant noir, and Présence Africaine) in the historical and ideological development of this literature will be examined. Special reference will be made to Caribbean writers of the Negritude movement. Documentary videos on African history and cultures will be shown and important audio-tapes will be played regularly. Supplementary texts will be assigned occasionally. Students will be expected to present response papers on a regular basis.

In addition to the required reading material, 2 essays (60%), regular class attendance, and contribution to discussions (10%), and a final exam (30%) constitute the course requirements. Papers are due on the dates indicated on the syllabus.

Required reading:

• Diop, Birago. Les contes d’adou Koumba .
• Chevrier, J. Anthologie Africaine: Poésie.
• Bâ, Maria. Une si longue lettre.
• Assia Djebar. Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (Toolkit).
• Boudjedra, Rachid. L'escargot entêté.

Department of History

HIAF 2002 - Modern African History(3)

Instructor: John Edwin Mason

Tues./Thurs.11:00AM-12:15PM

HIAF explores the history of Africa from the decline of the Atlantic slave trade, in the early nineteenth century, to the present. Our goal is to examine the historical roots of the continent's present condition. We look at the slave trade and its consequences, the European conquest of most of the African continent, African resistance to colonial rule, and the reestablishment of African independence.

We will concentrate on three regions: West Africa, especially Nigeria; Central Africa, especially the Congo and Rwanda; and southern Africa, especially South Africa. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which colonialism affected ordinary Africans and to the various strategies that Africans employed to resist, subvert, and accommodate European domination.

HIAF 2002 is an introductory course and assumes no prior knowledge of African history. There will be two blue book exams -- a mid-term and a final -- and periodic quizzes on the readings

 

HIUS 3559 - Witnessing Slavery (3)

Instructor: Kirt von Daacke

Mon./Wed. 3:00-4:15PM

This course examines the history of slaves and slavery in eighteenth and nineteenth century America as revealed by the testimony of slaves themselves. It focuses on important roles slavery and changing notions of race have played in American history, the endurance of African culture in America, African-American agency, and how African-Americans developed their own ideas about work, family, culture, community, and power. Students will develop their own body of research through extended analysis of slave narratives and interviews.

HIUS 3671 - History of the Civil Rights Movement (3)

Instructor: Julian Bond

Tues. 3:30-5:30PM

This course will examine the origins, philosophies, tactics, events, personalities and consequences of the southern civil rights movement from 1900 to the mid-‘1960s. The movement, largely composed of grass-roots unknowns, was based on a culture of resistance instilled by racially restrictive laws and customs institutionalized by the resistant white South following the demise of Reconstruction. By employing a variety of tactics, at the end of the ‘60s decade, it had won impressive victories against state-sanctioned discrimination. Readings, lectures and videos will be the basis for the final examination. Students will be required to write two short papers. The final grade will be determined on the basis of the two papers (25% each), the final examination (30%), and discussion section participation (20%).

Texts required: Bond, Julian and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, Thompson Learning Custom Publishing; Forman, James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, University of Washington Press; Wilkins, Roy with Tom Matthews, Standing Fast, Da Capo.

HIUS 4501 - Black Power (4)

Instructor: Claudrena Harold

Tues. 3:30-6:00PM

Over the course of the semester, students will examine African Americans’ multidimensional struggle for cultural, economic, and political empowerment during the second half of the 20th century. Much of the class will focus on the 1960s and 1970s; however, previous and subsequent periods will also be analyzed. Students should leave this class with not only a broader knowledge of “Black Power” as a cultural, political, and ideological movement, but also with a more nuanced understanding of the research methods and interpretive frameworks utilized by historians, as well as other social scientists, interested in Black Power in particular and the Black freedom struggle in general. Students will also have the opportunity to further develop their research skills and techniques through a series of assignments designed to assist them in identifying research topics and questions, interpreting primary and secondary texts, and substantiating arguments with “sound” evidence.

This course will also focus on the local dimension of Black Power by engaging student activism on UVA’s campus between 1968 and 1984. Significant attention will be given to students’ fight for a Black Studies department at UVA, their massive demonstrations against racial apartheid in South Africa, and their general struggle to make the University a more egalitarian place.

 

HIUS 4591 U.Va. History: Race and Repair(3)

Instructor: Phyllis Leffler and E Dukes

Tues. 3:30-6:00PM

This special topics class will focus on the university and the surrounding community of Charlottesville with a special emphasis on issues of race. Students will explore the history of the University from its founding and construction to the late twentieth century, exploring both the documented history and the community’s perception of that history. Topics include:

• the early role of the enslaved in both building and maintaining the quality of life for students and faculty;
• U.Va.’s position and role during the Civil War;
• the evolution of the student body and surrounding communities in the era of Reconstruction and Jim Crow;
• the values of southern Progressivism;
• the place of eugenics at U.Va.;
• early efforts at racial and gender diversity and administrative responses;
• the acceptance of African American students and the responses of the Black Charlottesville community;
• employment practices during the twentieth century;
• issues of growth and their impact on communities; and
• how that history has and has not been represented on grounds and throughout the built environment.

This course will invite and encourage community members who have worked or lived in the surrounding area to help construct the forgotten or buried histories of university/community relations from their perspective. Students enrolled in the course will develop projects that actively engage members of the community, and will develop final products that serve the wider community needs for revealing and understanding this history.

Course readings will be available through Collab and will include published and unpublished essays, primary source documents, university published reports, newspaper articles, website materials. Reading will be heavier during the first half of the semester, allowing students more time to focus on research for group projects during the second half. Students will maintain analytic journals based on the readings, and will produce a final group project. Active class participation is critical.

Department of Music

MUSI 2120: History of Jazz Music(3-4)

Instructor: Scot DeVeaux

Tues./Thurs.11:00AM-12:15PM

A survey of jazz music from before 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century; important instrumental performers, composers, arrangers, and vocalists. No previous knowledge of music required.

MUSI 3090- Performance in Africa (4)

Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk

Tues./Thurs 4:00-4:50PM

This course explores performance in Africa through reading, discussion, audio and video examples, hands-on practice, and – new this semester – teaching and performing with local school children. The course meets together with MUSI 3690 (African Drumming and Dance Ensemble), but is a full academic course. Students in Music 3090 are automatically part of the UVA African Music and Dance Ensemble. Your role in the Ensemble as learner and performer is crucial to your overall work in the course. This semester, the Community Engagement initiative will involve students participating once a week in an after-school club, teaching and mentoring children from two area schools.

We will explore African music/dance styles – focusing on Ewe music from Ghana and Togo and BaAka music from the Central African Republic, but branching to other forms and genres – 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 politics and processes involved in translating performance practices from one cultural context to another. Each students’ personal relationship to the material/experience will be integrated into study. Readings, discussions, and written work will focus heavily on topics and issues related to the main music/dance traditions that we are learning to perform this semester, though we may venture beyond those areas from time to time. The course will explore both "traditional" and "popular" styles, leading us to question those categories.

There is an informal audition for this course. No experience is expected, just come to the first evening class meeting (5:15) ready to sing and dance (in groups).

Co-Prerequisite: MUEN 3690

Prerequisite: Instructor permission

Department of Politics

PLAP 3700 - Racial Politics (3)

Instructor: Lynn Sanders

Mon./Wed. 11:00-11:50AM

Examines how attributions of racial difference have shaped American Politics.  Topic include how race affects American political partisanship, campaigns and elections, public policy, public opinion, and American political science. Prerequisite: One course on PLAP or instructor permission.

Department of Psychology

Department of Religious Studies

RELA 2850 Afro- Creole Religions in the Americas(3)

Instructor: Jalane Schmidt

Tues/Thurs. 11:00-12:15PM

This survey course investigates African-inspired religious practices in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly in those religions--such as Haitian Vodou, Cuban Regla de Ocha (aka "Santería"), and Brazilian Candomblé--which are deemed emblematic of local African-descended populations and even entire New World societies. By reading ethnographies, we will compare common features of these religions-such as polytheism, initiatory secrecy, divination, possession trance, animal sacrifice-as well as differences--such as contrasting evaluations of the devotional use of material objects, relations with the dead, and the commoditization of ritual expertise. We will consider how devotees deploy the history of slavery and re-interpret African influences in their practices, and evaluate practitioners' and anthropologists' debates about terms such as "tradition," "modernity," "creole," and "syncretism."

RELA 4100 - Yoruba Religion(3)

Instructor: Ben Ray

Tues/Thurs. 9:30-10:45AM

An in-depth study of Yoruba religion through its oral traditions, ritual performances, traditional art, independent churches, and its representation in literature. The course will cover the following subjects: Ifa divination; sacred kingship; the orisha; the concept of supreme being; plays by Ijimere, Soyinka, and Osofisan; Yoruba art and aesthetics; concepts of personal destiny, final judgment, ancestors, and rebirth.. The course concludes with a brief introduction to Santeria.

RELG 3800 - African American Religious History(3)

Instructor: Valerie Cooper

Tues. 3:30-6:00PM

This course will explore African American religious traditions in their modern and historical contexts by combining an examination of current scholarship and contemporary worship. Over the course of the semester, we will explore the religious life and religious institutions of African Americans from their African antecedents to contemporary figures and movements in the US. While the course will emphasize the growth and spread of Evangelical Christianity among African Americans, it will also consider non-Christian influences—like Islam and African traditional religion—upon black churches and black communities. In considering the wide variety, popularity, economic strength, political leadership, and ubiquity of religious institutions in the African American community, we will ask what role religion plays for black people, and what role African American religious life plays in the broader scheme of American life.

Department of Sociology

Studies in Women and Gender

SWAG 3250 - MotherLands: Landscapes of Hunger, Futures of Plenty (Primary) (3)

Instructor: Kendra Hamilton

Mon./Wed. 11:00-11:50AM (discussion section required)

This course explores the legacy of the "hidden wounds" left upon the landscape by plantation slavery along with the visionary work of ecofeminist scholars and activists daring to imagine an alternative future. Readings, guest lectures, and field trips illumine the ways in which gender, race, and power are encoded in historical, cultural, and physical landscapes associated with planting/extraction regimes such as tobacco, mining, sugar, and corn. Meets the second writing requirement.