Department of African, African-American, and Diaspora Studies (GRAD)

This upper level seminar examines contemporary African politics with a focus on political trends in the post-1990s period.

This course provides an understanding of how poverty is defined, the consequences of poverty, and policies to reduce poverty. It explores the determinants of human development outcomes from an interdisciplinary perspective (with a heavy economics focus).

This course explores forms of filmic and photographic representation of and by Africans. An introduction to key concepts in social theory and their application to the field of media studies and ethnography is a primary focus.

This course explores major conceptual debates in the field of human rights. Further, it examines human rights practices and struggles in selected countries in Africa.

An exploration of musical articulations of African diasporic identity focusing on aesthetics, social fields of production, and the historical development of the diaspora concept around music.

Examines modern and contemporary African art (1940s to the present) for Africans on the continent and abroad. Examines tradition, cultural heritage, colonialism, postcolonialism, local versus global, nationalism, gender, identity, diaspora.

This upper-level seminar focuses on debates in international development studies exploring theories and policies of development, particularly those pertaining to gender, sexuality, masculinities, and women's political agency in contemporary Africa.

This course provides an overview of Senegalese culture through movies, literary works, and scholarly books and articles. The course examines the geography, population, ethnic composition, thoughts and religious beliefs, arts and music, polygamy, status of women, and the impact of the tariqas or Sufi orders on people's daily lives.

This course will equip students to analyze critically cutting-edge issues concerning Africa today through readings, lectures, and research. For junior/senior majors and students with an interest in Africa.

This course is an introduction to the languages of Africa. No linguistics background is required. Topics include classification, characteristic linguistic features of African languages, and their role in their respective societies.

An examination of major intellectual trends in African American life from the 19th to the early 21st century.

This course will provide students the opportunity to compare and contrast how race, especially Blackness, and ethnicity are constructed across the globe as well as how race, politics, and policy interact in various countries. We will examine the phenomena of race and ethnicity in the political development of several countries including the U.S., South Africa, France, Australia, Brazil, and several others.

This course interrogates the diverse representations that black women personified on screen, investigates intersections between their off-screen lives and on-screen images, and explores what and how they contributed to the cinema industry. This course is a theoretical, critical, and historical examination of the black woman's cinematic experience.

Examines the divide between literacy- and orality-based modes of self-expression and cultural production, and the effects of this fault line on the African American struggle for inclusion and self-definition in the United States.

Examines race, culture, and politics in Brazil from historical and contemporary perspectives. Focuses on dynamics of race, gender, class, and nation in shaping Brazilian social relations.

The course is designed to give students a simulated experience of ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative research. Students are led through a learning experience where they will examine black activism in Cuba from historical and contemporary perspectives.

This course examines constructions of race and gender in a comparative framework from the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Students will explore how people across the Atlantic understood visual differences and human diversity in emerging concepts of race. Students will also focus on how inhabitants of Africa, Europe, North America, and South America constructed the category of "woman" and "man" and the constraints and liberties these constructions imposed.

Explores performance traditions in African American music, tracing development from African song through reels, blues, gospel, and contemporary vernacular expression. Focuses on continuity, creativity, and change within African American aesthetics. Previously offered as FOLK 610/AAAD 432.

This course uses social science approaches to explore the development of black feminist thought and activism in diverse cultural and national contexts. Students will gain knowledge of black feminist thought writing and activism in Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States.

Examines the ways African art appears in United States popular culture (advertisements, magazines, toys, films, art) to generate meanings about Africa. Addresses intersecting issues of nationalism, multiculturalism, imperialism, nostalgia, and race. Restricted to sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

In this seminar students will examine primary documents of engaged scholarship written by Africans and people of African descent in the Americas, Europe, and elsewhere in the African Diaspora.

This course examines how questions of democracy and human rights have been conceptualized in African Diaspora communities in the Americas and Europe.

This course is designed to give students a broad-ranging, interpretative perspective on-and analytical tools for studying-the migration and settlement of African peoples in various parts of the world, largely over the past several centuries. Based on selected secondary readings, students will study and compare the ways in which people of African descent have created political, cultural, and territorial communities in Africa and beyond the continent, especially in the slave and post-emancipation societies of the Americas.

Examines the origins of race in America, the relationship of racial oppression to class struggle at key points in American history, the proliferation of versions of the concept of privilege, and approaches to eliminating class and racial privilege.

This course introduces concepts and themes on the development of urbanism in the "Global South". Students engage with current debates over urbanism in the Global South, including looking at urban inequalities in contemporary cities. Through the course, students will be able to compare and critically analyze formations of contemporary urbanism in selected cities in the Global South from a comparative perspective.

Permission of the department. Beginning of mentored research on an honors thesis. Required of all candidates for graduation with honors in African, African American, and Diaspora studies.

Permission of the department. Completion of an honors thesis under the direction of a member of the faculty. Required of all candidates for graduation with honors in African, African American, and Diaspora studies.

The course introduces the essential elements of the Chichewa language. Emphasis is on speaking and writing grammatically acceptable Chichewa and on aspects of central African culture.

Emphasis is on speaking and writing grammatically acceptable Chichewa to a proficiency level that will enable the student to live among the Chichewa-speaking people of central southern Africa.

Continued instruction in Chichewa following the materials introduced in CHWA 401 and 402.

Introduces the essential elements of Lingala structure and vocabulary and aspects of African cultures. Aural comprehension, reading, speaking, and writing are stressed.

Continues the introduction of the essential elements of Lingala structure and vocabulary and aspects of African cultures. Aural comprehension, reading, speaking, and writing are stressed.

This courses increases language learning ability, communicative proficiency, and proficiency in the cultures of the Lingala-speaking people.

This course reinforces language learning ability, communicative proficiency in the culture of the Lingala-speaking people through gradual exposure to more challenging tasks, with emphasis on poetry and prose reading, and creative writing.

This course is the first part of Elementary Swahili. Students will be introduced to the basic elements of Standard Swahili language and culture. At the end of this course, students are expected to reach Novice High according to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) proficiency guidelines. In addition to Swahili language, students are exposed to topics on socioeconomic issues in East Africa, for example, greetings and social norms, nutrition and housing.

This course is a continuation of Elementary Swahili I. It introduces more advanced grammar, emphasizes more fluency in speaking, reading, and writing in standard Swahili. The course develops students understanding of the Swahili culture and the East African people who use Swahili as the language of wider communication. Students develop an understanding and appreciation of languages and cultures other than their own.

This course is the first part of Intermediate Swahili. Students taking this course are assumed to have taken Swahili Elementary I & II where basic elements of Standard Swahili language and culture are introduced. The course is designed to further help students improve their fluency with emphasis on reading, writing, speaking and listening. Further, students make some comparisons between their cultures and the culture of Swahili speaking people and the East African people in general.

SWAH 404 is designed to further help students improve their fluency with particular emphasis on reading, writing, speaking, and listening. At this level students discuss varied issues in East Africa including state and local government political and economic activities, kinship ties, transportation, and Swahili oral and written literature. Students are encouraged to use the knowledge acquired in their respective areas of specializations and personal experiences to make connections and comparisons.

Advanced Swahili aims at developing fluency and proficiency in Swahili language and students' understanding of the social, economic, and political situation and activities of the East African people. Further, the course is designed to develop the students' ability to describe events, express opinions, and compare what they learn in class with personal experience and knowledge in their respective fields of specialization using structured arguments.

This course reinforces and expands the grammatical, cultural, and communicative competence achieved in SWAH 405.

SWAH 408 explores contemporary health issues and other current affairs in Africa. The course is designed to help students understand the basic health issues in Africa as well as develop their language skills in reading, listening, comprehension and writing of Swahili language. Further, students will examine how language and culture impact beliefs and behaviors, and how together, these impact health interventions.

WOLO 401 (Elementary Wolof I) is appropriate for beginners with no background in the language.

WOLO 402 (Elementary Wolof 2) is appropriate for learners who have completed (or placed successfully out of) WOLO 401.

WOL 403 is appropriate for learners who have completed (or successfully placed out of) Elementary Wolof 2.

WOL 404 is appropriate for learners who have completed Intermediate Wolof 1.

This course is intended for learners who have acquired Wolof proficiency in WOLO 403 and 404. It provides students with the communication and linguistic skills needed to communicate fluently at the near-native level.

This course is intended for learners who have acquired Wolof proficiency in WOLO 405. It provides students with the advanced communication and linguistic skills needed to communicate fluently at the native level.