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 society and culture through film, literary works, and scholarly books and articles. The course examines the geography, population, religious beliefs, visual culture, popular music, and gender discourses in Senegalese contexts.

This course will equip students to critically analyze key issues in African and African diaspora socio-cultural and political thought through readings, lectures, film and assigned research.

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 study abroad course introduces students to the art and culture of the East African region, where the Swahili language is spoken most. It applies cultural skills studies and language theories to gain intercultural and interpersonal understanding and increase awareness of African critical issues, including politics, culture, socioeconomic, and education in a multi-ethnic society by engaging with the Pwani University students, the hosting Campus and its environs.

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.

This seminar aims to engage with theoretical debates in the field of Africana Studies with a focus on key theoretical approaches to selected thematic issues as they pertain to people of African descent in Africa and the African Diaspora.

Introduction to important scholarship on colonialism in Africa, especially in its cultural manifestations (education, arts, sport, religion, health)

This interdisciplinary course explores how literature and artistic expression in postcolonial Islamic Africa reflect the histories and politics of multicultural encounter. In addition to reading seminal texts on cosmopolitanism, this course engages students with Muslim African literature, cassette culture, popular music, and film in Muslim Africa. It explores critical issues of religious identity, education, gender, race, epistemology, and the sacred/secular divide in African Islamic contexts and from both an interdisciplinary and cosmopolitan perspective.

This seminar pursues professional development through three aims. First, through readings and guided exercises, students are able to implement tools related to the teaching craft with a focus on teaching philosophies and pedagogy, syllabi development, and lesson planning. Second, students will discuss topics related to job placement and professional dynamics within academia, with a particular focus on issues faced by underrepresented faculty. Third, guest lectures curated to student interests.

This graduate seminar aims to empower students to critically assess their understanding of race, gender, and social justice, emphasizing strategies for effecting change through community activism and social media. The course entails curated readings, discussions, and analyses of pivotal works on activism, race, gender, and social change in Africa. Students will explore theoretical frameworks and methodologies, culminating in a theory-driven paper on a relevant issue in race, gender, social justice, and social media.

This seminar explores contemporary debates in the field of International Development Studies (IDS) with a particular focus on those pertaining to gender, masculinities, human rights, and sexuality drawing on empirical developments in Africa.

The African policy makers and institutions have therefore been caught up in a complex language policy and planning problem complicated by a legacy of colonial languages considered superior and advanced. This course explores issues surrounding the politics of language in Africa from the creation of the imagined "nation-states" during colonization to the contemporary issues emanating from the realities of heterogeneous linguistic, ethnic, and cultural nations and continent.

This graduate-level course is structured as a reading seminar where we will collectively examine significant academic texts on the 'great American city', looking at themes of race, place, class, crisis, and renewal that have attended urbanism, primarily focused on the US. Readings will examine cities that include Detroit, Oakland, Chicago, and Baltimore. Themes include urban de-industrialization and renewal, disinvestment, the politics of activism and power, public housing, and environmental toxicity.

The course is designed to offer students a deep historical exploration of the experiences of African Americans in the southern US states from the end of the American Civil War through the twentieth century. Much attention is given to activism, gender, labor, and community formation, as well as the ever-evolving nature of Black identities in the South and the larger nation. Additionally, the course examines the centrality of migration to the African American experience.

This course explores the genealogy of Black feminist and womanist thought as intersecting theoretical frameworks. We will investigate the expansion of womanist thought from a theologically dominated discourse to a broader category of critical reflection associated with Black feminism, analyze the relationship between the two, and review their historical interventions.

This course is designed to give students a broad-ranging historical perspective on the migration and settlement of African peoples in various parts of the world, largely over the past three centuries. Based on selected readings, students will study and compare the ways in which people of African descent have created cultural and geographic communities outside of Africa, especially in the pre- and post-emancipation societies of the Americas.

This course explores key philosophical, theoretical and intellectual aspects of Pan-Africanism and Black Internationalism in the diaspora with emphasis on their expression in the Americas. We emphasize the work of individuals, organizations, and movements and the development of Pan-Africanism beginning with the era of African independence up to the contemporary period. We engage in close readings of texts and identify ideas that shaped Pan-Africanism and Black Internationalism in the last quarter of the 20th century.

A graduate-level introduction to the renderings of black feminist thought within various modalities of ethnographic practice and representation over time and across the African Diaspora. Explores how black feminists have understood and pushed disciplinary boundaries through their innovations in method and theory. The course centers black feminist contributions to intellectual debates and artistic craft in the social sciences and humanities, often blurring the division between artist and scholar.

Rather than prescribing a singular approach to Africana/Black Studies research, this graduate-level survey course celebrates the methodological innovations that have deepened our understanding of the modern world through the lens of Black experience. Featured is a selection of representative works by scholars who, in their time, advanced and troubled traditional disciplinary conventions in the social sciences and humanities to create new ways of knowing.

This seminar introduces students to the study of constitutionalism with a focus on contemporary Africa. It pays particular attention to the implications of constitutional making and remaking to institutional and political arrangements, and practices. Additionally, it explores the effects of constitutional developments to the land question, climate change, gender equality, the protection of human rights, and undercurrents of horizontal and social democratic accountability in terms of modalities of public power.

This course examines the historical evolution of Black nationalist and Pan-Africanist ideologies and movements since the late nineteenth century. It is particularly concerned with the persistence of separatist political trends and cultural expressions among people of African descent across the diaspora(s), as well as the emergence and development of continental Pan-Africanism, decolonization movements, and Afro-Caribbean political projects.

This seminar examines historical dynamics of Black social movements in Africa and the African diaspora. The focus is on ideologies and practices of political imagination and organization in different times and places.

This graduate seminar examines the ways that reproductive healthcare access and health itself are shaped by social, racial, and economic inequalities in our society and others. Of particular interest will be the ways that negotiations over reproduction shed light on broader social conflicts, exposing the importance of centering questions of reproduction in social theory. The geographic focus of this course is Africa and the United States.

This graduate level course surveys some of the seminal texts that have shaped the study of enslaved and free Black women and girls in the African Diaspora. Throughout the semester, students will explore how enslaved and free Black women's lived experiences disrupt traditional centering of any nation's borders. This course will also explore how feminist methods have both challenged and transformed the study of slavery in pursuit of new narritive frames and distinct archival methods.

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.

This course is an introduction to Yoruba and is intended for students with no prior knowledge of the language and culture of Yorubaland. The course emphasizes spoken and written Yoruba, as used in present day West Africa. At the end of this course, students are expected to reach Novice High according to the American Council Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) proficiency guidelines.

It introduces more advanced grammar and emphasizes more fluency in speaking, reading, and writing in standard Yoruba. The course develops students understanding of the Yoruba culture and the West African people who use Yoruba as the language of wider communication. To learn the Yoruba language and culture, students cover a wide range of socioeconomic and political topics including greetings, nutrition, health, housing, business and political leadership.

Intermediate Yoruba III is a continuation of Elementary Yoruba. It is the first of two intermediate level courses of the language. Students taking this course are assumed to have taken Yoruba Elementary I & II where basic elements of Yoruba language and culture are introduced. Emphasis is placed on reinforcing the basic structures learned in Elementary Yoruba I and II through oral and aural activities and increasing the level of active vocabulary.