*Afro-American Studies 91r. Supervised Reading and Research
Catalog Number: 1269
K. Anthony Appiah and members of the Department
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Students wishing to enroll must petition the Head Tutor for approval, stating the proposed project, and must have permission of the proposed instructor. Ordinarily, students are required to have taken some coursework as background for their project.
*Afro-American Studies 97a (formerly Afro-American Studies 11). Topics in Afro-American Literature and Culture
Catalog Number: 1439 Enrollment: Limited to Afro-American Studies concentrators and others by permission of the instructor.
Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw
Half course (fall term). Th., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16
Topic in 2000–01: Issues of Biography & African American Art History. This course takes as its subject several texts that have been published in the last ten years and privilege the life of the artist over the work of art. To better understand the role that biographical knowledge plays in the assessment of artistic production, participants will interrogate oppositional texts, examine the work of Foucault and Barthes on issues of authorship, and discuss the importance of self-fashioning in artistic identity.
*Afro-American Studies 97b (formerly Afro-American Studies 12). Topics in Afro-American History and Society: Seminar
Catalog Number: 2393 Enrollment: Limited to Afro-American Studies concentrators, and others by permission of instructor.
J. Lorand Matory
Half course (spring term). W., 1–3. First class meeting 2/2 at 1pm in William James Hall 301. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Topic in 2000-01: West African Cultures. Introduces students to the history and cultures of West and West-Central Africa, which supplied the majority of the African captives taken to the Americas between the 16th and the 19th centuries. Yet these regions not only are foundational to numerous American cultures but also continue to engage the Americas in a mutually transformative dialogue over ethnic identities, gender relations, and
religious devotion in the 20th century. Thus, special attention is given to the ancient and ongoing
involvement of these regions in international politics and commerce.
Note: formerly Anthropology 147.
*Afro-American Studies 98 (formerly Afro-American Studies 98a). Tutorial
Catalog Number: 6272
K. Anthony Appiah and members of the tutorial staff
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Students wishing to enroll must petition the Head Tutor for approval, stating the proposed project, and must have the permission of the proposed instructor. Ordinarily, students are required to have taken some coursework as background for their project.
Prerequisite: Completion of Afro-American Studies 10, or a substitute course approved by the Head Tutor.
*Afro-American Studies 99. Tutorial — Senior Year
Catalog Number: 8654 Enrollment: Limited to honors candidates.
K. Anthony Appiah and members of the Department
Full course. Hours to be arranged.
Thesis supervision under the direction of a member of the Department.
Afro-American Studies 118. Africans, African-Americans and the Legacy of Slavery
Catalog Number: 7429
Anne C. Bailey
Half course (fall term). M., 12–2. EXAM GROUP: 5, 6
What role did Africans play in the Atlantic Slave Trade? What was the process of cultural transfer to New World communities and how have historians and others assessed the continuities between African and African-American cultures? These and other questions will bring to the forefront the central issue of African and African-American agency. Of equal importance will be discussion of the artistic, spiritual and material contributions of African American slaves as co-creators of New World institutions.
Books include important works in both history and literature: Walter Rodney, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Classic Slave Narratives to name just a few.
Note: Required of concentrators.
[Afro-American Studies 120. African-American Religious History]
Catalog Number: 2574
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Surveys the history of African-American religious institutions and beliefs from slavery to the present. Positions the diversity of African-American religious expression within the larger context of black social and political life. Topics include the transmission of African culture to the New World, religion under slavery, independent black churches, race relations, foreign missions, black nationalism, gender and class, and reform resistance.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02. Offered as Divinity 2370.
[Afro-American Studies 123. Race, Nation, and Democracy]
Catalog Number: 2596
Cornel West and Roberto Mangabeira Unger (Law School)
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Studies the relationship between the promotion of group rights and identities and the advancement of democratic experimentalism in social life. Addresses these issues in two settings: 1) the American experience and debate about racism and its relation to class divisions, and 2) the worldwide resurgence of nationalism and the role of the nation-state as an instrument for the expression either of actual national differences or of the will to develop such differences. Explores the consequences of democratic experimentalism and of the efforts of minority groups to establish a generalized politics and law of group identities and rights.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
Afro-American Studies 123z. American Democracy
Catalog Number: 2354
Roberto Mangabeira Unger (Law School)
Half course (spring term). Tu., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Considers, in an American setting, the contemporary meaning of the democratic idea, the relation of democratic government to the market economy as well as to the class, gender and racial divisions of society, and the alternative institutional futures of democracy. Two focal points for the argument of the course are: 1) the exploration of possible, more democratizing arrangements for the organization of government, the economy, and civil society, and 2) the changes in consciousness, culture, and education needed to sustain such arrangements. Seeing American problems and possibilities as variations on worldwide themes, the course asks what it would mean to sacrifice American “exceptionalism” to American experimentalism.
Note: Additional discussion hour scheduled weekly. Offered jointly with the Law School as 30500-11.
Afro-American Studies 124. Constructions of Identity
Catalog Number: 3341
K. Anthony Appiah
Half course (fall term). W., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
Examines the debates about the social construction of race, gender, and sexuality. After exploring some work on gender and on lesbian and gay identities, the course will focus, in particular, on the debates about the interaction between gender and sexuality, on the one hand, and race, on the other. Discussions will center around the claims in political theory for the relevance of these collective identities for conceptions of citizenship and of political life.
Afro-American Studies 124y. Race: A Conceptual Exploration Seminar
Catalog Number: 4852
K. Anthony Appiah
Half course (spring term). M., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
Human beings characteristically suppose that we come in various kinds. In classifying people into these kinds, different societies have used different sorts of properties. Beginning in the Enlightenment, European and American thinkers began to divide our species into a number of global kinds, relying more and more on modes of classification that were also applied to other animals. Membership in such global kinds as Negro, Caucasian, Mongoloid, Semitic, or Aryan was increasingly held to explain a very wide range of phenomena. In this course, we shall explore the ways in which these modern racial modes of classification have developed over the last three centuries, and look critically at some of the uses to which they have been put.
[Afro-American Studies 125. Philosophical Problems of Race and Racism]
Catalog Number: 3822
K. Anthony Appiah
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
“Race” is a central term in political debate, social theory and everyday life in our society. It is widely held to be important in large measure because of the history of what we call “racism” in the United States and more generally, in the modern world. Yet there is little reflection on and no consensus about how either “race” or “racism” should be understood. We shall explore three key questions: How are we to understand the term “race”? What is racism? and Why is racism wrong?
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
Afro-American Studies 126. Philosophical Perspectives on Issues of Race
Catalog Number: 7898 Enrollment: Limited to 25.
Tommie Shelby
Half course (fall term). Th., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 17, 18
Critically examines recent philosophical work on the themes of “race” and racism. Topics for discussion include the following: What is a “race” and do any exist? What does it mean to embrace or reject one’s racial identity? What is racism, and what makes it wrong? How should we, from the point of view of justice, respond to racism and the social problems it causes?
Afro-American Studies 127. Marxist Theories of Racism
Catalog Number: 3133 Enrollment: Limited to 25.
Tommie Shelby
Half course (spring term). Th., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 17, 18
Marx himself doesn’t say much about racism. However, many social theorists have attempted to extend Marx’s ideas to explain the phenomenon of racial oppression. This course critically examines several Marxist and neo-Marxist accounts of the theory of racial ideology, the relationship between class exploitation and racial subordination, and the role of capitalist development and expansion in perpetuatingracial inequality.
Afro-American Studies 131. Afro-American Literature to the 1920s
Catalog Number: 2589
Werner Sollors
Half course (fall term). M., W., (F.), at 10. Additional discussion hour scheduled every Friday at 10:00 a.m. EXAM GROUP: 3
Close readings of major writers in the context of cultural history. I) Literature and folk culture in the slavery period: Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Omar Ibn Said, Victor Séjour, Lydia Maria Child, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Wells Brown, Frank Webb, Martin Robison Delany, and Harriet Jacobs. II) “Post-bellum, pre-Harlem”: Charles W. Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Pauline Hopkins, W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and James Weldon Johnson.
[Afro-American Studies 132. Afro-American Literature from the 1920s to the Present]
Catalog Number: 3710
Werner Sollors
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Close readings of major 20th-century writers in the context of cultural history. (I) From the Harlem Renaissance to the Federal Writers’ Project: Locke, Toomer, McKay, Fauset, Schuyler, Hughes, Hurston, Wright. (II) From World War II to the present: Ellison, Petry, Baldwin, Hansberry, Jones/Baraka, Morrison, Reed, Johnson, Lee, Dove.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
[*Afro-American Studies 132z. Domestic Life in Literature: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 4074
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Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Compares the portrayal of life at home in the literature of writers from the “Metropole” (center of activity) and the writers from the “outlying” areas. Readings from the works of Merle Hodge, Myriam Warner-Vieyra, Jean Rhys, Maria Luisa Bombal, George Eliot, Colette, Charlotte Brönte, Virginia Woolf, and others.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
[Afro-American Studies 134. The Literature of Possession: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 4105
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Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Through literary accounts of historical events, the part that imagination played in the relationship between the possessor and possessions as Europeans “took possession” of the New World will be explored. Readings from the works of Christopher Columbus, Meriwether Lewis and William Clarke, Bernal Diaz, C.L.R. James, George Lamming, Marco Polo, V.S. Naipaul, and Salman Rushdie.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
Afro-American Studies 134y. Memory, Landscape and the African-American
Catalog Number: 3543
Jamaica Kincaid
Half course (spring term). Th., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16
A people will point to a landscape (the ruggedness of mountains, the lushness of their meadowlands,
the mighty flow of a river) to explain their national character. Is this so for the African in America? Readings include Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on Virginia,” Elizabeth Bishop, Slave Narratives of Frederick Douglass and Mary Prince, Derek Walcott Horace Walpole, John Milton among others.
[Afro-American Studies 134z. Reading Thomas Jefferson and The African in America]
Catalog Number: 9959
Jamaica Kincaid
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal....” The author of those words was Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States; but who might have needed them more, the author and President or a contemporary of his, a man he owned named Jupiter. A look through his writings into the world of Thomas Jefferson and the influence the enslaved African had upon him. Special attention will be paid to “The Declaration of Independence,” “Notes on the State of Virginia,” and “The Farm and Garden Book.”
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
[*Afro-American Studies 135. The Thought of W.E.B. Du Bois: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 5092
Cornel West
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Examines the key texts of one of the towering African-American intellectuals of the 20th century. Analyzes the classic works of W.E.B. Du Bois as well as reconstructs the varying contexts of these works.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
[Afro-American Studies 135z. James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry]
Catalog Number: 2175
Half course (fall term). Tu., 12–2. EXAM GROUP: 14, 15
Examines the major works—fiction and non-fiction—of these two towering figures. We shall explore their conceptions of what it means to be human, modern, American, and Black.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
[Afro-American Studies 137y. The African-American Literary Tradition]
Catalog Number: 1820
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Considers autobiography within the African American literary tradition from the slave narratives of Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass to contemporary narratives written by Nathan McCall, Brent Staples, and Stephen Carter.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
[*Afro-American Studies 137z (formerly English 90ut). Black Women and Their Fiction]
Catalog Number: 5145
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Intends to define the precise shape and contours of the tradition of black women’s writing in English. How do black women use language to represent their experiences? How does their writing resemble or diverge from the black male tradition? How does black feminist theory differ from white feminist theory?
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
[Afro-American Studies 138. Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 6227
Werner Sollors
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Investigates the development of Wright’s sociological and Hurston’s anthropological imagination, with special emphasis on gender, politics, and literary form. Readings include most published and some unpublished writings, against the background of criticism.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
[Afro-American Studies 138z. Interracial Literature]
Catalog Number: 0164
Werner Sollors
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
This new course examines a wide variety of literary texts on black-white couples, interracial families, and biracial identity, from classical antiquity to the present. Works studied include romances, novellas, poems, plays, novels, short stories, and non-fiction, as well as some examples from the visual arts. Topics for discussion range from interracial genealogies to racial “passing,” from representations of racial difference to alternative plot resolutions, and from religious and political to legal and scientific contexts for the changing understanding of “race.”
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
Afro-American Studies 139. Black Travel Writing
Catalog Number: 4744 Enrollment: Limited to 40.
Naomi Pabst
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., 10–11:30. EXAM GROUP: 12, 13
Course examines black travel writing within a broader rubric of black literature and the emerging genre, “travel literature.” With attention to modes of representation and narrative strategy, we will explore histories of black travel and travellers, and the ways that transnational border-crossing influences the cultural, ideological, and political parameters of black identity. We will establish the forms, varieties, motivations, conflicts, and dilemmas of black travel, tourism, and transnational movement, as brought to bear upon issues of race, class, gender, nationality, imperialism, and globalization. Authors include Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Paule Marshall, Michele Cliff,
Dany Laferrière, Shay Youngblood.
[Afro-American Studies 140. Syncretism: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 3988
J. Lorand Matory
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Addresses hotly debated methods in the study of African American lifeways. Syncretism is the convergence of practices and beliefs of diverse origins, culminating in the synthesis of new cultural forms, like jazz and Cuban “Santería.” Examines the cultural prefigurations and political conditions that determine local syntheses and complicate conventional models of cultural retention and purity, acculturation, assimilation, and pluralism. While focused on the African diaspora in the Americas, includes comparative materials from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Pacific.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02. Offered jointly with the Divinity School as 3827.
[Afro-American Studies 140z. The Other African Americans]
Catalog Number: 0300
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Surveys the history and contemporary experiences of self-identified “mixed-race” groups, as well as voluntary immigrant groups from Africa and the Caribbean, such as Cape Verdeans, Nigerians, Jamaicans, Afro-Puerto Ricans, and Haitains in the United States. In this context, students will be introduced to arguments central to the social scientific study of modern societies generally, such as the invention of ethnicity, and negotiation of identity, and the social constructedness of race.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
[Afro-American Studies 141 (formerly Anthropology 157). Afro-Atlantic Religions]
Catalog Number: 3336
J. Lorand Matory
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Investigates the spiritual, political, and economic lives of millions around the Atlantic perimeter who worship African gods: West and Central Africans, Cubans, Brazilians, Haitians, and North Americans. For them, the gods are sources of power, organization, and healing amid the local political dominance of Muslims and Christians and the seismic expansion of international capitalism—conditions which themselves require significant attention. Lectures focus on such themes as women’s empowerment and the construction of gender in these religions, while a series of in-class discussions with priests will propose its own themes.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02. Offered jointly with Divinity School as 3692.
Afro-American Studies 143. African-Americans and a New Racial Divide
Catalog Number: 9321
Lawrence D. Bobo
Half course (fall term). M., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
This course directly engages the debate over racism in post-civil rights America. It provides a contemporary assessment of whether, how much, and why racial dynamics influence education, the economy, politics, and broader social relations. Special attention is devoted to matters of general intellectual and cultural trends as well as to the hard politics of the welfare reform, the criminal justice system, and the HIV/AIDs epidemic in Black communities. It seeks a critical assessment of the future of African-Americans in the post-civil rights, post-affirmative action U.S.
Afro-American Studies 151. Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa
Catalog Number: 2564
Olufemi A. Akinola
Full course. Th., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16
This course explores the dynamics of inheritance and choice in post-colonial Africa’s changing political arenas. The course focuses on different approaches to autochthony (or institutional hybridity) since c. 1945, using fictional and non-fictional material. Also to be explored are some implications of both forms for constructions of identity, progress and change in Africa and among its Diasporas.
Note: This course is to be offered over two semesters to allow in-depth discussion of historical continuities and change potential on various levels.
A part informal-conversational and part Socratic method of teaching/pedagogy is to be adopted. To facilitate discussion in class, readings and supplementary material- video clips, documentaries, feature articles, official reports, guest presentations, etc., are to be made available ahead of meetings, as applicable. Student-led seminars are to be encouraged, as are essays and term papers. A written examination is not anticipated.
[Afro-American Studies 165. Art and Colonialism]
Catalog Number: 4300 Enrollment: Limited to 12. Limited to 12.
Suzanne P. Blier
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
The role of colonialism in the definition, delimitation, discourse about art is examined in this course. The principal focus will be on art and colonial experience outside the West with respect to European or American presence. Among the topics raised are the following: the colonial experience and its “trace;” perceptions of the other; research methodologies and marginalization; the politics of collecting, museums, and exhibits; fantasy and the photographic record, the other Other; issues of gender; tourism and the role of foreign markets; native portrayals of the European other; primitivism and modern art.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
[Afro-American Studies 165y. African Women in Art and History]
Catalog Number: 2301 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Suzanne P. Blier
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Looks at the issues of gender identity, power, and display through the lens of key traditions of African art. Women as subjects, patrons, artists, and critics will also be explored in a range of contexts. Female/male aesthetics, male personification of females in masquerades, the prominence of androgyny in African art, “mother gods,” art in contexts of gender socialization, women on local governance, women in colonial discourse, and women on the move, are other issues which will be examined.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02. Meets at the Sackler Museum.
[Afro-American Studies 165z. Art of the African Diaspora: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 4873
Suzanne P. Blier
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Explores seminal issues in the arts of the African Diaspora, looking at a range of African-American Visual traditions in the Americas. Both historic and contemporary issues and forms will be examined in relationship to important traditions of sculpture, painting, dance, architecture, and performance art. Artists discussed will range from Edward Bannister, Edmonia Lewis, and Henry O. Tanner, to Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden and Charles White to Mel Edwards, Faith Ringgold, Fred Wilson, and Ike Ude. Carnival performances, Santeria traditions, Vodou ritual forms, and other “popular” or vernacular idioms will be treated as well.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
Afro-American Studies 166. Proseminar: Contemporary African American Visual Culture
Catalog Number: 4829 Enrollment: Limited to 25.
Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw
Half course (fall term). M., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Through examination of painting and sculpture, photography, film and video, sports and fashion, this course will explore the production, criticism, and exploitation of contemporary African American visual culture.
Note: Course convenes in Sackler 406.
[Afro-American Studies 187y. Black Cinema as Genre—From Blaxploitation to Quentin Tarantino]
Catalog Number: 9338
Isaac Julien
Half course (spring term). .
Looks at the history of African-American Cinema (from Oscar Micheaux to Spike Lee) and focuses on the use of stereotypes and hyperbole in some of its post-war popular genres including blaxploitation (Melvin van Peebles). Discussions will focus on issues of sexism and homophobia as well as the way space, time, and the city figure in these cinemas. Topics include: representation of gender in Dash’s Illusions and Lee’s Girl 6; the role of Pam Grier in blaxploitation films; the “soul film” genre (Superfly) and black independent cinema (Ganja and Hess); the construction of black masculinity in Boyz ‘n the Hood and gangsta-rap themed noir films; and the appropriation of black cinema by other film-makers and genres such as the aesthetic du cool of Quentin Tarantino.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02. Previous background in cultural theory and/or film theory recommended but not required.
Afro-American Studies 191. The Civil Rights Movement: Seminar
Catalog Number: 0897
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham
Half course (spring term). Tu., 2–4.
Explores the movement from its integrationist period in the 1950s and early 1960s to the heyday of militant black power in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Attention given to grassroots community activism, the contribution of nationally prominent individuals and organizations, and the changing of American laws, society, and the state.
*Afro-American Studies 196. Sociological Perspectives on Racial Inequality in America: Seminar
Catalog Number: 4619 Enrollment: Limited to 30.
William Julius Wilson (Kennedy School)
Half course (spring term). W., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
Examines classical and contemporary works on racial inequality in America. Different conceptions of the social, economic, and political situations that affect the state and nature of race relations are critically analyzed, as well as the different views on race and social policy.
Note: Offered jointly with the Kennedy School as HLE-209. Students must attend the first meeting of the class to enroll.
Afro-American Studies 196z. Race, Segregation and Inequality
Catalog Number: 5210
Lawrence D. Bobo
Half course (spring term). W., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Examines the changing status of African-Americans in the post-civil rights era from a variety of social science perspectives. The focus is on major scholarly assessments of the status of Blacks. Among the focal points of inquiry will be: race-based economic inequality; processes of racial residential segregation; and racial prejudice and bias in politics and everyday interaction. Although focused on contemporary issues and research, the course draws on foundational approaches developed by Du Bois, Johnson, and Drake and Cayton in their pioneering assessments of the status of Blacks.
*Afro-American Studies 197. Race, Class and Poverty in Urban America: Seminar
Catalog Number: 7265 Enrollment: Limited to 30.
William Julius Wilson (Kennedy School)
Half course (spring term). M., 2:30–4:30. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8, 9
Presents a social/historical analysis of the changing nature of urban inequality. Topics include the making of the inner-city ghetto; the new urban poverty; race and class conflict in urban America; and race, poverty, and public policy.
Note: Offered jointly with the Kennedy School as HLE-206. Meets at the Kennedy School. Students must attend the first meeting of the class to enroll–check Kennedy School calendar for date.