Photo by Paul Everett available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Photo by Paul Everett available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Course Descriptions

Term:  

Winter Quarter

Dept Course No and Title Instructor
AFAM (W18)198  DIRECTED GRP/STUDYSTAFF
No detailed description available.
AFAM (W18)198  DIRECTED GRP/STUDYAGUA, J.
No detailed description available.
AFAM (W18)198  DIRECTED GRP/STUDYWILLOUGHBY-HER, T.
No detailed description available.
AFAM (W18)198  DIRECTED GRP/STUDYWILDERSON, F.
No detailed description available.
AFAM (W18)198  DIRECTED GRP/STUDYSEXTON, J.
No detailed description available.
AFAM (W18)198  DIRECTED GRP/STUDYCOOKS CUMBO, B.
No detailed description available.
AFAM (W18)198  DIRECTED GRP/STUDYCHANDLER, N.
No detailed description available.
AFAM (W18)157  CRITICAL RACE THRYHAN, S.
No detailed description available.
AFAM (W18)143  HIP-HOP PHILOSOPHYMITCHELL, N.
No detailed description available.
AFAM (W18)128  RACE MIXTURE POLTCSSEXTON, J.
No detailed description available.
AFAM (W18)113  BLACK CINEMAWILDERSON, F.
The goals of this course are to introduce students to Afropessimism, an intervention in critical theory that argues slavery (what Orlando Patterson calls social death) structures the paradigm of reality for Black people in the 21st century.  Cinema plays a vital role in our deliberations. Some of our guiding questions are: How does the cinematic staging of Black people and violence expand and/or constrain our ability to think about discourse as a positioning modality? Are narrative arcs sutured or distended when the figure of emplotment is the Slave/the Black? In what ways do a film’s cinematic strategies (acoustics, lighting, image, editing, and camera work) unsettle the assumptive logic of poststructuralism? Unlike its companion course (Film and Racial Conflict offered in Fall 2017) this course will focus entirely on films that are either made by Black directors and/or films whose ethical dilemmas meditate on the Black dilemma of social death. The work of David Marriott, a leading Afropessimist psychoanalytic thinker and film theorist, will be at the center of our deliberations. Students who have taken Film and Racial Conflict during Fall of 2017 will find Black Cinema to be a deepening and extension of the knowledge they gained; but the Fall course is not a prerequisite for this course.
AFAM (W18)112A  EARLY AFAM LITCHANDLER, N.
African American Literature I
x-lists AfAm/English/History

This course will introduce students to the history of the African American intellectual and literary construction of the American experience, focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries – highlighting its early emergence, intensity and breadth – the colonial period through the advent of the Twentieth century. The will focus will be on Phillis Wheatley, Oluadah Equiano, Ottobah Cugoano, David Walker, Maria Stewart, and Frederick Douglass. W. E. B. Du Bois’s reflections on African American intellectual traditions will be of basic reference. In addition to established and recognized literary and intellectual texts, the readings and lectures also include, or consider, inscribed oral texts such as orations and public addresses, sermons, testimonials, songs, especially spirituals, and folklore. Other readings referenced or discussed in the class include published poetry, essays, petitions, legal appeals and declarations, editorials, slave narratives and other autobiographical narratives, fiction, and histories. The student who completes this course will have an understanding of the African American intellectual and literary construction of the American experience and thus the emergence of a modern literature and intellectual tradition, noting its early announcement within the history of the United States and a profound sense of its intensity and breadth.


AFAM (W18)111B  CONTEMP AFAM ARTCOOKS CUMBO, B.
No detailed description available.
AFAM (W18)40B  AFRICAN AMERICAN IISEXTON, J.
No detailed description available.