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:  

Fall Quarter

Dept Course No and Title Instructor
AFAM (F17)158  W. E. B. DU BOISCHANDLER
W. E. B. Du Bois — TTh 3:30-4:50 AfAm 158 — Code 20570
This course provides a deep introduction to one of the most important American  thinkers of the 20th century, W. E. B. Du Bois. Taking a grounding  in several essential early essays by Du Bois, the course places his classic text The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (1903) as the pivotal reference of the term. Key concepts by Du Bois, such as “double-consciousness” and the “problem of the color line” are spelled out and studied. This account of Du Bois’s practice, while moving from a basic reference to his original role in the emergence of the human sciences and historiography, also shows how both literary production and critical journalism were central aspects of his practice across more than a half century. The course thus provides a careful guide through some key early works of an essential thinker in African American and American literature, art, philosophy and the human sciences of the 19th and 20th centuries. Work for the course includes a bi-weekly journal, two sort essays (3-5 pages), and a final essay.
AFAM (F17)158  PRISONS & PUBLIC EDSOJOYNER, D.
No detailed description available.
AFAM (F17)144  MEDIA AND ACTIVISMDAUCHAN, D.
This course explores video/film artists and activists empowered by the medium of film/video. We will critically examine their works, aesthetics and impact. This class provides an opportunity for students inspired and moved to “activism”, to produce a creative project. Through a screening and lecture series, we will watch documentary films in an attempt to cross-reference academic media and activism studies with how activism is approached from a documentary filmmaking standpoint. We will analyze the creative decisions, approaches and techniques of video/filmmakers. In groups, students will make a short documentary and a strategic plan to bring attention to their issue of choice. This course is cross listed with FLM&MDA 191. Please contact Desha Dauchan at ddauchan@uci.edu for the authorization code for this course.
AFAM (F17)113  FILM&RACIAL CONFLCTWILDERSON, F.
Same as Flm&Mda 130. "Film and Racial Conflict" examines how U.S cinema, as an institution within a matrix of other institutions (i.e. families, schools, churches, prisons), positions Whites, Indians, and Blacks. To this end, we will be concerned primarily with the institutional and ideological positionality (how and where subjects are placed by discourse, i.e. film) of the three above races this country has produced through settlerism, genocide, and slavery; and concerned, secondarily, with the culturally affirming, and often identity aggrandizing, "voices" of our three focus groups. Settlerism, genocide, and slavery are the three structural necessities which underwrite U.S. society. Our guiding question is this: In what ways do the formal and narrative properties of 20th and 21st century fiction film disavow and/or acknowledge these structural necessities? Put another way, we will explore how late 20th and early 21st century cinema is suggestive of America’s foundational, triangulated, and unresolved antagonisms: The White demand for mastery and expansion; the Red demand for return of the both the land and a genocided population; and the Black demand for repair and return of, literally, everything (subjectivity in the present and the memory of subjectivity from the past). A basic assumption of course is that the fiction film, even a love story, stands in relation to these unresolved antagonisms; and furthermore, the narrative (the script) of most films tries not to reflect upon this relation.
AFAM (F17)134B  CARIB HISTORY IIJAMES, W.
No detailed description available.
AFAM (F17)162W  BLACK PROTEST TRADNWILDERSON, F.
History and discourses of the black protest tradition. Traces emergence of black protest against racial slavery and white supremacy from the early colonial period to present and the complex elaboration of identity politics within black communities in the twentieth century.

Prerequisite: Satisfactory completion of the Lower-Division Writing requirement.

Restriction: Upper-division students only.
AFAM (F17)40A  AFRICAN AMERICAN ICHANDLER, N.
This course is an introduction to core African American history from the 15th century to early 20th century, from the forced importation of Africans into the Americas in the late 15th century, to their central role in the founding of the United States in the 18th, to the development of social movements and a new sense of culture in the post-emancipation period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Notably it centrally includes the intellectual and political understanding of that history by African Americans. A key thinker for the course is W. E. B. Du Bois
AFAM (F17)152  AFRICAN AMER POLTCSPHOENIX, D.
No detailed description available.
AFAM (F17)125  AFAM WOMEN IN ARTCOOKS CUMBO, B.
Examines depictions of and by African American women in art and popular culture through a variety of media including textiles, painting, sculpture, photography, and installation. Focuses on African American women's experiences, perspectives, and strategies for contemporary representation.
AFAM (F17)145  AFAM & PHOTOGRAPHYCOOKS CUMBO, B.
Explores depictions of and by African Americans through photography. Examines the history of photography in relationship to African American culture through a variety of media from early daguerreotype processes to digital imagery.