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:  

Spring Quarter

Dept Course No and Title Instructor
AFAM (S19)40C  AFRICAN AMERICN IIIWILLOUGHBY-HER, T.
Introduction to theories of racial blackness in the modern world, with emphasis on developments in British colonies and U.S. Traces emergence of blackness as term of collective identity, social organization, and political mobilization.
AFAM (S19)154  BLKS US FOREIGN POLWILLOUGHBY-HER, T.
This course is concerned with these primary questions: What black political attitudes, philosophies, organizations, and ideologies about internationalism have shaped discourse in American foreign policy? How have the legacy of pan-Africanism and diasporic thinking influenced Black political ideologies about the nation-state, citizenship, migration, and identity? What role have black political scientists played in shaping the debates on racial democracy and comparative racial politics? What role have race and gender and culture played in the making of the international system and what constitutes foreign affairs, globalization, and international relations? Covers race and American Empire, race and black consciousness from WWI years to decolonization period in the following: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Congo, decolonization and the Civil Rights Movement, influence of decolonization and civil rights and black power movements on African Diaspora--mostly Cuba and Brazil).
AFAM (S19)163  BLACK FEMINIST THEORY & ACTIVISMSTAFF
This course applies Black feminist agency to the examination of notions of belonging, justice, liberation and reparations. We will consider the organizational strategies of African American women in addressing racial, sexual, economic oppressions and exposing the limits of maleness and whiteness as institutionalized, hegemonic frames. Women’s agendas for social change from the early slave narratives to the present will be examined, as will the cultural forces that impact African American lives and impel Black women’s activism. Our sources for this critical examination of the vital contributions of Black feminism to our collective human space will include theoretical texts, literature, articles, films, popular music and expressive culture.
AFAM (S19)159  PRISONS AND PUB EDSOJOYNER, D.
The aim of Prisons and Public Education is to analyze, deconstruct social relations and posit new realities with respect to interlocking violence that is levied against Black people in the form of public education and the prison regime. The course is built within an interdisciplinary framework that utilizes a wide array of sources in an effort to develop a multifaceted comprehension as to the inner workings of state violence, public education and the prison regime.
AFAM (S19)152  AFRICAN AMER POLTCSPHOENIX, D.
The story of the African-American struggle for true equality is a distinctly American one. Not simply because it features a distinct set of American actors interacting within the unique confines of the U.S. political system; but more so because this story is one that highlights and challenges the ideas at the heart of America. Are all people truly created equal? Can the rules and institutions of American democracy safeguard the liberty of its most marginalized denizens? Can the American dream be more than a dream deferred for a people simultaneously essential to American advancement and subjugated by it?

Special emphasis will be placed on: (1) the goals of political advancement articulated by various black leaders, and the strategies employed to achieve those goals, and (2) the manner in which these goals and strategies are shaped and constrained by U.S. political institutions such as the two party system, federalism, the criminal justice system, etc.

This course will feature a mix of lecture, small and large group discussion, in-class written exercises, and viewing of media clips such as documentaries, news features and podcasts. Students are expected to be active participants in both small and large group discussions.

Objectives
1. To immerse students in a range of relevant historical and contemporary discourses on black political objectives, strategies, movements and ideologies
2. To improve students’ ability to interrogate and analyze the dominant institutions and ideas at the heart of American politics—particularly how those institutions and ideas shape the political development of African Americans
3. To familiarize students with political science-informed perspectives on the instrumental role of race in shaping politics in the U.S.
AFAM (S19)128  BLACK FEMINIST SCIHARVEY, S.
This class offers a survey of black feminist science and technology studies. We will examine how science, medicine, and technology participate in, create, and are created by understandings of race, gender, sexuality, and nation. We will read authors such as Dorothy Roberts, Harriet Washington, Toni Morrison and others.
AFAM (S19)154  CAPITALISM&BLK/FEMTHARVEY, S.
This course will offer students a working knowledge of black feminist thought and criticisms of capitalism.  We’ll read from and about authors/activists including Lucy Parsons, Claudia Jones, Esther Cooper Jackson, Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, and the Combahee River Collective. In doing so we ask how black feminist theory and activism draws connections between colonialism, chattel slavery, imperialism and the life of black peoples in Africa and throughout the diaspora.
AFAM (S19)118  AFRICA:TRADE TO COLBORUCKI, A.
This course is an introduction of the history of Africa through the lens of the transatlantic slave trade from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. This traffic was one of the main crossroads of the history of Africa’s long and troubled relationship with both Europe and the Americas. The course’s primary goal, however, lies not in investigating the slave trade but in studying the political, economic, social, and cultural histories of a number of African societies that participated in the trade. Given the large number and vast diversity of African societies, the course cannot possibly present a comprehensive survey. Instead, it zooms in from broad questions such as the connections of Africans with Europeans, the roles of Africans in this traffic, and the interrelated political and cultural landscapes to the specifics of regionally grounded histories from the emergence of the Atlantic slave trade to the beginning of European colonialism in Africa.