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Lechase Room 103 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

This course uses film, novels, and historical studies to examine the following themes in the making of modern Africa: the forging of new national identities, creation of wage laborers, and the restructuring of agricultural work, gender, and social age. Students will also explore how African women and men have sought to redefine their place in the global economy before, during, and after the Cold War, against the backdrop of new opportunities and challenges presented by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, hunger, international debt, and engagement with China. There are no prerequisites; just bring your curiosity. 

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Lechase Room 141 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

The course will study the Black American Christian musical beginnings and includes forms of worship, early musical practices, the Spiritual, evolution of Gospel. An examination of ante-bellum musical activities follows including secular song types, character of the folk music with respect to poetic and musical form, language and themes. Attention will be given to significant literary and aesthetic developments, especially during the Harlem Renaissance and the poetry of several writers of that era will be surveyed. The course will treat Blues, its origins evolution through the 1940s. Surveys of classical music forms from the 18th to mid-20th century; music of the theater from minstrelsy to Broadway; precursors of jazz, the syncopated dance orchestra and brass bands; early jazz to bebop round out the course offerings.

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Lattimore Room 210 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

A methodological inquiry into ethnicity, race, and religion as constituents of personal and communal identity. The course will emphasize the implications of these categories for a religiously pluralistic society such as the United States. Topics to be covered in this course include American immigration history, race relations, and the process of Americanization. How do Americans achieve “whiteness”? What is the difference between “ethnic” and “racial”? How are these differences gendered? How does religion factor into these questions? Twentieth and twenty-first century shifts in American religious practice will be examined in light of immigration.

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Lechase Room 103 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

From Nigerian movies to Zimbabwean dancehall songs, this course uses popular music, dance, film, street art, bus slogans, newspapers and other sources to document African interpretations of contemporary social, political, and cultural issues. We will let African musicians, writers, directors, and artists guide our investigation into the big questions of the class: Why is the gap between rich and poor in African societies increasing? What is happening to gender relations? What do African people think of their political leaders and how do they imagine political situations might improve? Student projects may include teaching a popular African dance style; performing a popular song or theatrical skit from Africa; organizing a film screening or mini-festival; writing a research paper; or producing a podcast on African popular arts.

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Dewey Room 1305 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

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Frederick Douglass Room 302 (R 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

In Gospel Music in America, we will examine the historical development of gospel music, beginning with 19th century slave spirituals and ending with an examination of 21st century gospel music practices. Throughout this course, we will attempt to answer the following questions: what is gospel music how are the parameters of the genre defined? How has gospel music participated in constructions of black identity and spiritual formation? How has the sound and presentation of gospel music evolved i.e. instrumentation, vocal aesthetic, performance persona, and technique? Lectures and discussions will also highlight some of the perpetually controversial tensions that have come to define gospel music history and culture. Such tensions involve the commercialization of gospel music, the ambiguity of lyrical meaning, gospel musics flirtations with sensuality and sexuality, and debates about what constitutes authentic gospel music.

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Lattimore Room 210 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

This introductory survey course will focus on the process of colonization that indigenous societies of the Western Hemisphere experienced from the initial period of contact with Iberians like Columbus, Cortés, and Cabral, to the Latin American independence movements. We will explore how indigenous populations, and arriving Europeans, Africans and Asians negotiated their political, social and economic identities and environments. Despite Latin America's resulting cultural mixture, diversity, and vibrant societies, the colonial period was also rife with exploitation and inequality. In addition to accounts of the conquest and exploration, indigenous documents and other primary sources, each student will develop an avatar over the course of the semester to better understand the period's dominant trends and transitions. Come explore this exciting period of Latin American history.

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Lechase Room 161 (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

As a target for Dillan Roof and payday loan lending initiatives as well as an acknowledged source of homophobia and sexism, the Black church continues to be vital in American society—more poignantly, African American communities. While many continue to support social justice initiatives, The Black Church becomes a varied space for cultivating worship practices, homiletic praxis, musical selections and theological offerings. This course is designed to aid understanding African American Christian Traditions in the context of American (church) history. We will study what the Black church is, its construction, maintenance as well as its theological and social standings. We will listen to sermons, gospel music and attend a Black Church in the greater Rochester area as a cohort. The goal is to introduce major concepts produced by the Black Church including, but not limited to: womanist theology and ethics, Black liberation theology, Black social ethics, African American homiletics, and African American hermeneutics. Students will be asked to locate 

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Rush Rhees Library Room 442 (M 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

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(M 6:30PM - 8:00PM)

In this course, students will work on expanding their repertory of rhythms from Guinea, West Africa, and on improving their playing technique on the djembe, dunun, sangban, and kenkeni. In particular, we will concentrate on learning extended solo sequences for the djembe, and more advanced arrangements played on the dunun, sangban, and kenkeni. Students will also work on developing skills specific to performance, adding choreographed onstage movement to complement their drumming. Pre-requisite: At least one semester of previous enrollment in the Intro West African Percussion Ensemble.

Location

Strong Auditorium Room 011 (W 7:30PM - 9:00PM)

In this course, students will work on expanding their repertory of rhythms from Guinea, West Africa, and on improving their playing technique on the djembe, dunun, sangban, and kenkeni. In particular, we will concentrate on learning extended solo sequences for the djembe, and more advanced arrangements played on the dunun, sangban, and kenkeni. Students will also work on developing skills specific to performance, adding choreographed onstage movement to complement their drumming. Pre-requisite: At least one semester of previous enrollment in the Intro West African Percussion Ensemble.

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Strong Auditorium Room 011 (W 7:30PM - 9:00PM)

A continuation of Dance 181 that allows the student to deepen their experience and hone their skills in West African Dance.

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Spurrier Gymnasium Room 104 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

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Spurrier Gymnasium Room 104 (R 8:00PM - 9:30PM)

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(R 8:00PM - 9:30PM)

Rochester sits in one of the world’s most explicitly carceral landscapes, with more than a dozen state prisons within a 90 min drive. This co-taught course is a collaborative ethnographic research project designed to examine how the presence of prisons in towns around Rochester reflects and shapes the political, economic, and cultural lives of those who live in the region. Students will be introduced to methods and practices of ethnography and conduct firsthand research on the cultural politics of prison towns. Through assigned reading, students will learn about the history, sociology, and cultural logics of Rochester and the wider region, and of mass incarceration. What does a prison mean for a person living near one? How does the presence of prisons shape people’s notions of justice, citizenship, and punishment? How do these nearby but largely invisible institutions shape the ways that we live in Rochester? Recommended prior courses: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology or Incarceration Nation

Location

Lattimore Room 441 (W 9:00AM - 11:40AM)

American Culture? Is there such a thing? This class will explore, discuss and debate this question and some more: If there is an American culture, how can we tackle it? How does anthropology, famous for its research away from home, help us understand current major debates in the United States? How do outsiders understand and evaluate American culture? Is there a return of religion to American public life? How do Americans address power relations, class, gender, ethnicity and race? To tackle these questions we will use assigned readings, films, and current events seen through print and electronic media.

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Spurrier Gymnasium Room 104 (F 10:00AM - 12:20PM)

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Lattimore Room 431 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

 How do cyborgs, superheroes, and ghosts change our understanding of what it means to be human? How do interstellar travel, dystopian climate change, and revisionist ancient histories reframe the way we think of African diasporic histories of trauma, survival, desired freedom, and collective belonging? Studying science fiction, fantasy, and horror from across Africa, the Caribbean, and North America, this course will focus on how 20th and 21st century artists have reimagined black life after slavery and empire. We’ll study a range of artistic forms, including fiction, film, visual art, graphic novels, and music, by artists like Octavia Butler, Wanuri Kahiu, Wangechi Mutu, Nalo Hopkinson, Ryan Coogler, and Nnedi Okorafor. We’ll look at how artists of color contort the world we know, and how they use the speculative mode to pose deeply philosophical and historical questions. 

Location

Bausch & Lomb Room 270 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course focuses on the historical experiences of Africans and their descendants in Latin America from the first Portuguese slaving voyages to Haitian independence in 1804. We will study the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil, Spanish America and the French Antilles, but especially focus on the ways in which people of African descent negotiated colonialism, Catholicism and Iberian legal systems. Afrodescendiente women, in particular, navigated racialized and gendered expectations in relation to their reproductive capabilities. Our readings and discussions will address the roles played by black militiamen, healers, maroon leaders in forming communities that complicated and often challenged colonial rule in Colombia, Mexico and Cuba. We will also highlight how everyday people secured their freedom before the Latin American independence movements. Students taking the course for “W” credit will write and resubmit a research paper on a topic of their choice. 

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Meliora Room 205 (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

“Tell about the South,” demands Shreve McCannon in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! Was the “Old South” a region stuck in time, anti-modern, anti-North and anti-black” or was it, as historians have recently suggested, “an active participant in, and even a promoter of, change, progress, political liberalism, and global tourism?” This course will examine the powerful cultural and political influence of the American South on the nation and internationally. 

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Lechase Room 181 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

In Black Skins, White Masks, Frantz Fanon wrote, “O my body, make of me always a man who questions!” In the United States, popular cultural understandings of race have often located blackness within the body: in DNA, in blood, in skin, in hair texture, in facial features. How does race get mapped onto the body? In this interdisciplinary course on race and embodiment, students will encounter texts and writing assignments prompting them to think critically about how black bodies ‘matter’ in the contemporary U.S. Course materials and assignments will encourage students to explore how blackness intersects with other social categories such as gender and class at the site of the body, while exploring how these categories are socially constructed and can and should be troubled, blurred, and contested in the practice of social life. The dual themes of intersectionality and visuality will act as a frame for our explorations.

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Morey Room 504 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This junior seminar offers students the opportunity to research and discuss the operation and consequences of widespread corruption in the global economy and the complex historical processes – economic, social, and political – which help to explain the phenomenon. To make the seminar a well-focused course, discussion will focus on country-case studies (with about three selected individuals in each country) that help to demonstrate the general pattern of causes and effects. A major issue to consider, among other things, is the role of cut-throat competition among global corporations and the effects of their corrupt activities on the quality of governance.

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Rush Rhees Library Room 456 (W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

Through intensive reading and discussion, we examine the politics and history of American cities. While we read scholarship drawing on the experiences of an array of cities--including Chicago, New York, Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, New Haven, Atlanta, Buffalo, and Charlotte--our emphasis is on commonalities in the urban experience as well as on systematic differences. We analyze the relationship of cities to their hinterlands in the early stages of urban development, the rise of ethnic neighborhoods, suburbanization, industrialization, de-industrialization, housing and jobs, concentrated poverty, and population changes. Race, ethnicity, and class are central to this course, not only in understanding changes in neighborhoods but also in the nature of politics and governmental arrangements.

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Harkness Room 329 (T 12:30PM - 3:15PM)

Through intensive reading and discussion, we examine the politics and history of American cities. While we read scholarship drawing on the experiences of an array of cities--including Chicago, New York, Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, New Haven, Atlanta, Buffalo, and Charlotte--our emphasis is on commonalities in the urban experience as well as on systematic differences. We analyze the relationship of cities to their hinterlands in the early stages of urban development, the rise of ethnic neighborhoods, suburbanization, industrialization, de-industrialization, housing and jobs, concentrated poverty, and population changes. Race, ethnicity, and class are central to this course, not only in understanding changes in neighborhoods but also in the nature of politics and governmental arrangements.

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Harkness Room 329 (T 12:30PM - 3:15PM)

This course examines American writers’ responses to intense social, economic, and technological upheavals, such as urbanization, colonization, industrialization, and social injustices, from 1850s through now. Topics to be covered include colonialism, eco-tourism, slavery, civil rights, trauma, technology, urbanization, and the rise of science, and students can expect to explore the questions such as the following: How do environmental issues relate to the politics of race? How do writers represent the ongoing trauma of losing indigenous land? How to communicate the invisible hazards of climate change and the chemical industry? How has the rise of rationality displaced spiritual visions of the natural world? How do we create a meaningful connection to home and the planet amidst so much injustice and technological upheaval? INSTRUCTOR PERMISSION REQUIRED. NOT OPEN TO SENIORS.

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Lechase Room 184 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

The principal ideas of various liberation theologians -- Latin American, Asian, African, Afro-American, and feminist. We will also examine the social worlds in which they think and write, thus trying to see the connection between their ideas and the social environments they want to liberate.

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Todd Union Room 202 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Economic development of African Americans during the twentieth century, with an examination of the economics of discrimination. Same as HIS 253 and AAS 253.

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Meliora Room 205 (MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM)

Students will experience dancing African styles from the traditional cultures of Ghana and Guinea, West Africa. Technical emphasis will focus on foot patterns and placement, as well as developing the proper physical stance for African dance styles. Students will practice the dances and drum songs called Kpanlogo & Gota from Ghana, and Yankadi, Makru, & Kuku from Guinea, as well as various other selections. Outside work is required, including performance attendance, video viewing, article analysis, and journaling. Students can expect to gain a broadened perspective on contemporary West Africa and its cultural practices.

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Spurrier Gymnasium Room 104 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

In this course we’ll dive deep into the cultural history of three sprawling cities, asking how urban space on the African continent has been imagined and reimagined from the mid-20th century to the present. Spending consecutive weeks on each—Lagos (Nigeria), Nairobi (Kenya), Johannesburg (South Africa)—we will traverse an eclectic range of materials and perspectives. We’ll read about underground club cultures, colonial segregation laws, LGBTQ communities, and emergent musics like Afrobeat, Benga, and Township Tech. We’ll also study an array of cultural forms spanning sci-fi film, music videos, novels, sound art, fashion blogs, and comics. How, we’ll ask, do ever-shifting constraints, global influences, and desires for freedom change the shape of a city? What does it mean for a city to be continually reimagined and revised? 

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Meliora Room 218 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course will examine the varieties of thought about, and practice of, civil disobedience within social movements, with an emphasis on contemporary activism. When, why, and how do communities choose to push back against structures of violence and injustice? Throughout the semester, we will study canonical texts? of modern resistance history speeches, writing, direct action protests, art and will consider the role of this form of counter-conduct within larger campaign strategies to build power from below and get free.

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Lechase Room 143 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

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Lechase Room 161 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Mexico and Brazil are countries with complex cultural, racial and ethnic histories. This seminar will explore the process by which these two countries grappled with their diverse populations during the modern era and how policies and attitudes impacted citizens, residents and perceptions. The course will investigate the limitations that arose from Mexico’s pursuit of a “cosmic race” and how the myth of Brazil’s “racial democracy” was created and dispelled. We will debate the durability of these constructions and the limitations that arise from cross-country comparisons. The course will also challenge students to think theoretically regarding the salience of racial binaries. In addition to thought-provoking scholarly studies, students will read translated discourses from leading Mexican and Brazilian intellectuals and will generate their own final research papers. 

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room 362 (W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

Mexico and Brazil are countries with complex cultural, racial and ethnic histories. This seminar will explore the process by which these two countries grappled with their diverse populations during the modern era and how policies and attitudes impacted citizens, residents and perceptions. The course will investigate the limitations that arose from Mexico’s pursuit of a “cosmic race” and how the myth of Brazil’s “racial democracy” was created and dispelled. We will debate the durability of these constructions and the limitations that arise from cross-country comparisons. The course will also challenge students to think theoretically regarding the salience of racial binaries. In addition to thought-provoking scholarly studies, students will read translated discourses from leading Mexican and Brazilian intellectuals and will generate their own final research papers. 

Students will draw upon their exposure to the theory methods of AAS to produce an interdisciplinary research paper on a topic of their own choosing. Open only to senior majors. Permission of Department required.

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Morey Room 314 (T 9:40AM - 12:20PM)

Independent studies on some aspect of the problems of energy resource development in lower-income countries, solutions to it, and relationship to development issues, including work with the instructors Access to Hydrocarbon Energy for African Development project, can be done within this course. Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

Experience in an applied setting supervised on site. Approved and overseen by a University instructor.