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. 

Location

Online Room 5 (ASE) (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course will focus on the development of African American music from the 19th century through the latter part of the 20th century. We will study how African American music can be used a lens through which to understand the black American experience and the social and political landscape of American society as a whole. The historical, social, economic, and musical factors of various black American music genres will be examined with the aim to understand how African Americans constructed identity and interpreted the world around them. We will also discuss the performative aspects of these genres in order to understand how black music artists used their bodies and asserted their agency through performance on stage. Genres to be explored include the 19th century spiritual, the blues, gospel, jazz, early rock and roll, soul music, funk, rhythm and blues, and hip hop, among others.

Location

Online Room 12 (ASE) (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.

Location

Online Room 2 (ASE) (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.

Location

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

Location

Online Room 9 (ASE) (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.

Location

Online Room 5 (ASE) (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.

Location

Hylan Building Room 201 (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 

Location

Online Room 13 (ASE) (M 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This course surveys African American literature of a variety of genres—poetry, drama, autobiography, fiction, and non-fiction essays—from the 20th Century.  The course interprets this tradition not only as the production of American writers of African descent, but also as a set works that display formal characteristics associated with black cultural traditions.  Discussion topics include the meanings of race, the construction of black identity, and intra-racial differences of class, gender, and sexuality.   Special attention will be paid to approaching literary texts from a variety of critical perspectives.

Location

Lechase Room 161 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

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Location

(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)

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

Location

Spurrier Gymnasium Room 103 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Sansifanyi is an ensemble that provides various performance opportunities both on and off-campus for intermediate and advanced students of African dance & drumming. Instructor Kerfala Bangoura trains ensemble members in a performance style that integrates dance, drumming, vocal song, and narrative elements. Dancers who enroll in Sansifanyi will learn choreographic techniques for West African dance and gain experience dancing as soloists. Dancers will also learn focus on rhythmic timing and on drumming while dancing. Drummers enrolled in Sansifanyi will learn extended percussion arrangements and techniques for accompanying choreography. They will also learn how to play the breaks required of lead drummers. 
Prerequisites: Audition on first day of class OR for Dancers one of the following: DAN181&182, DAN283, DAN253, DAN285. For Drummers one of the following: MUSC168A, MUSC168B, MUSC146. Email kerfala.bangoura@gmail.com with questions.

Location

Spurrier Gymnasium Room 104 (R 6:45PM - 8:15PM)

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

Online Room 7 (ASE) (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.

Location

Online Room 14 (ASE) (F 10:00AM - 12:20PM)

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Location

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

Online Room 3 (ASE) (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. 

Location

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. 

Location

Online Room 10 (ASE) (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.

Location

Online Room 4 (ASE) (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.

Location

Online Room 13 (ASE) (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.

Location

Online Room 5 (ASE) (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.

Location

Online Room 5 (ASE) (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.

Location

Online Room 5 (ASE) (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.

Location

Online Room 2 (ASE) (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.

Location

Spurrier Gymnasium Room 103 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

The influence of Black people is a profound contribution to both culture and politics in America, and yet, anti-black racial injustice, police brutality, and violence against women and queer people persist throughout the country. To understand ​the complex relationships between gender, sexuality, and race, and cultural products and lived experiences, t​his course addresses questions of entertainment, artistic forms of resistance, and the relationship between cultural producers and capitalism. Rooted in Black feminism and critical race theory, in this course we examine contemporary art, movements, and popular culture to identify sites of contradiction at the intersections of identity, celebrity, capitalism, and feminisms, among other features at play. Topics include Colin Kaepernick’s political activism and Nike campaign, Lebron James’s HBO series ​The Shop​, Beyonce’s feminism from Destiny’s Child to ​Lemonade​, and social media phenomena such as “trending” and “cancel culture.” Texts include the work of cultural writers and theorists, Michelle Alexander, Hazel V. Carby, Brittany Cooper, Ralph Ellison, Roxane Gay, Audre Lorde, Quincy T. Mills, Jennifer C. Nash, Claudia Rankine, Phoebe Robinson, Omise’eke Tinsley, and Michelle Wallace.

Location

(MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM)

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? 

Location

Online Room 6 (ASE) (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course examines the origins, history, and present-day circulations of “intersectionality,” a concept first introduced into feminism’s critical lexicon in 1989 by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. For Crenshaw, “intersectionality” made visible the overlap and convergence of gender- and race-based structures of oppression through which Black women’s specific experiences of discrimination were frequently illegible and thus invisible to courts who understood legal claims of discrimination on the basis of race and sex through the experiences of African American men and white women, respectively. Since Crenshaw’s now classic essay first appeared, “intersectionality” has come to dominate U.S. feminism as an interpretive paradigm in academic research and teaching and as a powerful tool for feminist social critique and activism beyond the academy. Intersectionality is also today a major force for aesthetic and narrative innovation in the wider public sphere, as reflected in influential art and literature, popular music, and film and television of the recent decade.
 

In tracing this history, we will revisit Crenshaw’s foundational writings, some of the race-conscious legal theories and prior women-of-color feminisms that informed her interventions, and later Black feminist writing that took up this new critical paradigm. We will also attend to the wide theoretical reach of Crenshaw’s original concept, which scholars have deployed to understand the intersections of race and gender with other axes of difference—such as sexual orientation, disability, and immigration status—and to illuminate the complex operations of social oppressions beyond race- and gender-based discrimination, including Islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia, and ableism. Students will also engage intersectionality’s wider impact through several cultural objects and discourses that index this history. The course will conclude by looking at academic debates over intersectionality, which has faced critiques from within Black feminist thought, and Crenshaw’s most recent writings, including her response to intersectionality’s critics.

Taught by Prof. Eden Osucha.

Location

Online Room 20 (ASE) (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

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.

Location

Online Room 18 (ASE) (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

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

Morey Room 205 (W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

Humanitarianism and Its Discontents engages students in a critical understanding of humanitarianism discourses and practices through an exploration of polemics, misunderstandings, testimonials, and the creative imagination inspired from the practices of humanitarian interventions. This course seeks to take the student from a position of moral indignation to one of a critical indignation. Critical indignation refers to the documented and critical responses that proceed from an intellectual patience, a will to know, and ultimately, a better understanding of the practices and discourses generated by the phenomenon of charity and humanitarianism. Open only to senior majors. Permission of the Department required.

Location

Lechase Room 160 (TR 11:05AM - 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.

No description

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