Location

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

This course will examine the relationship between the religious and theological beliefs of African American musicians and their musical artistry. We will journey through various African American music genres of the 20th centuryblues, jazz, gospel, soul, funk, hip hop, etcand will study how religion has influenced performance style, lyrical content, vocality, melodic and harmonic contour, among a host of other factors.

Location

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

This course will present an introductory survey of the history of African American life from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We will focus largely on African American history in North America and the United States, but we will consider this history in the broader context of Black diasporic and Atlantic world history during this time period. The course will cover US Reconstruction’s rise and fall, the rise and fall of the Jim Crow regime, and the period of time bookended by the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Lives Matter uprisings of the past decade. We will focus especially on the question of Black self-determination: how Black American communities and individuals have historically defined and sought to achieve self-determination; how these definitions and struggles have both shaped and been shaped by the dominant political, economic, and social structures of the United States; and how these definitions and struggles have changed over time. The course will pay particular attention to the political, social, and cultural movements that defined these eras, and how these various movements challenged, contradicted, and/or shaped one another. We will focus especially on the ways that gender, class, sexuality, and nationalism shaped these movements. 

Location

Genesee Hall Room 309 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

This course surveys African American literature of various genres—fiction, poetry, drama, and autobiography—from the late-nineteenth century to the present. As a class, we will work together to identify persistent themes in African American literature and investigate continuities and evolutions in the ways African American writers have approached those themes across time, space, and literary movements. Along the way, students can expect to learn how to analyze literary texts in terms of both form and content.

While this course is grounded in literature, students will have regular opportunities to place course texts in interdisciplinary contexts, drawing connections to Black Lives Matter, climate justice, critical race theory, etc. Featured authors may include Frederick Douglass, Angelina Weld Grimké, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, and Ross Gay.

Location

Bausch & Lomb Room 315 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

The Eastman Mbira Ensemble provides a hands-on introduction to the ancient and sophisticated musical tradition of the Shona mbira of Zimbabwe. Visiting Zimbabwean guest artists will also offer students the opportunity to delve more deeply into traditional musical practices and their cultural and spiritual context. Songs are taught aurally so no musical experience or training is required. May be repeated for credit.

Location

Eastman Theatre Room B12A (M 6:30PM - 8:00PM)

Led by Master Drummer Fana Bangoura, the West African Drumming Ensemble is dedicated to the dynamic percussive traditions of Guinea. The ensemble combines the iconic djembe hand drum with a trio of drums played with sticks, known as dunun, sangban, and kenkeni. The powerful, multi-part relationships established by this trio of drums provide a rhythmic foundation for the ensemble, enabling djembe players to develop technique in executing both accompaniment and solo parts. Drawing upon his experience as a soloist with the internationally acclaimed groups Les Percussions de Guinée and Les Ballets Africains, Fana engages ensemble players with a wide repertory of music from various regions of Guinea, including the rhythms of the Susu, Malinke, and Baga language groups.

Location

Strong Auditorium Room 011 (MW 6:15PM - 7:30PM)

How does a country with five percent of the world's population, a country that nominally values freedom above all else, come to have nearly a quarter of the world's incarcerated people? In this survey course we investigate the history of imprisonment in the United States--as theorized and as practiced--from the founding of the republic to the present day. Special attention is paid to the politics, economics, race politics, and religious logics of contemporary mass incarceration, and to the efforts afoot to end mass incarceration.

Location

Bausch & Lomb Room 109 (MWF 10:25AM - 11:15AM)

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: One of the following: DANC181 & 182, DANC 283, DANC 253, DANC 285. For Drummers one of the following: MUSC 168A, MUSC 168B, MUSC 146 OR to audition, email kerfala.bangoura@gmail.com. 

Location

Spurrier Gymnasium Room 104 (TR 7:00PM - 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

Goergen Hall Room 108 (W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

North Africa and the Middle East is in a mess: Instead of democracy, the Arab Spring delivered a military dictatorship to Egypt; Iraq and Syria are melting into warring tribal enclaves; Saudi Arabia is waging a savage war in Yemen; and the Palestinians remain an unprotected stateless people. There is a crisis, and this course introduces students to the predicament, arguing that since the first Industrial Revolution in England, the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East have refashioned their destinies in partnership with the West. Students will examine how the following encounters helped make the region as we know it: the Anglo-Turkish Convention of 1838, transition from Ottoman to West European colonialism, discovery of huge and easily extractable oil reserves, creation of the state of Israel, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the US Invasion of Iraq in 2003. The class will also explore how the above patterns of engagement shaped the histories of the region's working classes, women, and the peasantry.

Location

Hylan Building Room 305 (R 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

How is Latinx identity expressed? What historical events have marked its social and cultural

articulation? These questions will guide the work of this course, as we discuss the historical and contemporary discourses that have shaped the lives and sociopolitical agency of Latinxs in the United States. Departing from the Caribbean Philosophical Association’s mission of Shifting the Geography of Reason, we will explore the tensions and dynamics involved in Latinx author’s thought and cultural productions. Through the analysis of literary and philosophical texts, as well as historical data and policies, we will examine projects and practices that work towards the decolonization of Power, Being and Knowledge.  Course offered in English. May be taken for Spanish credit (if writing assignments done in Spanish; prerequisite for Spanish enrollment is SPAN 200)

Readings may include works by Gloria Anzaldua, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Valeria Luiselli, Eduardo Halfon, Elizabeth Acevedo, Gabby Rivera, María Lugones

Location

Lechase Room 103 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

What is America? A country? A continent? A political ideal? A culture? This course traces the development of ideas about America, from its historical beginnings to our own time, from European fantasies about the New World and its possibilities to the experiences of settlers and citizens facing its realities. We will explore the competing and even contending narratives of America in a wide variety of cultural documents, from orations, sermons and political tracts to novels, poems, photographs, and films.

Location

Lechase Room 121 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This course deals with questions raised at the intersection of constitutional law and sociological and political science studies of the politics and practice of race in the United States. While studying major court decisions concerning race and slavery, voting, property rights, segregation/de-segregation, criminal justice, voting, discrimination, and affirmative action, we will examine questions such as: what is the role of the legal system in constituting and perpetuating the racial order of the United States? To what extent do court rulings reflect more than they shape what actually happens outside of the legal system? How, if at all, do they shape public opinion? What are the advantages and disadvantages of courts as a tool for social change? Do answers to these questions vary by area of law and/or historical period? The course is largely discussion-based and will include readings in case law, critical legal studies, critical race theory, and works in political science and sociology.

Location

Dewey Room 2110D (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This course will offer a survey of African American film and filmmakers from the early 20th century to the 21st.  Directors we will study include: Oscar Micheaux, Ivan Dixon, Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks, Charles Burnett, Carl Franklin, Dee Rees, Cheryl Dunye, Julie Dash, Kasi Lemmons, Ava DuVernay, Spike Lee, John Singleton, Ryan Coogler, Jordan Peele.  We will also explore the incisive critical and theoretical work African American critics have produced in response to these films and the contexts in which they emerge.

Location

Morey Room 504 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Does it matter where our power comes from? Why or how and to whom? This course uses anthropological case studies of different kinds of energy sources (fossil fuels, nuclear, water, solar, wind) and different kinds of electrification (centralized grids versus micro-grids) around the world to think about the relationship between energy, environments, power, and culture with a specific focus on intersectional gender and sexuality. How do energy practices and cultural norms of racialized gender shape each other in various places around the world, and to what effects? What might empirical attention to how people talk about and use energy help us to understand about the energy transitions and climate crises of the 21st century?

Location

Meliora Room 218 (MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM)

Addressing the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS in the United States, United Kingdom, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Haiti, and elsewhere, this uniquely interdisciplinary course will incorporate insights from the fields of public health, medical anthropology, and ethnomusicology. Studying the HIV/AIDS epidemic through the lens of musical expression, we will ask how individuals and communities affected by HIV/AIDS have mobilized musical sound in response to the disease. Topics addressed within the class will include musical representations of HIV/AIDS within queer communities; the use of music in public health campaigns to raise awareness about the disease; and the mobilization of musical performance within grassroots support groups for individuals affected by HIV/AIDS.

Location

Lattimore Room 540 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course examines some of the major public policy issues affecting the Black community.  We begin with a survey of the public policy making process at the local and federal levels.  The rest of the course deals with the specific groups, conflicts, institutions, and structural constraints governing the formation of public policy in the areas of education, poverty, affirmative action, and crime.  We will ask questions about the origin and nature of the problems in these areas, the explanations of why some policies and not others have been adopted, and the strengths and weaknesses of competing policy solutions.

Location

Morey Room 205 (MWF 11:50AM - 12:40PM)

Experience dancing African styles from traditional cultures of Guinea, West Africa, as well as studying cultural history and context from which and in which they are practiced and performed. Technical emphasis will focus on musicality and complex choreographic arrangement. Students will practice dances and drum songs. Required outside work includes performance attendance, video viewing, text and article analysis, research and written work.

Location

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

The course main objective is to introduce students to charismatic figures such as Kwame Nkrumah, W.E.B. Dubois, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Josephine Baker, Angela Davis and many others who contributed to the long walk to freedom in the Black World. The choice of Ghana derives from its role in the articulation of the narrative of black emancipation. The city of Accra, with the street names and various parks and monuments, is in itself an embodiment of this struggle. Students will learn in the classroom, but more importantly, they will learn by visiting selected sites of history and memory. Students will also learn by leaving and interacting with host families. The ultimate outcome expected from this course is to introduce students to Ghana as a strategic location in the global struggle for the emancipation of the Black world

Location

Hylan Building Room 305 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

We will investigate the peculiar quality of romanticism and the particular achievements of romantic writers in the United States during the period before the Civil War. Three capacious topics will organize discussions: nature and art, society and history, and individuals and communities. As part of each of these topics, we will also consider the pressures and controversies around slavery, race, and gender that were dividing the States in the decades before the Civil War. We will read works by Cooper, Childs, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Melville, Poe, Douglass, Jacobs, Hawthorne, Stowe, Whitman, Lincoln, Dickinson, and others. Of particular interest throughout the term will be the hopes and anxieties, allegiances and resistances, aesthetic triumphs and political frustrations that characters American romantic artists and have made the imagination a crucial part of the nation's life and an indispensable resource for its people even at moments when fundamental conflicts threatened to end the nation altogether.

Location

Morey Room 303 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Humanitarianism, largely understood as the ultimate of ethical acts, took root in the modern world not as a response to war or “emergencies” but as part of an effort to remake the world so that it better served the interests of humanity. Against the “hegemonic corporate forces of predatory capitalism,” aid agencies perform the work of welfare workers who are part of the network of moral discourses, religious beliefs, ethical commitments, and international norms that generate an obligation to help distant strangers.” Humanitarianism and Social Insecurities engages students in a critical understanding of humanitarianism discourses and practices through an investigation of polemics, misunderstandings, testimonials, and the creative imagination inspired by humanitarian interventions. With the recognition that “noble actions can have negative and unintended consequences”, this course takes the student from a position of moral indignation to one of a critical indignation, and ultimately, a better understanding of the practices and discourses generated by the phenomenon of charity, humanitarianism, and Social Insecurities.

Location

Lechase Room 161 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course is a survey of some of the canonical and some of the most exciting contemporary works in the field of African-American political thought. We begin with foundational texts from Walker, Delany, Douglass, Wells, Du Bois, Garvey, Baldwin, King, and Malcolm X. In the first half of the course we will focus on questions such as: What is the nature of the wrong(s) African Americans have suffered in the United States? What sustains systems of domination and exclusion? What responses, in addition to condemnation, do these systems of domination merit? What does the long history of white domination in the United States say about ideals of liberalism and democracy? And what is the way forward? In the second part of the course, we will read contemporary works dealing with reparations, collective responsibility, obligations to solidarity/allyship, and epistemologies of ignorance.

Location

Meliora Room 209 (MWF 9:00AM - 9:50AM)

The purpose of this course is to provide students with a broad exposure to the genealogical legacies, conceptual developments, and canonical thinkers of race and racial theories that emerge within the discipline of Black Studies. Understanding race as a system of social organization predicated on the hierarchy of difference, this class will pay specific attention to both the socio-historical progression of racial theories and its intersections with notions of gender, sexuality, class, disability, nationality, and citizenship. Readings will include, but are not limited to, works by James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara, Derrick Bell, Angela Davis, Patricia Hill Collins, Cheryl Harris, bell hooks, Cedric Robinson and more. Students will ultimately leave this course with a foundational understanding of (r)evolutions in theories of race and their application in popular cultural forms and relevance to contemporary race debates. This course will count towards the “Race and Social Issues” cluster.

Location

Lechase Room 141 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

Sansifanyi offers experienced dancers the opportunity to study West African dance forms as well as studying cultural history and context from which and in which they are performed at a professional level. This course requires a high degree of student commitment. Dancers who enroll in Sansifanyi will learn choreographic techniques for West African dance and gain experience dancing as soloists. They will also focus on rhythmic timing, and on advanced skills such as how to combine movement with drumming. In addition to the time students spend in class, dancers in the ensemble are expected to spend several hours per week researching, reading, writing, viewing videos, text and article analysis, practicing, and choreographing various rhythms, songs, movements, and sequences. Dancers must also be available for performances both on and off campus throughout the semester.   Clusters: Improvisation and the Creative Process, Movement and Culture, Dance and Performance. Prerequisite: Audition on first day of class or for dancers, one of the following: DANC 181/182, DANC 283, DANC 253, DANC 285: For drummers one of the following: MUSC 168A, MUSC 168B, MUSC 146

Location

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