Major Requirements

Our Black studies program can be classified as either social sciences (SS) or humanities (H), depending on the balance of the rest of the courses taken by the student.

For more information about the major requirements, please contact the director of undergraduate studies.

A minimum of 10 courses (40 credits) is required, including the following:

  • One introductory course—BLST 110: Introduction to Black Studies
  • Five divisional courses—Students must choose five BLST courses from either the humanities or social sciences. These courses will determine which of the College’s divisional requirements the BLST major will satisfy. No more than two of these courses can be at the 100-level.
  • Three elective courses—Students must choose three additional BLST courses as electives. No more than one course can be at the 100-level.
  • One advanced seminar—BLST 380: Advanced Seminar in Black Studies

Additional guidelines:

  • No more than six courses can be in a single discipline.
  • Two of the above courses must satisfy the Upper-Level Writing Requirement.

Elective and Divisional Courses

Listed under their home departments, examples of courses that can be applied to the Black Studies major include:

Black Studies

  • BLST 110: Introduction to Black Studies (McHarris/Ealey/Frierson)
  • BLST 104: Black Past Lives: Frederick Douglass’s Rochester (Barker)
  • BLST 105: American Resistance: The Struggle for Justice (Barker)
  • BLST 113: Introduction to Black Health I (Adetiba)
  • BLST 122: Black Life Online: Intro to Digital Black Studies (Smith)
  • BLST 204: Afrofuturism and Speculative Design (Smith)
  • BLST 209: AIDS Across the Diaspora (Adetiba)
  • BLST 216: Zambaje: Afro-Indigenous Relations in Latin America (Frierson)
  • BLST 219: 50 Years of Hip-Hop: Music, Movement, and Message (McCune)
  • BLST 224/242: Black Geographies: Race, Space, and Abolition (McHarris)
  • BLST 226: Black Paris (Kemedjio)
  • BLST 227/427: Singin’ a Black Girl’s Song: Black Women’s Sonic Cultures (Ealey)
  • BLST 231: Black Drama: Performance and Contemporary Issues (Ealey)
  • BLST 233: Policing America: Race, Class, and Criminalization (McHarris)
  • BLST 237: Recognizing Blackness in Latin America (Frierson)
  • BLST 247: Biographies of Emancipation in the Black World (Kemedjio)
  • BLST 252: Other/Worldly: A Black Ecology of Outer Space (Dunning)
  • BLST 257: Traveling While Black (Frierson)
  • BLST 258: Flights to Freedom: How Maroons Made the Americas (Frierson)
  • BLST 263: The Black Theatrical Past (Ealey)
  • BLST 264-01: Black Rochester: Histories, Movements, Legacies (McHarris)
  • BLST 264-02: Black Americans Abroad: How to Be an Expat (Frierson)
  • BLST 265: Viral Forms: African Internet Cultures in the 21st Century (Omelsky)
  • BLST 271: 21st Century Black Comedy as Resistance (Barker)
  • BLST 273: Introduction to the Francophone Caribbean Novel (Kemedjio)
  • BLST 279: Global Black Media (Omelsky)
  • BLST 262: Biomedical Blackness (Adetiba)
  • BLST 322: Epidemics Across the Color Line (Adetiba)
  • BLST 356: The Politics of Beyoncé (Dunning)
  • BLST 345/545: Black Sexual Worlds (McCune)
  • BLST 380: Black Feminist Theory and Criticism (Ealey)

Anthropology

  • ANTH 207: Race and Space in the City (Mariner)
  • BLST 200: Cultural Politics of Prison Towns (Doughty, Dubler)
  • BLST 207: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Mariner)
  • BLST 230: War Genocide and Justice (Doughty)
  • BLST 237: Black Embodiment (Mariner)
  • ANTH 255: Feminism and Media in the Americas (Mondragón-Celis)

English

  • BLST 101: African Literatures of Migration (Omelsky)
  • BLST 156: Introduction to African American Literature (Tucker/Omelsky/Dunning)
  • BLST 206: Black Adaptations (Omelsky)
  • BLST 214: Reimagining the Human: Global Black Speculative Fiction (Omelsky)
  • BLST 229: Slavery and the African American Novel (Tucker)
  • BLST 230: African American Autobiography (Tucker)
  • BLST 231: African American Drama (Tucker)
  • BLST 236: Haunted Caribbean (Omelsky)
  • BLST 261: Black Film Collectives (Omelsky)
  • BLST 266: Internet Aesthetics: Viral Forms from the Global South (Omelsky)
  • BLST 266: African Digital Cultures (Omelsky)
  • BLST 272: The Harlem Renaissance (Tucker)
  • BLST 276: Bright Lights, African Cities (Omelsky)
  • BLST 269: Contemporary African Film and Fiction (Omelsky)

History

  • HIST 151: Modern Latin America (Sierra)
  • HIST 170: African American History to 1900 (Chambliss)
  • HIST 200-02: The Harlem and Black Chicago Renaissances (Chambliss)
  • HIST 248: African Diaspora to Latin America, 1804 to 2009 (Sierra)
  • HIST 251: African Diaspora to Latin America, 1441-1804 (Sierra)
  • HIST 278: bell hooks: Writer and Theorist (Chambliss)
  • HIST 347/447: Archives and Absences: Writing from the Margins of History (Chambliss)
  • HIST 350/450: Captives: Past, Present and Future (Sierra)
  • HIST 386/486: The Other Atlantic: Chronicle, Ethnohistory and Memory (Sierra)
  • BLST 340: Black Mexico (Sierra)
  • BLST 142: African American History II Since 1900 (Chambliss)
  • BLST 150: Colonial Latin American History (Ball/Sierra)
  • BLST 353: Racial Democracies: Brazil vs. Mexico (Ball)

Modern Languages and Cultures

  • BLST 212: Humanitarianism and Its Discontents (Kemedjio)
  • BLST 237: Representing African Americans in the African Imagination (Kemedjio)
  • BLST 244: Mutilated Bodies, Mutilated Discourse (Kemedjio)
  • BLST 275: Hip Hop Japan (Bridges)
  • BLST 291: Caribbean Literature and Its Theory (Kemedjio)

Music

  • BLST 222: Music, Ethnography and HIV/AIDS (Kyker)
  • BLST 210: Ngoma: Drum, Dance, S Africa (Kyker)
  • ENS 217: Advanced Mbira Ensemble (Kyker)
  • MUY 590: Acoustic Africa (Kyker)
  • MUY 590: Music of the Black Atlantic (Kyker)
  • BLST 121: World Music (Kyker)
  • BLST 123: Music of Black Americans (Hunter)
  • BLST 124: American Protest Music (Hunter)
  • BLST 147: Gospel Music in America (Hunter)
  • BLST 140: Religion and Black Popular Music (Hunter)

Political Science

  • PSCI 209: The Politics of Punishment (Yntiso)
  • PSCI 213: Black Politics (Walker)
  • PSCI 220: Inequality and American Democracy (Walker)
  • PSCI 263: Democracy and Authoritarianism in the United States (Yntiso)
  • BLST 207: Race, Ethnicity and American Politics (Komisarchik)
  • BLST 242: Race, History, and City Politics (Gamm)
  • BLST 294: Political Economy of African American Communities (Johnson)

Religion and Classics

  • BLST 125: Religion, Race, and Ethnicity in America (Rubel)
  • BLST 146: Womanist Religious Rhetoric (Marshall)
  • BLST 152: The Black Church and The Underground Railroad Experience (Marshall)
  • BLST 170: Religion and Hip Hop (Marshall)
  • BLST 183: Incarceration Nation (Dubler)
  • BLST 185: Black Preaching and Sacred Rhetoric (Marshall)
  • BLST 200: Cultural Politics of Prison Towns (Doughty, Dubler)
  • BLST 239: Love, Liberation, and Black Lives: African American Religious Traditions (Marshall)
  • BLST 285: Civil Disobedience (Downey)