Courses

Further Information

Further information concerning planned graduate course offerings can be obtained by calling the Afro-American Studies Department office at (413) 545-2751, or by visiting the department's website at www.umass.edu/afroam/.

All courses carry 4 credits unless otherwise specified.

601 Slavery
This seminar will focus on the rise of slavery in the United States until its destruction during the Civil War. We shall study slavery as a political and economic institution as well as a day to day lived experience. Within this historical framework, the emphasis will be on broad themes and interpretations: for example, the construction of the concept of "race" and the debate over the origins of slavery, the nature of slave communities and culture, gender and slavery, slavery in a comparative perspective, the significance of slave resistance and the politics of slavery. The format of the course is discussion.

690J Passing
This course will focus on different manifestations of passing from the 19^th to the 21^st centuries, examining motivations, methods, and outcomes in the context of race, class, gender, sexuality, and literary aesthetic.

690K Writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance
This course will treat major writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance of the 1930s-1950s, setting them in the context of the White Chicago Renaissance, the New Negro Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, and other arts in Chicago in the era, and treating various aesthetics, goals, themes, symbols and images that express the zeitgeist of the movement.

691F Black Political Struggle and the American Political System
An historical examination of the black political struggle for equality and citizenship in America—the obstacles placed in the path of that struggle by the American political system in general and by the American state in particular—and the countless ways in which racial politics have shaped the system that is called American Democracy.

691G African American Poetry
An intensive survey of African American poetry from Lucy Terry to the present, focusing on how language, form, and content reflect the ways that African Americans have perceived their positions in American society and their roles as reflectors and/or shapers of African American culture. Explores sources and influences in various works of African, American, and British literature as well as works of African American folklore. Includes secondary critical works dealing with the African American poetic tradition.

691R Topics in the Modern Civil Rights Movement

692A Literary Theory
This course will take up literary theory since 1965 and how it has influenced the study of African American literature and culture.  The idea here is not to be comprehensive, but rather, to use the term popular a few years back, to stage a series of interventions into the sometimes troubled relationship between “high” theory and its successors and African American Studies. Our task will not simply be to examine different “schools” of critical theory, but to consider how theory has informed and challenged African American literary studies and vice versa.  We will also seek to historicize various critical moments or movements rather than simply view them as pieces of an intellectual toolbox.

692F  From Reconstruction to Renaissance
This course examines African American literature and culture from the rise of Reconstruction through the onset of Jim Crow and the Great Migration to the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance.  We will be particularly interested in the relationship between African American literature and culture during this period and the notions of modernity, modernism, and the artistic and social avant-garde in the United States.

692Q African Diaspora Studies: Introduction to Concepts and Historiography
*Required foundations course for Graduate Certificate in African Diaspora Studies.
This seminar will offer an introduction to 1) key concepts and definitions e.g. diaspora, Pan-Africanism, Afro-centrism, etc. 2) the classic works in the field. 3) major trends in contemporary scholarship. We will be reading a selection of works discussing the contours and history of the field as well as examples of recent scholarship. Two papers on major themes will be required. This course is required for the Graduate Certificate in African Diaspora Studies and is open both to students pursuing the certificate and to graduate students with a general interest in the subject.

699 Master’s Thesis
Credit, 1-10.

701-702 Major Works Seminar in Afro-American Studies I and II
An intensive study of fifty major works of Afro-American Studies. Required of all first-year doctoral and masters candidates, and open only to them.

899 Doctoral Dissertation
Credit, 10.