The Courses

(All courses carry 3 credits unless otherwise noted.)

AFROAM 101 Introduction to Black Studies
Interdisciplinary introduction to the basic concepts and literature in the disciplines covered by Black Studies. Includes history, the social sciences, and humanities as well as conceptual frameworks for investigation and analysis of Black history and culture.

AFROAM 117 Survey of Afro-American Literature (4 credits)
The major figures and themes in Afro-American literature, analyzing specific works in detail and surveying the early history of Afro-American literature. What the slave narratives, poetry, short stories, novels, drama, and folklore of the period reveal about the social, economic, psychological, and artistic lives of the writers and their characters, both male and female. Explores the conventions of each of these genres in the period under discussion to better understand the relation of the material to the dominant traditions of the time and the writers' particular contributions to their own art.  (Gen.Ed. AL,DU) 

AFROAM 118 Survey of Afro-American Literature II (4 credits)
Introductory level survey of Afro-American literature from the Harlem Renaissance to the present, including DuBois, Hughes, Hurston, Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, Walker, Morrison, Baraka and Lorde. (Gen. Ed. AL,DU) 

AFROAM 132 African-American History 1619-1860 (4 credits)
The main aim of this course is to make you familiar with some of the most important developments and issues in African American history until the Civil War. We will focus on the black experience under slavery and the struggle for emancipation. Topics include the Atlantic slave trade, evolution of African American communities and culture, the free black community, the distinct experience of black women, and the black protest tradition. The format of the course is lecture supplemented by class discussions.  (Gen.Ed. HS,DU) 

AFROAM 133 African-American History Civil War-1954 (4 credits)
Major issues and actions from the beginning of the Civil War to the 1954 Supreme Court decision. Focus on political and social history: transition from slavery to emancipation and Reconstruction; the Age of Booker T. Washington; urban migrations, rise of the ghettoes; the ideologies and movements from integrationism to black nationalism. (Gen. Ed. HS,DU) 

AFROAM 151 Literature & Culture (4 credits)
This course focuses on African American cultural expressions contributing to the shape and character of contemporary African American (and U.S.) culture and how these forms have influenced and been represented by African American writers. The course uses African American literature and culture of the 1960s and 1970s in their many manifestations, especially poetry, criticism, theater, music, and the visual arts as an entry into the concerns listed above. A particular focus of the course will be the ways in which domestic and international political movements, such as Civil Rights, Black Power, anti-colonial, and non-aligned intersected with black cultural efforts, deeply influencing the formal and thematic choices of African American artists. (Gen.Ed AL,DU)

AFROAM 156 Revolutionary Concepts in Afro-American Music II (4 credits) 
This course will examine the development of Afro-American music during the twentieth century with an especial focus on links to the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement.  In particular, the class will survey the variegated styles and productions of artists, including Bessie Smith, Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson, Ma Rainey, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Memphis Minnie, Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, Lightnin’ Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Mary Lou Williams, Charlie “Bird” Parker, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Smith, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, Randy Weston, Nina Simone, Charles Mingus, Archie Shepp, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, Booker T. & the MGs, Nikki Giovanni, Sun Ra, the Chicago Art Ensemble, Sonia Sanchez, Albert Ayler, Leon Thomas, Jayne Cortez, The Watts Prophets, The Last Poets, and Gil Scott-Heron.  (Gen. Ed. AT,DU)

AFROAM 161 Introduction to Afro-American Political Science (4 credits)
Survey of the politics of the Black community in the U.S. The history of Black political development, major theories which explain Black political life, social, economic, psychological and institutional environment from which Black politics flows. Attention paid to 1988 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson and its relevance to the 2008 election of Barack Obama.  (Gen. Ed. SB,DU)

AFROAM 197A Taste of Honey: Black Film, Part I (1 credit) *Fall offering
AFROAM 197B Taste of Honey: Black Film, Part II (1 credit) *Spring offering

AFROAM 234 The Harlem Renaissance   (4 credits)
Exploration of the cultural explosion also termed the New Negro movement, from W.E.B. Du Bois through the early work of Richard Wright. Essays, poetry, and fiction, and the blues, jazz, and folklore of the time examined in terms of how Harlem Renaissance artists explored their spiritual and cultural roots, dealt with gender issues, sought artistic aesthetic and style adequate to reflect such concerns. Readings supplemented by contemporary recordings, visual art, and videos. (Gen.Ed. AL,DU)

AFROAM 236 History of the Civil Rights Movement  (4 credits)
Examination of the Civil Rights Movement from the Brown v. Topeka decision to the rise of Black power. All the major organizations of the period, e.g., SCLC, SNCC, CORE, NAACP, and the Urban League. The impact on white students and the anti-war movement.  (Gen.Ed. HS,DU)

AFROAM 326 Black Women in U.S. History (4 credits)
The history of African American women from the experience of slavery to the present. Emphasis on the effect of racist institutions and practices on women. The ways in which women organized themselves to address the needs of African Americans in general and their own in particular. The achievements of such leaders as Mary Church Terrell, Harriet Tubman, Ella Baker, and Mary McLeod Bethune as well as lesser known women. (Gen.Ed. HS,DU)

AFROAM 330. Songbirds, Blueswomen, Soulwomen (4 credits)
The focus for this course is the cultural, political, and social issues found in the music and history of African American women performers. The primary emphasis in the course will be on African American women in Jazz, Blues, and Soul/R&B, but students also will study African American women composers as well as Spiritual-Gospel and Opera performers.

AFROAM 331. Life of W.E.B. Du Bois
An examination of the life and thought of arguably America’s greatest intellectual activist and one of Massachusetts’ native sons is the focus of this course. Students will conduct microfilm research in the W.E.B. Du Bois Special Collections and University Archives.

AFROAM 332. Blacks and Jews
Our aim in this course is to share with students an understanding of the scope and diversity of the relations of African Americans and Jewish Americans in the U.S., during the past 300 years.  One of our purposes is to minimize the tendency toward comparing degrees of suffering, or posing an “Us versus Them” framework that ignores the more complex interactions that have characterized Black-Jewish relations over time and in different geographical parts of the U.S.

AFROAM 344. Black Speculative Fiction
Examination of the development of black speculative fiction in the nineteenth and twentieth century, including science fiction, fantasy, gothic literature, magical realism, the detective novel, and/or related genres. Topics of discussion may include slavery and colonialism; diaspora; science, technology, and the environment; race and the paraliterary; utopianism and dystopianism; blackness and metaphysics; Afrofuturism.

AFROAM 345. Southern Literature, 4 credits, (AL,DU)
This course offers an introduction to Southern Black Literature through a sampling of classic texts and more recent prose and poetry. In addition to surveying a rich canon of literature that has its origins in the antebellum slave narrative tradition, we will also study: (1) networks, alliances, and patterns of migration connecting the U.S. South and the Global South (especially the Caribbean); (2) black queer and trans life in the South; (3) recent film and television set in the Deep South; (4) structures and experiences of dispossession and poverty. We will also look at media coverage and scholarship to explore struggles happening in the South right now, especially movements around armed self-defense/community policing; cooperative farming and economic self-determination; disaster capitalism and environmental dispossession in places like the Gulf Coast and in Puerto Rico; the toppling/removal of Confederate statues and fight against white supremacist organizations and activities.

AFROAM 365. Composition: Style & Organization
Expository writing focusing primarily on argumentative and narrative essays. Discussion and practice of logic—inductive and deductive reasoning—as it relates to the argumentative essay form. Topics as thesis on main idea, organization, style, unity, supporting evidence, avoiding logical fallacies, and basic writing mechanics, including constructing sentences, paragraphing, transitions, and correct grammar.

AFROAM 395F  Peer Leadership Development (Spring semester)
This is the 1st part of a two-semester two-course sequence that is designed to prepare second and third-year students to mentor entering first year students. This course will help older students focus on developing leadership and outreach skills which will enable them to strengthen their own academic achievement as well as prepare them to help others.  This two-semester course sequence begins with upper class students in the spring semester; the course will prepare them to work with incoming new students in the subsequent fall semester.The spring semester course is divided into two segments.  The first segment of this course will enable second and third year students to develop leadership skills for themselves which will enable them to have a better understanding of how to assist first year students in forming effective study groups, mediation, studying for exams, time management, and library skills.  Students will also learn how to act as mentors, by working with middle and high school students. Students will interact with these young people one on one as well as within groups.  The second half of the spring semester course will focus on various topics that affect the ALANAI community. Topics will include racism, sexism, STDs, drugs in our society, male and female relationships, dropping out of school, stress management, and ALANAI leaders in the past and present. Students will be assigned an office space in order to interview potential 1st year students over the phone as part of the admission outreach program and to establish initial contact with their fall semester mentees who have accepted the offer of admission to the university.

AFROAM 395G Peer Leadership and Facilitation (Fall semester)
This is the second part of a two-semester course that is designed to help upper-class (junior and senior) students’ focus on developing leadership and outreach skills. The course will enable upperclassmen to work directly with newly entering first semester’s students and to help them facilitate the transitional process from high school to college. Students in the class will serve as Peer Leaders to assist first year students form effective study groups; learn how to study for exams and how to manage their time more effectively. 

AFROAM 494DI Du Bois Senior Seminar (for Juniors and Seniors)
This course is an upper-division course that provides a structured context for students to reflect on their own learning in their General Education courses and the courses they have taken in the AFROAM major. In the course we will attempt to connect skills and knowledge from multiple sources and experiences and apply theory to practice in various real world settings; engaging diverse and even contradictory points of view; and, understanding issues and positions contextually as students prepare to write their senior thesis.  This course satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for students in the AfroAm major.

AFROAM 597E. Dalits and African Americans   (Undergraduate/Graduate)
The purpose of this seminar is to begin to explore similarities, differences, connections and convergences between the Dalit population of India and African Americans in the United States. We will read short histories of both peoples, studies that focus on examples of historic interactions, and studies comparing leading figures of both groups. Most of the reading will center on the 20th century i.e. India during the periods of colonization, anti-colonization, and independence; and on African Americans from emancipation to the end of legal segregation. There is a rich and rapidly growing scholarship on these topics so view this seminar as an opening to a complex and important topic. Good books to read, discussion format, class presentation on one of the books, final paper.