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 African American Music II (4 credits)
This course will examine the development of African American music during the twentieth century into the twenty-first century. Literature and history will be examined alongside documentaries and footage of famous performers in conjunction to their historical period and the cultural and political events of the time. The Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Arts Movement, post-Civil Rights era, and the Black Lives Matter Movement will encompass the scope of this course. In addition, the course will consider the diasporic reaches of “Afro-Latinidad” (bachata, salsa, etc.) and Caribbean influences such as reggae and dub. (Gen. Ed. AT,DU)

AFROAM 170 The Grassroots Experience in American Life and Culture I, (4 credits)
This course combines instruction in research techniques in a variety of Humanistic and Social Science disciplines, and hands-on experience with those techniques, with substantive materials focusing on the long struggle of minority populations for full participation in American cultural and public life. (Gen. Ed. HS,DU)

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 244 Afro-Am Poetry: Beginning to 1900 (4 credits)
This is a discussion-based course that will read black poetry as a response to both historical and contemporary contexts. Over the course of the semester, we will discuss the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, Frances E. W. Harper, and Paul Laurence Dunbar alongside some lesser-known African American poets from the pre-1900 period. We will also read some recently published poems and collections that take up historical questions and their traces in the present (including the transatlantic slave trade, regimes of enslavement, anti-blackness, racist science and medicine, state and police violence, and sexual violence). Students will also be introduced to poetry criticism and other relevant secondary literature. The work for the class will include two shorter response papers (rooted in close reading); one creative project; and a final research paper that will incorporate secondary sources. (Gen. Ed. AL,DU)

AFROAM 250 African American Short Stories (4 credits)
Students in this course will receive an introduction to the African American short story and to the major themes, issues, concepts, as well as the literary techniques and forms prevalent in African American literature. (Gen.Ed. AL,DU)

AFROAM 264 Foundations of Black Education in the U.S. (4 credits)
The education of blacks from Reconstruction to 1954. Includes public schools, colleges, and non-school education. The involvement of religious associations, philanthropic organizations, the Freedman’s Bureau, the Black church, and the Federal Government will also be discussed. (Gen. Ed. HS,DU)

AFROAM 293C Race, Sexuality, and the Law in Early America
What is race? What is sexuality? And how did early American history shape the legal structures that would come to define racial and sexual identities and possibilities? In this course, students will examine how African, European, and Native American ideas about race and sexuality influenced the development of colonial, early Republican, and antebellum America, with a special focus on the evolution of American legal frameworks undergirding racial and sexual hierarchies. Topics covered include initial encounters between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans; the birth and evolution of racial slavery; interracial sex and marriage; citizenship and belonging; and legal and extra-legal violence.

AFROAM 293G From Environmental Racism to Climate Justice
This course explores the emergence of the modern environmental justice movement in the U.S. South during the 1980s and 90s and examines its impact on the more recent development of a movement for climate justice. It will note how this movement coined the term “environmental racism” and made calls for new forms of participatory democracy, while also noting some of this movement’s limitations. In doing so, this course will pay particular attention to the ways in which this movementinformed the development of the demands of climate activists, both in the& United States and around the world. From here, this course will examine key facets of the emerging climate movement, including the fight to block pipelines, thestruggle against disaster capitalism, the conceptualization of the Anthropocene, and how growing debatescaround militarism, decolonization, eco-socialism, and industrial sabotage shape contemporary activism.

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 345 Southern Literature, (4 credits)
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. (Gen. Ed. AL,DU)

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. Junior year writing is required for all majors in AfroAm; secondary majors have the option to complete this requirement in their primary major.

AFROAM 494DI Du Bois Senior Seminar (for Juniors and Seniors)
This course is the senior capstone course required for all majors in Afro-American Studies. It also fulfills the University's Integrative Learning Experience (IE) requirement.This course has two aims: (1) to reflect on your educational journey at UMass as well as to further explore your intellectual and professional goals; and (2) to prepare you to complete your senior project in Afro-American Studies. The course will provide ample space and time to brainstorm and plan your senior project in consultation with the instructor and your peers.

AFROAM 597R  Reparations for African Descendants: Theory & Practice (Undergraduate/Graduate)
The United Nations declared 2015 to 2024 the International Decade of People of African Descent. The International Decade is a follow up of the process from the 2001 UN World Conference against Racism, where the international community designated the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade as a Crime against Humanity. In that spirit, this course will explore the issue of reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States. Reparations to the descendants of captive Africans has been debated in African-American political discourse for decades. This course will look at other cases for reparations internationally, engaging the history and the basis for the demand as well as proposals for reparations for African descendants.

AFROAM 597A. Afro-Caribbean Studies Undergraduate/Graduate)
Afro-Caribbean Studies is an advanced introduction to the history, culture, and politics of people of African descent in the Caribbean basin suitable for both graduate students and upper-level undergraduates.After a broad synopsis of the region’s history, the course has a focus on the politics of select Caribbean states, from 1900 to the present; viz., Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica. It will discuss major issues that affect the Caribbean region, namely, migration, poverty, regional economic cooperation and political integration, democratic institutions, and U. S. foreign policy towards the region. Also, the course will examine the history and role of the diverse religious components of the Caribbean basin from Indigenous practices to Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism and the emergence and development of African belief systems and practices such as Santeria, Espiritismo, Vodou and Rastafarianism from the 18th century to the present. Music and other expressive arts is an additional focal area of the class.

AFROAM 591G Black Ecologies. (Undergraduate/Graduate)
This seminar roots ecological catastrophe in the history of the Atlantic slave trade. We will read a number of works that illuminate the specific relationship between environmental degradation and the world that slavery made. We will be also interested in tracing how race, gender, and poverty are being mobilized as weapons of dispossession and extraction on the frontiers of capitalist exploitation today. Other topics will include: ecological thought in black critical theory; alternative models of sustainability and stewardship; black eco-poetics and climate fiction; environmental justice movements; new solidarities in climate activism. Readings will draw from a range of fields, including black critical theory; feminist, queer, and trans studies; disability studies; literary studies; and diaspora studies.