Courses

This two-course sequence assumes no previous knowledge of Arabic and provides a thorough grounding in the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It starts with the alphabet and the number system and builds the four skills gradually and systematically through carefully selected and organized materials focusing on specific, concrete and familiar topics such as self identification, family, travel, food, renting an apartment, study, the weather, etc.). These topics are listed in the textbook's table of contents.  The student who successfully completes the two-course sequence will have mastered about 1000 basic words and will be able to: 1) understand and actively participate in conversations on a limited range of practical topics such as self-identification, family, school, work, the weather, travel, etc., 2) read and understand, with the help of a short list of words, passages of up to 180 words written in Arabic script, and 3) discuss orally in class and write a 50-word paragraph in Arabic.  The two-course sequence aims to take the student from the Novice to the Intermediate Mid level according to the ACTFL proficiency guidelines.

Full details for ASRC 1202 - Elementary Arabic II

At the inception of this department at Cornell University in 1969, the Africana Studies and Research Center became the birthplace of the field "Africana studies." Africana studies emphasizes comparative and interdisciplinary studies of Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean and other diasporas. In this course, we will look at the diverse contours of the discipline. We will explore contexts ranging from modernity and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and plantation complex in the New World to processes of decolonization and globalization in the contemporary digital age. This course offers an introduction to the study of Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean and other diasporas. This course will examine, through a range of disciplines, among them literature, history, politics, philosophy, the themes - including race/racism, the Middle Passage, sexuality, colonialism, and culture - that have dominated Africana Studies since its inception in the late-1960s. We will explore these issues in an attempt to understand how black lives have been shaped in a historical sense; and, of course, the effects of these issues in the contemporary moment. This course seeks to introduce these themes, investigate through one or more of the disciplines relevant to the question, and provide a broad understanding of the themes so as to enable the kind of intellectual reflection critical to Africana Studies.

Full details for ASRC 1500 - Introduction to Africana Studies

This course offers an introduction to the philosophy of race. It canvasses key debates in the field concerning the metaphysical status of race, the relationship between the concept of race and racism (and the nature of the latter), the first-person reality of race, and the connections and disconnections between racial, ethnic, and national identities.

Full details for ASRC 1650 - Philosophy of Race

The short story is an ideal genre through which one might gain a basic introduction to African American literature and its major themes.  The foundational contributions to the development of the antebellum era of the nineteenth century were made by both black male and female authors during the fecund black literary renaissance of the 1850s, including "The Heroic Slave" by Frederick Douglass and "The Two Offers" by Frances E.W. Harper.  We will consider short stories by Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Charles Chesnutt, John Henrik Clarke, Ernest J. Gaines, Chester Himes, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Paule Marshall, Ann Petry, Mary Elizabeth Vroman, Alice Walker, and Richard Wright.  Through weekly entries in a reading journal, the production of six papers, and periodic in-class writing exercises, students will produce an extensive portfolio of written materials over the course of the semester.

Full details for ASRC 1822 - FWS: The African American Short Story

This course deals with educational innovations geared to promoting equal opportunity based on gender, race and class, in Africa and the African Diaspora. After an introduction of the concepts and theories of education and innovations and the stages of innovation as planned change, the course will focus on concrete cases and different types of educational innovations. The selected case studies, in the United States, include the creation and expansion of historically black institutions with a focus on Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), Lincoln University, Spelman College, and the Westside Preparatory School in Chicago. The African cases to be studied include African languages for instruction in Nigeria, science education also in Nigeria, Ujamaa and education for self-reliance in Tanzania, classroom action research in Lesotho, Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in African higher education with a focus on African Virtual Universities (AVU), the application of the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN) in Côte d'Ivoire, and OnLine learning at the University of in South Africa (UNISA). The role of education in the making of the Afropolitan in the 21st Century is discussed.

Full details for ASRC 1825 - FWS: Educational Innovations in Africa and Diaspora

In 1884 Germany took a lead role in the Berlin Conference, formalizing the 'Scramble for Africa'. Losing its colonies at the end of WWI, this interlude of German colonialism may appear brief. However, it left a long-lasting legacy for Germany's conceptions of race not least for the Nazi regime and ensuing Holocaust. The present course considers conceptions of race in modern Germany through an Africana Studies canon. Taking Aimé Césaire's theoretical framework as its starting point, the course deploys a cultural history approach to consider three main topics/eras. The first concerns questions of mapping. We examine this by reading the Berlin Conference in the context of emerging German ethnic expositions (Völkerschauen), where Theodor Michael's autobiography serves as our core cultural text. The second pertains to the re-appropriation of Germany's formal colonial past for Nazi propaganda. Here, we examine the early German colonialist, Carl Peters, whose biography featured as a central cinematographic propaganda source for Nazi Germany in 1941. Finally, we will discuss neo-colonial elements in contemporary German humanitarian politics, where we consider recruitment advertisement produced by the German army in juxtaposition with Post-Development arguments.

Full details for ASRC 1853 - FWS: Race and Colonialism in Modern Germany

Full details for ASRC 1862 - FWS: Black Faith Writing Matters

The digital revolution has made an enormous amount of information available to research scholars, but discovering resources and using them effectively can be challenging. This course introduces students with research interests in Latino and Africana Studies to search strategies and methods for finding materials in various formats (e.g., digital, film, and print) using information databases such as the library catalog, print and electronic indexes, and the World Wide Web. Instructors provide equal time for lecture and hands-on learning. Topics include government documents, statistics, subject-specific online databases, social sciences, the humanities, and electronic citation management.

Full details for ASRC 1900 - Research Strategies in Africana and Latino Studies

This course provides an overview of disastrous attempts at colonization in the Americas from ca. 1500 through ca. 1760. Over thirteen weeks, we will engage with the question of why some attempts at colonization failed and why some succeeded. We will also explore other early modern failures, from bankrupt monopoly trade companies to ill-fated buccaneer communities and entire cities destroyed by earthquakes and hurricanes. Exploring failures, rather than successes, will help students understand the contingent process of colonial expansion as well as the roles of Indigenous dispossession, African slavery, and inter-imperial trade networks to the success or failure of early modern colonies. Over the course of the semester, my lectures will cover broad themes in failed enterprises, while students will read several monographs and primary-source collections on specific disasters. Some central questions include: Why did some colonies fail and other thrived? What role did social factors like gender, race, and class play in colonial failures? What can we learn about colonialism and imperialism through a focus on when those processes ended in disasters?

Full details for ASRC 1986 - Disasters! A History of Colonial Failures in the Atlantic World, 1450-1750

This course centers Black women who have often described their reproductive health experiences as "fighting for our lives." While grounded in an exploration of Black women 's experiences in the US, this course also looks across the diaspora to issues of access, rights, and equity in reproductive health. Deeply inspired by the field of Black Feminist Health Science Studies, a field that advocates for the centrality of activism in healthcare and its importance for Black women's overall health and well-being, this course examines how issues of gender, race, class, ability, and power intersect to inform how reproductive health is conceptualized, practiced, and experienced. Ultimately, this course will yield a deeper understanding of how Black women have transformed existential and literal threats on their lives into a robust terrain of community-based activism and a movement for reproductive justice. We will read across a range of texts and genres from the historical and theoretical, to memoir and documentary. With what we learn together, we will craft contributions to public debates around healthcare issues impacting Black women.

Full details for ASRC 2023 - Fighting for Our Lives: Black Women's Reproductive Health and Activism in Historical Perspective

In this two-course sequence learners continue to develop the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing and grammar foundation through the extensive use of graded materials on a wide variety of topics.  While more attention is given to developing native-like pronunciation and to grammatical accuracy than in ARAB 1201 and ARAB 1202, the main focus of the course will be on encouraging fluency and facility in understanding the language and communicating ideas in it.  The student who successfully completes this two-course sequence will have mastered over 1500 new words and will be able to: 1) understand and actively participate in conversations related to a wide variety of topics beyond those covered in ARAB 1201 and ARAB 1202, such as the history and geography of the Arab world, food and health, sports, economic matters, the environment, politics, the Palestine problem, etc. 2) read and understand, with the help of a short list of words, passages of up to 300 words, and 3) discuss orally in class and write a 150-word paragraph in Arabic with fewer grammatical errors than in ARAB 1202.  The two-course sequence aims to take the student from the Intermediate Mid to the Advanced Mid level according to the ACTFL proficiency guidelines.

Full details for ASRC 2200 - Intermediate Arabic II

This course is designed for students who are interested in reading the language of the Qur'an with accuracy and understanding. The first week (4 classes) will be devoted to an introduction of the history of the Qur'an: the revelation, collection, variant readings, and establishment of an authoritative edition. The last week will be devoted to a general overview of "revisionist" literature on the Qur'an. In the remaining 12 weeks, we will cover all of Part 30 (Juz' 'Amma, suuras 78-114) and three suuras of varying length (36, 19, and 12).

Full details for ASRC 2204 - Introduction to Quranic Arabic

This course examines the development of the Caribbean since the Haitian Revolution.  It  will focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and our readings pay particular attention to the ways in which race, gender, and ethnicity shape the histories of the peoples of the region.  The course uses a pan-Caribbean approach by focusing largely on three islands - Jamaica, Haiti and Cuba - that belonged to competing empires.  Although the imperial powers that held these nations shaped their histories in distinctive ways these nations share certain common features. Therefore, we examine the differences and similarities of their histories as they evolved from plantation based colonies to independent nations.

Full details for ASRC 2308 - Modern Caribbean History

This course is a hybrid seminar/performance forum that combines scholarly exploration of hip hop musical aesthetics with applied performance. Students will engage in online and in-class discussions of hip hop musical aesthetics, contextualized historically, socially, and culturally through weekly reading and listening assignments. They will also devote significant time to creating and workshopping individual and collaborative musical projects. Formal musical training is not required, but students should have experience making music (instrumentalists, beat makers, lyricists, vocalists, beatboxers, etc.), and should have at least a basic familiarity with hip hop music. Students who wish to enroll in the course should contact the professor for more information.

Full details for ASRC 2380 - Performing Hip Hop

The vast Congo Basin region has shaped the world in ways that are often ignored. Its mineral resources travel the globe – the uranium used to bomb Japan in 1945 came from the Congo, and if you have a cellphone, you probably have a bit of the Congo in your pocket. But the region has been a key site for global trade for centuries. More than 400 years ago, diplomats from the mighty Kongo kingdom were stationed in Brazil and Europe, intervening in global affairs. Later, more than seven million enslaved people were forcibly taken from the region, a trade that brought terrible suffering, but also ensured that Congo region culture and politics would shape the Atlantic world. The Congo's first democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba, inspired generations of freedom fighters around the world, and his assassination at the hands of Belgian forces and their Congolese allies (with aid from Canadian soldiers and the CIA) has inspired outrage ever since – and transformed African geopolitics. The Congo was arguably the site of the first struggle for a "second decolonization" on the African continent, and activists have been fighting to democratize the state since the 1960s. It is famed for its novelists, philosophers, musicians, and artists. This course will explore the Congo region's global influence, and consider how diverse globalizations shaped the region.

Full details for ASRC 2556 - The Global Congo: Diplomacy, Extraction, and Resistance

This course surveys modern U.S. history, from Reconstruction to the contemporary period. It will examine how race has been the terrain on which competing ideas of the American nation have been contested. From struggles over citizenship rights to broader meanings of national belonging, we will explore how practices, ideas, and representations have shaped political, cultural, and social power. A key concern for this course is examining how groups and individuals have pursued racial justice from the late-nineteenth century to the present.

Full details for ASRC 2631 - Race and Modern US History

This course will introduce students to African American literary traditions in the space that would become North America. From early freedom narratives and poetry to Hip-Hop and film, we will trace a range of artistic conventions and cultural movements while paying close attention to broader historical shifts in American life over the past three centuries. We'll read broadly: poetry, fiction, speculative fiction, newspapers, and the like. We will ask: How do authors create, define, and even exceed a tradition? What are some of the recurring themes and motifs within this tradition? Authors may include: Phillis Wheatley, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, and Eve Ewing. This course satisfies the Literatures of the Americas requirement for English majors.

Full details for ASRC 2650 - Introduction to African American Literature

This lecture class will explore the socio-cultural history of modern Egypt from the late 18th century to the 21st century "Arab Spring." We will explore Egyptian history under the Ottomans and the Mamluks, the unsuccessful French attempts to colonize Egypt, and the successful British occupation of the country. We will then examine the development of Egyptian nationalism from the end of the 19th century through Nasser's pan-Arabism to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. We will accomplish this with the aid of a variety of texts and media, including novels and films.

Full details for ASRC 2670 - The History and Politics of Modern Egypt

W.E.B. DuBois declares, in "The Souls of Black Folk," "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not," thereby making an absolute claim on modernity. Cornel West has long acknowledged his indebtedness to the work of American pragmatist philosophy. In fact, West's "The American Evasion of Philosophy" reflects how West situates himself within the long history of American pragmatism. Reading DuBois and West, this course will explore the ways in which the legacy of Enlightenment thinking manifests itself in the work of two of America's foremost black thinkers. The course explores the ways in which DuBois and West both take up the Enlightenment project (each in his own way, each on their own terms), integrate it into their thinking; but, always, in such a way as to make immanent the question -- the philosophical difficulty -- of race and racism. That is, what is it that the Enlightenment does not think? Why is it that the Enlightenment does not think race and racism? DuBois and West, it can be said, do not so much "complete" Enlightenment (a philosophical impossibility, in any case) as locate their work in the aporia -- that signal absence that is defining of the black American experience. That is, if DuBois proclaims himself free (and, fit, as it were) to "sit with [an unwincing] Shakespeare," why is it necessary -- in the first place -- for DuBois to make that assertion? In other words, what is DuBois speaking to? What glaring philosophical, epistemological and, indeed, phenomenological absence is DuBois addressing? An absence that West, in his inimitable ways, too finds it necessary to take up, engage, and critique.

Full details for ASRC 3027 - W.E.B. DuBois and Cornel West: Black Thinkers of Modernity

In this two-semester sequence, learners will be introduced to authentic, unedited Arabic language materials ranging from short stories, and poems, to newspaper articles dealing with social,  political,  and cultural issues. Emphasis will be on developing fluency in oral expression through discussions of issues presented in the reading and listening selections. There will be more focus on the development of native-like pronunciation and accurate use of grammatical structures than in the previous four courses. A primary objective of the course is the development of the writing skill through free composition exercises in topics of interest to individual students.  This course starts where ARAB 2202 leaves off and continues the development of the four language skills and grammar foundation using 18 themes, some new and some introduced in previous courses but are presented here at a more challenging level.  The student who successfully completes this two-course sequence have mastered over 3000 new words and will be able, within context of the 18 new and recycled themes to: 1) understand and actively participate in conversations, 2) read and understand, with the help of a short list of words, authentic, unedited passages of up to 400 words, and 3) discuss orally in class and write a 300-word paragraph in Arabic with fewer grammatical errors than in ARAB 2202.  The two-course sequence aims to take the student from the Advanced Mid to the Superior level according to the ACTFL proficiency guidelines.

Full details for ASRC 3101 - Advanced Arabic II

Few areas of cultural expression can rise to the importance of music in Brazilian life. This seminar-style course employs discussion, critical reading and listening – and hands-on music-making – to investigate Brazilian culture, history, and politics through the lens of its music. Samba will be a significant focus, but we will also discuss a range of additional regional and national styles. Along with two class meetings per week, our "discussion" will coincide with rehearsals for Deixa Sambar, Cornell's Brazilian ensemble. The course will be taught in English. Music experience is not necessary, but engagement in music-making is an integral part of the course.

Full details for ASRC 3480 - Brazilian Culture through its Music

This course invites students to consider how Black women interacted with material objects and how these artifacts informed the contexts of their daily lives. the history of Black women as creators, consumers, and collectors of artifacts tells a story about American society, culture, and the contributions of Black women's labors and ideas to the production and meaning of material culture across time. From the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth century, Black women experienced layered relationships to artifacts, some of which they were forced to create under the system of chattel slavery and others they encountered through the prisms of desire and liberation. these varied contexts that inform Black women's connections to material and visual objects shape how they assign meaning to these artifacts and their cultural significance. Students will engage with course themes through research-based curatorial projects that introduce them to public history and digital history methods. The course will conclude with the development of a digital archive focused on curating the history of Black women's experiences with material culture.

Full details for ASRC 3750 - Black Women and Material Culture

What does it mean to be Black and Indigenous? For much of United States history, at least, to be Black and Indigenous was a legal if not social impossibility. Even as societies around the world have embraced the pluralism of multiraciality Black-Indigenous peoples have found themselves largely absent from both historical and contemporary conversations surrounding blackness and indigeneity. This course does the important work of excavating the histories of Black and Indigenous peoples in the Americas. We will do so by examining case studies alongside the writing and artwork of Black-Indigenous figures in order to understand more about the relationships, politics, and meanings of Black-Indigenous identity.

Full details for ASRC 4023 - Black and Indigenous Histories

This course provides students with a challenging and interdisciplinary examination of race and space in North American history. It engages public history and critical geographic study through the lens of African Diasporic place-making from the early national period to the present day. How did Afro-descendant people in North America come to know the landscape and fashion communities around wilderness, swamps, urban cores and other "undesirable" areas? What material elements of black spaces came to define what is meant by slums and ghettos? This course illustrates how ongoing struggles that Black communities face with displacement and gentrification are part of a long history that developed alongside territorial expansion and nation building that charted uneven paths to prosperity based on race, gender, and class. This course is timely given that there are about 1,912 sites listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places Database as having significance to "Black" heritage and will help students develop their facilities for assigning meaning to these identified sites and what place these spaces have in the understanding of American history.

Full details for ASRC 4102 - The Historical Geography of Black America

Jazz and the Common Wind: Afro-Caribbean/African American Dialogues thinks through Julius Scott's theorization of "the common wind' of resistance in the age of the Haitian Revolution to consider the transnational historical impact jazz music and the social and political resonance surrounding the music's history--how the music and its musicians articulated a common-sense cultural response to their societal environments. Students will learn not only how the music is structured and organized, but also what it meant and how it signified for Afro-American and Caribbean communities at various times. Key themes include plantation capitalism, transnationalism, hybridity, the Black radical tradition, and musicking. In this class, jazz is presented not merely as a historical genre, but a space for interaction and communication across the African diaspora and colonial subalterns.  

Full details for ASRC 4258 - Jazz and the Common Wind: Afro-Caribbean and African American Dialogues

There are two contrasting views of the status and role of women in Africa. One view portrays African women as controlled by men in all social institutions. Another view projects women as having a relatively favorable position in indigenous societies where they were active, with an identity independent of men's; in they were not clustered in a private sphere of the home while men controlled the public sphere. This course examines critical gender theories and African women in historical and contemporary periods. The topics covered include: women in non-westernized/pre-colonial societies; the impact and legacy of colonial policies; access to education and knowledge; political and economic participation in local and global contexts; women's organizations; armed conflicts and peace; same-gender love and evolving family values; the law and health challenges; the United Nations and World Conferences on Women: Mexico 1975, Copenhagen 1980, Nairobi 1985, Beijing 1995, post-Beijing meetings, the 2010 superstructure of UN Women, and Beijing +20 in 2015 with the UN Women's slogan "Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity: Picture it!"

Full details for ASRC 4602 - Women and Gender Issues in Africa

Therapeutic knowledge and practice in Africa have changed dynamically over the past century. Yet, questions about healing continue to be questions about the intimate ways that power works on bodies. Accounts of healing and medicine on the continent describe ongoing struggles over what counts as knowledge and who has the authority to intervene in social and physical threats. This class will discuss the expansion of biomedicine in Africa, the continuities and changes embodied in traditional medicine, and the shifting relationship between medicine, science and law. Our readings with trace how colonialism, post-independence nationalism, international development, environmental change and globalization have shaped the experience of illness, debility and misfortune today, as well as the possibilities for life, the context of care, and the meaning of death.

Full details for ASRC 4682 - Medicine and Healing in Africa

This advanced seminar centers underthought fissures within the field of Trans Studies. These fissures take the form of failed crossings between incommensurable positions. We will examine: the vexed relation between queer theory and Trans Studies, between the field's analytic of  "transing" and its originary focus on transgender people, between the specific violence faced by Black trans women and the possibility that Blackness itself might be para-ontologically trans; between turns to historical materialism and to new materialism, between understandings of gendered selfhood in the West and in the non-West; and between transmasculine and transfeminine experiences and heuristics. This seminar encourages students to view such failed crossings as generative sites in which future scholarship might take root.

Full details for ASRC 4688 - Trans Studies at a Crossroads

For senior Africana Studies majors working on an honors thesis, with selected reading, research projects, etc., under the supervision of a member of the Africana Studies and Research Center faculty.

Full details for ASRC 4901 - Honors Thesis

For students working on special topics, with selected reading, research projects, etc., under the supervision of a member of the Africana Studies and Research Center faculty.

Full details for ASRC 4903 - Independent Study

This course provides students with a challenging and interdisciplinary examination of race and space in North American history. It engages public history and critical geographic study through the lens of African Diasporic place-making from the early national period to the present day. How did Afro-descendant people in North America come to know the landscape and fashion communities around wilderness, swamps, urban cores and other "undesirable" areas? What material elements of black spaces came to define what is meant by slums and ghettos? This course illustrates how ongoing struggles that Black communities face with displacement and gentrification are part of a long history that developed alongside territorial expansion and nation building that charted uneven paths to prosperity based on race, gender, and class. This course is timely given that there are about 1,912 sites listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places Database as having significance to "Black" heritage and will help students develop their facilities for assigning meaning to these identified sites and what place these spaces have in the understanding of American history.

Full details for ASRC 6102 - The Historical Geography of Black America

What would happen if, instead of taking an instrumentalist view of the ideas of modern African political thinkers, we consider those ideas as indeed they are, attempts by them to proffer answers to the central questions of political philosophy as those are apprehended in the African context? If we did, we would end up with a robust, sophisticated discourse properly denominated 'Modern African Political Philosophy' in which we recognize, possibly celebrate and, ultimately, assess the quality of answers that African thinkers have provided.   In this Seminar, we shall be reading original works by African thinkers and do so in the context of modern political philosophy.  Participants in the course will work to create critical literature in response to these works as part of a more general effort to begin to create secondary resources in this relatively unexplored area of scholarship about Africa.  Each participant will be expected to produce a final piece that can be a candidate for, minimally, presentation at a learned conference and, maximally, publication in a journal. This is a seminar that is absolutely focused on intellectual production by its participants under the direction of the instructor.

Full details for ASRC 6220 - Modern African Political Philosophy

There are two contrasting views of the status and role of women in Africa. One view portrays African women as controlled by men in all social institutions. Another view projects women as having a relatively favorable position in indigenous societies where they were active, with an identity independent of men's; in they were not clustered in a private sphere of the home while men controlled the public sphere. This course examines critical gender theories and African women in historical and contemporary periods. The topics covered include: women in non-westernized/pre-colonial societies; the impact and legacy of colonial policies; access to education and knowledge; political and economic participation in local and global contexts; women's organizations; armed conflicts and peace; same-gender love and evolving family values; the law and health challenges; the United Nations and World Conferences on Women: Mexico 1975, Copenhagen 1980, Nairobi 1985, Beijing 1995, post-Beijing meetings, the 2010 superstructure of UN Women, and Beijing +20 in 2015 with the UN Women's slogan "Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity: Picture it!"

Full details for ASRC 6602 - Women and Gender Issues in Africa

This advanced seminar centers underthought fissures within the field of Trans Studies. These fissures take the form of failed crossings between incommensurable positions. We will examine: the vexed relation between queer theory and Trans Studies, between the field's analytic of  "transing" and its originary focus on transgender people, between the specific violence faced by Black trans women and the possibility that Blackness itself might be para-ontologically trans; between turns to historical materialism and to new materialism, between understandings of gendered selfhood in the West and in the non-West; and between transmasculine and transfeminine experiences and heuristics. This seminar encourages students to view such failed crossings as generative sites in which future scholarship might take root.

Full details for ASRC 6688 - Trans Studies at a Crossroads

This seminar examines how different political theorists, actors, and groups from the Global South responded to systems of empire and global racial hierarchy by proposing alternative projects of worldmaking throughout the 20th century. Their proposals often went beyond the nation-state form and entailed the rethinking of alternative modes of sovereignty and self-determination, as well as the creation of new formations like confederations, overseas departments, and regional economic institutions. Bringing together scholarship from Political Theory and critical International Relations, the seminar engages with the work of a wide array of anticolonial and anti-racist activists and thinkers who aimed to transform the inequalities of the imperial order by imagining alternative social and political worlds, epistemologies, and visions of global justice.

Full details for ASRC 6885 - Race, Empire, and Worldmaking

Independent study course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ASRC 6901 - Independent Study

This class is the second in a two-part course sequence offered in the fall and spring semesters annually. In this hybrid theory and methods course, students will read historiographic, ethnographic, and sociological engagements about African-descended people throughout the Diaspora.

Full details for ASRC 6903 - Africana Studies Graduate Seminar

Healing and medicine are simultaneously individual and political, biological and cultural. In this class, we will study the expansion of biomedicine in Africa, the continuities and changes embodied in traditional medicine, and the relationship between medicine, science and law. We will explore the questions African therapeutics poses about the intimate ways that power works on and through bodies. Our readings will frame current debates around colonial and postcolonial forms of governance through medicine, the contradictions of humanitarianism and the health crisis in Africa, and the rise of new forms of therapeutic citizenship. We will examine the ways in which Africa is central to the biopolitics of the contemporary global order.

Full details for ASRC 7682 - Medicine and Healing in Africa

Elementary Swahili provides a foundation in listening, speaking, reading, and writing the basic grammatical structures and vocabulary. No prior knowledge of the language is required. Swahili (Kiswahili) is spoken in the East and Central parts of Africa. It is an official and national language in Tanzania, and in Kenya. During a first semester course, students engage in short conversation and communicative tasks, such as, greetings, introduction, daily routines, shopping, etc. Students learn to comprehend short and simple utterances about topics pertaining to basic personal information and immediate setting in day to day life. A Swahili second semester increases your oral fluency, grammar, vocabulary, writing, reading, and listening skills. All listening exercises will aim at preparing students to speak. Be ready to actively participate in conversations, to express yourself orally, and write stories/compositions. Literature and Cultural materials are incorporated into the course, along with audio, video, and web-based materials.

Full details for SWAHL 1101 - Elementary Swahili II

This course introduces the Swahili language, predominantly spoken in East Africa, and its culture. The course provides basic Swahili oral communicative skills on routine social demand topics, orients students to the Swahili culture, and navigates East Africa. The course is intended for those who want to gain insight into East African cultures and /or travel to the countries. 

Full details for SWAHL 1109 - Strategies for Swahili Abroad

Intermediate Swahili levels I and II in general impart speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills beyond Swahili elementary level to participate with ease and confidence in familiar topics and exchange information on unfamiliar topics. Students are assigned communicative tasks such as respond to a situation with a short text and take part in a discussion after viewing short video clips and prompts to elicit speaking and listening competence and cultural awareness responses beyond elementary level. The language and cultural scenarios practiced are designed to help students demonstrate language responses beyond familiar topics, and to feel comfortable conversing with Swahili native speakers, as well as to blend in and feel welcomed as part of the community while exploring different topics such as acquaintanceship, relationships, health, festivals, education, sports, housing, politics, commerce, travel, etc. Short stories are used to depict cultural aspects such as cultural expressions, proverbs, sayings, and riddles. Literature and cultural materials are incorporated into the course, along with audio-visual and web-based material. In this course, students have an opportunity to participate in language conversation outside the classroom and explore the opportunities for study abroad in East Africa. Swahili Elementary I and II are prerequisite for this course. By the end of this course, students should be able to reach proficiency level Intermediate High according to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) www.actfl.org

Full details for SWAHL 2102 - Intermediate Swahili II

A two-semester beginner's course in Yoruba Language and Culture. Organized to offer Yoruba language skills and proficiency in speaking, reading, listening, writing, and translation. Focus is placed on familiar informal and formal contexts, e.g., home, school, work, family, social situations, politics, etc. Course uses Yoruba oral literature, proverbs, rhetoric, songs, popular videos, and theater, as learning tools for class comprehension. First semester focuses on conversation, speaking, and listening.  Second semester focuses on writing, translation and grammatical formation. Through the language course students gain basic background for the study of an African culture, arts, and history both in the continent and in the diaspora. Yoruba language is widely spoken along the west coast of Africa and in some African communities in diaspora.  Yoruba video culture, theater, music, and arts has a strong influence along the west coast and in the diaspora.A two-semester beginner's course in Yoruba language and culture. Organized to offer Yoruba language skills and proficiency in speaking, reading, listening, writing, and translation. Focus is placed on familiar informal and formal contexts, e.g., home, school, work, family, social situations, politics. Course uses Yoruba oral literature, proverbs, rhetoric, songs, popular videos, and theater as learning tools for class comprehension. First semester focuses on conversation, speaking, and listening. Second semester focuses on writing, translation, and grammatical formation. Through the language course students gain basic background for the study of an African culture, arts, and history both on the continent and in the diaspora. Yoruba language is widely spoken along the west coast of Africa and in some African communities in diaspora. Yoruba video culture, theater, music, and arts have strong influence along the west coast and in the diaspora.

Full details for YORUB 1109 - Introduction to Yoruba II

Intermediate Yoruba II is a follow-up to Intermediate Yoruba I. It is a fourth-semester Yoruba language course. The course assists students to acquire advanced level proficiency in reading, speaking, writing, and listening in Yoruba language. Students are introduced to grammatical and syntactic structures in the language that will assist them in describing, presenting, and narrating information in the basic tenses. At the end of the course, students will be able to listen to, process, and understand programs produced for native speakers in media such as television, radio, and films. They will be able to read and understand short stories, novels, and plays written for native speakers of the language.

Full details for YORUB 2111 - Intermediate Yoruba II

Development of communication skills through dialogues and role play. Texts and songs are drawn from traditional and popular literature. Students research daily life in selected areas of South Africa.

Full details for ZULU 1116 - Elementary Zulu II

Students read longer texts from popular media as well as myths and folktales. Prepares students for initial research involving interaction with speakers of isiZulu in South Africa and for the study of oral and literary genres.

Full details for ZULU 2117 - Intermediate Zulu II

Readings may include short stories, a novel, praise poetry, historical texts, or contemporary political speeches, depending on student interests. Study of issues of language policy and use in contemporary South Africa; introduction to the Soweto dialect of isiZulu. Students are prepared for extended research in South Africa involving interviews with isiZulu speakers.

Full details for ZULU 3114 - Advanced Zulu II