Course Offerings (CAS Bulletin)

INTRODUCTORY CORE

Concepts in Social and Cultural Analysis
V18.0001  4 points.
A gateway to all majors offered by the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Focuses on the core concepts that intersect the constituent programs of SCA: Africana Studies, American Studies, Asian/Pacific/American Studies (A/P/A), Gender and Sexuality Studies, Latino Studies, and Metropolitan Studies. The course surveys basic approaches to a range of significant analytical concepts (for example, property, work, technology, nature, popular culture, consumption, and knowledge), each one considered within a two-week unit.

Approaches to Africana Studies
V18.0101  Offered every year. 4 points.
Introduces students to a variety of topics and methodologies associated with Africana studies as a field of academic inquiry, including the history of the field and its growth over the course of time. Specific topics may include the question of African retention in the Americas, the comparative study of slavery, the concept of creolization, an understanding of the black Atlantic, and the meaning of diasporic studies, as well as the use of history, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, literature, music, and the arts as ways in which the experiences of black peoples have been documented and transmitted.

Introduction to Pan-Africanism
V18.0104  Formerly V11.0010. Offered every year. 4 points.
Deals with the history of Pan-Africanism and its impact on the modern world. Focuses on the major themes of Pan-Africanism, including those of African unity, black rebellion against colonialism and racism, African diaspora, and black culture. Also considers the relationship between Pan-Africanism and movements such as nationalism, Marxism, and Afrocentricity.

Introduction to Black Urban Studies
V18.0105  Formerly V11.0020. Identical to V57.0090. Offered every year. 4 points.
Introduces students to the tools of cultural criticism and theory, with particular emphasis on black culture, urban environment, and black people’s relationships to a variety of social and cultural institutions and practices. The latter may include the mass media, class and poverty, the police, urban development, education, music, art, and sports.RESEARCH CORE

Senior Research Seminar
V18.0090  Prerequisites: V18.0001 and V18.0101, or V18.0104, or V18.0105. Offered in the fall. 4 points.
An advanced research course in Africana studies. It culminates in each student completing a substantive research paper that makes use of various methodological skills. Students work individually and collaboratively on part of a class research project pertaining to the major in Africana studies. Majors must take this class in the fall of their senior year.

Internship Program

Internship Fieldwork
V18.0040  Corequisite: V18.0042. Requires ten hours of fieldwork. 2 points.

Internship Seminar
V18.0042  Corequisite: V18.0040. 2 points.
The 4-point internship program complements and enhances the formal course work of Africana studies majors. Students intern at agencies dealing with a range of issues pertaining to Africana studies and take a corequisite seminar that enables them to focus the work experience in meaningful academic terms. The goals of the internship are threefold: (1) to allow students to apply the theory that they have gained through course work, (2) to provide students with analytical tools, and (3) to assist students in their exploration of professional career paths. The internship is open to juniors and seniors and requires an interview and permission of the director of internships.

ELECTIVE COURSES

African American 20th-Century Novels and Narratives
V18.0139  Formerly V11.0139. Offered every year. 4 points.
This seminar covers a historicized selection of black writers who over the latter half of the 20th century have inscribed in literature the cul-tural, social, and political experiences of African Americans in the United States. We critically explore, discuss, and write about a range of works varying from poetry to the short story and the novel. Our studies focus on the key topics, issues, innovations, and themes that have consistently been important to African American literary production. Some examples are the emancipation impulse, “double consciousness,” the black struggle for human rights, the rise of black women writers, postmodernism, sexual and gender politics, and contemporary expressions of the slavery motif.

The Strange Career of Blackness
V18.0151  Formerly V11.0302. Offered every two or three semesters. 4 points.
Traces some of the conflicting and controversial perceptions about the significance of blackness as a social signifier in contemporary society. Starting with Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk at the turn of the 20th century, the course notes some of the transformations represented by the New Negro movement, the negritude episode of international literature and art, and the revival coming out of the black arts movement of the 1960s. The bulk of the course deals with challenges and contradictions in the perception of blackness in the era of postnationalism, post–civil rights, postmodernism, and hip-hop. These include campaigns to de-essentialize race and to discourage blackness as self-segregation, as well as challenges from feminism, biracialism, queer theory, and immigrant psychology reflected in recent books such as The End of Blackness. Several works of poetry, fiction, cinema, and music are explored.

The Black Essay
V18.0152  Formerly V11.0403. Offered every year. 4 points.
Examines the urban experience and black life and culture in New York through a series of writing assignments on African American neighborhoods, institutions, issues, and culture. Students are required to travel throughout the black community, conduct interviews, and do research for essays on the black experience in the city. They are introduced to the research and reporting techniques of journalism and given the chance to employ these techniques in their papers.

Race and Rumors of Race
V18.0154  Offered every year. 4 points.
A multidisciplinary reading, writing, and discussion course on the concept of race. Though the focus is on “blackness” and “whiteness” in the United States, there is some comparison to Brazil. We will also pay some attention to those who have traditionally rejected the racial identities imposed on them and have suffered the consequences. The name of the course is borrowed from the title of a book written by Howard Washington Odum and published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1943.

The Black Body and the Lens
V18.0155  Offered every year. 4 points.
This interdisciplinary seminar explores the range of ideas and methods used by critical thinkers in addressing the body in photography, video, music, and film. Central to our discussions is a focus on how the display of the black body affects how we see and interpret the world. Using a series of case studies, we consider the construction of beauty, gendered images, race, and hip-hop culture. The historical gaze has profoundly determined the visual construction of the black body in contemporary society. The interplay between the historical and the contemporary, between self-presentation and imposed representation, is fundamental to our discussions. The seminar centers the student within the contemporary world of image making with an emphasis on the black body. Final projects include an imaging project and/or a written essay.

African Political Thought
V18.0160  Formerly V11.0411. Offered once every two years. 4 points.
An introduction to the works of the most significant African political thinkers and statesmen of the postcolonial era. Many prominent African nationalist leaders who came to power in the first decade of independence were also political philosophers imbued with a vision of the political, economic, social, and cultural development of their countries. These African political thinkers are divided into two main schools: (1) the African nationalists, primarily concerned with internal African sociopolitical dynamics, and (2) the Pan-Africanists, who focused on external dynamics and constraints.

Politics of Sub-Saharan Africa
V18.0161  Formerly V11.0412. Offered once every two years. 4 points.
An in-depth exploration of the historical, political, social, cultural, and economic forces shaping contemporary African political processes, systems, and institutions. Different theories and approaches to the study of African politics are examined. The rise of African nationalism and the struggle for independence from colonial rule are examined, as well as the first decade of independence, characterized by experiments with African socialism. The period of the early 1970s was characterized by recurrent military coups and the advent of military regimes, followed in the mid-1970s by a surge of military Marxist regimes. Finally, the early 1990s saw the development of democracy movements in practically every country on the continent.

International Relations of Africa
V18.0162  Formerly V11.0414. Offered once every two years. 4 points.
An introduction to the economic, political, and strategic dimensions of the external relations of the 54 African states, from independence to the present. A historical overview of international actors in Africa and of foreign policies of the African states provides the backdrop for the examination of Africa’s evolving economic, political, and strategic relations with the major world powers during and after the Cold War. The course concludes with an assessment of the status and role of Africa in the post–Cold War international system.

Language and Liberation: At Home in the Caribbean and Abroad
V18.0163  Formerly V11.0801. Identical to V61.0026. Offered every year. 4 points.
Explores the linguistic and cultural transformations that took place in the Commonwealth Caribbean from 17th-century slavery and bond servitude to the present day. The focus is on the extent to which Caribbean people were given or demanded the freedom to create and maintain a postcolonial Caribbean identity. The sociohistorical conditions that led to the creation of new Caribbean languages called “pidgins” and “creoles” as the English language was transplanted from Britain to the Third World are discussed.

20th-Century Black Feminist Thought
V18.0165  Formerly V11.0303. Identical to V57.0679. 4 points.
Explores the production and practice of black feminist theory in 20th-century America. Examines the written work and the activism of African American women and looks at the way that theory and practice historically intersect around questions of race and gender. Because this is a course on feminism, we also spend a good deal of time interrogating power and thinking about the ways in which systems of oppression both produce and block a black feminist consciousness. While much of our attention is historical, our readings are designed to facilitate a critical conversation about what a black feminist political practice might mean in the 21st century.

Topics in Black Urban Studies
V18.0180  Formerly V11.0300. Offered once a semester. 4 points.
Explores specific issues dealing with the black urban experience, focusing on social and cultural institutions. Possible themes, which vary from semester to semester, include class and poverty, the police, urban development, education, sports, music, and art.

Topics in Pan-Africanism
V18.0181  Formerly V11.0800. Offered once a semester. 4 points.
Deals with specific themes of Pan-Africanism and their impact on the modern world. Possible themes, which vary from semester to semester, include African unity, black rebellion, colonialism and racism, the African diaspora and culture, and relationships between Pan-Africanism and movements such as nationalism, Marxism, and Afrocentricity.

LANGUAGE COURSES

Introduction to Swahili I
V18.0121  Formerly V11.0201. Offered every year. 4 points.
Provides students with an elementary understanding of Swahili, a Bantu language with a rich oral and written tradition that is spoken by about 100 million people from Somalia to Mozambique and Zanzibar. After a short presentation of Swahili’s history, codification, and relation to other languages, students are drilled in phonetics and grammar. They are also introduced to poems, songs, and oral narratives.

Elementary Swahili II
V18.0122  Formerly V11.0202. Prerequisite: V18.0121 or permission of the instructor. Offered every year. 4 points.
Expands on the basic knowledge of the pronunciation, vocabulary, useful expressions, and fundamental grammatical features acquired in Swahili I. Allows essential communication skills to develop into conversational ability using simple and familiar situations. Building on the early grasp of the language, students expand the range of conversational ability and understanding of various grammatical concepts associated with this agglutinative language.

Intermediate Swahili I
V18.0123  Formerly V11.0203. Prerequisite: V18.0122 or permission of the instructor. Offered every year. 4 points.
Builds on the basic knowledge of the pronunciation, vocabulary, useful expressions, and fundamental grammatical features already attained at the introductory level. Aims to strengthen reading, writing, and conversation skills by accessing a wide range of grammatical and literary knowledge of the language, its cultural context, and literary genre. The students are required to familiarize themselves with a novel and a play written in Kiswahili.

Intermediate Swahili II
V18.0124  Formerly V11.0204. Prerequisite: V18.0123 or permission of the instructor. Offered every year. 4 points.
Aims to enable students to communicate entirely in Kiswahili, to carry out bidirectional translation from Swahili to English and from English to Swahili, and to negotiate technical language. At this level, the students would master the intricacies of Kiswahili grammar; acquire a wide range of vocabulary; read Kiswahili fluently; understand Kiswahili poetry, idioms, and proverbs; and use idiomatic Kiswahili in creative writing and translation.

Independent Study
V18.0197,0198  Formerly V11.0997,0998. Prerequisite: permission of the program director. Offered every semester. 1 to 4 points per term.

RELATED COURSES

The following courses in individual disciplines are open to Africana studies majors and minors. See the departmental sections for course descriptions.

ANTHROPOLOGY

African Literature
V18.0775  Formerly V11.0021. Identical to V14.0020. 4 points.

Peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa: Culture and International Studies
V18.0776  Formerly V11.0101. Identical to V14.0101. 4 points.

Peoples of the Caribbean: Culture and International Studies
V18.0777  Formerly V11.0106. Identical to V14.0102. 4 points.

Transcultural Cinema
V18.0778  Formerly V11.0122. Identical to V14.0122. 4 points.

ART HISTORY

Art and Architecture in Sub-Saharan Africa and the South Pacific
V18.0787  Formerly V11.0080. Identical to V43.0560. 4 points.

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

The Postcolonial in African Literature
V18.0779  Formerly V11.0128. Identical to V29.0128. 4 points.

Topics in Caribbean Literature
V18.0780  Formerly V11.0132. Identical to V29.0132, V41.0704. 4 points.

Colonialism and the Rise of Modern African Literature
V18.0781  Formerly V11.0850. Identical to V29.0850. 4 points.

ECONOMICS

Economics and Society in the Third World: Africa
V18.0782  Formerly V11.0125. Identical to V31.0125. 4 points.

ENGLISH

18th- and 19th-Century African American Literature
V18.0783  Formerly V11.0250. Identical to V41.0250. 4 points.

20th-Century African American Literature
V18.0784  Formerly V11.0160. Identical to V41.0251. 4 points.

African American Drama
V18.0785  Formerly V11.0161. Identical to V30.0255, H28.0605. 4 points.

Contemporary African American Fiction
V18.0786  Formerly V11.0162. Identical to V41.0254. 4 points.

HISTORY

Women and Slavery in the Americas
V18.0730  Formerly V97.0660 and V11.0660. Identical to V57.0660. 4 points.

History of African Civilization to the 19th Century
V18.0788  Formerly V11.0055. Identical to V57.0055. 4 points.

History of African Civilization During the 19th and 20th Centuries
V18.0789  Formerly V11.0056. Identical to V57.0056. 4 points.

The History of Religions in Africa
V18.0790  Formerly V11.0566. Identical to V57.0566. 4 points.

History of Contemporary Africa
V18.0791  Formerly V11.0567. Identical to V57.0567. 4 points.

History of Southern Africa
V18.0792  Formerly V11.0568. Identical to V57.0568. 4 points.

Seminar: Modernization and Nation Building in Sub-Saharan Africa
V18.0793  Formerly V11.0585. Identical to V57.0585. 4 points.

Seminar: History of African Towns and Cities from Medieval to Modern Times
V18.0794  Formerly V11.0598. Identical to V57.0598. 4 points.

African American History to 1865
V18.0795  Formerly V11.0647. Identical to V57.0647. 4 points.

African American History Since 1865
V18.0796  Formerly V11.0648. Identical to V57.0648. 4 points.

Race, Gender, and Sexuality in U.S. History
V18.0729  Formerly V11.0655. Identical to V57.0655. 4 points.

Seminar: History of African Americans
V18.0797  Formerly V11.0696. Identical to V57.0696. 4 points.

JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION

Minorities and the Media
V18.0702  Formerly V11.0016 and V97.0016. Identical to V54.0016. 4 points.

LINGUISTICS

African American Vernacular English: Language and Culture
V18.0799  Formerly V11.0023. Identical to V61.0023. 4 points.

African American English II
V18.0800  Formerly V11.0046. Identical to V61.0046. 4 points.

MUSIC

African American Music in the United States
V18.0801  Formerly V11.0116. Identical to V71.0016. 4 points.

POLITICS

The Politics of the Caribbean Nations
V18.0802  Formerly V11.0532. Identical to V53.0532. 4 points.

SOCIOLOGY

Race and Ethnicity
V18.0803  Formerly V11.0135. Identical to V93.0135. 4 points.

STEINHARDT SCHOOL OF CULTURE, EDUCATION, AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

American Dilemmas: Race, Inequality, and the Unfulfilled Promise of Education
V18.0755  Formerly V99.0041, V11.0041, and V18.0501. Identical to E27.0041. 4 points.