Africana Studies Course Descriptions
Coordinator: Marilyn Jimenez, Associate Professor, Africana Studies150 Foundations of Africana Studies
This course provides the foundations and context for Africana Studies from an historical and contemporary perspective. It defines the geographical parameters which include the study of Africans on the Continent and in the diaspora (Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean). It also clarifies concepts and correct false perceptions of Africa and Africans, with a focus on inclusiveness and diversity of both the traditional and the modern. This course is multidisciplinary cross-cultural, taught from an African-centered perspective sensitive to race, gender, and class. Faculty members from the departments of anthropology, economics, French, history, political science and sociology participate as guest lecturers. (Pinto)200 Ghettoscapes
More than ever, the ghetto has come to dominate the American imagination. Mainstream media has portrayed the inner city as a place of fear and to be feared. In reaction to this view, many African-American and Latino writers and filmmakers have forged powerful images of community and effort. This course focuses on films and literary texts that take up the imagery of the ghetto and its role in modern American society. In addition, students consider the role of the inner city as the crucible for hip-hop culture, including its international manifestations. (Jiménez, offered alternate years)
Typical readings: Wright, How Bigger Was Born; Petry, The Street; Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place; Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land; Thomas, Down These Mean Streets; Rodríguez, The Boy Without a Flag: Tales of the South Bronx. Films include Hanging in with the Homeboys; Boyz ’n the Hood; Menace II Society; Mi Vida Loca; Crossover Dreams201 South Africa: An Orientation
This course provides an inter-disciplinary introduction to the people, land and culture of South Africa. It is a requirement for students planning to go on the South Africa program. It is taught from an African-centered and feminist perspective inclusive of the variety and diversity of peoples and cultures. It includes the historical, sociopolitical, literary and cultural aspects. The cultural component includes music and the arts. Issues of health and safety are central to the course. (Pinto, Fall, offered alternate years)202 Women’s Narratives in Post-Apartheid South Africa
This course makes students aware of the importance of people in any culture having a voice in the events that influence their lives and examines the contributions of South African women to their history and culture. In the postapartheid period (since 1994) women’s narratives, autobiographies, novels, stories and plays have emerged as a rich source of information about the hidden and silenced majority. These narratives navigate between history and literature reconfiguring women’s roles in South African history and culture. The literary texts can in this way contribute to the restoration of women’s places and rewriting their history and contributions. No prerequisites. (Pinto, Fall, offered alternate years)
Typical readings: Meer, Women’s Speak; Karodia, Daughters of the Twilight; Mhlope, Have You Seen Sandile; Ramphele, Steering by the Stars; Wicomb, David’s Story214 Sénégal: An Orientation
This course provides an introduction to the people, land, and culture of Sénégal for students planning to go on the Sénégal program. It includes an introduction to Sénégalese history, religion, economics, manners and customs, arts and crafts, food, sports, geography, wildlife, and vegetation. Students touch on issues of health and safe traveling. There is extensive viewing of slides and videotapes. (Joseph, offered alternate years)216 African Literature II: National Literatures of Africa
This course is a continuation of African Literature I and focuses on a single national literature from Africa and the ways in which writers and bards work in the context of the postcolonial national society identity. (Joseph)
Typical readings: poetry of L.S. Senghor; Ousmane Sembene, Harmattan; Aminata Sow Fall, La Grève des Bàttus; A. Sadji, Maïmouna; Birago Diop, Contes D’Amadou Coumba; Boubacar Boris Diop, Grand Dakar Usine225 African-American Culture
This course attempts to identify and analyze distinctive elements of African-American culture. It focuses on literature, dance, and film, but also refers to music and visual arts. While it follows the development of African-American culture chronologically, it often returns to key experiences and sees them in light of new experiences or different contexts. (Jiménez, offered alternate years)
Typical readings: DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; Toomer, Cane; Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Morrison, Song of Solomon226 Screen Latinos
In this course, students learn to identify Latino stereotypes in the media (primarily film and television), trace the history of such stereotypes and show how these stereotypes have been repackaged for contemporary audiences. More important, students examine how Latinos have used media, including New Media, to counteract the stereotypes and fashion images that spring from their specific identities as Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Dominicans, Cubans, etc., and yet acknowledge their shared culture as “Latinos.” To this end, students encounter a variety of “media objects,” including literature, film, television, murals, new media (Web installations) and performance art (groups such as Culture Clash). (Jimenez, Fall 2006)240 Third World Women’s Texts
This course analyzes issues of special importance to Third World women through literary texts. The focus is on the “politics of the body,” and includes discussion of such issues as reproduction, fertility and infertility, self-image and racial identity, and aging. (Pinto, Jiménez, offered alternate years)
Typical readings: Rifaat, Distant View of a Minaret; El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero; Emecheta, The Bride Price; Edgell, Beka Lamb309 Black Cinema
This course examines films by African, African American, and other African diaspora directors. It focuses on the attempt by different filmmakers to wrest an African/diasporic identity and aesthetic from a medium that has been defined predominantly by American and European models. Students analyze the implicit and explicit attempts to formulate a black aesthetic within film, as well as the general phenomenon of the representation of blacks in film. Directors considered include Haile Gerima, Ousmane Sembene, Souleymane Cisse, Charles Burnett, Camille Billops, Isaac Julien, Sara Maldoror, Julie Dash, Spike Lee and others. (Jiménez, offered alternate years)310 Black Images/White Myths
This course is designed to provide basic analytical tools for the study of racial and ethnic images in films, television, and other texts. The focus is on African-American and Latino images in mainstream media as inflected through issues of race/ethnicity, gender, and class. (Jiménez, offered alternate years)
Typical readings: essays by Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, bell hooks, and others, plus various films 460 Invisible Man and Its Contexts This course is a seminar focusing on a close reading and analysis of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Ellison’s novel is a pivotal work in the study of African-American culture because it draws upon many aspects of the African-American experience–history, music, politics, etc., and poses fundamental questions about identity and the nature of American democracy. It also has the distinction of coining one of the enduring tropes of racial discourse—invisibility. Prerequisite: ALST 225, HIST 227, HIST 228, or equivalent. (Jiménez)
Typical readings: Ellison, Invisible Man and Shadow and Act; Sundgust, Cultural Contexts to Ellison’s Invisible Man461 Experience of Race
In this seminar students explore all aspects of race as part of the human experience in an attempt to understand why racial categories are so pervasive and enduring in Western thought. How did racial categories arise? Was there a time when Western societies did not think in terns of race? Or is race a “natural” way of fixing differences? What is the difference between racialized thinking and racism? Has racism ended, as some social thinkers contend? Will we ever stop categorizing people in terms of race? In addition, students examine the differences in how race is experienced in the United Sates, Latin America and the Englishspeaking Caribbean. (Jiménez, Pinto)
Typical readings: Goldberg, Racist Culture; Fanon, Black Skins/White Masks; Ellison, Invisible Man; Lamming, In the Castle of My SkinStudents are encouraged to study an African language through the SILP program (Arabic, Swahili or Xhosa) and to go on a program abroad in Africa (Sénégal or South Africa).