May 09, 2024

Catalogue 2014-2015

Catalogue 2014-2015 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Course Descriptions

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Africana Studies: I. Introductory
	AFRS 101 - Martin Luther King Jr. Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as HIST 101 ) This course examines the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. We immediately rethink the image of King who liberals and conservatives construct as a dreamer of better race relations. We engage the complexities of an individual, who articulated a moral compass of the nation, to explore racial justice in post-World War II America. This course gives special attention to King’s post-1965 radicalism when he called for a reordering of American society, an end to the war in Vietnam, and supported sanitation workers striking for better wages and working conditions. Topics include King’s notion of the “beloved community”, the Social Gospel, liberalism, “socially conscious democracy”, militancy, the politics of martyrdom, poverty and racial justice, and compensatory treatment. Primary sources form the core of our readings. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 104 - Religion, Prisons, and the Civil Rights Movement 1 unit(s) (Same as RELI 104 ) African American citizenship has long been a contested and bloody battlefield. This course uses the modern Civil Rights Movement to examine the roles the religion and prisons have played in theses battles over African American rights and liberties. In what ways have religious beliefs motivated Americans to uphold narrow definitions of citizenship that exclude people on the basis of race or moved them to boldly challenge those definitions? In a similar fashion, civil rights workers were incarcerated in jails and prisons as a result of their nonviolent protest activities. Their experiences in prisons, they exposed the inhumane conditions and practices existing in many prison settings. More recently, the growth of the mass incarceration of minorities has moved to the forefront of civil and human rights concerns. Is a new Civil Rights Movement needed to challenge the New Jim Crow? Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 105 - Issues In Africana Studies 1 unit(s) Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 106 - Elementary Arabic Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) This course is an elementary level course offered during fall semester only. The course builds basic skills in Modern Standard Arabic, the language spoken, read, and understood by educated Arabs throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and other parts of the world. No prior experience in Arabic is necessary. The course focuses on building students’ abilities to (1) communicate successfully basic biographical information: name, place of residence, family members, and daily life activities, using memorized material; (2) understand speech dealing with areas of practical need such as highly standardized messages, phrases, or instructions, such as memorized greetings, pleasantries, leave taking, very basic questions and answers related to immediate need or personal information; (3) derive meaning from short, non-complex texts that convey basic information for which there is contextual or extra-linguistic support; (4) manage successfully a number of uncomplicated communicative tasks in straightforward social situations, such as giving basic personal information, and describing basic objects, a limited number of activities, preferences, and immediate needs. Ms. Al-Haddad and Mr. Mhiri. Students who did not complete AFRS 106 may enroll in AFRS 107 , if they demonstrate equivalent knowledge by a placement test. Yearlong course 106-AFRS 107 . Three 50-minute periods, plus one drill period per week.
	AFRS 107 - Elementary Arabic Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) This is an elementary level course offered during spring semester only. The course focuses on building students’ abilities to (1) create statements and formulate questions based on familiar material in short and simple conversational-style sentences with basic word order; (2) understand basic information conveyed orally in simple, minimally connected discourse that contains high-frequency vocabulary; (3) understand fully and with ease short, non-complex texts that convey basic information and deal with personal and social topics of immediate interest, featuring description and narration; (4) ask simple questions and handle a straightforward survival situation by producing sentence-level language, ranging from discrete sentences to strings of sentences, typically in present time. Ms. Al-Haddad and Mr. Mhiri. Students who did not complete AFRS 106 may enroll in AFRS 107, if they demonstrate equivalent knowledge by a placement test. Yearlong course AFRS 106 -107. Three 50-minute periods, plus one drill period per week.
	AFRS 109 - Beyond the Veil and Islamic Terrorism: Modern Arabic Literature Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) This course introduces students to major themes, authors, and genres in modern Arabic literature from the late nineteenth century to the present. Readings include autobiography, fiction, drama, and poetry representing the rich Arabic literary heritage of the Middle East and North Africa. We also read various secondary materials and watch several documentary and feature films that will anchor our discussion of the literary texts in their socio-historical and cultural context(s). Some of the major themes (foci) of the course include (1) tradition and change; (2) the colonial and postcolonial encounters with the other; (3) changing gender roles and the politics of (Islamic) Feminism; (4) religion and politics, among others. Mr. Mhiri. Open only to freshmen; satisfies college requirement for a Freshman Writing Seminar. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 122 - Tradition, Religion, Modernity: A History of North Africa and the Middle East 1 unit(s) (Same as INTL 122 ) This course provides an introduction to the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa covering the period from the end of the eighteenth century until the present. The aim is to trace the genealogy of sociopolitical reform movements across this period of the history of North Africa and The Middle East. The course is designed to familiarize students with major themes spanning the colonial encounter, the rise of nationalisms, and postcolonial nation-building. Our inquiry includes an examination of the rise of political Islam as well as the contemporary popular revolutions sweeping through the region at the moment. Our goal is to achieve a better understanding of the culmination and collision of the historical trends of tradition religion and modernity and their manifestation in the ongoing Arab Spring. Mr. Hojairi. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 141 - Tradition, History and the African Experience 1 unit(s) (Same as HIST 141 ) From ancient stone tools and monuments to oral narratives and colonial documents, the course examines how the African past has been recorded, preserved, and transmitted over the generations. It looks at the challenges faced by the historian in Africa and the multi-disciplinary techniques used to reconstruct and interpret African history. Various texts, artifacts, and oral narratives from ancient times to the present are analyzed to see how conceptions and interpretations of African past have changed over time. Mr. Rashid. Fulfills the Freshman Writing Seminar Requirement. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 175 - Mandela: Race, Resistance and Renaissance in South Africa Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as HIST 175 ) This course critically explores the history and politics of South Africa in the twentieth century through the prism of the life, politics, and experiences of one of its most iconic figures, Nelson Mandela. After almost three decades of incarceration for resisting Apartheid, Mandela became the first democratically elected president of a free South Africa in 1994. It was an inspirational moment in the global movement and the internal struggle to dismantle Apartheid and to transform South Africa into a democratic, non-racial, and just society. Using Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, as our point of departure, the course discusses some of the complex ideas, people, and developments that shaped South Africa and Mandela’s life in the twentieth century, including: indigenous culture, religion, and institutions; colonialism, race, and ethnicity; nationalism, mass resistance, and freedom; and human rights, social justice, and post-conflict reconstruction. Mr. Rashid. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 185 - The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the United States Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) Given the release of series like Orange is the New Black, movies like American Violet, and the recent cases of Marissa Alexander and CeCe McDonald, the particularities of Black women’s incarceration is ostensibly coming to the fore within the public sphere. Through our readings of cultural productions as well as critical texts we will examine and write about the intersection of race, gender, sexuality and carcerality. Mr. Moore. Open only to freshmen; satisfies the college requirement for a Freshman Writing Seminar. Two 75-minute periods.
Africana Studies: II. Intermediate
	AFRS 202 - Black Music Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as MUSI 202 ) An analytical exploration of the music of certain African and European cultures and their adaptive influences in North America. The course examines the traditional African and European views of music performance practices while exploring their influences in shaping the music of African Americans from the spiritual to modern times. Mr. Patch.
	AFRS 203 - Arab Women Writers: A Literature of their Own? Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) This course examines a selection of literary works by modern and contemporary Arab women writers in English translation. We will read fiction, poetry, autobiographies, short stories, and critical scholarship by and about Arab women, from North Africa and the Middle East, in order to develop a critical understanding of the social, political, and cultural context(s) of these writings, and to form an enlightened opinion about the issues and concerns raised by Arab women writers throughout the Twentieth Century, at different historical junctures, and in different locations. Our class discussions will focus—among other themes—on: (1) Arab women writers and feminism. (2) Arab Women and Islamism. (3) Arab women and the West. (4) Arab Nationalism(s), Arab Modernity(s), and Arab women. (5) Arab Women writing in the Diaspora: hyphenated identities and different routes of homecoming. The authors to be read include Assia Djebar (Algeria); Fatima Mernissi (Morocco); Nawal Sadaawi (Egypt); Hanan Al-Shaykh (Lebanon); and Sahar Khalifeh (Palestine); and many others. Mr. Mhiri. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 204 - Islam in America 1 unit(s) (Same as RELI 204 ) This course examines the historical and social development of Islam in the U.S. from enslaved African Muslims to the present. Topics include: African Muslims, rice cultivation in the South, and slave rebellions; the rise of proto-Islamic movements such as the Nation of Islam; the growth and influence of African American and immigrant Muslims; Islam and Women; Islam in Prisons; Islam and Architecture and the American war on terror. Prerequisite: one unit in Religion or permission of the instructor. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 205 - Arab American Literature 1 unit(s) (Same as AMST 205 ) This course examines issues of identity formation, including race and ethnicity, gender, religion, and multiculturalism in the literary production of at least four generations of American writers, intellectuals and journalists of Arab and hybrid descent. We will read autobiographies, novels, short stories and poetry spanning the twentieth century, as well as articles and book chapters framing this literature and the identity discourse it vehicles within the broader cultural history of the American mosaic. Authors and works studied may change occasionally and include: Khalil Gibran, Elia Abu Madi, Gregory Orfalea, Joseph Geha, Diana Abu Jaber, Naomi Shihab Nye, Suheir Hammad, Betty Shamieh, Moustafa Bayoumi, and others. All texts are originally written in English. Mr. Mhiri. Open to all students. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 206 - Social Change in the Black and Latino Communities 1 unit(s) (Same as RELI 206 and SOCI 206 ) An examination of social issues in the Black and Latino communities: poverty and welfare, segregated housing, drug addiction, unemployment and underemployment, immigration problems and the prison system. Social change strategies from community organization techniques and poor people’s protest movements to more radical urban responses are analyzed. Attention is given to religious resources in social change. Not offered in 2014/15. One 2.5-hour period.
	AFRS 207 - Intermediate Arabic Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) This is an intermediate level course offered during fall semester only. The course focuses on enhancing students’ abilities to (1) create with the language and communicate personal meaning effectively; (2) satisfy personal needs and social demands to survive in an Arabic speaking environment; (3) understand information conveyed in simple, sentence-length speech on familiar or everyday topics. (4) understand short, non-complex texts that convey basic information and deal with personal and social topics. (5) build intercultural competence through exposure to authentic Arabic expressions, proverbs, and similar linguistic and cultural idioms. Mr. Mhiri. This course is designed for students who have completed AFRS 107 or its equivalent successfully as demonstrated by a placement test. Three 50-minute periods, plus one drill period per week.
	AFRS 208 - Intermediate Arabic Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) This is an intermediate level course offered during spring semester only. The course focuses on enhancing students’ abilities to (1) write short, simple communications, compositions, and requests for information in loosely connected texts about personal preferences, daily routines, common events, and other personal topics; (2) understand simple, sentence-length speech in a variety of basic personal and social contexts and accurately comprehend highly familiar and predictable topics; (3) understand short, non-complex texts, featuring description and narration, that convey basic information and deal with basic and familiar topics; (4) handle successfully a variety of uncomplicated communicative tasks in straightforward social situations such as exchanges related to self, family, home, daily activities, interests and personal preferences, as well as physical and social needs, such as food, shopping, travel, and lodging; (5) develop their intercultural competence through increased exposure to authentic Arabic literary and journalistic audiovisual material. Ms. Al-Haddad. Students who did not complete AFRS 207 may enroll if they demonstrate equivalent knowledge by a placement test. Three 50-minute periods, plus one drill period per week.
	AFRS 209 - From Homer to Omeros Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as GRST 209 ) No poet since James Joyce has been as deeply and creatively engaged in a refashioning of Homer as Derek Walcott, the Caribbean poet and 1992 Nobel Laureate. He has authored both a stage version of the Odyssey and a modern epic, Omeros, and in both of them he brings a decidedly postcolonial and decidedly Caribbean idiom to Homer’s ancient tales. In this course we devote ourselves to a close reading of these works alongside the appropriate sections of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Our aim is both to understand the complexities of Walcott’s use of the Homeric models and to discover the new meanings that emerge in Homer when we read him through Walcott’s eyes. Ms. Friedman. Prerequisite: any 100-level Greek and Roman Studies course or one unit of related work or special permission. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 211 - Religions of the Oppressed and Third-World Liberation Movements 1 unit(s) (Same as RELI 211 ) A comparative socio-historical analysis of the dialectical relationship between religion and the conditions of oppressed people. The role of religion in both suppression and liberation is considered. Case studies include the cult of Jonestown (Guyana), Central America, the Iranian revolution, South Africa, slave religion, and aspects of feminist theology. Prerequisite: special permission of the instructor. This course is taught at the Otisville Correctional Facility. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 212 - Arabic Literature and Culture 1 unit(s) This course covers the rise and development of modern literary genres written in verse and prose and studies some of the great figures and texts. It touches on the following focuses on analytical readings of poetry, stories, novels, articles, and plays. The students gain insights into Arabic culture including religions, customs, media, and music, in addition to the Arabic woman’s rights and her role in society. The course is open to any student who has taken AFRS 207 or AFRS 208 . Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 217 - Prisons, Community Reentry, and Critical issues in the Criminal Justice System Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) This course examines the prison experience in the United States and critical issues in the criminal justice system in a prison setting with Vassar students and incarcerated men. The course provides historical overviews of the role of prisons in society and critical examinations of some relevant contemporary issues in criminal justice such as the death penalty, felon disenfranchisement, juveniles in adult prisons, children of incarcerated parents, and immigrants in prison. The course meets on Thursday evenings for two hours. A number of field trips are scheduled to local and New York City agencies usually on Fridays. Special permission required.
	AFRS 227 - The Harlem Renaissance and its Precursors Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as ENGL 227 ) This course places the Harlem Renaissance in literary historical perspective as it seeks to answer the following questions: In what ways was “The New Negro” new? How did African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance rework earlier literary forms from the sorrow songs to the sermon and the slave narrative? How do the debates that raged during this period over the contours of a black aesthetic trace their origins to the concerns that attended the entry of African Americans into the literary public sphere in the eighteenth century? Ms. Dunbar.
	AFRS 228 - African American Literature: “Vicious Modernism” and Beyond Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as ENGL 228 ) In the famous phrase of Amiri Baraka, “Harlem is vicious/Modernism.” Beginning with the modernist innovations of African American writers after the Harlem Renaissance, this course ranges from the social protest fiction of the 1940s through the Black Arts Movement to the postmodernist experiments of contemporary African American writers. Mr. Simpson.
	AFRS 229 - Black Intellectual History Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as SOCI 229 ) This course provides an overview of black intellectual thought and an introduction to critical race theory. It offers approaches to the ways in which black thinkers from a variety of nations and periods from the nineteenth century up to black modernity engage their intellectual traditions. How have their perceptions been shaped by a variety of places? How have their traditions, histories and cultures theorized race? Critics may include Aimé Césaire, Anna Julia Cooper, W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon, Paul Gilroy, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Ida B. Wells, and Patricia Williams. Ms. Harriford.
	AFRS 232 - African American Cinema Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as FILM 232 ) This course provides a survey of the history and theory of African American representation in cinema. It begins with the silent films of Oscar Micheaux and examines early Black cast westerns (Harlem Rides the Range, The Bronze Buckaroo, Harlem on the Prairie) and musicals (St. Louis Blues, Black and Tan, Hi De Ho, Sweethearts of Rhythm). Political debate circulating around cross over stars (Paul Robeson, Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Eartha Kitt, and Harry Belafonte) are central to the course. Special consideration is given to Blaxploitation cinema of the seventies (Shaft, Coffy, Foxy Brown, Cleopatra Jones) in an attempt to understand its impact on filmmakers and the historical contexts for contemporary filmmaking. The course covers “Los Angeles Rebellion” filmmakers such as Julie Dash, Charles Burnett, and Haile Gerima. Realist cinema of the 80’s and 90’s (Do the Right Thing, Boyz N the Hood, Menace II Society, and Set it off),is examined before the transition to Black romantic comedies, family films, and genre pictures (Coming to America, Love and Basketball, Akeelah and the Bee, The Great Debaters). Ms. Mask. Prerequisite: FILM 210 and permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods plus outside screenings.
	AFRS 234 - Creole Religions of the Caribbean Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as LALS 234 and RELI 234 ) The Africa-derived religions of the Caribbean region—Haitian Voodoo, Cuban Santeria, Jamaican Obeah, Rastafarianism, and others—are foundational elements in the cultural development of the islands of the region. This course examines their histories, systems of belief, liturgical practices, and pantheons of spirits, as well as their impact on the history, literature, and music of the region. Ms. Paravisini-Gebert. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 235 - The Civil Rights Movement in the United States 1 unit(s) (Same as AMST 235 ) In this interdisciplinary course, we examine the origins, dynamics, and consequences of the modern Civil Rights movement. We explore how the southern based struggles for racial equality and full citizenship in the U.S. worked both to dismantle entrenched systems of discrimination—segregation, disfranchisement, and economic exploitation—and to challenge American society to live up to its professed democratic ideals. Ms. Collins. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 236 - Imprisonment and the Prisoner Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as SOCI 236 ) What is the history of the prisoner? Who becomes a prisoner and what does the prisoner become once incarcerated? What is the relationship between crime and punishment? Focusing on the (global) prison industrial complex, this course critically interrogates the massive and increasing numbers of people imprisoned in the United States and around the world. The primary focus of this course is the prisoner and on the movement to abolish imprisonment as we know it. Topics covered in this course include: racial and gender inequality, the relationship between imprisonment and slavery, social death, the prisoner of war (POW), migrant incarceration, as well as prisoner resistance and rebellion. Students also come away from the course with a complex understanding of penal abolition and alternative models of justice. Mr. Alamo. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 242 - Brazil, Society, Culture, and Environment in Portuguese America 1 unit(s) (Same as GEOG 242 , ITAL 242 , and LALS 242 ) Brazil, long Latin America’s largest and most populous country, has become an industrial and agricultural powerhouse with increasing political-economic clout in global affairs. This course examines Brazil’s contemporary evolution in light of the country’s historical geography, the distinctive cultural and environmental features of Portuguese America, and the political-economic linkages with the outside world. Specific topics for study include: the legacies of colonial Brazil; race relations, Afro-Brazilian culture, and ethnic identities; issues of gender, youth, violence, and poverty; processes of urban-industrial growth; regionalism and national integration; environmental conservation and sustainability; continuing controversies surrounding the occupation of Amazonia; and long-run prospects for democracy and equitable development in Brazil. Mr. Godfrey. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 246 - French Speaking Cultures and Literatures of Africa and the Caribbean Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as FREN 246 ) Topic for 2014/15b: What Does Comic Art Say? African comic art comes in a variety of styles, languages, and formats. From the comic strip, found in newspapers and magazines, to developmental and political cartoons, it interfaces with journalism, painting, advertising, television, film and music. Having placed comic art in its theoretical context, we analyze the production of francophone ‘bédéistes’ (cartoonists) from and on Africa, such as Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie’s Aya de Yopougon, Edimo-Simon-Pierre Mbumbo’s Malamine, un Africain à Paris, Pahé’s La vie de Pahé, Serge Diantantu’s Simon Kimbangu, Arnaud Floc’h’s La compagnie des cochons and Stassen Les Enfants. We also examine how cartoon characters such as Camphy Combo and Gorgooloo, respectively in Gbich! and Le Cafard Libéré, represent the complexities of francophone African urban society at the turn of the century. Ms. Célérier. Prerequisite: FREN 210 or FREN 212 or the equivalent. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 247 - The Politics of Difference Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as POLI 247 ) This course relates to the meanings of various group experiences in American politics. It explicitly explores, for example, issues of race, class, gender, disability, and sexual orientation. Among other things, this course addresses the contributions of the Critical Legal Studies Movement, the Feminist Jurisprudence Movement, the Critical Race Movement, and Queer Studies to the legal academy. Mr. Harris.
	AFRS 249 - Latino/a Formations Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as LALS 249 and SOCI 249 ) This course focuses on the concepts, methodologies and theoretical approaches for understanding the lives of those people who (im)migrated from or who share real or imagined links with Latin America and the Spanish-Speaking Caribbean. As such this course considers the following questions: Who is a Latino/a? What is the impact of U.S. political and economic policy on immigration? What is assimilation? What does U.S. citizenship actually mean and entail? How are ideas about Blackness, or race more generally, organized and understood among Latino/as? What role do heterogeneous identities play in the construction of space and place among Latino/a and Chicano/a communities? This course introduces students to the multiple ways in which space, race, ethnicity, class and gendered identities are imagined/formed in Latin America and conversely affirmed and/or redefined in the United States. Conversely, this course examines the ways in which U.S. Latina/o populations provide both economic and cultural remittances to their countries of origin that also help to challenge and rearticulate Latin American social and economic relationships. Mr. Alamo.
	AFRS 251 - Topics in Black Literatures 1 unit(s) This course considers Black literatures in all their richness and diversity. The focus changes from year to year, and may include study of a historical period, literary movement, or genre. The course may take a comparative, diasporic approach or may examine a single national or regional literature. Mr. Laymon.
	AFRS 252 - Writing the Diaspora: Verses/Versus Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as ENGL 252 ) Black American cultural expression is anchored in rhetorical battles and verbal jousts that place one character against another. From sorrow songs to blues, black music has always been a primary means of cultural expression for African Americans, particularly during difficult social periods and transition. Black Americans have used music and particularly rhythmic verse to resist, express, and signify. Nowhere is this more evident than in hip hop culture generally and hip hop music specifically. This semester’s Writing the Diaspora class concerns itself with close textual analysis of hip-hop texts. Is Imani Perry right in claiming that Hip Hop is Black American music, or diasporic music? In addition to close textual reading of lyrics, students are asked to create their own hip-hop texts that speak to particular artists/texts and/or issues and styles raised. Mr. Laymon. Prerequisites: one course in literature or Africana Studies.
	AFRS 254 - The Arts of Eastern, Southern, Central and Western Africa 1 unit(s) (Same as ART 254 ) This course is organized thematically and examines the ways in which sculpture, painting, photography, textiles, and film and video function both historically and currently in relationship to broader cultural issues. Within this context, this course explores performance and masquerade in relationship to gender, social, and political power. We also consider the connections between the visual arts and cosmology, identity, ideas of diaspora, colonialism and post-colonialism, as well as the representation of the “Self,” and the “Other.” Mr. Leers. Prerequisites: ART 105 -ART 106 , one course in Africana Studies, or permission of the instructor. The Non-Recorded Option is available to non-majors. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 255 - Race, Representation, and Resistance in U.S. Schools Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as EDUC 255 and URBS 255 ) This course interrogates the intersections of race, racism and schooling in the US context. In this course, we examine this intersection at the site of educational policy, media and public attitudes towards schools and schooling- critically examining how representations in each shape the experiences of youth in school. Expectations, beliefs, attitudes and opportunities reflect societal investments in these representations, thus becoming both reflections and driving forces of these identities. Central to these representations is how theorists, educators and youth take them on, own them and resist them in ways that constrain possibility or create spaces for hope. Ms. Malsbary. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 256 - Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism 1 unit(s) (Same as INTL 256 and POLI 256 ) Conflicts over racial, ethnic and/or national identity continue to dominate headlines in diverse corners of the world. Whether referring to ethnic violence in Bosnia or Sri Lanka, racialized political tensions in Sudan and Fiji, the treatment of Roma (Gypsies) and Muslims in Europe, or the charged debates about immigration policy in the United States, cultural identities remain at the center of politics globally. Drawing upon multiple theoretical approaches, this course explores the related concepts of race, ethnicity and nationalism from a comparative perspective using case studies drawn from around the world and across different time periods. Mr. Mampilly. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 257 - Genre and the Postcolonial City 1 unit(s) (Same as POLI 257 and URBS 257 ) This course explores the physical and imaginative dimensions of selected postcolonial cities. The theoretical texts, genres of expression and cultural contexts that the course engages address the dynamics of urban governance as well as aesthetic strategies and everyday practices that continue to reframe existing senses of reality in the postcolonial city. Through an engagement with literary, cinematic, architectural among other forms of urban mediation and production, the course examines the politics of migrancy, colonialism, gender, class and race as they come to bear on political identities, urban rhythms and the built environment. Case studies include: Johannesburg , Nairobi, Algiers and migrant enclaves in London and Paris. Mr. Opondo. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 258 - Environment and Culture in the Caribbean 1 unit(s) (Same as ENST 258 ) The ecology of the islands of the Caribbean has undergone profound change since the arrival of Europeans to the region in 1492. The course traces the history of the relationship between ecology and culture from pre-Columbian civilizations to the economies of tourism. Among the specific topics of discussion are: Arawak and Carib notions of nature and conservation of natural resources; the impact of deforestation and changes in climate; the plantation economy as an ecological revolution; the political implications of the tensions between the economy of the plot and that of the plantation; the development of environmental conservation and its impact on notions of nationhood; the ecological impact of resort tourism; the development of eco-tourism. These topics are examined through a variety of materials: historical documents, essays, art, literature, music, and film. Ms. Paravisini. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 259 - Settler Colonialism in a Comparative Perspective 1 unit(s) (Same as POLI 259 ) This course examines the phenomenon of settler colonialism through a comparative study of the interactions between settler and ‘native’ / indigenous populations in different societies. It explores the patterns of settler migration and settlement and the dynamics of violence and local displacement in the colony through the tropes of racialization of space, colonial law, production/labor, racialized knowledge, aesthetics, health, gender, domesticity and sexuality. Attentive to historical injustices and the transformation of violence in ‘postcolonial’ and settler societies, the course interrogates the forms of belonging, memory, desire and nostalgia that arise from the unresolved status of settler and indigenous communities and the competing claims to, or unequal access to resources like land. Case studies are drawn primarily from Africa but also include examples from other regions. Mr. Opondo. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 260 - International Relations of the Third World: Bandung to 9/11 Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as INTL 260 and POLI 260 ) Whether referred to as the “Third World,” or other variants such as the “Global South,” the “Developing World,” the “G-77,” the “Non-Aligned Movement,” or the “Post-Colonial World,” a certain unity has long been assumed for the multitude of countries ranging from Central and South America, across Africa to much of Asia. Is it valid to speak of a Third World? What were/are the connections between countries of the Third World? What were/are the high and low points of Third World solidarity? And what is the relationship between the First and Third Worlds? Drawing on academic and journalistic writings, personal narratives, music, and film, this course explores the concept of the Third World from economic, political and cultural perspectives. Beginning at the dawn of the 20th century with the rise of anti-colonial movements, we examine the trajectory of the Third World in global political debates through the end of the Cold War and the start of the War on Terror. Mr. Mampilly. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 264 - African American Women’s History 1 unit(s) (Same as WMST 264 ) In this interdisciplinary course, we explore the roles of black women in the U.S. as thinkers, activists, and creators during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Focusing on the intellectual work, social activism, and cultural expression of a diverse group of African American women, we examine how they have understood their lives, resisted oppression, constructed emancipatory visions, and struggled to change society. Ms. Collins. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 265 - African American History to 1865 1 unit(s) (Same as HIST 265 ) This course provides an introduction to African American history from the Atlantic slave trade through the Civil War. African Americans had a profound effect on the historical development of the nation. The experiences of race and slavery dominate this history and it is the complexities and nuances of slavery that give this course its focus. This course examines key developments and regional differences in the making of race and slavery in North America, resistance movements among slaves and free blacks (such as slave revolts and the abolitionist movement) as they struggled for freedom and citizenship, and the multiple ways race and gender affected the meanings of slavery and freedom. This course is designed to encourage and develop skills in the interpretation of primary and secondary sources. Mr. Mills. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 266 - Art and Everyday Life in the United States Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as AMST 266 and ART 266 ) An exploration of material and expressive creations closely associated with everyday life from the era of the transatlantic slave trade to the present day. Focusing on objects, images, spaces, and lore intimately tied to African American lives, we examine these ordinary and extraordinary creations and expressions in relation to the histories, movements, beliefs, practices, and ideas that underlie them. Ms. Collins. Prerequisite: ART 105 -ART 106 or coursework in Africana Studies, American Studies, Women’s Studies, or permission of the instructor. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 267 - African American History, 1865-Present 1 unit(s) (Same as HIST 267 ) This course examines some of the key issues in African American history from the end of the civil war to the present by explicating selected primary and secondary sources. Major issues and themes include: Reconstruction and the meaning of freedom, military participation and ideas of citizenship, racial segregation, migration, labor, cultural politics, and black resistance and protest movements. This course is designed to encourage and develop skills in the interpretation of primary sources, such as letters, memoirs, and similar documents. The course format, therefore, consists of close reading and interpretation of selected texts, both assigned readings and handouts. Course readings are supplemented with music and film. Mr. Mills. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 268 - Sociology of Black Religion 1 unit(s) (Same as RELI 268 and SOCI 268 ) A sociological analysis of a pivotal sector of the Black community, namely the Black churches, sects, and cults. Topics include slave religion, the founding of independent Black churches, the Black musical heritage, Voodoo, the Rastafarians, and the legacies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. This course is taught to Vassar students and incarcerated men at the Otisville Correctional Facility. It will be taught at the Otisville Correctional Facility. To be announced. Special permission required. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 270 - The Black Power Movement Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as HIST 270 ) This course examines the Black Power Movement as a burgeoning social movement in the post World War II period, while also placing it in the long traditions of black political thought and radicalism within American democracy. In addition to studying black radicalism in the early twentieth century, the course explores the philosophies and tactics of civil rights activism; questions of feminism and masculinity; radicalism and conservatism; violence, nonviolence, and self-defense; and community control, nationalism, and internationalism. Major sites of inquiry include education, arts and media, police brutality, welfare rights, electoral politics, and economic empowerment. By engaging the ideologies, politics, and culture of the Black Power Movement, we gain a deeper understanding of how people claim their rights and personhood against seemingly insurmountable odds. Mr. Mills. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 271 - Perspectives on the African Past: Africa Before 1800 1 unit(s) (Same as HIST 271 ) A thematic survey of African civilizations and societies to 1800. The course examines how demographic and technological changes, warfare, religion, trade, and external relations shaped the evolution of the Nile Valley civilizations, the East African city-states, the empires of the western Sudan, and the forest kingdoms of West Africa. Some attention is devoted to the consequences of the Atlantic slave trade, which developed from Europe’s contact with Africa from the fifteenth century onwards. Mr. Rashid. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 272 - Modern African History 1 unit(s) (Same as HIST 272 ) Africa has experienced profound transformations over the past two centuries. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Africans lost and regained their independence from different European colonial powers. This course explores the changing African experiences before, during, and after European colonization of their continent. Drawing on primary sources, film, memoirs, and popular novels, we look at the creative responses of African groups and individuals to the contradictory processes and legacies of colonialism. Particular attention will be paid to understanding how these responses shape the trajectories of African as well as global developments. Amongst the major themes covered by the course are: colonial ideologies, African resistance, colonial economies, gender and cultural change, African participation in the two world wars, urbanization, decolonization and African nationalism. We also reflect on some of the contemporary developmental dilemmas as well as opportunities confronting post-colonial Africa. Mr. Rashid. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 273 - Development Economics Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as ECON 273 ) A survey of central issues in the field of development economics, this course examines current conditions in less developed countries using both macroeconomic and microeconomic analysis. Macroeconomic topics include theories of growth and development, development strategies (including export-led growth in Asia), and problems of structural transformation and transition. Household decision-making under uncertainty serves as the primary model for analyzing microeconomic topics such as the adoption of new technology in peasant agriculture, migration and urban unemployment, fertility, and the impact of development on the environment. Examples and case studies from Africa, Asia, Latin America and transition economies provide the context for these topics. Ms. Jones. Prerequisites: ECON 100 and ECON 101, or ECON 102 .
	AFRS 275 - Caribbean Discourse Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as ENGL 275 and LALS 275 ) Study of the work of artists and intellectuals from the Caribbean. Analysis of fiction, non-fiction, and popular cultural forms such as calypso and reggae within their historical contexts. Attention to cultural strategies of resistance to colonial domination and to questions of community formation in the post-colonial era. May include some discussion of post-colonial literary theory and cultural studies. Ms. Paravisini.
	AFRS 277 - Sea-Changes: Caribbean Rewritings of the British Canon 1 unit(s) Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 280 - Spaces of Exception: Migration, Asylum-Seeking, and Statelessness Today Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as INTL 280 , PHIL 280 , and POLI 280 ) The totalitarian disregard for human life and the treatment of human beings as superfluous entities began, for Hannah Arendt, in imperial projects and was extended to spaces where entire populations were rendered stateless and denied the right to have rights. In this course, we are going to start from Arendt’s seminal analysis of statelessness and her concept of the right to have rights to study aspects of today’s “migratory condition.” This is a peculiar condition by which inclusion in the political community is possible only by mechanisms of exclusion or intensified precarity. Mapping these mechanisms of identification through exclusion, abandonment, and dispossession will reveal that, like the stateless person, the contemporary migrant is increasingly being included in the political community only under the banner of illegality and/or criminality, unreturnability, suspension, detention, and externalization. This fact pushes millions of people to exist in “islands of exception,” camps and camp-cities on the shores of Malta, Cyprus, or Lampedusa in the Mediterranean, Manus/ Nauru in the Pacific, and Guantanamo in the Americas. Through a critical engagement with the migrant condition, this course examines a range of biopolitical practices, extra-territorial formations, and technologies of encampment (externalization, dispersion, biometric virtualization). The engagement with the physical and metaphysical conditions of these ‘spaces of exception’ where migrants land, are detained, measured, and sometimes drown, calls attention to lives at the outskirts of political legibility while interrogating the regimes of legibility through which migrant lives are apprehended. Besides Arendt, we will discuss novels and texts by Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Zadie Smith, Eyal Weizman, Emmanuel Levinas, Achille Mbembe, Michel Foucault, Suvendrini Perera, V.Y. Mudimbe, Jacques Derrida, and Julia Kristeva. Ms. Borradori and Mr. Opondo. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 282 - The Carceral State and Black (Queer and Trans) Bodies Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) This course will examine the impact of criminalizing and carceral apparatuses on Black queer and trans bodies. Building upon the work of scholars like Andrea Ritchie, Dean Spade, and Michelle Fine as well as the advocacy of organizations like Sylvia Rivera Law Project, National Center for Transgender Equality, and National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, we will explore, what Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie and Kay Whitlock have named, “queer (in)justice.” More specifically, we will employ intersectionality, the Black feminist sociological theory, and critical race theory as the optics through which we might assess the multiple and interconnected systems (i.e., homo and trans antagonisms; White racial supremacy; late capitalism and neoliberalism; etc.) that impact the lives of Black queer and trans people in the age of the prison industrial complex. Mr. Moore. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 288 - The Politics of Language in Schools and Society Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as EDUC 288 , LALS 288 , and URBS 288 ) The United States is one of the most multilingual nations in the world, and, language is intimately connected to family and personal identity. This course explores how language, power, and ideology play out in public debate, state policy and educational justice movements. We examine the link between racism, language and national belonging by analyzing how Standard English, Black English (AAVE) and Spanish-English bilingualism are positioned as more or less “correct”, or politicized and even policied. We then turn our eye to curriculum and education policy, examining how debates around language in the classroom. Finally we pose possibilities, and examine the politics of language in multilingual, hybrid and global contexts. What do debates about “correctness” in language obscure? How do our fears, hopes and longing for identity shape our beliefs about language in the classroom? How does the history of U.S. language politics inform our present? What does equitable language education policy look like? Why are these issues important to all citizens? Ms. Malsbary. Prerequisite: EDUC 235 or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 290 - Field Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring 1/2 to 1 unit(s) Individual or group field projects or internships. The department. Unscheduled. May be selected during the academic year or during the summer.
	AFRS 298 - Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring 1/2 to 1 unit(s) Individual or group project of reading or research. The department. Unscheduled. May be selected during the academic year or during the summer.
	AFRS 299 - Research Methods Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) An introduction to the research methods used in the disciplines represented by Africana Studies. Through a variety of individual projects, students learn the approaches necessary to design projects, collect data, analyze results, and write research reports. The course includes some field trips to sites relevant to student projects. The emphasis is on technology and archival research, using the Library’s new facilities in these areas. The course explores different ideas, theories and interdisciplinary approaches within Africana Studies that shape research and interpretation of the African and African diasporic experience. Students learn to engage and critically utilize these ideas, theories and approaches in a coherent fashion in their own research projects. They also learn how to design research projects, collect and analyze different types of data, and write major research papers. Emphasis is placed on collection of data through interviews and surveys as well as archival and new information technologies, using the facilities of Vassar libraries. Ms. Collins. The course includes some field trips to sites relevant to student projects. Required of majors and correlates, but open to students in all disciplines.
	AFRS 386 - Situating Blackness, Situating Vassar: Experience, Documentation, Transformation Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as ANTH 386 ) This course encourages students to explore the meanings of blackness (and raced identity categories) as lived experience at Vassar College and beyond. It provides methodological tools for students to explore self-knowledge, conduct social analyses of current contexts, and represent blackness as a lived experience today. The uses of historical literature, ethnography, film, guest speakers, social justice workshops, and first-hand accounts of experiences at Vassar and other institutions (by former students and existing members of the community) help contextualize local experiences in the broader world and also explore the meanings of blackness. The course addresses how raced identity is experienced, and how it can be transformed in, and transformative to, social life at Vassar. A primary goal is to help students link pain and suffering to systemic inequality, social privilege, and collective transformation. Ms. Lowe Swift. Prerequisite: open to all qualified students with the permission of the instructor. One 3-hour period.
Africana Studies: III. Advanced
	AFRS 300 - Senior Thesis or Project Semester Offered: Fall or Spring 1 unit(s)
	AFRS 301 - Seminar in Classical Civilization: Athenian Drama on the African Stage Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as DRAM 301 and GRST 301 ) Topic for 2014/15a: Athenian Drama on the African Stage. Since the independence of many African countries in the early 1960s, an increasing number of playwrights have drawn on Greek tragedy as a model for their productions. In this class we both read a selection of these works alongside their Greek intertexts and consider several larger issues at play in these adaptations. Among the questions we consider are the affinity between Greek and African theatrical forms related to their origins in ritual and the question of the particular role of the classical in a postcolonial world. Readings include such works as Soyinka’s Bacchae, Rotimi’s The Gods are Not to Blame, Osofisan’s Tegonni and Fugard’s The Island. Ms. Friedman. Prerequisites: previous coursework in Greek and Roman Studies or another related discipline and sophomore status. All readings are in English. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 307 - Upper-Intermediate Arabic Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) Upper-intermediate language and culture course in Modern Standard Arabic. Designed to consolidate students’ reading and listening comprehension, and their oral skills at the intermediate-mid level of proficiency; and to help them reach intermediated- high level proficiency by the end of the course. Ms. Al-Haddad.
	AFRS 308 - Upper-Intermediate Arabic Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) Upper-intermediate language and culture course in Modern Standard Arabic. Designed to consolidate students’ reading and listening comprehension, and their oral skills at the intermediate-mid level of proficiency; and to help them reach intermediated- high level proficiency by the end of the course. Ms. Al-Haddad.
	AFRS 310 - Politics and Religion: Tradition and Modernization in the Third World 1 unit(s) (Same as RELI 310 ) An examination of the central problem facing all Third World and developing countries, the confrontation between the process of modernization and religious tradition and custom. Along with the social, economic, and political aspects, the course focuses on the problems of cultural identity and crises of meaning raised by the modernizing process. Selected case studies are drawn from Africa and Asia. To be announced. Prerequisite: AFRS 268 , or two units in Religion or Africana Studies at the 200-level, or permission of the instructor. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 311 - Advanced Arabic Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) This is an advanced level course offered during fall semester only. The course focuses on enhancing students’ abilities to (1) Read and understand various types of discourses, such as newspaper articles (descriptive, narrative, argumentative, etc.), essays and short stories on various topics; (2) Listen to and understand the main ideas of a speech, lecture or news broadcast; (3) Present personal opinion and construct a nuanced argument about a range of topics about literature, history, politics, culture and society in various parts of the Arab World; (4) Write cohesive and articulate summaries and critical reports about the same topics. Students will continue to develop their communicative skills (speaking, listening, writing and reading) in Modern Standard Arabic through different types of course assignments aimed at helping them reach advanced levels of proficiency. Ms. Al-Haddad. This course is designed for students who have successfully completed two courses in upper intermediate Arabic or its equivalent as demonstrated by a placement test. Two 75-minute periods.
	AFRS 319 - Race and Its Metaphors 1 unit(s) Re-examinations of canonical literature in order to discover how race is either explicitly addressed by or implicitly enabling to the texts. Does racial difference, whether or not overtly expressed, prove a useful literary tool? The focus of the course varies from year to year. Prerequisite: Open to juniors and seniors with 2 units of 200-level work in English; or, for juniors and seniors without this prerequisite, 2 units of work in allied subjects and permission from the associate chair of English. Not offered in 2014/15. One 2-hour period.
	AFRS 326 - Challenging Ethnicity 1 unit(s) (Same as ENGL 326 and URBS 326 ) An exploration of literary and artistic engagements with ethnicity. Contents and approaches vary from year to year. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 330 - Religion, Critical Theory and Politics Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as RELI 330 ) Topic for 2014/15b: Religion, Race, and Democracy. This seminar in religious ethics examines the way certain goods and virtues potentially crucial to a just democracy-hope, reverence, other-regard, memory, community, and even love-have historically been in short supply. Of particular interest is the way that race in America is a crucial frame through which to look at this set of questions. How do democracies teach their citizens about the sorts of virtues that democratic existence may require? How do religious resources contribute to this conversation? Ultimately we consider whether democracy is capable of expressing and training its citizens in the sorts of virtues that the pluralistic conditions of democratic life-conditions centrally rooted in the conflict over the nature of racial justice-would seem to require. Mr. Kahn. No prerequisites. One 2-hour period.
	AFRS 352 - Redemption and Diplomatic Imagination in Postcolonial Africa Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as POLI 352 ) This seminar explores the shifts and transformations in the discourse and practice of redemptive diplomacy in Africa. It introduces students to the cultural, philosophical and political dimensions of estrangement and the mediation practices that accompany the quest for recognition, meaning and material well-being in selected colonial and postcolonial societies. Through a critical treatment of the redemptive vision and diplomatic imaginaries summoned by missionaries, anti-colonial resistance movements and colonial era Pan-Africanists, the seminar interrogates the ‘idea of Africa’ produced by these discourses of redemption and their implications for diplomatic thought in Africa. The insights derived from the interrogation of foundational discourses on African redemption will be used to map the transformation of identities, institutional forms, and the minute texture of everyday life in postcolonial Africa. The seminar also engages modern humanitarianism, diasporic religious movements, Non-Governmental Organizations and neoliberal or millennial capitalist networks that seek to save Africans from foreign forces of oppression or ‘themselves.’ Mr. Opondo. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. One 2-hour period.
	AFRS 353 - Pedagogies of Difference: Critical Approaches to Education 1 unit(s) (Same as EDUC 353 ) Pedagogies of difference are both theoretical frameworks and classroom practices- enacting a social justice agenda in one’s educational work with learners. In this course, we think deeply about various anti-oppressive pedagogies- feminist, queer and critical race- while situating this theory in our class practicum. Thus, this course is about pedagogies of difference as much as it is about different pedagogies that result. We will address how different pedagogies such as hip hop pedagogy, public pedagogy and Poetry for the People derive from these pedagogies of difference. The culminating signature assessment for this course is collaborative work with local youth organizations. Ms. Cann. Prerequisite: EDUC 235 or permission of the instructor. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 360 - Black Business and Social Movements in the Twentieth Century 1 unit(s) (Same as HIST 360 ) From movies to music, bleaching cream to baseball, black entrepreneurs and consumers have historically negotiated the profits and pleasures of a “black economy” to achieve economic independence as a meaning of freedom. This seminar examines the duality of black businesses as economic and social institutions alongside black consumers’ ideas of economic freedom to offer new perspectives on social and political movements in the twentieth-century. We explore black business activity and consumer activism as historical processes of community formation and economic resistance, paying particular attention to black capitalism, consumer boycotts, and the economy of black culture in the age of segregation. Topics include the development of the black beauty industry; black urban film culture; the Negro Baseball League; Motown and the protest music of the 1960s and 1970s; the underground economy; and federal legislation affecting black entrepreneurship. Mr. Mills. Not offered in 2014/15. One 2-hour period.
	AFRS 362 - Text and Image Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as ENGL 362 ) Explores intersections and interrelationships between literary and visual forms such as the graphic novel, illustrated manuscripts, tapestry, the world-wide web, immersive environments, the history and medium of book design, literature and film, literature and visual art. Topics vary from year to year. Topic for 2014/15b: Because Dave Chappelle Said So. The course will explore the history and movement of black, mostly male, satirical comic narratives and characters. From Hip Hop to Paul Beatty’s White Boy Shuffle to Spike Lee’s Bamboozled to Dave Chappelle to Aaron McGruder’s Boondocks to Sacha Cohen’s Ali G character, black masculinity seems to be a contemporary site of massive satire. Using postmodernism as our critical lens, we will explore what black satirical characters and narratives are saying through “tragicomedy” to the mediums of literature, film, television and politics. We will also think about the ways that black archetypes (coon, mammy, sapphire, uncle tom, pickaninny, sambo, tragic mulatto, noble savage, castrating bitch) have evolved into cutting edge comedy on the internet like Awkward Black Girl. We start to see the beginnings of this strategic evolution taking place in the Civil Rights movement when black leaders use television and visual expectations of blackness to their national and global advantage. How did black situation comedies and black comedians of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s speak to and/or disregard that history. Are contemporary comic narratives, narrators and characters, while asserting critical citizenship, actually writing black women’s subjectivities, narratives and experiences out of popular American History? Does satire have essentially masculinist underpinnings? How are these texts and characters communicating with each other and is there a shared language? Is there a difference between a black comic text and a black satirical text? Have comic ideals of morality, democracy, sexuality, femininity and masculinity changed much since the turn of the century? Did blaxploitation cinema revolutionize television for black performers and viewers? How has the internet literally revolutionized raced and gendered comedy? These are some of the questions we will explore in Because Dave Chappelle Said So. Mr. Laymon. One 2-hour period.
	AFRS 365 - Race and the History of Jim Crow Segregation Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as HIST 365 ) This seminar examines the rise of racial segregation sanctioned by law and racial custom from 1865 to 1965. Equally important, we explore the multiple ways African Americans negotiated and resisted segregation in the private and public spheres. This course aims toward an understanding of the work that race does, with or without laws, to order society based on the intersection of race, class and gender. Topics include: disfranchisement, labor and domesticity, urbanization, public space, education, housing, history and memory, and the lasting effects of sanctioned segregation. We focus on historical methods of studying larger questions of politics, resistance, privilege and oppression. We also explore interdisciplinary methods of studying race and segregation, such as critical race theory. Music and film supplement classroom discussions. Mr. Mills.
	AFRS 366 - Art and Activism in the United States 1 unit(s) (Same as AMST 366 , ART 366 , and WMST 366 ) Vision and Critique in the Black Arts and Women’s Art Movements in the United States. Focusing on the relationships between visual culture and social movements in the U.S., this seminar examines the arts, institutions,and ideas of the Black Arts movement and Women’s Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Analyzing paintings, photographs, posters, quilts, collages, murals, manifestos, mixed-media works, installations, films, performances, and various systems of creation, collaboration, and display, we explore connections between art, politics, and society. Ms. Collins. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Not offered in 2014/15. One 2-hour period.
	AFRS 370 - Transnational Literature 1 unit(s) This course focuses on literary works and cultural networks that cross the borders of the nation-state. Such border-crossings raise questions concerning vexed phenomena such as globalization, exile, diaspora, and migration—forced and voluntary. Collectively, these phenomena deeply influence the development of transnational cultural identities and practices. Specific topics studied in the course vary from year to year and may include global cities and cosmopolitanisms; the black Atlantic; border theory; the discourses of travel and tourism; global economy and trade; or international terrorism and war. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AFRS 373 - Slavery and Abolition in Africa 1 unit(s) (Same as HIST 373 ) The Trans-Saharan and the Atlantic slave trade transformed African communities, social structures, and cultures. The seminar explores the development, abolition, and impact of slavery in Africa from the earliest times to the twentieth century. The major conceptual and historiographical themes include indigenous servitude, female enslavement, family strategies, slave resistance, abolition, and culture. The seminar uses specific case studies as well as a comparative framework to understand slavery in Africa. Mr. Rashid. Prerequisite: standard department prerequisites or permission of the instructor. Not offered in 2014/15. One 2-hour period.
	AFRS 374 - The African Diaspora Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as HIST 374 ) This seminar investigates the social origins, philosophical and cultural ideas, and the political forms of Pan-Africanism from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It explores how disaffection and resistance against slavery, racism and colonial domination in the Americas, Caribbean, Europe, and Africa led to the development of a global movement for the emancipation of peoples of African descent from 1900 onwards. The seminar examines the different ideological, cultural, and organizational manifestations of Pan-Africanism as well as the scholarly debates on development of the movement. Readings include the ideas and works of Edward Blyden, Alexander Crummell, W. E. B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, Amy Garvey, C.L.R. James, and Kwame Nkmmah. Mr. Rashid. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor.
	AFRS 378 - Black Paris 1 unit(s) (Same as ENGL 378 and FREN 378 ) This multidisciplinary course examines black cultural productions in Paris from the first Conference of Negro-African writers and artists in 1956 to the present. While considered a haven by African American artists, Paris, the metropolitan center of the French empire, was a more complex location for African and Afro-Caribbean intellectuals and artists. Yet, the city provided a key space for the development and negotiation of a black diasporic consciousness. This course examines the tensions born from expatriation and exile, and the ways they complicate understandings of racial, national and transnational identities. Using literature, film, music, and new media, we explore topics ranging from modernism, jazz, Négritude, Pan-Africanism, and the Présence Africaine group, to assess the meanings of blackness and race in contemporary Paris. Works by James Baldwin, Aime Césaire, Chester Himes, Claude McKay, the Nardal sisters, Richard Wright. Ousmane Sembène, Mongo Beti, among others, are studied. Ms. Célérier and Ms. Dunbar. Not offered in 2014/15. One 2-hour period.
	AFRS 382 - Race and Popular Culture Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as LALS 382 and SOCI 382 ) This seminar explores the way in which the categories of race, ethnicity, and nation are mutually constitutive with an emphasis on understanding how different social institutions and practices produce meanings about race and racial identities. Through an examination of knowledge production as well as symbolic and expressive practices, we focus on the ways in which contemporary scholars connect cultural texts to social and historical institutions. Appreciating the relationship between cultural texts and institutional frameworks, we unravel the complex ways in which the cultural practices of different social groups reinforce or challenge social relationships and structures. Finally, this seminar considers how contemporary manifestations of globalization impact and transform the linkages between race and culture as institutional and intellectual constructs. Mr. Alamo. Not offered in 2014/15. One 2-hour period.
	AFRS 383 - Transnational Solidarities:Palestinian Struggle for Self-Determinatione/Black Struggle for Liberation Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) In this course, we think through and interrogate the Prison Industrial Complex as a global system. We also examine state carceral policies and practices within the US and Israel/Palestine, regional and transnational prison abolition movements, “Jim Crow” technologies, and the notion of reciprocal transnational solidarities. We respond to the following questions: Is it a correct move on the part of Black leaders in the US to draw comparisons between the Jim Crow practices of the US past and the state practices impacting the Palestinian present? Assuming that the Prison Industrial Complex operates both locally and globally, how might we map its proliferation and evidence its impact? How might we define reciprocal solidarities, within the context of global prison abolition movements, and what might such solidarities look like? How do carceral policies and practices function discursively and materially? Mr. Moore. Prerequisite: open to Juniors and Seniors only.
	AFRS 385 - Seminar in American Art Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as AMST 385 and ART 385 ) Topic for 2014/15b: The Visual Culture of the American Civil War. Today, images of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine are ubiquitous; they appear online, in print, and on television. Press coverage was equally pervasive during the American Civil War, but, in the nineteenth century, illustrated newspapers, documentary photography, and figurative monuments were new media that had only recently been developed. This course explores how and why the American Civil War was represented in the fine arts and visual culture in order to understand the complex and reciprocal relationship between the visual arts and politics. How did painting, photography, sculpture, and print shape the ideologies and realities of the War, and how did the War define the possibilities and limitations of these media as well as the relationship between them? We explore these questions through seminar meetings on such topics as slavery, violence, soldiers and veterans, the homefront, landscape, and emancipation as well as through the work of major American artists like Mathew Brady, Frederic Church, Robert Duncanson, Winslow Homer, Edmonia Lewis, and Thomas Nast. Ultimately, our goal is to develop a better understanding of the Civil War and American art as well as an intellectual and historical context for evaluating the visual culture of war in the United States today. Ms. Elder. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. One 2-hour period.
	AFRS 399 - Senior Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring 1/2 to 1 unit(s) Senior independent study program to be worked out in consultation with an instructor. The department.
American Studies: I. Introductory
	AMST 100 - Introduction to American Studies Semester Offered: Fall and Spring 1 unit(s) This course reveals and challenges the histories of the categories that contribute to the definition of “America.” The course explores ideas such as nationhood and the nation-state, democracy and citizenship, ethnic and racial identity, myths of frontier and facts of empire, borders and expansion, normativity and representation, sovereignty and religion, regionalism and transnationalism as these inform our understanding of the United States and American national identity. One goal of the course is to introduce students to important concepts and works in American Studies. Either American Studies 100 or AMST 105 will satisfy the 100-level core requirement of the American Studies major. Topics vary with expertise of the faculty teaching the course. Topic for 2014/15a: Empire/City. We investigate New York-both as “city of fact” and “city of feeling”-as a lens through which to explore the inter- and multi-disciplinary field of American Studies. New York, the Empire City, has also been called the capital of capitalism, the capital of the Twentieth Century, the pre-eminent American city in the American Century, and both the most and the least “American” of places. Along with other key global icons of modernity, New York also came to stand for “the city” itself. We attend to key transformations in the built environment from 1820 to the present, as we explore the particular role that New York City has played in the social, economic and political history of the United States. While our case studies are buildings and spaces, we are also interested in the modes of life and political visions that transformations in the built environment register and enable. And we discover the visible traces of this rich history in the city we encounter today. The course includes at least one field trip to New York. Ms. Brawley. Topic for 2014/15b: The American Secular: Religion and the Nation-State. (Same as RELI 100 ) Is there a distinct realm in American politics and culture called the secular, a space or a mode of pubic discourse that is crucially free of and from the category of religion? This class considers the sorts of theoretical and historical moments in American life, letters, and practice that have, on the one hand, insisted the importance and necessity of such a realm, and on the other hand, resisted the very notion that religion should be kept out of the American public square. We will ask whether it is possible or even desirable—in our politics, in our public institutions, in ourselves—to conceive of the secular and the religious as radically opposed. We will ask if there are better ways to conceive of the secular and the religious in American life, ways that acknowledge their mutual interdependence rather than their exclusivity. Mr. Kahn. Open to freshmen and sophomores only. Two 75-minute periods.
	AMST 101 - The Art of Reading and Writing Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) Development of critical reading in various forms of literary expression, and regular practice in different kinds of writing. The content of each section varies; see the Freshman Handbook for descriptions. The department. Although the content of each section varies, this course may not be repeated for credit; see the Freshman Handbook for descriptions. Open only to freshmen; satisfies the college requirement for a Freshman Writing Seminar.
	AMST 105 - Introduction to Native American Studies Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) This course is a multi-and interdisciplinary introduction to the basic philosophies, ideologies, and methodologies of the discipline of Native American Studies. It acquaints students with the history, art, literature, sociology, linguistics, politics, and epistemology according to an indigenous perspective while utilizing principles stemming from vast and various Native North American belief systems and cultural frameworks. Through reading assignments, films, and discussions, we learn to objectively examine topics such as orality, sovereignty, stereotypes, humor, language, resistance, spirituality, activism, identity, tribal politics, and environment among others. Overall, we work to problematize historical, ethnographical, and literary representations of Native people as a means to assess and evaluate western discourses of domination; at the same time, we focus on the various ways Native people and nations, both in their traditional homelands and urban areas, have been and are triumphing over 500+ years of colonization through acts of survival and continuance. Either AMST 100 or 105 will satisfy the 100-level core requirement of the American Studies major. Ms. McGlennen. Open to freshmen and sophomores only. Two 75-minute periods.
	AMST 112 - Family, Law, and Social Policy 1 unit(s) (Same as POLI 112 and WMST 112 ) This course explores the ways laws and social policies intertwine with the rapid changes affecting U.S. families in the 21st century. We focus on ways in which public policies both respond to and try to influence changes in family composition and structure. The topics we explore may include marriage (including same-sex and polygamous marriage); the nuclear family and alternative family forms; domestic violence and the law; incarcerated parents and their children; juvenile justice and families; transnational families; and family formation using reproductive technologies. Although focusing on contemporary law and social policy, we place these issues in historical and comparative perspective. Course meets at the Taconic Correctional Facility. Ms. Shanley. Prerequisite: permission of the instructors. Not offered in 2014/15. One 3-hour period.
	AMST 160 - Art and Social Change in the United States Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as ART 160 ) In this first-year seminar, we explore relationships between art, visual culture, and social change in the United States. Focusing on twentieth and twenty-first century social movements, we study artists and communities who have sought to inspire social change–to cultivate awareness, nurture new ideas, offer new visions, promote dialogue, encourage understanding, build and strengthen community, and inspire civic engagement and direct action–through creative visual expression. Ms. Collins. Open only to freshmen; satisfies the college requirement for a Freshman Writing Seminar. Two 75-minute periods.
	AMST 177 - Special Topics Semester Offered: Spring 1/2 unit(s) (Same as ENGL 177 and URBS 177 ) Topic for 2014/15b: Imagining the City. This six-week course will survey various approaches to thinking and writing about the city. How do our surroundings change us? What power does an individual have to reshape or reimagine the vast urban landscape? We will consider a diverse array of depictions: the ethnic underground of Chang-rae Lee’s Queens; the forlorn Baltimore depicted in the television show The Wire; the midnight wanderings of Teju Cole and Junot Diaz; the global bustle of Jessica Hagedorn’s Manila; present-day graffiti artists and urban farmers reclaiming their “right to the city.” Mr. Hsu.
American Studies: II. Intermediate
	AMST 203 - Introductory Creative Writing: Journalisms Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as ENGL 203 ) This course examines the various forms of journalism that report on the diverse complexity of contemporary American lives. In a plain sense, this course is an investigation into American society. But the main emphasis of the course is on acquiring a sense of the different models of writing, especially in longform writing, that have defined and changed the norms of reportage in our culture. Students are encouraged to practice the basics of journalistic craft and to interrogate the role of journalists as intellectuals (or vice versa). Mr. Kumar. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Applicants to the course must submit samples of original nonfiction writing (two to five pages long) and a statement about why they want to take the course. Deadline for submission of writing samples one week after October break.
	AMST 205 - Arab American Literature 1 unit(s) (Same as AFRS 205 ) This course examines issues of identity formation, including race and ethnicity, gender, religion, and multiculturalism in the literary production of at least four generations of American writers, intellectuals and journalists of Arab and hybrid descent. We will read autobiographies, novels, short stories and poetry spanning the twentieth century, as well as articles and book chapters framing this literature and the identity discourse it vehicles within the broader cultural history of the American mosaic. Authors and works studied may change occasionally and include: Khalil Gibran, Elia Abu Madi, Gregory Orfalea, Joseph Geha, Diana Abu Jaber, Naomi Shihab Nye, Suheir Hammad, Betty Shamieh, Moustafa Bayoumi, and others. All texts are originally written in English. Mr. Mhiri. Open to all students. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AMST 207 - Commercialized Childhoods Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as SOCI 207 ) This course examines features of childhoods in the U.S. at different times and across different social contexts. The primary aims of the course are 1) to examine how we’ve come to the contemporary understanding of American childhood as a distinctive life phase and cultural construct, by reference to historical and cross-cultural examples, and 2) to recognize the diversity of childhoods that exist and the economic, geographical, political, and cultural factors that shape those experiences. Specific themes in the course examine the challenges of studying children; the social construction of childhood (how childhoods are constructed by a number of social forces, economic interests, technological determinants, cultural phenomena, discourses, etc.); processes of contemporary globalization and commodification of childhoods (children’s roles as consumers, as producers, and debates about children’s rights); as well as the intersecting dynamics of age, social class, race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in particular experiences of childhood. Ms. Rueda. Two 75-minute periods.
	AMST 213 - American Music 1 unit(s) (Same as MUSI 213 ) The study of folk, popular, and art musics in American life from 1600 to the present and their relationship to other facets of America’s historical development and cultural growth. Mr. Pisani. Prerequisite: one unit in one of the following: music; studies in American history, art, or literature; or permission of the instructor. Alternate years. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AMST 214 - History of American Jazz Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as MUSI 214 ) An investigation of the whole range of jazz history, from its beginning around the turn of the century to the present day. Among the figures to be examined are: Scott Joplin, “Jelly Roll” Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie, Thomas “Fats” Waller, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Miles Davis. Mr. Mann. Prerequisite: one unit in one of the following: music, studies in American history, art, or literature; or permission of the instructor. Alternate years.
	AMST 217 - Studies in Popular Music Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as MEDS 217 and MUSI 217 ) Topic for 2014/15b: History of Rock. This class examines the social history of rock from Elvis Presley to the present through examination of musical trends, socio-economic and demographic changes, social and political movements and issues in fandom, production and reception. Seminal artists and events are examined along with the development of genres, subcultures and accompanying trends like fashion, slang, literature, identity politics, as well as the influence of TV, film, radio, video, art, the internet and the music industry. Issues of race, class, gender, age, politics, censorship and hybridity will form the backbone of the course, as well as rock beyond the Anglophone world as a global art form. Mr. Patch. Recommended: one unit in either Music, Sociology, or Anthropology. Two 75-minute periods.
	AMST 235 - The Civil Rights Movement in the United States 1 unit(s) (Same as AFRS 235 ) In this interdisciplinary course, we examine the origins, dynamics, and consequences of the modern Civil Rights movement. We explore how the southern based struggles for racial equality and full citizenship in the U.S. worked both to dismantle entrenched systems of discrimination—segregation, disfranchisement, and economic exploitation—and to challenge American society to live up to its professed democratic ideals. Ms. Collins. Not offered in 2014/15.
	AMST 249 - Encounter and Exchange: American Art from 1565 to 1865 1 unit(s) (Same as ART 249 ) This course examines American art from European contact in the 16th century through the Civil War. It emphasizes the formative role of the international encounter and cross-cultural exchange to this art. The focus is on painting, photography, and prints, though a range of objects types including sculpture, architecture, moving panoramas, and wampum belts will also be explored. Prerequisites: ART 105 -ART 106 , or permission of the instructor. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AMST 250 - America in the World 1 unit(s) This course focuses on current debates in American Studies about resituating the question of “America” in global terms. We explore the theoretical and political problems involved in such a reorientation of the field as we examine topics such as American militarization and empire, American involvement in global monetary organizations such as the World Trade Organization and the World Bank, the question of a distinctive national and international American culture, foreign perspectives on American and “Americanization,” and the global significance of American popular culture including film and music such as hip-hop. Required of students concentrating in the program. Generally not open to senior majors. Open to other students by permission of the director and as space permits. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AMST 251 - Modern America: Visual Culture from the Civil War to WWII Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) (Same as ART 251 ) This course examines American visual culture as it developed in the years between the Civil War and World War II. Attention is paid to the intersections among diverse media and to such issues as consumerism, abstraction, primitivism, femininity, and mechanized reproduction. Artists studied include Thomas Eakins, Timothy O’Sullivan, James McNeill Whistler, Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer, Edward Weston, and Aaron Douglas. Ms. Elder. Prerequisite: ART 105 -ART 106 or a 100-level American Studies course or by permission of instructor. Two 75-minute periods.
	AMST 252 - The American Military at Home and Abroad 1 unit(s) After 1945 the U.S. created the world’s largest and most far-reaching network of military bases. Today, more than 700 military bases in over 150 countries are hosts to American troops, civilian employees of the Department of Defense, and private military contractors. Readings explore the development of this unprecedented global network of military bases, the differing Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) that govern the relationship between the U.S. military and the local populations, as well as the impact of the U.S. troops on these communities. By taking a transnational perspective, we explore the possibilities and limits for democratic change due to the U.S. presence, but also the way in which America’s military deployments abroad brought about change at home. Assigned readings draw on the writing of scholars of the U.S. military, texts produced by opponents of the U.S. military, as well as artistic responses (films, plays, novels, poems) to the U.S. global base structure. Ms. Hoehn. Not offered in 2014/15. Two 75-minute periods.
	AMST 257 - Reorienting America: Asians in American History and Society 1 unit(s) (Same as ASIA 257 and SOCI 257 ) Based on sociological theory of class, gender, race/ethnicity, this course examines complexities of historical, economic, political, and cultural positions of Asian Americans beyond the popular image of “model minorities.” Topics include the global economy and Asian immigration, politics of ethnicity and pan-ethnicity, educational achievement and social mobility, affirmative action, and representation in mass media. Ms. Moon. Not offered in 2014/15.

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Course Descriptions

AFRS 101 - Martin Luther King Jr.

AFRS 104 - Religion, Prisons, and the Civil Rights Movement

AFRS 105 - Issues In Africana Studies

AFRS 106 - Elementary Arabic

AFRS 107 - Elementary Arabic

AFRS 109 - Beyond the Veil and Islamic Terrorism: Modern Arabic Literature

AFRS 122 - Tradition, Religion, Modernity: A History of North Africa and the Middle East

AFRS 141 - Tradition, History and the African Experience

AFRS 175 - Mandela: Race, Resistance and Renaissance in South Africa

AFRS 185 - The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the United States

AFRS 202 - Black Music

AFRS 203 - Arab Women Writers: A Literature of their Own?

AFRS 204 - Islam in America

AFRS 205 - Arab American Literature

AFRS 206 - Social Change in the Black and Latino Communities

AFRS 207 - Intermediate Arabic

AFRS 208 - Intermediate Arabic

AFRS 209 - From Homer to Omeros

AFRS 211 - Religions of the Oppressed and Third-World Liberation Movements

AFRS 212 - Arabic Literature and Culture

AFRS 217 - Prisons, Community Reentry, and Critical issues in the Criminal Justice System

AFRS 227 - The Harlem Renaissance and its Precursors

AFRS 228 - African American Literature: “Vicious Modernism” and Beyond

AFRS 229 - Black Intellectual History

AFRS 232 - African American Cinema

AFRS 234 - Creole Religions of the Caribbean

AFRS 235 - The Civil Rights Movement in the United States

AFRS 236 - Imprisonment and the Prisoner

AFRS 242 - Brazil, Society, Culture, and Environment in Portuguese America

AFRS 246 - French Speaking Cultures and Literatures of Africa and the Caribbean

AFRS 247 - The Politics of Difference

AFRS 249 - Latino/a Formations

AFRS 251 - Topics in Black Literatures

AFRS 252 - Writing the Diaspora: Verses/Versus

AFRS 254 - The Arts of Eastern, Southern, Central and Western Africa

AFRS 255 - Race, Representation, and Resistance in U.S. Schools

AFRS 256 - Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism

AFRS 257 - Genre and the Postcolonial City

AFRS 258 - Environment and Culture in the Caribbean

AFRS 259 - Settler Colonialism in a Comparative Perspective

AFRS 260 - International Relations of the Third World: Bandung to 9/11

AFRS 264 - African American Women’s History

AFRS 265 - African American History to 1865

AFRS 266 - Art and Everyday Life in the United States

AFRS 267 - African American History, 1865-Present

AFRS 268 - Sociology of Black Religion

AFRS 270 - The Black Power Movement

AFRS 271 - Perspectives on the African Past: Africa Before 1800

AFRS 272 - Modern African History

AFRS 273 - Development Economics

AFRS 275 - Caribbean Discourse

AFRS 277 - Sea-Changes: Caribbean Rewritings of the British Canon

AFRS 280 - Spaces of Exception: Migration, Asylum-Seeking, and Statelessness Today

AFRS 282 - The Carceral State and Black (Queer and Trans) Bodies

AFRS 288 - The Politics of Language in Schools and Society

AFRS 290 - Field Work

AFRS 298 - Independent Work

AFRS 299 - Research Methods

AFRS 386 - Situating Blackness, Situating Vassar: Experience, Documentation, Transformation

AFRS 300 - Senior Thesis or Project

AFRS 301 - Seminar in Classical Civilization: Athenian Drama on the African Stage

AFRS 307 - Upper-Intermediate Arabic

AFRS 308 - Upper-Intermediate Arabic

AFRS 310 - Politics and Religion: Tradition and Modernization in the Third World

AFRS 311 - Advanced Arabic

AFRS 319 - Race and Its Metaphors

AFRS 326 - Challenging Ethnicity

AFRS 330 - Religion, Critical Theory and Politics

AFRS 352 - Redemption and Diplomatic Imagination in Postcolonial Africa

AFRS 353 - Pedagogies of Difference: Critical Approaches to Education

AFRS 360 - Black Business and Social Movements in the Twentieth Century

AFRS 362 - Text and Image

AFRS 365 - Race and the History of Jim Crow Segregation

AFRS 366 - Art and Activism in the United States

AFRS 370 - Transnational Literature

AFRS 373 - Slavery and Abolition in Africa

AFRS 374 - The African Diaspora

AFRS 378 - Black Paris

AFRS 382 - Race and Popular Culture