Africana Studies Program

Director: Louis Römer;

Steering Committee: Tagreed Al-Haddad (Africana Studies), Stephane Andrade^a (Sociology), Patricia-Pia Célérier^a (French and Francophone Studies), Diane Harriford (Sociology), Jonathon Kahn (Religion), Candice M. Lowe Swift (Anthropology), Mia Mask (Film), Taneisha Means^a (Political Science), Mootacem Mhiri (Africana Studies), Osman Nemli (Philosophy), Samson Okoth Opondo (Political Science), China Sajadian^a (Anthropology), Michael Reyes Salas (Africana Studies), Louis Römer (Anthropology), Jasmine Syedullah (Africana Studies), Catherine Tan (Sociology), Shona Tucker (Drama), Kirsten Wesselhoeft (Religion), Kimberly Williams Brown (Education);

Participating Faculty: Lisa Gail Collins (Art), Eve Dunbar (English), Tamyka Jordon-Conlin (Music), Erin McCloskey^ab (Education), Krystle McLaughlin^b (Chemistry), Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert^ab (Hispanic Studies), Hiram Perez (English), Tyrone Simpson II (English), Eva Woods Peiró^b (Hispanic Studies).

^a   On leave 2026/27, first semester

^b   On leave 2026/27, second semester

^ab On leave 2026/27

Founded in 1969 out of student protest and political upheaval, the Africana Studies Program continues its commitment to social change and the examination and creation of new knowledge. The Africana Studies Program brings together scholars and scholarship from many fields of study and draws on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to explore the cultures, histories, institutions, and societies of African and African-descended people. Program strengths include: education and activism; literature; feminism; political thought; Arabic language and culture; critical race theory; queer studies; prison studies; visual culture; creative writing; social, cultural, and political movements; and popular culture.

Advisers: Program director and program faculty.

Programs

Major

• •  Africana Studies Major

Correlate Sequences in Africana Studies

• •  Africana Studies Correlate Sequence
• •  Arabic Language and Culture Correlate Sequence
• •  Prison Studies Correlate Sequence

Courses

Africana Studies: I. Introductory

• •  AFRS 100 - Introduction to Africana Studies
• •  AFRS 105 - The Self and the Western Other in Modern Arabic Literature
• •  AFRS 106 - Elementary Arabic
• •  AFRS 107 - Elementary Arabic
• •  AFRS 110 - Prison Abolition and Black Liberation
• •  AFRS 131 - Narratives of Black History: Lives and Archives
• •  AFRS 150 - Critical Approaches to Youth Justice
• •  AFRS 168 - Black Histories in the United States
• •  AFRS 175 - Mandela: Race, Resistance and Renaissance in South Africa

Africana Studies: II. Intermediate

• •  AFRS 200 - Movements and Ideas in Africana Studies
• •  AFRS 202 - Black Music
• •  AFRS 203 - The Carceral State
• •  AFRS 204 - Intersections of Our Homes, Schools, and Communities
• •  AFRS 205 - Arab Women Writers
• •  AFRS 206 - Racial Capitalism
• •  AFRS 207 - Intermediate Arabic
• •  AFRS 208 - Intermediate Arabic
• •  AFRS 209 - Homer and the Caribbean
• •  AFRS 210 - Afrofuturism
• •  AFRS 211 - Islam in Europe and the Americas
• •  AFRS 213 - Art, Spirituality and Power in Precolonial African History
• •  AFRS 215 - African American History to 1865
• •  AFRS 217 - Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy: Cultural Studies Between Media Theory and Philosophy
• •  AFRS 219 - Queer of Color Critique
• •  AFRS 220 - Policing the Planet
• •  AFRS 221 - Captive Genders and Methods of Survival
• •  AFRS 223 - Surrealism Across the African Diaspora
• •  AFRS 225 - Prison Literature and Political Dissidence in the MENA Region
• •  AFRS 227 - The Harlem Renaissance and its Precursors
• •  AFRS 228 - African American Literature
• •  AFRS 229 - Black Intellectual History
• •  AFRS 231 - Algeria/France:Race, Religion & Citizenship
• •  AFRS 232 - African American Cinema
• •  AFRS 233 - Carceral Literature of the Caribbean
• •  AFRS 234 - Race, Space and Nature
• •  AFRS 240 - Cultural Localities
• •  AFRS 242 - Brazil and Amazonia at Risk
• •  AFRS 243 - Twentieth Century Black Writers Against the Surveillance State
• •  AFRS 244 - Indian Ocean
• •  AFRS 246 - African American History since 1865
• •  AFRS 247 - The Politics of Difference
• •  AFRS 248 - Racial and Ethnic Group Politics in Popular Culture
• •  AFRS 251 - Topics in Black Literatures
• •  AFRS 252 - Health Inequalities and Activism
• •  AFRS 253 - Topics in American Literature
• •  AFRS 255 - Race, Representation, and Resistance in U.S. Schools
• •  AFRS 257 - Genre and the Postcolonial City
• •  AFRS 259 - Settler Colonialism in a Comparative Perspective
• •  AFRS 263 - Carceral Geographies
• •  AFRS 266 - Art, Urgency, and Everyday Life in the United States
• •  AFRS 272 - Modern African History
• •  AFRS 276 - How to Write a Black Memoir
• •  AFRS 280 - Africana Philosophy
• •  AFRS 281 - Black Classicisms and the Human(ities)
• •  AFRS 282 - Afro-Caribbean Voices in Francophone Phenomenology
• •  AFRS 290 - Community-Engaged Learning
• •  AFRS 298 - Independent Work
• •  AFRS 299 - Research Methods

Africana Studies: III. Advanced

• •  AFRS 300 - Senior Thesis or Project
• •  AFRS 307 - Upper-Intermediate Arabic
• •  AFRS 308 - Upper-Intermediate Arabic
• •  AFRS 313 - Culture and Society in the Middle East and North Africa
• •  AFRS 317 - Youth Culture and Politics in Africa, 1930s to Present
• •  AFRS 319 - Race and its Metaphors
• •  AFRS 320 - Abolitionist Theory
• •  AFRS 322 - Caribbean Spaces: Discourses of West Indian resistance, love and hope
• •  AFRS 323 - Visualizing Abolition
• •  AFRS 330 - Religion, Critical Theory and Politics
• •  AFRS 332 - Then Whose Negro Are You?
• •  AFRS 336 - Black Ecologies
• •  AFRS 344 - Living for the City: Race, Space, and Place in Urban American
• •  AFRS 346 - Seminar on the U.S. Courts and Legal System
• •  AFRS 351 - Africana Studies Seminar
• •  AFRS 352 - Redemption and Diplomatic Imagination in Postcolonial Africa
• •  AFRS 353 - Creolizing the World
• •  AFRS 354 - Race, Language, and Digital Media
• •  AFRS 366 - Art and Activism in the U.S.
• •  AFRS 374 - The African Diaspora
• •  AFRS 399 - Senior Independent Work