African American and African Diaspora Studies

AFAS UN1001 INTRO TO AFRICAN-AMER STUDIES. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Students need to register for a section of AFAS UN1010, the required discussion section for this course.
Prerequisites: Students need to register for a section of AFAS UN1010, the required discussion section for this course. From the arrival of enslaved Africans to the recent election of President Barack Obama, black people have been central to the story of the United States, and the Americas, more broadly. African Americans have been both contributors to, and victims of, this “New World” democratic experiment. To capture the complexities of this ongoing saga, this course offers an inter-disciplinary exploration of the development of African-American cultural and political life in the U.S. but also in relationship to the different African diasporic outposts of the Atlantic world. The course will be organized both chronologically and thematically, moving from the “middle passage” to the present so-called “post-racial” moment—drawing on a range of classical texts, primary sources, and more recent secondary literature—to grapple with key questions, concerns, and problems (i.e. agency, resistance, culture, etc.) that have preoccupied scholars of African-American history, culture, and politics. Students will be introduced to a range of disciplinary methods and theoretical approaches (spanning the humanities and social sciences), while also attending to the critical tension between intellectual work and everyday life, which are central to the formation of African-American Studies as an academic field. This course will engage specific social formations (i.e. migration, urbanization, globalization, etc.), significant cultural/political developments (i.e. uplift ideologies, nationalism, feminism, Pan-Africanism, religion/spirituality, etc.), and hallmark moments/movements (i.e. Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights movement, etc.). By the end of the semester, students will be expected to possess a working knowledge of major themes/figures/traditions, alongside a range of cultural/political practices and institutional arrangements, in African-American Studies

AFAS UN1002 Major Debates in African-American Studies. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Students must register for discussion section, AFAS UN1003.
Prerequisites: Students must register for discussion section, AFAS UN1003. This course will focus on the major debates in African-American Studies from the role of education to the political uses of art. The class will follow these debates historically with attention to the ways in which earlier discussions on migration and emigration, for example, were engaged with the specific historical conjuncture in which they took place as well as in the myriad ways in which earlier debates continue to resonate today. There will be a mix of primary documents and secondary sources and commentary

AFAS UN1003 Blackness and Frenchness: A Radical Genealogy. 4.00 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

How have Black radicals embraced the French language and, at times, Frenchness without espousing France’s dominance and its doctrines of assimilation? This course explores the watershed moments from the past three centuries that redefine the articulations of blackness in French, in France and beyond—from revolutionary or constitutional independence in the post-colony to recent social movements in continental Europe. In addition to the opening inquiry, guiding questions for this course include but are not limited to the following. What kinds of state-sanctioned backlash in France have ensued in the face of affirmative reclamations of blackness (e.g. Négritude and Afroféminisme)? And, what are the historical linkages between Black radicalism in France and the United States? Through an intra-imperial and inter-imperial lens, this course will center contributions from Black writers, artists, and intellectuals of divergent colonial histories with especial consideration to those for whom French and France is their native language and land.

AFAS UN3030 AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSIC. 3.00 points.

This course focuses on a central question: how do we define “African-American music”? In attempting to answer this question, we will be thinking through concepts such as authenticity, representation, recognition, cultural ownership, appropriation, and origin(s). These concepts have structured the ways in which critics, musicians and audiences have addressed the various social, political and aesthetic contexts in which African-American music has been composed (produced), performed (re-produced) and heard (consumed)

AFAS UN3943 Senior Pro Seminar. 4.00 points.

This course is a seminar for seniors to either write a formal proposal for a capstone project or to begin the research process for a Senior Thesis, which will be written in the Spring semester. This interdisciplinary course provides the necessary structure needed to complete either goal. This will be an interactive class in which students are required to participate and actively engage in each meeting

AFAS UN3930 TOPICS IN THE BLACK EXPERIENCE. 4.00 points.

Please refer to Institute for Research in African American Studies for section course descriptions: http://iraas.columbia.edu/

AFAS UN3936 Black Intellectuals Seminar. 4 points.

AFAM Major/Concentrator required course

This undergraduate seminar examines a diverse group of black intellectuals' formulations of ideologies and theories relative to racial, economic and gender oppression within the context of dominant intellectual trends. The intellectuals featured in the course each contributed to the evolution of black political thought, and posited social criticisms designed to undermine racial and gender oppression, and labor exploitation around the world. This group of black intellectuals' work will be analyzed, paying close attention to the way that each intellectual inverts dominant intellectual trends, and/or uses emerging social scientific disciplines to counter racism, sexism, and classism. This seminar is designed to facilitate an understanding of the black intellectual tradition that has emerged as a result of African-American thinkers' attempts to develop a unified response to an understanding of the black condition. This course explores of a wide range of primary and secondary sources from several different periods, offering students opportunity to explore the lives and works of some of the most important black intellectuals. We will also consider the way that period-specific intellectual phenomenon-such as Modernism, Marxism, Pan-Africanism, and Feminism-combined with a host of social realities.

AFAS UN3940 SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR. 4.00 points.

The Senior Seminar will afford thesis writers the chance to workshop their idea, conduct research and/or interviews, work with the IRB protocols (if necessary), learn to work with archival materials, and perform other research activities prior to writing the thesis. Students who choose to write a capstone paper or conduct a capstone project can choose an elective course the following semester. The Thesis Seminar, conducted in the spring semester, is a workshop-oriented course for Senior Thesis writers organized around honing their writing skills while providing guidance to students in their field/disciplinary-specific projects. For example, a student may choose to write a historical biography of an artist while another may pursue a sociological study of the effects of mass incarceration on voting rights. The instructor of the Thesis Seminar, working with a faculty adviser (dependent on the specific field of inquiry in the thesis), will provide feedback and supervise the writing schedule of the students

AFAS GU4031 POPULAR MUSIC/PROTEST MOVEMNTS. 4.00 points.

Open to graduate students and limited advanced undergraduates.

This course will examine the relationship between popular music and popular movements. We will be taking a historical, as well as a thematic, approach to our investigation as a way to trace various legacies within popular music that fall under the rubric of "protest music" as well as to think about the ways in which popular music has assisted various communities to speak truth to power. We will also consider the ways in which the impact of the music industry has either lessened or enhanced popular music's ability to articulate "protest" or "resistance" to hegemonic power.

AFAS GU4035 Criminal Justice and the Carceral State in the 20th Century United States. 4 points.

To apply for course enrollment, please contact Prof. Samuel Roberts (skroberts@columbia.edu).

This course provides an introduction to historical and contemporary concepts and issues in the U.S. criminal justice system, including state violence; the evolution of modern policing; inequality and criminal justice policy; drug policy as urban policy; and the development of mass incarceration and the “carceral continuum.” The writing component to this course is a 20-25 page research paper on a topic to be developed in consultation with the instructor. This course has been approved for inclusion in the African-American Studies and History undergraduate curricula.

AFAS GU4037 Third World Studies. 4 points.

Introduction to third world studies; an introduction to the methods and theories that inform the field of third world studies (aka ethnic studies), including imperialism, colonialism, third world liberation movements, subjectivities, and racial and social formation theories;

AFAS GU4080 Black Feminist Imaginaries: Practices and Poethics. 4.00 points.

This seminar will focus on theories, practices, and literature of Black thought and Black feminist imaginaries. We will read some of the significant Black feminist scholarship and literature that have emerged over the past three centuries with particular attention to Black feminist theorizing of the intersections of race and gender. The bulk of our reading will concentrate on 20th and 21st century texts with particular attention to the ways that Black feminists (even those retroactively so-named) have long insisted on the material, social, and spiritual significance of Black lives, Black life, and Black thought. In this course, we will read across genre and field to consider the myriad discourses in which Black feminist theorizing has intervened. The list of writers, artists, and thinkers whose work will guide our interrogations include Phillis Wheatley, Rebecca Cox Jackson, Zora Neale Hurston, Fanny Lou Hamer, Johnetta B. Cole, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Hortense Spillers, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, Lucille Clifton, Susan Lori Parks, Saidiya Hartman, Adrienne Piper, Daphne Brooks, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. Central to the course investigations is Carolyn Martin Shaw’s description in “Disciplining the Black Female Body: Learning Feminism in Africa and the United States”: “The individual, the social agent or actor, is a product of culture and produces culture. An individual's subjectivity is determined by that which he or she is subject to (such as laws, language, and stories) and that which he or she is subject of (such as personal decisions, actions, and stories). What holds together fragmentary cultures and part societies? I find the term discourse useful for thinking about linkages and articulations within and across “part societies.”” And across fields. Black feminist imaginaries offer discourses which intervene in dominating narrative, language, image, and knowledge structures. Multiple areas of knowledge and knowledge production must be brought to bear. We will read and think through how Black feminist imaginaries may reframe our understandings of the individual, the state, and the state of things

ENGL GU4621 HARLEM RENAISSANCE. 3.00 points.

(Lecture). This course will focus on the arts of the Harlem Renaissance as experiments in cultural modernity and as forms of incipient political empowerment. What was the Harlem Renaissance? Where and when did it take place? Who were its major players? What difference did it make to everyday Harlemites? What were its outposts beyond Harlem itself? Was there a rural HR? An international HR? As we wonder about these problems of definition, we will upset the usual literary/historical framework with considerations of music and painting of the period. How to fit Bessie Smith into a frame with W.E.B. Du Bois? Ellington with Zora Neale Hurston? Aaron Douglas with Langston Hughes? Where is Harlem today? Does it survive as more than a memory, a trace? Is it doomed to be black no more? How does Harlem function in our national/(international?) imagination? Has the Harlem Renaissance's moment come and gone? What continuities might we detect? What institutions from the early twentieth century have endured?

ENGL GU4622 AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE II. 3.00 points.

(Lecture). This survey of African American literature focuses on language, history, and culture. What are the contours of African American literary history? How do race, gender, class, and sexuality intersect within the politics of African American culture? What can we expect to learn from these literary works? Why does our literature matter to student of social change? This lecture course will attempt to provide answers to these questions, as we begin with Zora Neale Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and Richard Wrights Native Son (1940) and end with Melvin Dixons Loves Instruments (1995) with many stops along the way. We will discuss poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fictional prose. Ohter authors include Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Malcom X, Ntzozake Shange, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison. There are no prerequisites for this course. The formal assignments are two five-page essays and a final examination. Class participation will be graded

AFAS UN3001 SING A BLACK GIRL'S SONG: THE NON FICTION WRITING OF NTOZAKE SHANGE. 3.00 points.

This undergraduate seminar offers an in-depth exploration of the nonfiction work of the renowned African-American poet and playwright Ntozake Shange, whose archives are at Barnard College, her alma mater. Through readings, discussion, and visits to her archives, students will probe this lesser-examined aspect of Shange's oeuvre, including her essays on her life, the arts, food, and other artists and creators. This course invites participants to engage critically with Shange's essays and personal writings while delving into her archive. Students will identify key themes and literary techniques in Shange's nonfiction and the historical and cultural context in which she wrote these works. We will examine how Shange's nonfiction contributes to her broader work and her perspectives on history, gender, feminism, and race as they intersect in her life as a Black woman artist. Students will develop critical thinking skills through close reading, analysis, and discussion of Shange's nonfiction and will improve their writing skills by composing reflections and essays on Shange's works. They will develop research skills and gain insights into Shange's creative process through firsthand engagement with Shange's archive at Barnard