AFRO-AMERICAN STUDIES
AFROAM 101. Introduction to Black Studies, 4 credits (I,DU)
Professor Jimoh
TuTh 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Interdisciplinary introduction to the basic concepts and literature in the disciplines covered by Black Studies. Includes history, the social sciences, and humanities as well as conceptual frameworks for investigation and analysis of Black history and culture.
AFROAM 117. Survey of Afro-American Literature I, 4 credits (AL,DU)
Professor Smethurst
Lecture: MW 11:15 – 12:05 p.m. Discussions: F 10:10 or F 11:15
This course covers the major figures and themes in African American literature before the Harlem Renaissance, analyzing specific works in detail and surveying this rich body of writing. It examines what slave narratives, poetry, short stories, novels, drama, and folklore of the eighteenth and nineteenth century reveal about the social, economic, psychological, and artistic lives of the writers and their characters. While we will discuss many different topics and themes across the semester, we will be particularly interested in tracking the relationships among black writers, artists, and activists in the period; examining the relationship between black writing and other artistic forms and media; and placing early African American writing within a long history of freedom struggles.
AFROAM 132. African-American History: 1619-1860, 4 credits (HS,DU)
Instructor: Anne Kerth
Lecture: MW 2:30 - 3:20 p.m. Discussions: F 1:25 or F 2:30
This course will examine important developments and issues in African American history from the initial arrival of African slaves to Virginia until the Civil War. We will focus on the Black experience under slavery and the struggle for emancipation. Key topics to be discussed include the Atlantic slave trade, the evolution of African American communities and culture, free Black communities, the distinct experience of Black women, and Black protest traditions.
AFROAM 151. Literature & Culture, 4 credits (AL,DU)
Professor Smethurst
Lecture: MW 12:20 – 1:10 p.m. Discussions: F 12:20 or 1:25
This course explores relevant forms of Black cultural expression that have contributed to the shape and character of contemporary Blackness. Topics to be discussed will include West African cultural patterns and the Black past; the transition-slavery; the culture of survival; cultural patterns evident in literature; and Black perceptions versus white perceptions.
AFROAM 156. Revolutionary Concepts in Afro-American Music II, 4 credits (AT,DU)
Instructor: TBD
TuTh 4:00-5:15 p.m.
This course will examine the development of African-American music during the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century with a particular focus on links to the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, the Post Civil Rights era, and the Black Lives Matter Movement. In particular, the class will survey the varied styles, productions, and receptions of artists including Bessie Smith, Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson, Ma Rainey, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Leadbelly, Lightnin’ Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Mary Lou Williams, Charlie “Bird” Parker, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Archie Shepp, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Booker T. & the MGs, Sun Ra, The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, N.W.A., Public Enemy, Blackstar, The Roots, Lauryn Hill, India Arie, Kendrick Lamar, Janelle Monae, Chance the Rapper, J Cole, among others.
AFROAM 170. The Grassroots Experience in American Life and Culture I, 4 credits (HS,DU)
Instructor: TBD
TuTh 5:30-6:45 p.m.
What is the connection between art and activism? Who belongs to the “grassroots” in grassroots movements? And what does it mean for us today? Combining instruction in research techniques from a variety of Humanistic, Artistic, and Social Science disciplines with hands-on experience employing those techniques, this course explores the long struggle of minority populations for full participation in American cultural and public life—and our place within it.
AFROAM 236. History of the Civil Rights Movement, 4 credits (HS,DU)
Professor Shabazz
MW 11:15 – 12:05 p.m. Discussions: F 9:05, 10:10, 11:15 or F 12:20
This course examines the Civil Rights Movement from the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision in 1954 and through the rise and decline of Black Power. We will investigate the lives and influence of major movement leaders, as well as major organizations of the period including SCLC, SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP; and the collective efforts of ordinary citizens who did extraordinary things. We also will pay attention to the Civil Rights Movement in the South, as well as the North and West; the work of gender and sexuality; and different philosophical and tactical strands of the movement, including nonviolent demonstrations and black nationalism.
AFROAM 236. History of the Civil Rights Movement, 4 credits (HS,DU)
*On-line: Contact UMassUlearn.edu
This course examines the Civil Rights Movement from the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision in 1954 and through the rise and decline of Black Power. We will investigate the lives and influence of major movement leaders, as well as major organizations of the period including SCLC, SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP; and the collective efforts of ordinary citizens who did extraordinary things. We also will pay attention to the Civil Rights Movement in the South, as well as the North and West; the work of gender and sexuality; and different philosophical and tactical strands of the movement, including nonviolent demonstrations and black nationalism.
AFROAM 264. Foundations of Black Education in the U.S., 4 credits (HS,DU)
Professsor Shabazz
TuTh 1:00-2:15 p.m.
The education of blacks from Reconstruction to 1954. Includes public schools, colleges, and non-school education. The involvement of religious associations, philanthropic organizations, the Freedman’s Bureau, the Black church, and the Federal Government will also be discussed.
AFROAM 365. Composition: Style & Organization, 3 credits
Professor Losier
TuTh 2:30-3:45 p.m., NAH 302
Expository writing focusing primarily on argumentative and narrative essays. Discussion and practice of logic—inductive and deductive reasoning—as it relates to the argumentative essay form. Topics as thesis on main idea, organization, style, unity, supporting evidence, avoiding logical fallacies, and basic writing mechanics, including constructing sentences, paragraphing, transitions, and correct grammar.
AFROAM 494DI. Du Bois Senior Seminar, 3 credits (IE Course for AfroAm Seniors& Juniors)
Professor Rusert
Tuesdays 11:30-2:00 p.m., NAH 302
This course builds on the intellectual, activist, and cultural-criticism traditions promoted by Massachusetts-born, African-American polymath W.E.B. Du Bois to fulfill the Gen. Ed. Integrative Experience requirement. The course asks students to consider the evolution of their academic, personal, and professional goals in relation to their previous coursework both inside and outside Afro-American Studies and the university’s Gen. Ed. curriculum. Particular attention will be placed on the social justice and cultural knowledge aspects of African American Studies. Department majors may use course-writing assignments as the foundation for a subsequent senior research project.
AFROAM 590B. Black Body Studies, 4 credits (Undergrad/Grad)
Professor Covington-Ward
Tuesdays 11:30 – 2:00 p.m., NAH 302
Black Body Studies is an emerging subfield of Africana/Black studies that uses the lens of the body and embodiment to examine the initiative and creativity of people of African descent in Africa and its diasporas while also investigating how Black bodies are used by others to perpetuate white supremacy, global anti-Black racism, and other forms of harm and exclusion to Black individuals and communities (Covington-Ward, article in progress). This course will examine some of the most important texts to examine Black bodies from multiple perspectives and across different geographical regions including Africa, North and South America, and the Caribbean. Using a multidisciplinary approach bringing literature, ethnography, sociological and historical texts into conversation, the course takes a thematic approach focusing on topics such as the Black body as related to: the question of humanity, violence and anti-Black racism, religion and spirituality, reproductive rights and justice, biopolitics, disabled/abled bodies, and fat phobia. Students will be exposed to both classic texts and newer texts that provide myriad perspectives on Black Body Studies.
AFROAM 590D. Phillis Wheatley: Poet and Prophet, 4 credits (Undergrad/Grad)
Professor Rusert
Thursdays 11:30 – 2:00 p.m., NAH 302
This course emerges from a recent renaissance of scholarship and creative work about the enslaved poet and freedom dreamer, Phillis Wheatley (Peters). Above all else, the course will take shape through deep and careful readings of the poet’s body of work. We will also place Wheatley within a rich tradition of black feminist poetics and read a number of poems that have been dedicated to or otherwise inspired by her across the centuries. We will read the best of recent scholarship on Wheatley, with particular attention to work that: deepens our understanding of her relationship not to her enslavers, but to her kin, community, and to other black artists; reads her in the context of West African and diasporic traditions; attends to the politics of power and pleasure in her poems; examines the circulation of her poetry within local, regional, and transatlantic networks of both print and manuscript cultures in the late eighteenth century; and traces the history of her memorialization by writers, readers, and other communities and groups. The course will include some poetry writing in and outside class, but no prior creative writing experience is required or expected. Poets, researchers, curious students, and Wheatley enthusiasts are all encouraged to enroll.
AFROAM 691C. Historiographical Methods in Afro-American Studies, 4 credits
Professor Kerth
Tuesdays 4:00 – 6:30 p.m., NAH 302
This course will introduce you to some of the basics of what it means to read, think, and write as an historian. We will explore what historians do and why as well as the "objectivity question," the development of African American history as an academic discipline, and one or two current controversies. We also will learn how to locate and use the resources of the Du Bois Library such as microforms, government documents, the papers of W.E.B. Du Bois, on-line indices and collections, as well as those of such important national repositories such as the Library of Congress, the Moorland-Spingarn Collection at Howard University and the Schomburg Center of the N.Y. Public Library.
AFROAM 692J. African American Literary Movements, 4 credits
Professor Jimoh
Thursdays 4:00-6:30 p.m., NAH 302
The New Negro Harlem Renaissance writers (1920s), the Chicago Writers (1930s and 1940s), the Black Arts and Aesthetics Movement writers (1960s and 1970s), and Black Womanist/Gender issues writers (1980s) mark four distinct periods of heightened literary production among African American writers. Participants in this course will investigate formative themes and concepts (protest/social literature, Pan-Africanism, uplift, Black aesthetic, among others) that have shaped these movements and will examine the cross-talk—shared concepts, ideas, and ideals—that gives these movements as well as twentieth-century African American literature certain recognizable features that have been shaped and reshaped over time.
AFROAM 701-702. Major Works in Afro-American Studies I and II
*Open to Afro-American Studies M.A. and Ph.D. Students Only.
MW 4:00-6:30 p.m., NAH 302