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description:
AFS 2000 Introduction
and Foundations to Africana Studies
AFS 2100 Comparative Approaches to Forms of Black
Consciousness
AFS 2140 Origins of the Modern Civil Rights Movement
AFS 2230 African American Literature/Criticism
and Culture
AFS 2240 Africana Autobiography
AFS 2250 African Storytellers as Traditional Historians
AFS 2350 Black Majorities in the Caribbean and
Latin America
AFS 3000 Black Experience: From the African Beginnings
to 1865
AFS 3010 Black Experience: From 1866 to the Present
AFS 3070 Poetics and Politics of Gender in Islam
AFS 3100 The Black Woman: Historical Perspective
and Contemporary Status
AFS 3130 Radical Activism and the Black Community
AFS 3140 The Black Community
AFS 3150 The Underground Railroad in the Midwest
AFS 3220 West Africa in Colonial America
AFS 3250 Ethnohistory of sub-Saharan East Africa
AFS 3300 History and Significance of Black Pop
Culture-1906 to Present
AFS 3350 Research Procedures in Africana Studies
AFS 3400 African and African American Cinema
AFS 3500 Blacks in Michigan
AFS 3600 Black Woman-Black Man Relationships
AFS 3700 Black Historical Movements/Moments
AFS 3800 Special Topics in Africana Literature
and Culture
AFS 3880 Introduction to African Civilization
AFS 4000 Blacks in the Arts
AFS 4050 Folk Histories of Africa/Middle East
AFS 4100 Bridging the African Diaspora in the New
Millennium: An Interdisciplinary Approach
AFS 4650 Internship/Seminar
AFS 4860 Africa and the Slave Trade
AFS 4980 Directed Independent Study
AFS
2000 Introduction and Foundations to Africana Studies
3 hrs
Provides an overview of the
origins of black people, the philosophical underpinnings
of the discipline, the evolution of the field of Africana
Studies, its theoretical and practical applications, and
the holistic methods of studying African peoples and their
social evolution. Historically oriented, the course is designed
to be interpretive rather than chronological. The course
covers the African civilization in the western hemisphere,
folklore, mythology, customs, rise of Black nationalism,
role of black consciousness, and present day alternatives.
AFS
2100 Comparative Approaches to Forms of Black Consciousness
3 hrs
This course focuses on the
history of Black consciousness in the African Diaspora from
the 17th to 20th centuries. It is concerned with forms of
Black expression and social action as they are manifested
in specific historical, cultural, and political contexts
using comparative approaches. Some of the themes include
Africa in African American thought and culture, naming and
identity, forms of feminism and gender, movement and migrations,
and the rhetoric of freedom in Black ideology.
AFS
2140 Origins of the Modern Civil Rights Movement
3 hrs
This course
is designed to introduce students to the social, political,
and theological
sources that inform Black theology. The course emphasizes
the role of the Old Testament motifs in the social construction
of black theology. Black theology and the black church are
the premise of the modern Civil Rights movement. Therefore,
this course concentrates on the different sources of theology
and various church (denomination) ideologies and their role
in creating and sustaining the Civil Rights era for Black
Americans.
AFS
2230 African American Literature/Criticism and Culture
4 hrs
This course is designed both
to introduce students to key issues, themes, and methods
in African American literature/criticism and culture as well
as to pique interest in an effort to encourage further study
of the discipline. It surveys texts by African American authors
and examines the relationship between the literature, criticism,
and theories serving to explain it. BAS 200 is strongly recommended
as a prerequisite to this course.
AFS
2240 Africana Autobiography
3 hrs
This course will examine autobiographies
and autobiographical novels from different parts of Africa
and the United States. Some texts in the course will refer
to a remote period of the African and African American experience,
while others will refer to the current developments in Africa
and the United States.
AFS
2250 African Storytellers as Traditional Historians
3 hrs
To understand Africa's past
from the perspectives of the African storytellers, we must
understand their art and their ability to cross boundaries
between the present and the past, as well as understand how
they fuse fact and fiction at the boundaries of myth and
history, where transformations occur. This is the area where
fact and fiction become endowed with meaning. Drawing on
the art of storytelling, this course will examine Africa's
past through myths, epics, and local African stories.
AFS
2350 Black Majorities in the Caribbean and Latin America
3 hrs
This course will review basic [social history]
literature from the Caribbean, Central and South America to
determine the impact of Black majorities a) on the societies,
b) on construction of collective identities, c) on memories
that mobilize them, and d) on processes of making community
despite displacement. These questions will be put to a representative
territory from each language group in the Americas to discuss
unequal power relations that can then be compared to USA/Canada.
AFS
3000 Black Experience: From the African Beginnings to 1865
3 hrs
This course will examine the
myriad patterns of adaptation and adjustments made by the
enslaved Africans and free people of color to the continuing
oppressive character of American Society prior to 1865. Slave
narratives and abolitionists tracts written by freed people
reveal much about the African-American's interpretation of
their presence in the New World. The Black presence created
a commonality of experience, the characteristics of which
became and remain a distinctive American co-culture. It aims
to examine how the Black presence altered the idea of race
and how this alteration became a function of the institutional
forms that Black Americans have shaped to survive in a hostile
environment.
AFS
3010 Black Experience: From 1866 to the Present
3 hrs
The Black Experience from 1865
to the present will concentrate on the plight of the newly
freed African-American. The development of the family in
post-bellum years, the Euro-American reaction to the change
in status, the rise of pseudo scientific racist thought,
the long-term psychological effects of slavery on both the
victims and the victimizers, the search and the rise of Black
Messianic leaders, the migration from the rural-agricultural
South to the urban-industrialized North, the emergence of
Black Nationalism-Civil Rights Movement and the non-Black
backlash. BAS 300 is highly recommended as a prerequisite
to this course.
AFS
3070 Poetics and Politics of Gender in Islam
3 hrs
This seminar course takes a historical and
literary approach to the politics of gender in the Islamic
traditions of Africa and the Middle East and conceptualizes
the voices of Muslim women through narrative discourses.
AFS
3100 The Black Woman: Historical Perspective and Contemporary
Status
3 hrs
This course is an examination
of the historical perspective and contemporary status of
the Black woman and her story, paying critical attention
to her image as reflected in her role in the American society.
The course emphasizes the problems, issues, and concerns
of the Black woman. The course also focuses on the evolution
and the development of the Black woman in literature, community
(sociology), politics, academics, and ideology (Black feminism,
Africana womanism, and womanism).
AFS
3130 Radical Activism and the Black Community
3 hrs
This course
is designed to introduce student to the role and influence
of black religious
leadership in movements of liberation. The course addresses
issues of race, gender, and violence within the cultural
realities of black ministers, by blending the disciplines
of history and theology. A key focus of the course is on
the role and influence of the "black sermon" as
a vehicle for change and protest against abusive power structures
(Rev. Martin Luther King, Minister Malcolm X, Bishop Desmond
TuTu and Rev. Allan Boseak are a some considered in this
course). Black ministers’ radical philosophies and
practices are studied in comparative perspectives. Furthermore,
we will examine how the radical activism and philosophies
of these ministers mobilized the black community.
AFS
3140 The Black Community
3 hrs
An investigation of the social
forms and structures within the Black community from the
unique Black perspective. The course will focus on the sociological,
political, economic, psychological, health, and physical
aspects of community building by a subordinated group.
AFS
3150 The Underground Railroad in the Midwest
3 hrs
During the mid to late 19th
century, Calhoun County, Michigan was an active human rights
center. This area was one stop on the Central Michigan route
of the Underground Railroad. Slaves would begin their journey
in one of the upper southern states, and go from stop to
stop, ultimately reaching "their Canaan lands." There
was a large group who participated in this pursuit of freedom
for the enslaved Africans. They were considered subversive
fanatics by slaveholders and righteous reformers by others.
The aim of this class is the examination of the Underground
Railroad system and the people involved. Of particular interest
will be the role played by Michiganders in this freedom movement.
AFS
3220 West Africa in Colonial America
3 hrs
This course treats the cultural,
social, material, religious, and the political West African
background of African Americans from the 7th century A.D.
to the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783.
AFS
3250 Ethnohistory of sub-Saharan East Africa
3 hrs
This is a seminar on the enthnohistory
of sub-Saharan East AFrica, from the point of view of the
African storytellers as well as that of Western historians.
The main focus of the course will be in Upper Nile River
in Sudan, and Lake Rudolf, the region known as "the
cradle of humankind," in northern Kenya, the Omo River
and its delta in southern Ethiopia, the Karamja Plateau in
northern Uganda.
AFS
3300 History and Significance of Black Pop Culture-1906
to Present
3 hrs
This course will focus on the
continuum of Black Pop Culture in the twentieth century,
its development stages and its emergence as the nucleus of
Pop Culture in "mainstream" America. Students will
survey Black theatre, art, music, and literature in twentieth-century
America and study the institutions, persons, sites, and traditions
that it inspired.
AFS
3350 Research Procedures in Africana Studies
3 hrs
This course will consider the current [comparative
and transnational] research on emerging issues in the field
of Africana Studies. The course will consider debates in the
literature from representative sites in Africa, the Caribbean,
an the Americas and also consider the pioneer researchers in
the field, their innovative procedures/techniques.
AFS
3400 African and African American Cinema
3 hrs
African and African American
film-makers capture Africa's and the United States' past
and present experiences and imagine themselves in the future.
The course examines African and African American cultures
and peoples through films, within the light of film theory
and cultural studies and it addresses a wide variety of topics
such as tradition and modernity, globalization, economic
development, colonial and post colonial identities, power
and resistance, and gender issues.
AFS
3500 Blacks in Michigan
3 hrs
A survey of the significance
of Blacks in the making of Michigan history. We will trace
the movement of Blacks into Michigan; investigate patterns
of settlement, reactions to the émigrés, and
the development of the Black families and church as principal
forces in the Black community. We will study the political,
social, and economic implications of being Black in Michigan,
both the urban and rural areas from 1790 to the present.
The student will be introduced to the varieties of historical
sources available for such study.
AFS
3600 Black Woman-Black Man Relationships
3 hrs
This course is examines the
evolutionary aspects of Black female-male relationships beginning
with African customs through contemporary times. It examines
the strains and lasting effects that slavery has on Black
female-male relationships in the Americas. The course will
consider problems of Black female-male relationships, the
question of quality Black female-male relationships, sexism,
economics, scarcity of men, games one plays to begin and
sustain relationships, the self-destructive and racist targeting
of Black men, the Black community, family dynamics, and strategies
for improvement and strengthening these relationships.
AFS
3700 Black Historical Movements/Moments
4 hrs
This travel course is designed
to examine Black historical movements/moments related to
the African Diaspora (African American, African, and Caribbean).
Students will have the opportunity to interface with historical
locations, sites, and documents relevant to the era of study.
Topics will vary each spring offered and may be repeated
once under different topics with approval of the advisor.
AFS
3800 Special Topics in Africana Literature and Culture
4 hrs
This seminar is designed to
examine critical issues central to the African diaspora and
to produce quality Requirements through investigating African,
African American, and Diasporan literature, history, philosophy,
and culture from and African-centered or Afro-centric perspective.
This course may be repeated once under different topics with
approval of the advisor.
AFS
3880 Introduction to African Civilization
3 hrs
Overview of major aspects of African history
and civilization from earliest times to the present. Emphasis
is placed upon elements which contribute to the uniqueness
of the African experience. Course is cross-listed with HIST
388.
AFS
4000 Blacks in the Arts
3 hrs
An examination of the creative
dimension of the Black Experience as found in music, art,
literature, religion, and dance. This course will also explore
the influence of science and technology on the arts and identify
the universal elements in these areas.
AFS
4050 Folk Histories of Africa/Middle East
3 hrs
This course introduces folklore as history
in Africa and the Middle East. Comparative approaches to folklore
is the focus in this course as it relates to African and Middle
Eastern legends, myths, and traditional histories.
AFS
4100 Bridging the African Diaspora in the New Millennium:
An Interdisciplinary Approach
3 hrs
This course will come from
a broad spectrum of disciplines, including African-American
studies, African Studies, agriculture, anthropology, archaeology,
architecture, literature, the fine arts, politics, religion,
sociology, women's studies and rural and urban studies. One
of the goals of the class is to attract a wide range of scholars,
students, Pan African activists and professionals to learn
and converse about various aspects of the African Diaspora.
AFS
4650 Internship/Seminar
3-6 hrs
Student will participate in
an internship/practicum where their knowledge will be put
directly into practice. They will be led through this experience
with a seminar led by an approved faculty member from the
Africana Studies Program core faculty and, where appropriate,
a person from the students' disciplinary major department.
Prerequisite: A minimum of 15 credits in the Africana Studies
Program coordinate major.
AFS
4860 Africa and the Slave Trade
3 hrs
This course will examine Africa and the Atlantic
slave trade from the 15th to the 19th centuries. Course is
cross-listed with cross-listed with HIST 486.
AFS
4980 Directed Independent Study
1-6 hrs
A program of independent study,
directed by an approved Africana Studies faculty member,
that allows the student to pursue readings relating to the
Black Experience not dealt with in other courses. The initiative
for describing the project, planning the method(s) of investigation,
determining the appropriate results, and securing the cooperation
of a faculty member to advise the work must come from the
student. Applications are available in the Africana Studies
Program office and must be approved by the director. |
