Fall 2015

A multidisciplinary investigation into the lives and cultures of people of African descent in the Americas. Topics may include: the African background, religion and the black church, popular culture, slavery and resistance, morality and literacy, the civil rights movement, black nationalism, theories of race and race relations.

Phillips (12) CI; SOC

Multidisciplinary in scope, the course will survey critical social change in African cultures and civilizations through a study of history, art, literature, religion, economy, and politics, paying particular attention to the cultural impact of colonial rule on contemporary societies and states.

Baum (10) NW; SOC

This course deals with the African heritage, origins of white racial attitudes toward blacks, the slave system in colonial and ante-bellum America, and free Black society in North America. Specific emphasis will be placed on the Afro-American experience and on the relationship between blacks and whites in early American society.  Open to all classes.

Johnson (12) W; SOC

This course focuses on links between Africa and other parts of the world, in particular Europe and Asia. Readings, lectures, and discussions will address travel and migration, economics and trade, identity formation, empire, and cultural production. Rather than viewing Africa as separate from global processes, the course will address historical phenomena across oceans, deserts, cultures, and languages to demonstrate both the diversity of experiences and the long-term global connections among disparate parts of the world.

Trumbull (10A) NW; INT or SOC

This course introduces major currents in the history of black radical thought, with a particular focus on the U.S. after emancipation. This class encourages students to define and evaluate radicalism in the shifting contexts of various liberation struggles. By exploring dissenting visions of social organization and alternative definitions of citizenship and freedom as expressed through nonviolence, armed rebellion, black nationalism, Pan Africanism, socialism, communism, anticolonialism, feminism, queer theory and integrationism, students will confront the meaning of the intersection of race, gender, class and sexuality in social movements.

White (10) W; SOC

A study of African American literature from the Harlem Renaissance to the present, this course will focus on emerging and diverging traditions of writing by African Americans. We shall also investigate the changing forms and contexts of 'racial representation' in the United States. Works may include those by Hurston, Hughes, Wright, Ellison, Morrison, Schuyler, West, Murray, Gates, Parks.

Kinyon (10) W; LIT

This course examines jazz from its origins to the present, with special attention to pivotal figures in the history of jazz such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman. Class work includes listening to, analyzing, and discussing a wide variety of recorded jazz performances, and watching jazz films. Class sessions include performances by visiting artists. Outside of class, students will attend live jazz performances, listen to recordings, and read about the artists who brought this music to life. The goal is to help increase understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of the great American art form called jazz.

Haas (10A); W; ART

This course examines the environmental history of Africa and Asia, focusing on the period of European colonialism and its aftermath. Topics include deforestation and desertification under colonial rule; imperialism and conservation; the consequences of environmental change for rural Africans and Asians; irrigation, big dams and transformations in water landscapes; the development of national parks and their impact on wildlife and humans; the environmentalism of the poor; urbanization and pollution; and global climate change in Africa and Asia. Open to all classes.

Haynes (10) NW; INT or SOC

This course is designed to provide students with a specific and global view of the diversity of literatures from the African continent. We will read texts written in English or translated from French, Portuguese, Arabic and African languages. Through novels, short stories, poetry, and drama, we will explore such topics as the colonial encounter, the conflict between tradition and modernity, the negotiation of African identities, post-independence disillusion, gender issues, apartheid and post-apartheid. In discussing this variety of literatures from a comparative context, we will assess the similarities and the differences apparent in the cultures and historical contexts from which they emerge. Readings include Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Naguib Mahfouz's Midaq Alley, Calixthe Beyala's The Sun Hath Looked Upon Me, Camara Laye's The African Child, and Luandino Vieira's Luanda.

Coly; Ghana FSP

This course offers an introduction to the history of North Africa from its conversion to Islam to its current, transnational political and social formations. Focusing on religion and conversion, Sufism and mysticism, French and Italian colonialism, trade and economic history, environment, the region's engagement with the Sahara, literature and culture, and migration, assignments will emphasize major themes in the social, political, economic, and cultural history of the region. Open to all classes.

Trumbull (2A) NW; SOC

This course examines movements for civil rights, broadly defined, in the 20th-century US. Students explore concepts of American citizenship, considering struggles for political inclusion and efforts to participate fully in the nation's social and cultural life. We focus on women's and gay rights and the struggles of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Asians, examining how these and other groups have envisioned and pursued full American citizenship.

White (12) CI; SOC

This class introduces the history and practices of African-derived religious traditions as they have developed in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Black American communities in the United States. These religious systems will be discussed with reference to their mainstream representation (as "voodoo") and analyzed according to the more complex realities of their practitioners' everyday lives. Three themes to be explored in each tradition include 1) gender identity; 2) racial identity and resistance; and 3) aesthetics. Open to all classes.

Pérez (2) CI; TMV or INT

This interdisciplinary course investigates how Afro-descendants in the Americas have forged social, political, and cutlural ties across geopolitical and linguistic boundaries. Drawing on recent scholarship in the fields of history, African Diaspora Studies, and Latin American Studies, we will interrogate the transnational dialogue among US African Americans and Afro-Latin Americans using case studies from Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, and Puerto Rico. We will explore how black activists from the United States have partnered with people of color in Latin America and the Caribbean to challenge racism and economic inequality, while also considering why efforts to mobilize Afro-descendants across the Americas have often been undermined by mutual misunderstandings, conflicting agendas, and differing conceptions of "race" and "nation."

Phillips (11) CI: INT or SOC

Available to students who wish to independently explore aspects of African and African American Studies which are not included in courses currently offered at Dartmouth. Open to qualified students with permission of the course instructor and the Chair. (Obtain Proposal Form in the program office.) No student may take more than two such courses without the approval of the Chair. Open to sophomores, juniors and seniors.

For senior African and African American Studies majors toward the culminating experience, with permission of selected instructor and the Chair. (Obtain Proposal Form in the program office.)

Two terms of senior year with selected AAAS faculty member.

The honors student will pursue the project under guidance of selected faculty member and with permission of the Chair. See "A Guide to Honors in African and African American Studies."