Spring 2017

This course is a writing-intensive seminar on women’s changing roles in the Caribbean. We will critically examine the growing scholarship on Caribbean women written by historians, anthropologists, and sociologists, as well as analyze primary sources written by women in the region. In the first unit of the course, we will trace the development of colonial slave societies in the Caribbean through the experiences of enslaved, free, and indentured women. Then, in the second unit, we will analyze the ways in which Caribbean women renegotiated their public and private roles in the wake of emancipation. In the final unit of the course, we will investigate the emergence of women's movements in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries and examine working- and middle-class women's struggles for suffrage, property rights, political representation, and racial equality.

Goldthree (2)

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.

Rabig (11) W, SOC

This course examines the historical and contemporary sporting experiences primarily of Black Americans. The decision to refer to this class as a “Black” experience is deliberate, as we will briefly interrogate how race and sports functions for the Black diaspora in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Europe. Despite brief examinations of the diaspora, this class uses sports history as a critical lens to understand American history.

This course will examine African American playwrights, drama, and theater from 1959 to the present. Further exploration will focus on the impact of civil rights, the Black Arts movement, and cultural aesthetics on the form, style, and content of African American plays. Readings will include plays of Hansberry, Baldwin, Baraka, Kennedy, Childress, Shange, Wolfe, Wilson, Parks and others. Open to all classes.

Kinyon (12) CI, ART

This class examines developments in jazz such as soul jazz, jazz funk, the avant-garde, big bands, Afro-Latin jazz and world jazz. Class work includes close listening and discussions of audio and video recordings, collaborations and in-class presentations, supplemented with performances by visiting artists. Students will also complete required reading, listening and writing assignments and attend jazz performances, resulting in a deeper understanding and appreciation for jazz and improvisation, both worldwide and in our daily lives.

Glasgo (10A) W; ART

This interdisciplinary course explores the constructions of gender identities in different African sociocultural contexts. The emphasis is on contemporary Africa, although we will discuss some of the historical frameworks of these identities. We will read historical accounts of gender in some pre-colonial African societies, investigate the impact of colonialism, and examine gender in some anticolonial movements. We will also analyze gender in urban and rural contexts, and address such questions as homosexuality and gay rights.

Coly (3A) CI; INT

This course explores selected theatre and performance traditions of sub-Saharan Africa. How do African playwrights negotiate and transform the colonial legacy of Western drama, and how do they use theater to challenge neocolonial regimes and to advance ideas of democracy, human rights, and gender equality?  Plays from Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda receive special emphasis. No prior knowledge of African studies or theater is necessary, just a willingness to expand critical and creative horizons. 

Edmondson (2) NW; ART

This course examines the relationship between politics and the novel in Africa. I have selected novels from different parts of Africa. We will approach the selected novels as instruments of political interest and products of political contexts. We will then proceed to put these novels in a triangular conversation with political theorists of Africa and the political philosophies of African leaders Topics include democracy and governance, clientelism and patrimonialism, failed states, gender, and grassroots activism.

Coly (2A) NW: LIT

The islands of the Caribbean have served as the site for two of the most significant revolutionary upheavals of the modern era-the Haitian Revolution and the Cuban Revolution and have produced anti-colonial luminaries such as José Marti, Frantz Fanon, Marcus Garvey, and Claudia Jones. This course will explore the origin, trajectory, and outcome of nationalist struggles in the Caribbean from the eighteenth-century to the present through primary and secondary materials, memoirs, fiction, and film.

Goldthree (10) NW; SOC or INT

An introduction to the themes and foundational texts of postcolonial literature in English. We will read and discuss novels by writers from former British colonies in Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean, and the postcolonial diaspora, with attention to the particularities of their diverse cultures and colonial histories. Our study of the literary texts will incorporate critical and theoretical essays, oral presentations, and brief background lectures. Authors may include Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, V.S. Naipaul, Merle Hodge, Anita Desai, Bessie Head, Nadine Gordimer, Paule Marshall, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Salman Rushdie, Earl Lovelace, Arundhati Roy.

Khan (10A) NW; INT or LIT

This course examines the work of David Drake, a South Carolinian slave who made some of the largest ceramic storage vessels of this region, signing them and etching sayings and poems onto them as well. This seminar engages with Drake's poetry-pottery through critical and historical research, interpretive writing, and our own creative adventures in ceramic handicrafts. As a culminating assignment, students will contribute chapters to a scholarly book on Drake, which the professor shall edit.

Chaney (10A) ART

How have African musicians created lively fusions of precolonial and western genres (including jazz, soul, and hip hop)? How have African musicians negotiated independence, democratization, and postcoloniality through their musical expressions? How have they used music to forge links with Africans in other nations and a broader African diaspora? And how have African popular musics, and the musicians themselves, circulated in local and global contexts? In this course, we investigate a range of popular musics from the African continent, focusing in particular on music from Western and Southern Africa. Students will be introduced to diverse genres, from highlife to chimurenga to kwaito, and the methodological approaches of ethnomusicology. Each case study fits into four broad course themes: music and political dissent; music and diaspora; African music and the “World Music” industry; music and youth culture. Texts, performances, media, and in-class workshops all form an integral part of this course. 

Inglese (11) NW; ART

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.)