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AAS 115: JAZZ, ITS EVOLUTION and ESSENCE (Same as MUS 115) Tu,Th, 1:00-2:15 p.m ANDREWS Content: The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the various styles and genres associated with the music commonly referred to as jazz. Critical issues related to the social and cultural history of African-Americans will be discussed and aligned with corresponding musical developments. The main challenge in this course is to become familiar with the important formal and stylistic traditions within jazz as well as with its creators. Although no prior musical knowledge is presumed, students will be responsible for the musical terms and concepts presented in class. Jazz musicians studied include Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Monk, and Miles Davis. Text: Jones, LeRoi: Blues People. Particulars: In addition to lectures and readings, each student is expected to spend considerable time listening to the repertoire under discussion. Prepared tapes are on reserve in Candler Library. There will be a mid-term, final, and two short quizzes.
AAS 190S: AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY from the BLACK AESTHETIC to the HIP-HOP AESTHETIC Tu, Th 4-5:30 pm WARREN Content: In this course students will study the black aesthetic as it appears in the poetry ofsuch writers as Baraka, Giovanni, Sanchez, and others, and will compare and contrast the nuances and politics of a black aesthetics with the Harlem Renaissance and the with the hip-hop aesthetic. Texts: That’s the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader eds. Murray Forman & Mark Anthony Neal. Afro-American Poetics: Revisions of Harlem and the Black Aesthetic by Houston Baker, Jr.
AAS 190: SUGAR and SLAVES (Same as HIST 190 and AFS 190) Content: European expansion into the Americas after 1492 made possible increased production of sugar and other staples to satisfy changing patterns of consumption in the Old World. Production of many of these commodities took place on plantations and employed the labor of African slaves. This course draws on history, literature, film, and art history to probe the reasons for the rise of slavery in the New World and its impact on Africa and the Americas, focusing especially on the experiences of the slaves.Texts: Mintz, Sweetness and Power; Eltis, et al., Slave Trade Database; Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade; Northrup, The Atlantic Slave Trade; The Life of Olaudah Equiano; Schwartz, Slaves, Peasants, Rebels; Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery; Gomez, Exchanging their Country Marks; "Amistad" Particulars: Students will keep a journal in which they record reactions to readings and reflections on them. Each will write multiple drafts of two critical papers. Class participation is expected. Grades: journal (25%), papers (25% each), class participation (25%).
Tu 1:00-4:00 pm L. HARRIS CANCELLED AAS 247 RACIAL and ETHNIC RELATIONS (Same as SOC 247) Tu, Th 5:30-6:45 pm WERUM Content: The goal of this course is to enable students to better understand relationships between racial and ethnic groups applying sociological concepts. Understanding the nature of these relations requires an historical and comparative (i.e., international) focus. While the bulk of material in this course deals with the U.S., we will spend a considerable amount of time on race and ethnic relations in other countries. This will help us better understand the extent to which patterns of race and ethnic relations have similar causes in different societies. Among the topics we will cover are: race and ethnicity as a social construct; slavery and its effects on race and ethnic relations; the relationship between race, class, and gender; social movements organized on the basis of race/ethnicity; immigration, genocide, poverty; and segregation. For this purpose students will read a course packet of selected articles as well as a few assigned books. Particulars: Three exams (partly multiple choice and partly essay) and, of course, regular attendance and participation.
M 2:00-5:00 pm GILEAD Texts: TBA Particulars: One final and one midterm exam. No required paper.
Tu, Th 11:30-12:45 am JACKSON Content: This course will explore literature concerned with the texture of African American radical consciousness during the 1960s and 1970s. How did black writers depict the American scene during this vital period of American social transformation, characterized initially by the liberal domestic policies of the Great Society Program and conservative foreign policies directed toward African and Asian efforts to overcome colonial domination? How did the writers respond to more conservative domestic policies in the 1980s? What constitutes an act of dissent or insurgency? The class will pursue in depth the multiple ideological positions tendered by the texts, that typically fluctuate along an axis between revolution and assimilation. Further, we will seek to understand the perpetual redefining of the culprit that seems to stand in the way of black progress: Western society, the United States, the legacy of slavery, black patriarchy, western epistemology, the fragmented black identity, an impoverished historical understanding. We will regularly engage the complex dynamics of memory, race, sexuality, nostalgia, social class and national position in fiction narratives written by African Americans between roughly 1960 and 1980.
AAS 320SWR: AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGION: ENCOUTERS, TRANSLANTIONS and MEANING in BLACK RELIGION THOUGHT and EXPRESSION (Same as REL 320 SWR) Tu, Th 1:00- 2:15 pm STEWART Content: This course invites students to participate in the ongoing scholarly exercise of mapping the definitive events, traditions and experiences in African American religious formation in the context of the United States. Our engagement with this rich and instructive legacy will be twofold bridging conversations in historical and theological approaches to African American religious studies. In accenting the ambiguous and multi-layered terrain of religious encounters, translations, and meanings characteristic of African American experiences during the slave period, in the first half of the course, we will access this moment through a disciplined engagement with the tools and methods of historical inquiry. Subsequently, during the second half of the course, we will examine the specific uses of primary and secondary historical sources in African American religious thought with emphasis on Black/womanist liberation theology. Texts: Course readings will be selected from the following texts:
Particulars: Assignments: 2 Short papers, Final seminar paper. Given the writing intensive nature of the course, students will have the option of building upon previous work for their final seminar papers. There are no prerequisites for this course.
Content: Erupting from the political and spiritual ferment of the civil rights and Black power movements, a novel school of thought was inaugurated with the launching of Black theology in the latter twentieth century. Disciplined by the two chief branches of Black radicalism, the architects of this theological movement claimed inspiration from the legacies of the two personalities who came to embody the spiritual and political strivings guiding the African American quest for freedom during this era: Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Almost forty years have passed since the first expressions of academic Black theology emerged with an agenda for liberating African Americans and other marginalized groups from oppressiveand unjust structures in the church and society. Yet, after three generations of prolific intellectual production, there is much concern that this corpus of scholarship remains on the periphery of American public discourse and in academic isolation from many traditional Black ecclesial institutions. This under-tapped reservoir of prophetic theological and ethical reflection continues to be anonymous to so many in the American public and can hardly compete for the attention of the Black masses in the face of more popular theologies espoused by the multitude of charismatic non-denominational churches now littering the American landscape. As Black theology has expanded over the years to address an increasingly complex range of intersecting social issues, including racism, sexism, homophobia, religious conflict,andeconomic and environmental injustice, this course seeks to explore the most recent works in the field with the aim of discerning the particular foci of its liberation project today. Through rigorous encounters with select texts and contexts narrating an African American tradition of Christian thought and praxis, students will be invited to: (1) wrestle with the plethora of issues posed by and to academic Black theology in our current milieu; (2) enter a critical conversation about the constructive nature and task of Christian theological reflection; (3) become conversant with particular methods and conceptual categories in the discipline of Christian theology; and (4) discover their own theological or ethical perspectives in dialogue with those interrogated in class. Texts: Students will read selections from the following texts: James Cone, Risks of Faith:The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation: 1968-1998
Particulars: There are no prerequisites for this course. Assignments:
Content: This course examines the collective experiences of African Americans from the latter part of the 19th century to the present. These experiences are complicated by issues of class, race, gender and region both inside and outside of African American group experiences. In addition to important developments within the general American political-economy (including social, intellectual and institutional developments), the course at times compares North America's black population with experiences of other African peoples in Diaspora during this time period. Texts: To be announced in class. Particulars: Requirements include mandatory class attendance, an in-class midterm and take-home final, group projects and a research paper. Final grades will also reflect informed and detailed class discussions.
Content: This class will look at the work of a fascinating group of contemporary artists. These are artists of African origin/background, living and working in what we now sometimes refer to as the “African diaspora”. Such communities of people, and the artists they have produced, owe their present day existence to a variety of factors including the trans-Atlantic slave trade, 20 th century patterns of migration and travel, and the evolving nature of the art world. Today, a growing number of artists of African origin have become major players in the art market. Others have become reflective of shifts and developments in 20 th Century Black cultural politics. This class will examine the work of a range of Black artists whose practice came to the fore over the course of the last three or four decades, from the early 1970s right up to the present time. Artists to be studied include US practitioners such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Faith Ringgold, Artists of Caribbean background such as Albert Chong and Barrington Watson, and British artists of the African diaspora such as Chris Ofili and Godfried Donkor. Particulars: Students are required to produce weekly response papers, relating to the previous week’s class. A 3500 - 4000 word paper, relating to some aspect of the class, must be submitted towards the end of the semester. There will also be a graded test. Required Reading (two publications): Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century (1997, ISBN: 0-500-20295-8). Reissued as Black Art: A Cultural History (2002, ISBN: 0-500-20362-8) RICHARD J. POWELL, Thames and Hudson World of Art Caribbean Art (1998, ISBN 0-500-20306-2) VEERLE POUPEYE, Thames and Hudson World of Art
Tu, Th 2:30-3:45pm GADSDEN Content : African American political culture is a site of rich and fervent debate, both in an inter- and intra-racial context. This course is designed to introduce students to the variety and complexity of African American discursive expression and explore the roots of African American ideologies and their relationship with social movements and the grassroots. Through the exploration of primary and secondary texts, students will be asked to consider varied and often competing visions of identity and freedom inherent in, among others, African American expressions of civil rights liberalism, civil rights unionism, Black feminism, Black Nationalism, and Black conservatism. We will pay special attention to the political economy of ideas and how black thinkers of varied stripes understood the “race problem”and, by extension, African Americans’ relationship with “America.” Primary texts will include : Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery: An Autobiography; W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks; Rayford Logan, ed., What the Negro Wants; Martin Luther King, Jr. Why We Can’t Wait; James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time; Juan Williams, Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America—and What We Can Do About It. Particulars : short responses to weekly responses, mid-term, final paper
Tu, Th 1:00-2:15 pm GILLESPIE Content: Is there a crisis or dearth of political leadership in the African American community? Who are the up-and-coming leaders in African American politics, and how are they ascending to national prominence? What is the implication of the ascent of these "leaders" for the advancement of African American political interests? In this course, students will examine contemporary African American politics to determine whether and how the new generation of African American leaders, (i.e. Barack Obama and Harold Ford, etc.) promote an African American agenda in a post-civil rights, multi-cultural environment. Students will apply their knowledge to an in-depth research project which probes the relationship between the leadership styles of individual African American politicians or political groups and thesubstantive representation that these leaders provide on important policy issues. Texts: TBA Particulars: Weekly papers and a final 20 page paper on a contemporary African American leader.
Tu, Th 4:00-5:15 pm WARREN Content: In this seminar students will study the novels by Alice Walker. Major emphasis ofthe course centers on discussion and analysis of the texts. The goal of the seminar is tocreate a cycle of reading, reflecting, discussing, analyzing, and writing about Walker’s texts, understanding their relationship to the African American literary tradition in general and to African American women’s literature and history in particular. Texts: The Third Life of Grange Copeland; Meridian; The Color Purple; The Temple of My Familiar; Possessing the Secret of Joy, By the Light of my Father’s Eyes, and Now is the Time to Open Your Hear; In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens. Particulars: 5 short critical papers (2-3 pages); one oral presentation, midterm and final examination.
Texts will include: John David Smith, ed., When Did Southern Segregation Begin; Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940; Henry Louis Gates, Colored People; Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Sage of Race, CivilRights,and Murder in the Jazz Age; Kevin Kruse, White Flight:Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism; Matt Lassiter, Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South; Jonathan Kozol, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America; Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century. Particulars: short responses to weekly readings, research paper
AAS 385S: BLACK MUSIC: CULTURE, COMMERCE, and the RACIAL IMAGINATION (Same as MUS 470S) Tu, Th 11:30 am-12:45 pm ANDREWS Content: This course explores the relationship between two broadly held concepts--black music and race. Through the activities of reading principal texts, listening to representative musical examples, and engaging in intense discussion, the student will discover the dynamics of our racial imagination. Most important, the course will try to penetrate WHY such formulations as black music exist and the goals it serves. Required Texts: TBA Leroi Jones, Blues People Particulars: A bibliography project, a final paper and two concert performances are required.
Content: Aspects of African American history and culture are the subject of in depth reading and study for a semester. In collaboration with a faculty member, a student conceptualizesaresearch project and completes a reading list. The research project will reflect the research and teaching strengths of the department faculty, and may be in suchdisciplines as history, sociology, literature, art history, music, and health. Particulars: A reading list pertinent to the area of study is approved during the first week of the semester. A schedule of meeting times is developed for continuous discussion and analyses of the selected area of study. STUDENTS MUST HAVE WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE DEPARTMENT CHAIR TO ENROLL IN THIS COURSE.
TU 2:30-5:00 pm ALDRIDGE Required Texts: Aldridge, Delores and Carlene Young, Out of the Revolution Bell, Derrick, Silent Convenants Hill-Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought Mills, Charles Wade. The Racial Contract Semmes, Clovis E. Cultural Hegemony and African American Development Trouillot,Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past Particulars: 1)Each student is required to have a personal copy of each text, and to have it in class. 2)A written synopsis of each assigned reading must be submitted at the beginning of each class. 3)Each student is expected to participate actively in discussion during the seminar. Further, all students should expect to be called upon, and should be prepared to give a ten minute presentation on sections of assigned reading to be discussed. 4)A major research project must be submitted at the end of the semester. Guidelines will be provided for the project. A student may opt out of the final research project by taking a comprehensive examination of the entire course material. Grading: Class Participation: 25% Written Synopsis: 25% Major Research Project orComprehensive Examination: 50% AAS 491R : INTERNSHIP AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES FLEXIBLE TIME CONSULT INSTRUCTOR WARREN Content: The internship is a mechanism through which students will become acquainted with some of the major influences affecting the African American community, as they also become acquainted with some of the major organizations that serve the needs of African American communities in Atlanta. A minimum of four and a maximum of eight credit hours can be earned through the internship. These credit hours will be completed during the spring semester of a major's senior year. In addition to working at the internship site, students will submit a weekly report detailing the progress of their project and a final research paper focused on the significance of the internship site and the student's work there. Internships will be coordinated in consultation with the Director of Under Graduate Studies. |
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