African-American and African Studies

This introductory course surveys the histories of people of African descent in Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean from approximately the Middle Ages to the 1880s. Emphases include the Atlantic slave trade and its complex relationship to Africa; the economic systems, cultures, and communities of Africans and African-Americans in the New World, in slavery and in freedom; the rise of anti-slavery movements; and the socio-economic systems that replaced slavery in the late 19th century.

This introductory course builds upon the histories of people of African descent in Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean surveyed in AAS 1010. Drawing on disciplines such as Anthropology, History, Religious Studies, Political Science and Sociology, the course focuses on the period from the late 19th century to the present and is comparative in perspective. It examines the links and disjunctions between communities of African descent in the United States and in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. The course begins with an overview of AAS, its history, assumptions, boundaries, and topics of inquiry, and then proceeds to focus on a number of inter-related themes: patterns of cultural experience; community formation; comparative racial classification; language and society; family and kinship; religion; social and political movements; arts and aesthetics; and archaeology of the African Diaspora.

New course in the subject of African American Studies.

This course is a survey of literary texts in English by contemporary African writers. Students will read a variety of texts including novels, short stories, poetry, film and songs and critically analyze the cultural and aesthetics of the literary landscape. Particular attention will be on how authors engage themes such as identity, patriarchy, gender, class, and politics in post-colonial structures.

Students will be introduced to the evidence and debates surrounding the claims that racialized and poor communities disproportionately shoulder society's environmental burdens. Through a variety of analytical and contextual lenses, we examine fundamental environmental problems faced by individuals and communities of color and the policies and initiatives designed to address them.

This course, taught as a lower-level seminar, will address the role the media has played in creating images and understandings of 'Blackness' in the United States, particularly where it converges with popular ideologies about gender.

This course will focus on recent African arrivals to the United States, exploring the history of Africans who voluntarily entered the country. We will examine the lives of Africans who came to the US in the late 19th, 20th, and 21st century as students, visitors, missionaries, & temporary residents, as well as the reasons for African migration, settlement patterns and adjustment issues, and immigrant relationships with Americans, black and white.

Lower-level topics course: reading, class discussion, and written assignments on a special topic in African-American and African Studies Topics change from term to term, and vary with the instructor.

New course in the subject of African and African American Studies

This course introduces African American literature through the cultural, historical, and imaginative landscapes of the Black South. We will read canonical texts alongside film and media to trace stories of resistance, survival, and creativity across generations. Each class begins with music (blues, spirituals, hip hop) foregrounding sonic traditions that shape Black Southern expression. Together, we will encounter profound visions of freedom.

In this course, we will trace the history of reggae music and explore its influence on the development of Jamaican literature. With readings on Jamaican history, we will consider why so many reggae songs speak about Jah and quote from the Bible. Then, we will explore how Marcus Garvey's teachings led to the rise of Rastafarianism, which in turn seeded ideas of black pride and black humanity into what would become reggae music.

The course introduces students to the history of the US over the 20th century through a focus on popular music. We will emphasize the social and cultural contexts for popular music, including Jim Crow segregation in the South, the Cold War, urbanization, the popular music industry, radio, television and other mass communications media, labor and class relations, the modern civil rights movement, the 1960s youth counterculture and its legacy, feminism and gay liberation movements.

This seminar examines the historical and contemporary trajectories and the cultural and intellectual contributions of Afro-descendant peoples in Latin America. Students explore the myriad ways in which Afro-Latin Americans have shaped their societies from the colonial period to the present day.

Which performances of Blackness do we find acceptable, and which do we scorn? How have Black Americans worked to assert their value in a media climate that seemingly relies on dichotomies of exceptionalism and deficiency? We will examine how African American culture, history, and experiences--"Blackness"--are presented in popular media. We will focus on representations of Blackness as offered up by Black people and how, intra-racially, concepts of racial uplift and good Black citizenship.

In this course, students will gain an understanding of the richness and variety of African life. While no course of this kind can hope to give more than a broad overview of the continent, students will learn which intellectual tools and fundamental principles are necessary for approaching the study of the hundreds of cultural worlds that exist today on the African continent. This course will draw from ethnographic texts, literary works and film.

In this interdisciplinary survey course on women leaders in urban areas in Africa, we will examine the experiences of women from diverse societies across the Eastern and Southern regions of Africa during the colonial and postcolonial periods. Of particular importance is how women in these societies have faced challenges and how they emerge as leaders in their communities.

This course examines women's religious activities, traditions and spirituality in a number of different African contexts. Drawing on ethnographic, historical, literary, and religious studies scholarship, we will explore a variety of themes and debates that have emerged in the study of gender and religion in Africa. Topics will include gendered images of sacred power; the construction of gender through ritual; sexuality and fertility; and women

The horror genre provides daring, unflinching lessons. It is a syllabus of our social, political, and racial world. Black horror, in particular, has established itself as a primer on the quest for social justice. What can such a boundary-pushing genre teach us about paths to solidarity and democracy? What can we learn about disrupting racism, misogyny, and anti-Blackness?

Breaking with popular constructions of the region as a timeless tropical paradise, this course will re-define the Caribbean as the birthplace of modern forms of capitalism, globalization, and trans-nationalism. We will survey the founding moments of Caribbean history, including the imposition of slavery, the rise of plantation economies, and the development of global networks of goods and peoples.

This course provides a historical and analytical understanding of the issues involving race, racism, race relations in American sport. This course provides an overview of the sporting events, activism, icons, and time periods that have been shaped by Americas continued struggle to improve race relations.

An intensive examination of African-American social criticism centered upon, but not limited to, the life and thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. We will come to grips with the American legacy of racial hatred and oppression systematized in the institutions of antebellum chattel slavery and post-bellum racial segregation and analyze the array of critical responses to, and social struggles against, this legacy.

This intermediate seminar offers a historical and intersectional approach to understanding how slavery has evolved in the United States since the end of the Civil War.

This course examines the plantation as both a historical site and persistent structure of power. We will study the plantation¿s afterlives in literature, history, and media, asking how writers and creatives grappled with its meanings across time. Here, at UVA, where enslaved labor built and sustained the institution, the study of the plantation is not abstract--it is local and lived.

This course will focus on major debates, theories, and methodological approaches in the social sciences that contribute to African American Studies. The course helps students to consider how a multidisciplinary approach enriches efforts to analyze such issues as health disparities, education, and incarceration as they relate to the African Diaspora.