Reading, class discussion, and research on a special topic in African-American and African Studies culminating in the composition of a research paper. Topics change from term to term, and vary with the instructor. Primarily for fourth-year students but open to others.

Prerequisite: SWAH 1010.

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.

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.

Further develops skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing, and awareness of the cultural diversity of the Swahili-speaking areas of East Africa. Readings drawn from a range of literary and journalistic materials.

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.

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.

Using a mix of scholarly and popular-press readings and an examination of digital artifacts, we will analyze the creations and contributions of Black digital culture from the mid-90s to the present. Covering topics including the early Black blogosphere; the creation of niche content sites like BlackPlanet.com; the emergence of Black Twitter; the circulation of memes, and the use second-screening.

This is an introductory course that will survey selected recent and classic texts in the interdisciplinary fields of African American, African, and Caribbean Studies. By the end of the course, students will be prepared to identify and understand major themes that have shaped the development of the discipline of Africana Studies.

Allows students to work on an individual research project. Students must propose a topic to an appropriate faculty member, submit a written proposal for approval, prepare an extensive annotated bibliography on relevant readings comparable to the reading list of a regular upper-level course, and complete a research paper of at least 20 pages.