African, African American, and Diaspora Studies

African, African American, and Diaspora Studies

Battle Hall, CB# 3395
(919) 966-5496

First Session, 2024

AAAD 101 Introduction to Africa (3)

ONLINE. Introduction to the study of the African continent, its peoples, history, and contemporary problems of development in a globalized world, including a survey of the African past, society and culture, and contemporary political, economic, and social issues. Students will explore the African continent’s developments over the years to evaluate how the past informs the present and to establish contemporary issues emerging in a global world. Readings in this course are drawn from several fields, including geography, history, anthropology, literature, economics, language, and education.

AAAD 102 Introduction to Media in Africa (3)

ONLINE. This course explores the precolonial, colonial and contemporary media in Africa. It focuses on the different types of media, its impact on socioeconomic and political development, and the growth and development of the Internet in the region. It introduces students to the inventors, copyright regulations, African governments’ media regulation statutes, and careers in the media industry in the continent. Further, the course explores how the media reflect and inspire cultural, political, and ethical norms with emphasis on various storytelling techniques based on audience and method of delivery.

AAAD 130 Introduction to African American and Diaspora Studies (3)

ONLINE. The course tracks the contours of history, life, societies, and cultures of the Atlantic African diaspora from their origins through Emancipation in the United States, the Caribbean, and South America. The course provides a specific focus on the development, organization and dissolution of slavery across a range of geographies in the diaspora.

AAAD 201 Introduction to African Literature (3)

ONLINE. An introduction to African literature, with an emphasis on works by writers from the late colonial period to the present and including a survey of different genres. The diversity of African languages, ethnicities, nationalities, and colonial histories presents myriad of challenges to a unified analysis of African literature. African literatures presented in indigenous languages, French in Francophone countries, and English in Anglophone countries, are analyzed as a unit rather than fragments of literatures from different nationalities, ethnicities, and colonial histories. Course readings and literary works will be studied via a multidisciplinary approach and experiential learning.

AAAD 231 African American History Since 1865 (3)

MAYMESTER. Special emphasis on post-emancipation developments. This course focuses on the Reconstruction era to assess the gains and losses African Americans experienced in this period. Additionally, the legal, social, and political developments that impacted African Americans in the post-emancipation era will be explored to assess how African Americans attempted to reconstitute themselves in slavery’s aftermath. Online section available.
ONLINE. Special emphasis on post-emancipation developments. This course focuses on the Reconstruction era to assess the gains and losses African Americans experienced in this period. Additionally, the legal, social, and political developments that impacted African Americans in the post-emancipation era will be explored to assess how African Americans attempted to reconstitute themselves in slavery’s aftermath.

AAAD 288 Global Black Popular Cultures (3)

ONLINE. Through an interdisciplinary analysis of key aspects of black popular cultures in their global diversity, this course tackles fundamental questions about the meanings of black identity, identification, and belonging. This course explores the intertwined histories, genealogies, and social contexts of Black cultural practices as produced in the Black Atlantic world. First, students examine how scholars have defined the concepts of blackness, Diaspora, transnationalism, globalization, and postcolonialism in relation to culture. Then, students explore how these notions and phenomena have characterized Black performance in popular culture in the US, Africa, and parts of Western Europe. This course meets the Visual and Performing Arts (VP) requirement.

AAAD 290 Memory Work at Penn Center (3)

MAYMESTER. Engage with the history of the Penn Center at Wilson Library, before travelling to St. Helena Island, South Carolina to aid the Penn Center and local communities in preserving Gullah and Geechee heritage through newly discovered archival materials. Before it was the Penn Center, the Penn School was founded in 1862 as one of the first schools in the South for formerly enslaved West Africans. In 1948, Penn School transitioned into Penn Community Services, taking on the mantle of social justice and ushering in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conferences. Learn how memory can be activated in the service of historically Black spaces and places. This course includes a a mandatory trip to St. Helena, SC May 21-25.

AAAD 391 Human Development and Sustainability in Africa and the African Diaspora (3)

ONLINE. A critical introduction to the study of development and sustainability as interlinked approaches to understanding contemporary challenges in Africa and the African diaspora. Development is a concept with multiple meanings and contextual incarnations. The course emphasizes thinking of development as a field of expertise and intervention and as a modality of change, that goes beyond economistic understandings of development as simply economic growth.

SWAH 112 Intensive Kiswahili 1-2 (3)

ONLINE. Swahili 112 covers two elementary courses: Swahili 401-Elementary Kiswahili I and Swahili 402-Elementary Kiswahili II. Whereas the course has a special place for structural aspects of the language, emphasis is particularly placed on the four language skills namely, speaking, writing, reading, and listening. Students cover a wide range of social, economic and political issues in East Africa. Swahili is a Bantu (Niger-Congo) language spoken as a mother tongue or a second language in East and Central African countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia. Students can take SWAH 112 to fulfill the language requirement as well as credit obligations for African Studies and Global Studies majors and minors. Students taking SWAH 112 during Summer I, 2024 may take SWAH 403 during the Fall of 2024.

Second Session, 2024

AAAD 250 African Americans in Motion Pictures (3)

ONLINE. This course will analyze the role of the African American in motion pictures, explore the development of stereotypical portrayals, and investigate the efforts of African American actors and actresses to overcome these portrayals. African Americans in cinema from the early 1900s to the present, explores how race is constructed onscreen, and examines how entertainers subverted these distorted representations. The course introduces film theory, exploits studies on stars and stardom, explores both silent and sound pictures, and illuminates the contributions of significant African American filmmakers. Films screened in this class will attempt to determine how racial representation has evolved over time and assess how they intersect with more contemporary representations. This course meets the Visual and Performing Arts (VP) requirement.