AFST H101  INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN AND AFRICANA STUDIES  (1.0 Credit)

Kevin Quin

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

An interdisciplinary introduction to Africana Studies, emphasizing change and response among African peoples in Africa and outside.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

AFST H214  THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT  (1.0 Credit)

Kevin Quin

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course examines the history, politics, and culture of the black power movement in the United States. We will explore the intellectual and political activities of major activists and organizations during the 1960s and 1970s. We will also examine the black power movement’s global dimensions in addition to its connection to other social movements and political traditions including black feminism, Marxism, Pan-Africanism, and gay liberation. By the end of this course, students will have a solid understanding of the ways black power transformed both politics and culture in the United States after World War II. Crosslisted: HIST.

AFST H230  RELIGION AND BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLE  (1.0 Credit)

Terrance Wiley

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This course will examine the background for and the key events, figures, philosophies, tactics, and consequences of the modern black freedom struggle in United States. The period from 1955-1965 will receive special attention, but the roots of the freedom struggle and the effect on recent American political, social, and cultural history will also be considered.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

AFST H233  TOPICS IN CARIBBEAN LITERATURE: A NEW WAVE  (1.0 Credit)

Keishla Rivera-López

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course will focus on authors of the Caribbean and its diaspora, engaging fiction, theory, memoir, poetry and drama from the mid-twentieth century through the present. Core themes will include migration, class, colonialism, racial identity, gender and sexuality. Crosslisted: English, Africana Studies

(Offered: Fall 2025)

AFST H235  AFRICAN POLITICS  (1.0 Credit)

Susanna Wing

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

Analysis of political change in Africa from the colonial period to contemporary politics. Selected case studies will be used to address central themes including democracy, human rights, gender, interstate relations, economic development, and globalization. Prerequisite(s): one course in political science or consent of the instructor.

AFST H242  THE BLACK RADICAL TRADITION  (1.0 Credit)

Kevin Quin

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course is a critical inquiry into what Black Marxism author Cedric Robinson called “the Black Radical Tradition.” We will examine the historical legacy of black radical thought and action, with a particular emphasis on the United States during the 20th century. We will engage texts in social, political, and intellectual history and Africana critical theory to examine how people of African descent have formulated alternative definitions of abolition, freedom, and citizenship in response to slavery, capitalism, and racism. Crosslisted: HIST.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

AFST H245  ETHNOGRAPHIES OF AFRICA: CULTURE, POWER AND IDENTITY  (1.0 Credit)

Zolani Ngwane

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This course is a historical overview of some classic and contemporary ethnographic studies of Africa. The course focuses on the contribution of social anthropology to our understanding of the history and socio-cultural identities and practices of the people of Africa. Crosslisted: Anthropology, Africana Studies

AFST H264  THE OPPOSITIONAL GAZE: ART TRAVERSING THE BINARY  (1.0 Credit)

Qrescent Mali Mason

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

Through a survey of visual, literary, and performance arts primarily by Black and Latina women (e.g., Lorraine O’Grady, Adrian Piper, Christina Sharpe, Ana Victoria Jiménez) this course seeks to theorize the many dimensions of the oppositional gaze, with a focus on the ways these thinker-artists challenge, critique and disrupt various binaries that they identify with the history of western philosophy. Crosslisted: AFST,VIST.

AFST H283  AFRICAN POLITICS, AFRICAN NOVELS AND FILM  (1.0 Credit)

Susanna Wing

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

The study of politics in Africa through African literature. We explore themes including colonial legacies, gender, race and ethnicity, religion and political transition as they are discussed in African literature. Crosslisted: Political Science, Africana Studies Prerequisite(s): One previous course in political science or instructor consent

AFST H302  BLACK QUEER STUDIES  (1.0 Credit)

Kevin Quin

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This seminar examines the intellectual and political issues at stake in the field of black queer studies. Black queer studies consists of theories and methods that examine how race, gender, and sexuality intersect in ways that shape our everyday lives. We will explore foundational texts, central themes, and key debates within black queer studies in relation to other fields of thought including queer of color critique, African diaspora studies, and trans studies. Crosslisted: GSST.

AFST H315  HISTORIES OF THE THIRD WORLD: ASIA, AFRICA, AND INTERNATIONALISM  (1.0 Credit)

Ruodi Duan

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This seminar uncovers possibilities, solidarities, and conflicts that defined the “Third World," which was, at its core, a constellation of visions for a more just postcolonial international society. We will probe its conceptual rise and pragmatic limits, and in so doing, grapple with some of the most important political currents of modern history: Pan-Asianism, Pan-Africanism, anti-imperialism, Marxism, and the globalization of the U.S. civil rights movement. The capstone project is an original research paper. Crosslisted: AFST,EALC.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

AFST H319  BLACK QUEER SAINTS: SEX, GENDER, RACE, CLASS AND THE QUEST FOR LIBERATION  (1.0 Credit)

Terrance Wiley

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

Drawing on fiction, biography, critical theory, film, essays, and memoirs, participants will explore how certain African American artists, activists, and religionists have resisted, represented, and reinterpreted sex, sexuality, and gender norms in the context of capitalist, white supremacist, male supremacist, and heteronormative cultures. Crosslisted: Africana Studies, Religion Prerequisite(s): 200-level Humanities course, or instructor consent

(Offered: Spring 2026)

AFST H329  BELL HOOKS SEMINAR: BLACK FEMINIST AUTOTHEORY AND CRITICAL PHENOMENOLOGY  (1.0 Credit)

Qrescent Mali Mason

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course will be a survey of the critical phenomenological work of Black feminist philosopher bell hooks, with a concentration on how hooks’ theory is intertwined with her lived experience. Crosslisted: AFST,GSST. Pre-requisite(s): 200- Level Philosophy course or Instructor Permission

AFST H341  RACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA I  (1.0 Credit)

Ezgi Guner

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This is an interdisciplinary course offered over two semesters, focusing respectively on the African continent (I) and the Middle East (II). While the course examines race-making in these regions separately, it nonetheless highlights their interconnectedness. Both semesters, we will explore premodern conceptualizations javascript:submitAction_win0(document.win0,'CRSE_CATALOG_DESCRLONG$spellcheck$0');of social difference, intersectionality of race and religion, racialization within the contexts of slavery, colonialism, apartheid, and postcolonial nation-states. Students are encouraged but not required to enroll in both courses. Crosslisted: AFST.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

AFST H361  TOPICS IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIT: THE NEW BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT  (1.0 Credit)

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course will begin with an exploration of the literary achievement of the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, engaging with its political and cultural context. We will then move into contemporary fiction, poetry, nonfiction, theory and popular culture, articulating the relationship between mainstream artists of the late 20th and 21st century and the ideals of BAM. Prerequisite(s): Two 200-level English courses or instructor consent

(Offered: Spring 2026)

AFST H376  LITERATURE AND POLITICS OF SOUTH AFRICAN APARTHEID  (1.0 Credit)

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course explores the history and historiography of South African apartheid from its inception in 1948 to its democratic overthrow in 1994. We will consider the interplay between complex definitions of race, gender, nation and difference in novels, plays, and poetry written during the apartheid years. We will also discuss the tension between an ethics and aesthetics of literary production in a time of political oppression. What would it mean for one to write an apolitical text in a cultural space rife with racial and social tensions? Authors will include Nadine Gordimer, Alan Paton, J.M.Coetzee, Bessie Head, and Alex La Guma. Crosslisted with Africana Studies.

ANTH H245  ETHNOGRAPHIES OF AFRICA: CULTURE, POWER AND IDENTITY  (1.0 Credit)

Zolani Ngwane

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This course is a historical overview of some classic and contemporary ethnographic studies of Africa. The course focuses on the contribution of social anthropology to our understanding of the history and socio-cultural identities and practices of the people of Africa. Crosslisted: Anthropology, Africana Studies

ANTH H339  ANTHROPOLOGY OF EMPIRE  (1.0 Credit)

Ezgi Guner

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This advanced seminar is an anthropological exploration of empire both as an analytic category and a historical phenomenon. It begins by introducing the discipline's historical entanglements with empire and the anthropological critique of this epistemological legacy. Focusing on cases from the Caribbean, Africa, America, and the Middle East, it discusses the emergence of the anthropology of empire. Key concepts and debates for this course are race, genocide, settler colonialism, security, diaspora, material culture and museums.

ANTH H341  RACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA I  (1.0 Credit)

Ezgi Guner

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This is an interdisciplinary course offered over two semesters, focusing respectively on the African continent (I) and the Middle East (II). While the course examines race-making in these regions separately, it nonetheless highlights their interconnectedness. Both semesters, we will explore premodern conceptualizations javascript:submitAction_win0(document.win0,'CRSE_CATALOG_DESCRLONG$spellcheck$0');of social difference, intersectionality of race and religion, racialization within the contexts of slavery, colonialism, apartheid, and postcolonial nation-states. Students are encouraged but not required to enroll in both courses. Crosslisted: AFST.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

COML H223  VISUALIZING NATIONS: AFRICA AND EUROPE  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course will explore ideas of nation-building in regard to the transnational relations between Europe and Africa. We will discuss African and European experiences of nation-creation to distinguish between exclusionary and inclusionary visions of nation states, and focus in particular on literary texts from Great Britain, Germany, and France in comparison with literary texts from Nigeria, South Africa, and Algeria.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

COML H233  TOPICS IN CARIBBEAN LITERATURE: A NEW WAVE  (1.0 Credit)

Keishla Rivera-López

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course will focus on authors of the Caribbean and its diaspora, engaging fiction, theory, memoir, poetry and drama from the mid-twentieth century through the present. Core themes will include migration, class, colonialism, racial identity, gender and sexuality. Crosslisted: English, Africana Studies

(Offered: Fall 2025)

COML H270  THE ART OF SPORTS: ANCIENT AND MODERN  (1.0 Credit)

Ava Shirazi

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course explores the visual and poetic life of sports, ancient and modern. It brings together cultural criticism, visual analysis, and historical study to theorize the beauty of athletics. Concepts of the body, gender, race and performance, and tropes such as "for the love of the game," "feel for the game" and "poetry in motion" will organize our work on the sensory and aesthetic dimensions of sports. No prior expertise in classics, art or sports necessary. Crosslisted: COML,VIST.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

COML H312  ADVANCED TOPICS IN FRENCH LITERATURE  (1.0 Credit)

Koffi Anyinefa

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

Migrer, dans son sens le plus neutre, veut dire « se déplacer ». Le terme implique donc une traversée de frontières (spatiales, sociales, culturelles, etc.). Depuis les trois dernières décennies, le verbe (et ses dérivés : migration, migrant, migratoire) s’est « politisé ». Il connote désormais une situation de crise aux frontières des États riches de la planète (l’Europe notamment). Comment donc, dans un monde des nations nous déplaçons-nous aujourd’hui ? Comment respecter la souveraineté de celles-ci, l’intégrité de leurs frontières ? Comment reconnaître le droit à la migration, à l’asile, bref à l’hospitalité envers l’étranger, le citoyen d’une autre nation ? Comment accorder l’idéal humaniste (et universel) de l’hospitalité à nos valeurs contemporaines liées à la citoyenneté ? Les textes au programme (essais, textes littéraires et films – fictions et documentaires) nous aideront à réfléchir sur ces questions. Crosslisted: FREN and COML Pre-requisite : 1 course FREN 2xx

(Offered: Fall 2025)

COML H377  PROBLEMS IN POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE: IMPERIAL INTIMACIES  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course mobilizes the concept of “imperial intimacies” to theorize the rich historical, imaginative, and political horizons of imperialism. Taking our cue from Hazel Carby’s book of the same name—and from what Lisa Lowe has influentially described as The Intimacies of Four Continents—this interdisciplinary class will study literary works (novels, memoir, poetry, film) that bring into critical focus the lasting contradictions and critical challenges of colonial and postcolonial literature and culture. Crosslisted: English, Comparative Literature Prerequisite(s): Two 200-level English courses or instructor consent

(Offered: Spring 2026)

CSTS H222  CREATING CLASSICS: A VISUAL WORKSHOP ON PASOLINI & GREEK DRAMA  (1.0 Credit)

Ava Shirazi

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

Can our engagement with the past be a creative action? A reclaiming of ancient ideas and media? This seminar-workshop hybrid answers such questions through collaborative scholarship and experiments with Greek tragedy and its afterlife in cinema.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

CSTS H270  THE ART OF SPORTS: ANCIENT AND MODERN  (1.0 Credit)

Ava Shirazi

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course explores the visual and poetic life of sports, ancient and modern. It brings together cultural criticism, visual analysis, and historical study to theorize the beauty of athletics. Concepts of the body, gender, race and performance, and tropes such as "for the love of the game," "feel for the game" and "poetry in motion" will organize our work on the sensory and aesthetic dimensions of sports. No prior expertise in classics, art or sports necessary. Crosslisted: COML,VIST.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

EALC H296  CHINA AND AFRICA: HISTORICAL ENCOUNTERS AND CONTEMPORARY LEGACIES  (1.0 Credit)

Ruodi Duan

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

China's economic and cultural presence in Africa has expanded dramatically since 2000, especially after the launch of the “Belt and Road Initiative." But to understand the contemporary China-Africa relationship, it is essential to examine historical precedents. This course draws from scholarship, journalism, and culture to explore modes and implications of foreign aid, diverse experiences of travel and resettlement between China and Africa, and the role of race in past and present constructions of China-Africa relations. Crosslisted: EALC. Pre-requisite(s): N/A

EALC H315  HISTORIES OF THE THIRD WORLD: ASIA, AFRICA, AND INTERNATIONALISM  (1.0 Credit)

Ruodi Duan

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This seminar uncovers possibilities, solidarities, and conflicts that defined the “Third World," which was, at its core, a constellation of visions for a more just postcolonial international society. We will probe its conceptual rise and pragmatic limits, and in so doing, grapple with some of the most important political currents of modern history: Pan-Asianism, Pan-Africanism, anti-imperialism, Marxism, and the globalization of the U.S. civil rights movement. The capstone project is an original research paper. Crosslisted: AFST,EALC.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

EDUC H208  INQUIRIES INTO BLACK STUDY, LANGUAGE JUSTICE, AND EDUCATION  (1.0 Credit)

Alice Lesnick

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

Growing out of the Lagim Tehi Tuma/”Thinking Together” program (LTT), the course will explore the implications for education in realizing the significance of global Black liberation and Black Study/ies—particularly in relation to questions of the suppression and sustenance of language diversity and with a focus, as well, on Pan-Africanism—by engaging with one particular community as a touchstone for learning from and forwarding culturally sustaining knowledge. Prerequisites: Two courses, at least one in Education, with the second in Africana Studies, Linguistics, Sociology, or Anthropology; or permission of the instructor.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

ENGL H113  PLAYING IN THE DARK: FREEDOM, SLAVERY & THE HAUNTING OF US LITERATURE  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

According to Toni Morrison, the relentless valorization of freedom in a nation built upon the enslavement of people of African descent created a literature full of ghosts and other spectral presences. This course looks at how horror, the Gothic, and the supernatural structure U. S. narrative (mostly) fiction’s engagement with race and history, focusing on how literature disorients our understanding of the “real” when that supposed real conceals histories of violence, terror, revenge, and subversion.

(Offered: Spring 2026)

ENGL H233  TOPICS IN CARIBBEAN LITERATURE: A NEW WAVE  (1.0 Credit)

Keishla Rivera-López

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course will focus on authors of the Caribbean and its diaspora, engaging fiction, theory, memoir, poetry and drama from the mid-twentieth century through the present. Core themes will include migration, class, colonialism, racial identity, gender and sexuality. Crosslisted: English, Africana Studies

(Offered: Fall 2025)

ENGL H265  AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE: BLACK HORROR  (1.0 Credit)

Asali Solomon

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course will explore the artistic genre of horror and its tendencies, with a particular focus on representations of Blackness in literature, film and television.

ENGL H361  TOPICS IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIT: THE NEW BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course will begin with an exploration of the literary achievement of the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, engaging with its political and cultural context. We will then move into contemporary fiction, poetry, nonfiction, theory and popular culture, articulating the relationship between mainstream artists of the late 20th and 21st century and the ideals of BAM. Prerequisite(s): Two 200-level English courses or instructor consent

(Offered: Spring 2026)

ENGL H376  LITERATURE AND POLITICS OF SOUTH AFRICAN APARTHEID  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course explores the history and historiography of South African apartheid from its inception in 1948 to its democratic overthrow in 1994. We will consider the interplay between complex definitions of race, gender, nation and difference in novels, plays, and poetry written during the apartheid years. We will also discuss the tension between an ethics and aesthetics of literary production in a time of political oppression. What would it mean for one to write an apolitical text in a cultural space rife with racial and social tensions? Authors will include Nadine Gordimer, Alan Paton, J.M.Coetzee, Bessie Head, and Alex La Guma. Crosslisted with Africana Studies.

ENGL H377  PROBLEMS IN POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE: IMPERIAL INTIMACIES  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course mobilizes the concept of “imperial intimacies” to theorize the rich historical, imaginative, and political horizons of imperialism. Taking our cue from Hazel Carby’s book of the same name—and from what Lisa Lowe has influentially described as The Intimacies of Four Continents—this interdisciplinary class will study literary works (novels, memoir, poetry, film) that bring into critical focus the lasting contradictions and critical challenges of colonial and postcolonial literature and culture. Crosslisted: English, Comparative Literature Prerequisite(s): Two 200-level English courses or instructor consent

(Offered: Spring 2026)

ENVS H312  BLACK & ASIAN FOODWAYS: AN EXPLORATION  (1.0 Credit)

Talia Young

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This course will examine environmental and social histories of Black and Asian foods and cuisines in the US, including an introduction to environmental food studies, US Black and Asian migration histories, conflict, and solidarity, and case studies of specific foods. Prerequisite(s): ENVS 101 and at least one of ENVS 201–204; or permission of instructor

FREN H250  INTRODUCTION À LA LITTÉRATURE FRANCOPHONE: CUISINE ET CULTURE EN FRANCE  (1.0 Credit)

Kathryne Corbin

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

In 2010, “the gastronomic meal of the French” was inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, with particular mention to “togetherness, the pleasure of taste, and the balance between human beings and the products of nature.” In addition, UNESCO noted the importance in choosing the right dish or recipe, how products are procured, which flavors marry well, the art of the table setting, and the specific structure of the meal. Why is “food” so central to French culture? Culinary culture is constructed from a rich fabric of narratives that sustain its very practice. What are those stories and how are they shared? In this course, we will explore the discourse, indeed the language, that led to the emergence of French cuisine and the rise of gastronomy in the nineteenth century. (We will even consider the complex relationship the French have with doggie bags...) Primary sources include works by Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Annie Ernaux, Agnès Varda and Émile Zola. Materials for consideration include literature, cookbooks, menus, film, television, sociological and historical texts, as well as topics of contemporary political and social debate. Prerequisite(s): FREN 101 and 102/105, or 005 and 102/105

FREN H255  CINEMA ET COLONIALISME  (1.0 Credit)

Koffi Anyinefa

Division: Humanities

(Offered: Spring 2026)

FREN H312  ADVANCED TOPICS IN FRENCH LITERATURE  (1.0 Credit)

Koffi Anyinefa

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

Migrer, dans son sens le plus neutre, veut dire « se déplacer ». Le terme implique donc une traversée de frontières (spatiales, sociales, culturelles, etc.). Depuis les trois dernières décennies, le verbe (et ses dérivés : migration, migrant, migratoire) s’est « politisé ». Il connote désormais une situation de crise aux frontières des États riches de la planète (l’Europe notamment). Comment donc, dans un monde des nations nous déplaçons-nous aujourd’hui ? Comment respecter la souveraineté de celles-ci, l’intégrité de leurs frontières ? Comment reconnaître le droit à la migration, à l’asile, bref à l’hospitalité envers l’étranger, le citoyen d’une autre nation ? Comment accorder l’idéal humaniste (et universel) de l’hospitalité à nos valeurs contemporaines liées à la citoyenneté ? Les textes au programme (essais, textes littéraires et films – fictions et documentaires) nous aideront à réfléchir sur ces questions. Crosslisted: FREN and COML Pre-requisite : 1 course FREN 2xx

(Offered: Fall 2025)

GERM H223  VISUALIZING NATIONS: AFRICA AND EUROPE  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course will explore ideas of nation-building in regard to the transnational relations between Europe and Africa. We will discuss African and European experiences of nation-creation to distinguish between exclusionary and inclusionary visions of nation states, and focus in particular on literary texts from Great Britain, Germany, and France in comparison with literary texts from Nigeria, South Africa, and Algeria.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

GSST H302  BLACK QUEER STUDIES  (1.0 Credit)

Kevin Quin

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This seminar examines the intellectual and political issues at stake in the field of black queer studies. Black queer studies consists of theories and methods that examine how race, gender, and sexuality intersect in ways that shape our everyday lives. We will explore foundational texts, central themes, and key debates within black queer studies in relation to other fields of thought including queer of color critique, African diaspora studies, and trans studies. Crosslisted: GSST.

GSST H329  BELL HOOKS SEMINAR: BLACK FEMINIST AUTOTHEORY AND CRITICAL PHENOMENOLOGY  (1.0 Credit)

Qrescent Mali Mason

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course will be a survey of the critical phenomenological work of Black feminist philosopher bell hooks, with a concentration on how hooks’ theory is intertwined with her lived experience. Crosslisted: AFST,GSST. Pre-requisite(s): 200- Level Philosophy course or Instructor Permission

HIST H114  ORIGINS OF THE GLOBAL SOUTH  (1.0 Credit)

James Krippner

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course analyzes the complex histories, shifting geographies, and unequal relationships of power denoted by the term “Global South,” a designation that maps unevenly onto the formerly colonized regions of Latin America, Africa and Asia. As we shall see, the term is also at times used to describe marginalized populations and places within the “Global North,” a convenient though not entirely accurate label for today’s relatively rich and developed world regions. A basic concern of the course will be to assess how colonialism and its legacies have influenced world history, including the production of knowledge. Our collective goal will be to develop new ways of thinking about our pasts, presents and futures.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

HIST H214  THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT  (1.0 Credit)

Kevin Quin

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course examines the history, politics, and culture of the black power movement in the United States. We will explore the intellectual and political activities of major activists and organizations during the 1960s and 1970s. We will also examine the black power movement’s global dimensions in addition to its connection to other social movements and political traditions including black feminism, Marxism, Pan-Africanism, and gay liberation. By the end of this course, students will have a solid understanding of the ways black power transformed both politics and culture in the United States after World War II. Crosslisted: HIST.

HIST H242  THE BLACK RADICAL TRADITION  (1.0 Credit)

Kevin Quin

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course is a critical inquiry into what Black Marxism author Cedric Robinson called “the Black Radical Tradition.” We will examine the historical legacy of black radical thought and action, with a particular emphasis on the United States during the 20th century. We will engage texts in social, political, and intellectual history and Africana critical theory to examine how people of African descent have formulated alternative definitions of abolition, freedom, and citizenship in response to slavery, capitalism, and racism. Crosslisted: HIST.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

HIST H296  CHINA AND AFRICA: HISTORICAL ENCOUNTERS AND CONTEMPORARY LEGACIES  (1.0 Credit)

Ruodi Duan

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

China's economic and cultural presence in Africa has expanded dramatically since 2000, especially after the launch of the “Belt and Road Initiative." But to understand the contemporary China-Africa relationship, it is essential to examine historical precedents. This course draws from scholarship, journalism, and culture to explore modes and implications of foreign aid, diverse experiences of travel and resettlement between China and Africa, and the role of race in past and present constructions of China-Africa relations. Crosslisted: EALC. Pre-requisite(s): N/A

HIST H315  HISTORIES OF THE THIRD WORLD: ASIA, AFRICA, AND INTERNATIONALISM  (1.0 Credit)

Ruodi Duan

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This seminar uncovers possibilities, solidarities, and conflicts that defined the “Third World," which was, at its core, a constellation of visions for a more just postcolonial international society. We will probe its conceptual rise and pragmatic limits, and in so doing, grapple with some of the most important political currents of modern history: Pan-Asianism, Pan-Africanism, anti-imperialism, Marxism, and the globalization of the U.S. civil rights movement. The capstone project is an original research paper. Crosslisted: AFST,EALC.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

HLTH H227  HEALTH & EXPERTISE IN AFRICA  (1.0 Credit)

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This class examines the politics of health in Africa with a focus on the diverse forms of health expertise practiced on the continent. We will consider the relationships between scientific and medical practices and broader political systems in Africa and the diaspora, investigate the interface between knowledge traditions emerging from within and outside the continent, and consider how experts attempt to intervene in the domain of health. Pre-requisite(s): HLTH 115 or instructor consent Lottery Preference: 1) declared health studies minors, 2) sophomores

HLTH H305  THE LOGIC AND POLITICS OF GLOBAL HEALTH  (1.0 Credit)

Anna West

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This course engages critically with changing intervention paradigms in global health from the late colonial period to the present. Topics include colonial and missionary medicine; sanitation and segregation; medicalization of reproduction; eradication campaigns; family planning; labor hierarchies; postcolonial technoscience; medical research. Prerequisite(s): HLTH 115 OR at least one course in anthropology or history OR permission of the instructor

(Offered: Fall 2025)

HLTH H316  MAKING AND MISTAKING RACE IN AMERICAN MEDICINE  (1.0 Credit)

Anna West

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This course examines the origins and development of American medical and scientific thinking about race. Drawing on histories of medicine, critical race theory, science and technology studies, sociology, and medical anthropology, we trouble the idea of race-as-biological-difference and explore the social construction of (pseudo)scientific knowledge about race, bodies, genes, and health. Students learn to historicize genomic and post-genomic discourses of racial difference, and develop communication strategies for confronting racial essentialism in medicine and public discourse. Pre-requisite(s): HLTH H115 or a 100-level course in Anthropology, Sociology, or History Lottery Preference: Senior Health Studies minors Junior Health Studies minors Africana Studies minors and concentrators Anthropology majors and minors

MUSC H122  AFRICAN AMERICANS, MUSIC, AND THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE  (1.0 Credit)

Edwin Porras

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

How did African-American expressive culture become such an influential presence in the US? This course surveys the myriad genres and styles of African American Music from early jazz styles and urban blues to the birth of rhythm 'n blues, as well as contemporary expressions such as hip-hop. It explores development and impact of popular music particular to the United States, including its commercialization, mass mediation, and the penetration of mainstream America and the global market. Students will be introduced to seminal figures in the creation of African American popular music.

PEAC H329  AFRO-ASIAN SOLIDARITIES  (1.0 Credit)

Prea Persaud Khanna

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This interdisciplinary course analyzes the relationship between Black and Asian communities in the Americas, highlighting moments of solidarity and unity and areas of divergence and conflict. Moving from slavery to indentureship to U.S. immigration, particularly post 1960s, students will examine the rhetoric of the yellow peril, the myth of the model minority, the rise of Black Power movements, orientalist stereotypes, and anti-blackness within the Asian (inclusive of South Asian and Indo-Caribbean) community. Pre-requisite(s): PEAC 101 or 201 or consent of instructor Lottery Preference: PJHR, AFST, and FGSTC students

(Offered: Spring 2026)

PHIL H264  THE OPPOSITIONAL GAZE: ART TRAVERSING THE BINARY  (1.0 Credit)

Qrescent Mali Mason

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

Through a survey of visual, literary, and performance arts primarily by Black and Latina women (e.g., Lorraine O’Grady, Adrian Piper, Christina Sharpe, Ana Victoria Jiménez) this course seeks to theorize the many dimensions of the oppositional gaze, with a focus on the ways these thinker-artists challenge, critique and disrupt various binaries that they identify with the history of western philosophy. Crosslisted: AFST,VIST.

PHIL H329  BELL HOOKS SEMINAR: BLACK FEMINIST AUTOTHEORY AND CRITICAL PHENOMENOLOGY  (1.0 Credit)

Qrescent Mali Mason

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course will be a survey of the critical phenomenological work of Black feminist philosopher bell hooks, with a concentration on how hooks’ theory is intertwined with her lived experience. Crosslisted: AFST,GSST. Pre-requisite(s): 200- Level Philosophy course or Instructor Permission

PHIL H372  TOPICS IN PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY AND INTERSECTIONALITY  (1.0 Credit)

Qrescent Mali Mason

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course will attempt to determine how and to what extent intersectionality may fit into the discipline of philosophy. Focusing on the ethical dimensions of the concept, we will determine the conceptual difficulties philosophy brings to bear on intersectionality. Prerequisite(s): 200 level Philosophy course or Instructor's Approval

POLS H235  AFRICAN POLITICS  (1.0 Credit)

Susanna Wing

Division: Social Science,Social Justice
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World,

Analysis of political change in Africa from the colonial period to contemporary politics. Selected case studies will be used to address central themes including democracy, human rights, gender, interstate relations, economic development, and globalization. Prerequisite(s): one course in political science or consent of the instructor.

(Offered: Spring 2026)

POLS H235  AFRICAN POLITICS  (1.0 Credit)

Susanna Wing

Division: Social Science,Social Justice
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World,

Analysis of political change in Africa from the colonial period to contemporary politics. Selected case studies will be used to address central themes including democracy, human rights, gender, interstate relations, economic development, and globalization. Prerequisite(s): one course in political science or consent of the instructor.

(Offered: Spring 2026)

POLS H241  IMMIGRATION POLITICS AND POLICY  (1.0 Credit)

Anita Isaacs

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

Examines the causes and rights of forced migrants and refugees along with the responses and responsibilities of the international community. Focus on Mexico and Central America. Prerequisite(s): One political science course or instructor consent

(Offered: Fall 2025)

POLS H242  WOMEN IN WAR AND PEACE  (1.0 Credit)

Susanna Wing

Division: Social Science

Analysis of the complex issues surrounding women as political actors and the ways in which citizenship relates to men and women differently. Selected cases from the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Asia are studied as we discuss gender, domestic politics, and international relations from a global perspective. Prerequisite(s): one course in POLS or instructor consent

POLS H283  AFRICAN POLITICS, AFRICAN NOVELS AND FILM  (1.0 Credit)

Susanna Wing

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

The study of politics in Africa through African literature. We explore themes including colonial legacies, gender, race and ethnicity, religion and political transition as they are discussed in African literature. Crosslisted: Political Science, Africana Studies Prerequisite(s): One previous course in political science or instructor consent

RELG H119  BIBLE, RACE AND SEXUALITY  (1.0 Credit)

Naomi Koltun-Fromm

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course focuses on the interpretive history and historical contexts of a selection of biblical passages which form the core of "biblical" understandings of race, gender and sexuality. In comparative and historical textual exploration students will learn the variety of ways these texts have been understood across time and community, as well as how these same texts continue to provoke new interpretations and new understandings of race, gender and sexuality. Lottery Preference: Ten spaces reserved for first years.

RELG H137  BLACK RELIGION AND LIBERATION THEOLOGY  (1.0 Credit)

Terrance Wiley

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

An introduction to the theological & philosophical claims raised in Black Religion & Liberation Thought in 20th C America. In particular, the course will examine the multiple meanings of liberation within black religion, the place of religion in African American struggles against racism, sexism and class exploitation and the role of religion in shaping the moral and political imaginations of African Americans.

RELG H230  RELIGION AND BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLE  (1.0 Credit)

Terrance Wiley

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This course will examine the background for and the key events, figures, philosophies, tactics, and consequences of the modern black freedom struggle in United States. The period from 1955-1965 will receive special attention, but the roots of the freedom struggle and the effect on recent American political, social, and cultural history will also be considered.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

RELG H242  TOPICS IN AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGIOUS HISTORY: THE RELIGIOUS WRITINGS OF JAMES BALDWIN  (1.0 Credit)

Terrance Wiley

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course will explore the intellectual thought of novelist, writer, activist, James Baldwin. The course will cover four decades of James Baldwin's fiction and non-fiction writings. Students will also be asked to read relevant biographical materials that help to contextualize Baldwin's life and literary corpus.

(Offered: Spring 2026)

RELG H254  RAP AND RELIGION: RHYMES ABOUT GOD AND THE GOOD  (1.0 Credit)

Terrance Wiley

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

We will explore the origins, existential, and ethical dimensions of Rhythm and Poetry (RAP) music. Giving attention to RAP songs written and produced by African American artists, including Tupac, Nas, Jay-Z, The Roots, Lauryn Hill, and Kanye West, we will analyze their work with an interest in understanding a) the conceptions of God and the good reflected in them, b) how these conceptions connect to and reflect African American social and cultural practices, and c) how the conceptions under consideration change over time.

RELG H319  BLACK QUEER SAINTS: SEX, GENDER, RACE, CLASS AND THE QUEST FOR LIBERATION  (1.0 Credit)

Terrance Wiley

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

Drawing on fiction, biography, critical theory, film, essays, and memoirs, participants will explore how certain African American artists, activists, and religionists have resisted, represented, and reinterpreted sex, sexuality, and gender norms in the context of capitalist, white supremacist, male supremacist, and heteronormative cultures. Crosslisted: Africana Studies, Religion Prerequisite(s): 200-level Humanities course, or instructor consent

(Offered: Spring 2026)

VIST H113  BLACK VISUAL CULTURE: AN INADEQUATE SURVEY OF THE LATE 19TH TO 20TH CENTURIES  (1.0 Credit)

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course seeks to ask the question: How do we see blackness? How have we learned to see the thing we’re always surrounded by and have so many questions of? How do we know blackness through the visual and/as the racial? What if blackness uses the racial-visual to be known but refuses to be seen and represented so easily? What do we do then? Lottery Preference: 5 slots for first year students; preferences for VIST Minors

VIST H232  BLAQUEER EYE: THE LOOK AND FEEL OF REAL  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

Beginning with behind-the-scenes documentary of a female illusionist pageant The Queen (1968) and ending with the cancellation of HBO’s ballroom reality television competition show Legendary (2021), this course finds interest in the textured lives of gender and sexually creative African descendants in the U.S. and how their lives have been translated into the terms black, queer, and trans in public imagination. Lottery Preference: Visual Studies minors, then Film Studies minors

VIST H264  THE OPPOSITIONAL GAZE: ART TRAVERSING THE BINARY  (1.0 Credit)

Qrescent Mali Mason

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

Through a survey of visual, literary, and performance arts primarily by Black and Latina women (e.g., Lorraine O’Grady, Adrian Piper, Christina Sharpe, Ana Victoria Jiménez) this course seeks to theorize the many dimensions of the oppositional gaze, with a focus on the ways these thinker-artists challenge, critique and disrupt various binaries that they identify with the history of western philosophy. Crosslisted: AFST,VIST.

VIST H270  THE ART OF SPORTS: ANCIENT AND MODERN  (1.0 Credit)

Ava Shirazi

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course explores the visual and poetic life of sports, ancient and modern. It brings together cultural criticism, visual analysis, and historical study to theorize the beauty of athletics. Concepts of the body, gender, race and performance, and tropes such as "for the love of the game," "feel for the game" and "poetry in motion" will organize our work on the sensory and aesthetic dimensions of sports. No prior expertise in classics, art or sports necessary. Crosslisted: COML,VIST.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

VIST H308  HOW TO READ BLACK FEMME AVATARS  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course is an in-depth and engaged study of Uri McMillian’s book Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance (NYU Press, 2015). In it, McMillian presents a history of visual and performance artists like Ellen Craft, Lorraine O’Grady, Adrian Piper, Nicki Minaj, whose oeuvres can be understood through the lens of black feminist study and theory. Lottery Preference: Visual Studies minors

VIST H309  THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ARDMORE  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

Through close looking, performance experiments, and scholarship on reality television in general and the Housewives franchise in particular, this course will investigate the way that the production of reality in these shows—the very visual quality of film, filter, and light dependent on revenue dictated by viewership—changes along lines of identity causing us to wonder if the Housewives not only change our culture, but also our (view of our) lives. We will tinker around with performance and production work inside and outside the classroom to question the fabric of our own realities and how we can share in its weaving. Lottery Preference: VIST minors, GSST concentrators, AFST concentrators

WRPR H139  DOES REPRESENTATION MATTER?  (1.0 Credit)

Division: First Year Writing

In this course, students will explore theories of representation, along with critical race studies, structuralism and poststructuralism, global feminisms and neoliberalism, to think through contemporary discourses (like #Oscarssowhite and Girlboss Feminism) that claim representation matters when it comes to racial and gender justice. Lottery Preference: First year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing.

WRPR H142  DEFINING BLACKNESS: RACE & INTIMACY IN AMERICAN DISCOURSE  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: First Year Writing

In this course, students will close-read narrative and filmic depictions of transcending, transgressing, and violating racial borders, thinking about what these narratives reflect and what they produce when it comes to understandings of race, gender and sexuality. We’ll look at the effects of both transgressive and progressive figurations of “racial mixture” and mixed race individuals, considering what functions these discourses play in larger schemas of American politics, ideologies and affects. Lottery Preference: First year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing

AFST B101  BLACK MATTERS: INTRODUCTION TO BLACK STUDIES  (1.0 Credit)

Paul Joseph López Oro

This interdisciplinary course situates the study of Black lives, known interchangeably as African American Studies, Black Studies, Africana Studies, or African Diaspora Studies, within the context of ongoing struggles against anti-Black racism. We will explore the founding principles and purposes of the field, the evolution of its imperatives, its key debates, and the lives and missions of its progenitors and practitioners. In doing so we will survey, broadly and deeply, the diverse historical, political, social, cultural, religious/spiritual, and economic experiences and expressions of the African Diaspora in the Americas and beyond.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

AFST B202  BLACK QUEER DIASPORA  (1.0 Credit)

Paul Joseph López Oro

This interdisciplinary course explores over two decades of work produced by and about Black Queer Diasporic communities throughout the circum-Atlantic world. While providing an introduction to various artists and intellectuals of the Black Queer Diaspora, this course examines the viability of Black Queer Diaspora world-making praxis as a form of theorizing. We will interrogate the transnational and transcultural mobility of specific Black Queer Diasporic forms of peacemaking, erotic knowledge productions, as well as the concept of “aesthetics” more broadly. Our aim is to use the prism of Blackness/Queerness/Diaspora to highlight the dynamic relationship between Black Diaspora Studies and Queer Studies. By the end of this course students will have a strong understanding of how systems of power work to restrict the freedoms of Black Queer and Trans communities, and how Black LGBTQ people have lived, organized, and created in spite of and in response to these oppressions. This interdisciplinary undergraduate upper-level course will utilize academic texts accompanied by poetry, fiction, film, television, and visual art to understand Black Queer and Trans subjectivities.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

AFST B204  #BLACKLIVESMATTEREVERYWHERE  (1.0 Credit)

Paul Joseph López Oro

#BlackLivesMatterEverywhere: Ethnographies & Theories on the African Diaspora is a interdisciplinary course closely examines political, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual mobilizations for Black Lives on local, global and hemispheric levels. We will engage an array of materials ranging from literature, history, oral histories, folklore, dance, music, popular culture, social media, ethnography, and film/documentaries. By centering the political and intellectual labor of Black women and LGBTQ folks at the forefront of the movements for Black Lives, we unapologetically excavate how #BlackLivesMatterEverywhere has a long and rich genealogy in the African diaspora. Lastly, students will be immersed in Black queer feminist theorizations on diaspora, political movements, and the multiplicities of Blackness.

(Offered: Spring 2026)

AFST B206  BLACK LATINX AMERICAS: MOVEMENTS, POLITICS, & CULTURES  (1.0 Credit)

Paul Joseph López Oro

Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This interdisciplinary course examines the extensive and diverse histories, social movements, political mobilization and cultures of Black people (Afrodescendientes) in Latin America and the Caribbean. While the course will begin in the slavery era, most of our scholarly-activist attention will focus on the histories of peoples of African descent in Latin America after emancipation to the present. Some topics we will explore include: the particularities of slavery in the Americas, the Haitian Revolution and its impact on articulations of race and nation in the region, debates on “racial democracy,” the relationship between gender, class, race, and empire, and recent attempts to write Afro-Latin American histories from “transnational” and “diaspora” perspectives. We will engage the works of historians, activists, artists, anthropologists, sociologists, and political theorists who have been key contributors to the rich knowledge production on Black Latin America.

(Offered: Spring 2026)

AFST B300  BLACK WOMEN'S STUDIES  (1.0 Credit)

Paul Joseph López Oro

Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

Black Feminist Studies, which emerged in the 1970s as a corrective to both Black Studies and Women's Studies, probes the silences, erasures, distortions, and complexities surrounding the experiences of peoples of African descent wherever they live. The early scholarship was comparable to the painstaking excavation projects of an archaeologist digging for hidden treasures. A small group of mainly black feminist scholars have been responsible for reconstructing the androcentric African American literary tradition by establishing the importance of black women's literature going back to the nineteenth century. In this interdisciplinary seminar, students closely examine the historical, critical and theoretical perspectives that led to the development of Black Feminist theory/praxis. The course will draw from the 19th century to the present, but will focus on the contemporary Black feminist intellectual tradition that achieved notoriety in the 1970s and initiated a global debate on “western” and global feminisms. Central to our exploration will be the analysis of the intersectional relationship between theory and practice, and of race, to gender, class, and sexuality. We will conclude the course with the exploration of various expressions of contemporary Black feminist thought around the globe as a way of broadening our knowledge of feminist theory.

ARCH B101  INTRODUCTION TO EGYPTIAN AND NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY  (1.0 Credit)

Henry Colburn

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

A historical survey of the archaeology and art of the ancient Near East and Egypt.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

ARTD B138  HIP HOP LINEAGES  (0.5 Credit)

Hip Hop Lineages is a team-taught practice-based course, exploring the embodied foundations of Hip Hop and its expression as a global phenomenon. Offered on a pass/fail basis only.

ARTD B141  AFRICAN DIASPORA: BEGINNING TECHNIQUE  (0.5 Credit)

Staff

The African Diaspora course cultivates a community that centers global blackness, dance, live music, and movement culture. Embody living traditions from a selection of peoples and countries including Guinea, Ghana, Mali, Brazil, and Cuba. Offered on a pass/fail basis only.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

ARTD B210  SACRED ACTIVISM: DANCING ALTARS, RADICAL MOVES  (1.0 Credit)

Lela Aisha Jones

Domain(s): A: Creative Expression

How do practices of embodiment, choreography, artistry, performance, testifying and witnessing guide us to transformative and liberatory action in our lives? Centered in this course is adornment culture, intergenerational dances, and embodiment as sacred from a range of global perspectives. We will engage altar building through our beings/bodies and with materials, as well as the importance of costume and garb in setting the scene for advocacy, ritual, and staged offerings. Expect to dance, move, write, discuss, create projects, and engage in a variety of text-based and media resources. We will work individually and collectively for communal learning. The content for this course will be steeped in the lives, cultures, and practices of black and brown folks. This is a writing and dance attentive course. No dance experience necessary, just the courage to move.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

ARTD B348  ENSEMBLE: AFRICAN DIASPORA DANCE  (0.5 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Creative Expression

Dance ensembles are designed to offer students significant opportunities to develop dance technique and performance skills. Students audition for entrance into individual ensembles. Original works choreographed by faculty or guest choreographers are rehearsed and performed in concert. Students are evaluated on their participation in rehearsals, demonstration of commitment and openness to the choreographic process, and achievement in performance. Preparation: This course is suitable for intermediate and advanced level dancers. Concurrent attendance in at least one technique class per week is recommended. Students must commit to the full semester and be available for rehearsal week and performances in the Spring Dance Concert.

COML B213  THEORY IN PRACTICE: CRITICAL DISCOURSES IN THE HUMANITIES  (1.0 Credit)

Luca Zipoli

Division: Humanities

What is a postcolonial subject, a queer gaze, a feminist manifesto? And how can we use (as readers of texts, art, and films) contemporary studies on animals and cyborgs, object-oriented ontology, zombies, storyworlds, neuroaesthetics? By bringing together the study of major theoretical currents of the 20th century and the practice of analyzing literary works in the light of theory, this course aims at providing students with skills to use literary theory in their own scholarship. The selection of theoretical readings reflects the history of theory (psychoanalysis, structuralism, narratology), as well as the currents most relevant to the contemporary academic field: Post-structuralism, Post-colonialism, Gender Studies, and Ecocriticism. They are paired with a diverse range of short stories across multiple language traditions (Poe, Kafka, Camus, Borges, Calvino, Morrison, Djebar, Murakami, Ngozi Adichie) that we discuss along with our study of theoretical texts. We will discuss how to apply theory to the practice of interpretation and of academic writing, and how theoretical ideas shape what we are reading. The class will be conducted in English, with an additional hour taught by the instructor of record in the target language for students wishing to take the course for language credit.

(Offered: Spring 2026)

CSTS B108  ROMAN AFRICA  (1.0 Credit)

Catherine Conybeare

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

In 146 BCE, Rome conquered and destroyed the North African city of Carthage, which had been its arch-enemy for generations, and occupied many of the Carthaginian settlements in North Africa. But by the second and third centuries CE, North Africa was one of the most prosperous and cultured areas of the Roman Empire, and Carthage (near modern Tunis) was one of the busiest ports in the Mediterranean. This course will trace the relations between Rome and Carthage, looking at the history of their mutual enmity, the extraordinary rise to prosperity of Roman North Africa, and the continued importance of the region even after the Vandal invasions of the fifth century.

EDUC B200  COMMUNITY LEARNING COLLABORATIVE: PRACTICING PARTNERSHIP  (1.0 Credit)

Alice Lesnick

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

One of the four entry-point options for student majoring or minoring in Education Studies, this course is open to students exploring an interest in educational practice, theory, research, and policy. The course asks how myriad people, groups, and fields have defined the purpose of education, and considers the implications of conflicting definitions for generating new, more just, and more inclusive modes of "doing school" informed by community-based as well as academic streams of educational practice. In collaboration with practicing educators, students learn practical and philosophical approaches to experiential, community-engaged learning across individual relationships and organizational contexts. Fieldwork in an area school or organization required

(Offered: Spring 2026)

EDUC B266  GEOGRAPHIES OF SCHOOL AND LEARNING: URBAN EDUCATION RECONSIDERED  (1.0 Credit)

Kelly Zuckerman

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This course examines issues, challenges, and possibilities of urban education in contemporary America. We use as critical lenses issues of race, class, and culture; urban learners, teachers, and school systems; and restructuring and reform. While we look at urban education nationally over several decades, we use Philadelphia as a focal “case” that students investigate through documents and school placements. Weekly fieldwork in a school required.

ENGL B217  NARRATIVES OF LATINIDAD  (1.0 Credit)

Jennifer Harford Vargas

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course explores how Latina/o writers fashion bicultural and transnational identities and narrate the intertwined histories of the U.S. and Latin America. We will focus on topics of shared concern among Latino groups such as struggles for social justice, the damaging effects of machismo and racial hierarchies, the politics of Spanglish, and the affective experience of migration. By analyzing a range of cultural production, including novels, poetry, testimonial narratives, films, activist art, and essays, we will unpack the complexity of Latinidad in the Americas.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

ENGL B271  TRANSATLANTIC CHILDHOODS IN THE 19TH CENTURY  (1.0 Credit)

Chloe Flower

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This class explores what we can see anew when we juxtapose American and British experiences of, and responses to, emergent ideas and ideals of childhood in the child-obsessed nineteenth century. After setting up key eighteenth-century concepts and contexts for what French historian Philippe Ariès called the "invention of childhood," we'll explore the ways in which children came to be defined between 1800 and 1900, in relation to such categories as law, labor, education, sex, play, and psychology, through examinations of both "literary" works and texts and artifacts from a range of other discourses and spheres. We'll move between American and British examples, aiming to track the commonalities at work in the two nations and the effects of marked structural differences. Here we'll be especially attentive to chattel slavery in the U.S., and to the relations, and non-relations, between the racialized notions of childhood produced in this country and those which arise out of Britain's sharply stratified class landscape. If race and class are produced differently, we'll also consider the degree to which British and American histories and representations of boyhood and girlhood converge and diverge across the period. We’ll close with reflections on the ways in which a range of literary genres on the cusp of modernism form themselves in and through the new discourses of childhood and evolving figures of the child.

ENGL B372  BLACK ECOFEMINISM(S): CRITICAL APPROACHES  (1.0 Credit)

Alex Alston

Division: Humanities

How have Black feminist authors and traditions theorized or represented the ecological world and their relationship to it? How does thinking intersectionally about gender(ing) and racialization expand or challenge conventional notions of “nature,” conservation, or environmental justice? In what ways does centering racial blackness critically reframe a host of practical and philosophical questions historically brought together under the sign “ecofeminism?” Combining history and theory, the humanities and the social sciences, this interdisciplinary course will use the work of Black feminist writers (broadly defined) across a range of genres to approach and to trouble the major paradigms and problems of contemporary Euro-American ecofeminist thought. The course uses fiction and poetry by Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Countee Cullen as a gateway to a range of critical work by Jennifer Morgan, Sylvia Wynter, Maria Mies, and Val Plumwood as it attempts to define and deconstruct what Chelsea Frazier calls “Black Feminist Ecological Thought.”

FREN B208  LA DIVERSITÉ DANS LE CINÉMA FRANÇAIS CONTEMPORAIN  (1.0 Credit)

Julien Suaudeau

Until the closing years of the 20th century, ethnic diversity was virtually absent from French cinema. While Francophone directors from Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa debunked colonialism and neocolonialism in their films, minorities hardly appeared on French screens. Movies were made by white filmmakers for a white audience. Since the 1980's and the 1990's, minorities have become more visible in French films. Are French Blacks and Arabs portrayed in French cinema beyond stereotypes, or are they still objects of a euro-centric gaze? Have minorities gained agency in storytelling, not just as actors, but as directors? What is the national narrative at play in the recent French films that focus on diversity? Is it still "us against them", or has the new generation of French filmmakers found a way to include the different components of French identity into a collective subject? From Bouchareb to Gomis, from Kechiche to Benyamina and Jean-Baptiste, this course will map out the visual fault lines of the French self and examine the prospects for a post-republican sense of community. This course will be taught in French. Open to non-majors. There will be a weekly screening on Sunday, 7:00pm-9:00pm.

(Offered: Spring 2026)

HART B365  EXHIBITING AFRICA: ART, ARTIFACT AND NEW ARTICULATIONS  (1.0 Credit)

At the turn of the 20th century, the Victorian natural history museum played an important role in constructing and disseminating images of Africa to the Western public. The history of museum representations of Africa and Africans reveals that exhibitions—both museum exhibitions and “living” World’s Fair exhibitions— has long been deeply embedded in politics, including the persistent “othering” of African people as savages or primitives. While paying attention to stereotypical exhibition tropes about Africa, we will also consider how art museums are creating new constructions of Africa and how contemporary curators and conceptual artists are creating complex, challenging new ways of understanding African identities.This course was formerly numbered HART B279; students who previously completed HART B279 may not repeat this course.

(Offered: Spring 2026)

HIST B102  INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS  (1.0 Credit)

Kalala Ngalamulume

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

The course is designed to introduce students to the history of African and African Diaspora societies, cultures, and political economies. We will discuss the origins, state formation, external contacts, and the structural transformations and continuities of African societies and cultures in the context of the slave trade, colonial rule, capitalist exploitation, urbanization, and westernization, as well as contemporary struggles over authority, autonomy, identity and access to resources. Case studies will be drawn from across the continent.

(Offered: Fall 2025)

HIST B212  PIRATES, TRAVELERS, AND NATURAL HISTORIANS: 1492-1750  (1.0 Credit)

Ignacio Gallup-Diaz

Division: Social Science

In the early modern period, conquistadors, missionaries, travelers, pirates, and natural historians wrote interesting texts in which they tried to integrate the New World into their existing frameworks of knowledge. This intellectual endeavor was an adjunct to the physical conquest of American space, and provides a framework though which we will explore the processes of imperial competition, state formation, and indigenous and African resistance to colonialism.

HIST B237  THEMES IN MODERN AFRICAN HISTORY  (1.0 Credit)

Kalala Ngalamulume

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This is a topics course. Course content varies

(Offered: Spring 2026)

HIST B243  TOPICS: ATLANTIC CULTURES  (1.0 Credit)

Ignacio Gallup-Diaz

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

(Offered: Spring 2026)

HIST B337  TOPICS IN AFRICAN HISTORY  (1.0 Credit)

Kalala Ngalamulume

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This is a topics course. Topics vary.

(Offered: Spring 2026)

HLTH B115  INTRODUCTION TO HEALTH STUDIES  (1.0 Credit)

Arnav Bhattacharya

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

The multidisciplinary foundation for the health studies minor. Students will be introduced to theories and methods from the life sciences, social sciences, and humanities and will learn to apply them to problems of health and illness. Topics include epidemiological, public health, and biomedical perspectives on health and disease; social, behavioral, and environmental determinants of health; globalization of health issues; cultural representations of illness; health inequalities, social justice, and health as a human right.

(Offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2026)

ITAL B218  EARLY-MODERN INTERSECTIONS: A NEW ITALIAN RENAISSANCE  (1.0 Credit)

Luca Zipoli

Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

The period or movement commonly referred to as the Renaissance remains one of the great iconic moments of global history: a time of remarkable innovation within artistic and intellectual culture, and a period still widely regarded as the crucible of modernity. Although lacking a political unity and being constantly colonized by European Empires, Italy was the original heartland of the Renaissance, and home to some of its most powerful and enduring figures, such as Leonardo and Michelangelo in art, Petrarch and Ariosto in literature, Machiavelli in political thought. This course provides an overview of Italian culture from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century by adopting a cross-cultural, intersectional, and inter-disciplinary approach. The course places otherness at the center of the picture rather than at its margins, with the main aim to look at pivotal events and phenomena (the rise of Humanism, courtly culture, the canonization of the language), not only from the point of view of its protagonists but also through the eyes of its non-male, non-white, non-Christian, and non-heterosexual witnesses. The course ultimately challenges traditional accounts of the Italian Renaissance by crossing also disciplinary boundaries, since it examines not only literary, artistic, and intellectual history, but also material culture, cartography, science, technology, and history of food and fashion. All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students seeking Italian credits will complete their assignments in the target language.

SOCL B225  WOMEN IN SOCIETY  (1.0 Credit)

Veronica Montes

Division: Social Science

In 2015, the world’s female population was 49.6 percent of the total global population of 7.3 billion. According to the United Nations, in absolute terms, there were 61,591,853 more men than women. Yet, at the global scale, 124 countries have more women than men. A great majority of these countries are located in what scholars have recently been referring to as the Global South – those countries known previously as developing countries. Although women outnumber their male counterparts in many Global South countries, however, these women endure difficulties that have worsened rather than improving. What social structures determine this gender inequality in general and that of women of color in particular? What are the main challenges women in the Global South face? How do these challenges differ based on nationality, class, ethnicity, skin color, gender identity, and other axes of oppression? What strategies have these women developed to cope with the wide variety of challenges they contend with on a daily basis? These are some of the major questions that we will explore together in this class. In this course, the Global South does not refer exclusively to a geographical location, but rather to a set of institutional structures that generate disadvantages for all individuals and particularly for women and other minorities, regardless their geographical location in the world. In other words, a significant segment of the Global North’s population lives under the same precarious conditions that are commonly believed as exclusive to the Global South. Simultaneously, there is a Global North embedded in the Global South as well. In this context, we will see that the geographical division between the North and the South becomes futile when we seek to understand the dynamics of the “Western-centric/Christian-centric capitalist/patriarchal modern/colonial world-system” (Grosfoguel, 2012). In the first part of the course, we will establish the theoretical foundations that will guide us throughout the rest of the semester. We will then turn to a wide variety of case studies where we will examine, for instance, the contemporary global division of labor, gendered violence in the form of feminicides, international migration, and global tourism. The course’s final thematic section will be devoted to learning from the different feminisms (e.g. community feminism) emerging out of the Global South as well as the research done in that region and its contribution to the development of a broader gender studies scholarship. In particular, we will pay close attention to resistance, solidarity, and social movements led by women. Examples will be drawn from Latin America, the Caribbean, the US, Asia, and Africa.

(Offered: Spring 2026)

SOCL B276  MAKING SENSE OF RACE  (1.0 Credit)

Nora Taplin-Kaguru

What is the meaning of race in contemporary US and global society? How are these meanings (re)produced, resisted, and refused? What meanings might we desire or imagine as alternatives? In this course, we will approach these questions through an array of sources while tracking our own thinking about and experiences of raced-ness. Course material will survey sociological notions of the social construction of race, empirical studies of lived experiences of race, and creative fiction and non-fiction material intended to catalyze thinking about alternative possibilities.