African and Africana Studies (Bi-Co)

Department Website:
https://www.haverford.edu/africana-studies

African and Africana Studies concentrators and students hone sophisticated global frames of reference and dynamic research methods in order to study continental Africa and the African diaspora. Drawing on anthropology, economics, history, linguistics, literature, music, philosophy, political science, and sociology, students analyze and interpret processes of emancipation, decolonization, development, and globalization in Africa proper and in societies with populations of African origin.

African and Africana Studies is a Bi-College program, offered as a minor at Bryn Mawr or as an area of concentration for students at Haverford majoring in certain disciplines. The concentration at Haverford is open to majors in which at least two African and Africana Studies courses are offered. The African and Africana Studies program also belongs to a consortium with Bryn Mawr College, Swarthmore College, and the University of Pennsylvania, allowing concentrators to access resources and courses at all four participating institutions.

Learning Goals

Study continental Africa and various African diasporas through a global frame of reference.
Understand how the African continent has been linked for centuries to transcontinental movements of people, money, ideas, and things.
Study African political and cultural history and African diasporic movements and the links between them.
Understand how a variety of methodological approaches or disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, economics, history, linguistics, literature, music, philosophy, political science, and sociology, can be used to analyze social life and practices in Africa and its diasporas and understand global trade, slavery, emancipation, decolonization, and development against a background of international economic change in Africa itself and in societies worldwide with populations of African origin.
Examine the values and beliefs of persons and communities in multiple African societies as a way to critically and comparatively engage European and American history and philosophy.
Examine African peoples’ responses to racialized Atlantic slave trade, colonization, and globalization in order to cultivate a theoretical understanding of social change processes.

Haverford’s Institutional Learning Goals are available on the President’s website, at http://hav.to/learninggoals.

Curriculum

The African and Africana Studies curriculum is organized to help students develop a global understanding of African societies and experiences throughout the African diaspora. A key to realizing this goal is students’ capacities to relate disparate materials from cognate disciplines to their concentrated research in African and Africana Studies. Because African and Africana Studies concentrators must take courses in various fields and disciplines, it is vital that they have an opportunity to historically, conceptually, and theoretically frame their coursework in the concentration. To that end, concentrators in the African and Africana Studies program must take a foundation course at either Haverford or Bryn Mawr College. Students may satisfy this requirement by taking either AFST H101, “Introduction to African and Africana Studies” or HIST B102, “Introduction to Africana Civilizations.”

Students are advised to complete one of the two foundation course options as early as possible, ideally during the first two years, and by no later than the junior year.

Concentration Requirements

Concentrators must take either AFST H101, “Introduction to African and Africana Studies” (Haverford College) or HIST B102, “Introduction to Africana Civilizations” (BMC).
Other than the required introductory course, students must complete five additional courses from a list approved by the concentration coordinator.
At least two, and no more than three, courses must be completed in the departmental major.
At least three African and Africana Studies courses must be taken in at least two departments outside of the major.
At least one of the required courses must deal with the African diaspora.
Concentrators must complete either a senior thesis or seminar-length essay in an area of African and Africana Studies.

Students majoring in a department that requires a thesis satisfy therequirement by writing on a topic approved by their department and by the coordinator(s) of the African and Africana Studies program. If the major department does not require a thesis, an equivalent written exercise that is a seminar-length essay is required. The essay may be written within the framework of a particular course or as an independent study project. The topic must be approved by the instructor in question and by the coordinator(s) of the African and Africana Studies program. Successful completion of the African and Africana Studies minor/concentration is noted on students’ final transcripts.

Faculty

Below are the core Bi-Co African and Africana Studies faculty. Many other faculty at both institutions contribute courses to the program; see the Courses section for a full listing.

Core Faculty at Haverford

Kevin Quin
Assistant Professor of Africana Studies

Qrescent Mali Mason
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Coordinator of African and Africana Studies

Linda Strong-Leek
Provost; Professor of African and Africana Studies; Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies

Terrance Wiley
Assistant Professor of Religion and African and Africana Studies

Core Faculty at Bryn Mawr

Paul Joseph Lopez Oro
Assistant Professor and Program Director of Africana Studies

Kalala Ngalamulume
Professor of Africana Studies and History

Courses at Haverford

Africana Studies Courses

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 2024)

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 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 2024)

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

AFST H247 AFRICANA PHILOSOPHY (1.0 Credit)

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

Africana philosophy has been defined as “as an area of philosophical research that addresses the problems faced and raised by the African diaspora.” (Gordon 2008) Africana philosophy, then, is a modern form of philosophy that oftentimes engages themes and questions that are neglected by Western philosophy. This course will examine philosophical problems raised by African American, Afro-Caribbean, and African philosophy, while engaging major scholars and schools of Africana philosophy. Crosslisted: AFST. Pre-requisite(s): One 100-level course in philosophy or consent of instructor.

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.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

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

(Offered: Spring 2025)

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.

(Offered: Spring 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

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 H334 RACE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES (1.0 Credit)

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

This course explores how race is intertwined with infectious diseases in producing persistent social and health inequalities in the U.S. and abroad. It will examine how human group difference is understood as a given and natural condition despite sociocultural, historical, political, and economic contexts that shape it. It will deal with incidents demonstrated racialized understanding of the body and racial discrimination and inequalities perpetuated in the context of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Ebola, Cholera and Covid 19. Crosslisted: AFST,ANTH. Pre-requisite(s): None. Lottery Preference: declared Health Studies minors, then African studies minors or Anthropology majors

AFST H361 TOPICS IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIT: REPRESENTATIONS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY (1.0 Credit)

Asali Solomon

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

For the past three centuries African American writers have mined the experience of chattel slavery in the cause of literal and artistic emancipation. Slave narratives, as well as poetry, essays and novels depicting slavery, constitute a literary universe so robust that the term subgenre does it injustice. In this work spanning the 18th-21st centuries, the reader will find pulse-quickening plots, gruesome horror, tender sentiment, heroism, degradation, sexual violation and redemption, as well as resonant meditations on language and literacy, racial identity, power, psychology, democracy, freedom and the human character. This course is focused primarily on prose representations of slavery in the Americas. Our discussions will incorporate history, but will foreground literary and cultural analysis.

(Offered: Spring 2025)

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

Laura McGrane

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.

Anthropology Courses

ANTH H212 FEMINIST ETHNOGRAPHY (1.0 Credit)

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

This course delves into the historical development and utility of feminist anthropology. Feminist Ethnography is both methodology and method that seeks to explore how gender, race, sexuality, and subjectivity operate in a variety of contexts. We will explore articulations and critiques of feminist ethnographic methods that engage researcher positionality and the politics of research. This course is one part analytic and another part how-to. Participants will read classic and contemporary ethnographies while learning to craft auto-ethnographic research. Prerequisite(s): One ANTH course or instructor consent

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

ANTH H334 RACE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES (1.0 Credit)

Staff

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

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.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

Comparative Literature Courses

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

Imke Brust

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 2024)

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 2024)

COML H312 ADV TOPICS FRENCH LITERATURE (1.0 Credit)

Kathryne Corbin

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

During the 19th century, and more specifically the Second Empire (1852-1870), Emperor Napoleon III and Baron Eugene Haussmann embarked on the demolition and reconstruction of Paris, a project that would establish the capital as the modern city so widely celebrated today. In this course, we will explore the ways writers and artists during this time experienced the city and discovered new ways of seeing their world as a result of these (sometimes polarizing) transformations. Through works by Baudelaire, Balzac, Sue, and Zola, as well as artists such as Caillebotte, Cassatt, Manet, Monet, and Renoir, we will appreciate what writers and artists discovered as they became « painters of modern life », looking closely, for the first time, at everyday objects as veritable objects of art. Alongside the readings of these classics, students will keep a personal journal where they will consider new ways of seeing their world, reflecting on mundane encounters, and transforming simple objects and panoramas into their own « chefs d’œuvre ». Crosslisted: FREN and COML

(Offered: Fall 2024)

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

Alexander Millen

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: Fall 2024)

Classical Studies Courses

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

East Asian Languages and Cultures Courses

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

(Offered: Spring 2025)

Education Courses

EDUC H308 INQUIRIES INTO BLACK STUDY, LANGUAGE JUSTICE, AND EDUCATION (1.0 Credit)

Maurice Rippel

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 2024)

English Courses

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

Gustavus Stadler

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 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: REPRESENTATIONS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY (1.0 Credit)

Asali Solomon

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

(Offered: Spring 2025)

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

Laura McGrane

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

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

Alexander Millen

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

Environmental Studies Courses

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

Talia Young

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World; C: Physical and Natural Processes

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

(Offered: Spring 2025)

French and French Studies Courses

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

(Offered: Spring 2025)

FREN H312 ADV TOPICS FRENCH LITERATURE (1.0 Credit)

Kathryne Corbin

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

German Courses

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

Imke Brust

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

Gender and Sexuality Studies Courses

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

(Offered: Spring 2025)

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)

History Courses

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 2024)

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

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

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

(Offered: Spring 2025)

HIST H310 POLITICAL TECHNOLOGIES OF RACE AND THE BODY (1.0 Credit)

Andrew Friedman

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

This course examines the technologies, ideologies, and material strategies that have created and specified human beings as racialized and gendered subjects in the U.S. Readings cover biopolitics, disability studies, material culture, histories of disease, medicine, violence and industrialization. In our discussions and research, we will aim to decode the production of "reality" at its most basic and molecular level. Crosslisted: History, Health Studies

HIST H340 TOPICS IN AMERICAN HISTORY: VOICES FOR JUSTICE—SIX AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES (1.0 Credit)

Emma Lapsansky-Werner

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

This course will use biographies and memoirs to explore the world and human-dignity strategies of six African American activists from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Through the eyes and experiences of these individuals, the course examines the world(s) they inhabited, their interweaving with Quakers and Quaker ideas and activism--and how their efforts to analyze, navigate, and master their world have helped shape American history. Built around the biographies, writing and speeches of Massachusetts sea captain Paul Cuffee (1759-1817); Philadelphia entrepreneur James Forten (1766-1842); teacher/newspaper publisher/lawyer Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893); educator/missionary Fanny Jackson Coppin (1837-1913); Philadelphia abolitionist Sarah Mapps Douglass (1806-1882); and March-on-Washington coordinator Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), the course surveys not only these individuals, but also the America they inhabited and influenced. Each of these six lives intersected, in various ways, with Quaker people, ideas and activities.

Health Studies Courses

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 2024)

HLTH H310 POLITICAL TECHNOLOGIES OF RACE AND THE BODY (1.0 Credit)

Andrew Friedman

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

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

(Offered: Spring 2025)

HLTH H334 RACE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES (1.0 Credit)

Staff

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

Music Courses

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.

Peace, Justice and Human Rights Courses

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 2025)

Philosophy Courses

PHIL H247 AFRICANA PHILOSOPHY (1.0 Credit)

Staff

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

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

Qrescent Mali Mason

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

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)

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

Political Science Courses

POLS H235 AFRICAN POLITICS (1.0 Credit)

Susanna Wing

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

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

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

(Offered: Spring 2025)

Religion Courses

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.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

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.

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.

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

Visual Studies Courses

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

troizel xx Carr

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

VIST H216 BLACK SPECULATIVE FUTURES (1.0 Credit)

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

The course will explore how black artists, theorists, and activists imagine different futures to critique power asymmetries and create radical transformation. We will investigate how the speculative works differently across genres and we will craft our own embodied speculative art.

VIST H221 BLACK OTHERWISE WORLDS: THE ART OF CONTEMPORARY BLACKNESS (1.0 Credit)

Staff

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

This course considers the relationship between recent black art and art writing and what scholar of religion Ashon Crawley calls an “aesthetic of possibility.” Specifically, we will examine work that imagines “otherwise” through a number of strategies: rethinking the relationship between the present and the past, crafting alternative worlds, critically examining life at the end of the Anthropocene, rethinking the Enlightenment subject, and exploring black sacred practices.

VIST H222 THE (BLACK) ARTIST AS HISTORIAN (1.0 Credit)

Staff

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

This course seeks to investigate what has been called a historical or archival turn in contemporary art production through the lens of black visual art. We will explore the varied ways that black artists have continuously probed the meaning and production of history throughout the twentieth century, but also how these explorations have changed over time and in relationship to particular subject material (e.g., the history of slavery or more local or personal histories). Lottery Preference: Visual Studies minors

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

troizel xx Carr

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

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

Qrescent Mali Mason

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

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

troizel xx Carr

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

(Offered: Spring 2025)

Writing Program Courses

WRPR H126 RADICAL BLACK FEMINISMS AND THE CARCERAL STATE (1.0 Credit)

Division: First Year Writing

With growing calls for the abolition of prisons and all systems of racial-sexual domination, this course will examine a long history of works by and about Black women political prisoners since the Black Power Era. Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing.

WRPR H139 DOES REPRESENTATION MATTER? (1.0 Credit)

Connie McNair

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)

Connie McNair

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

(Offered: Fall 2024)

Courses at Bryn Mawr

Africana Studies Courses

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 2025)

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.

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.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology Courses

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

Jennie Bradbury

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 2024)

Dance - Arts Program Courses

ARTD B138 HIP HOP LINEAGES (0.5 Credit)

Melanie Cotton, Patricia Jones

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.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

ARTD B141 AFRICAN DIASPORA: BEGINNING TECHNIQUE (0.5 Credit)

Patricia Jones

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.

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

Lela Aisha Jones

How do practices of embodiment, choreography, artistry, performance, testifying, and witnessing guide us to transformative and liberation action in our lives? This course excavates the adornment of beings/bodies and the making of sacred spaces for embodied performance, introspection, and ceremonial dance. We will take up the notion of the being/body as an altar and the importance of costume and garb in setting the scene for activism, ritual, and staged offerings. The cognitive has gotten us here, what might continuums of believing in the being/body unveil? Expect to dance, move, write, discuss, create projects, and engage in a variety of textual 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 courage to move.

ARTD B348 ENSEMBLE: AFRICAN DIASPORA DANCE (0.5 Credit)

Patricia Jones

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.

Classical Studies Courses

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.

Education Courses

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

Chanelle Wilson

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 2025)

EDUC B217 LESSONS IN LIBERATION: REJECTING COLONIALIST POWER IN EDU (1.0 Credit)

Chanelle Wilson

Formal schooling is often perceived as a positive vestige of colonization, yet traditional practices continue a legacy of oppression, in different forms. This course will analyze education practices, language, knowledge production, and culture in ways especially relevant in the age of globalization. We will explore and contextualize the subjugation of students and educators that perpetuates colonialist power and implement practices that amplify the voices of the marginalized. We will learn lessons in liberation from a historical perspective and consider contemporary influence, with a cross-continental focus. Liberatory education practices have always existed, often on the margins of colonial forces, but present nonetheless. This course will support students’ pursuit of a politics of resistance, subversion, and transformation. We will focus on the development of a critical consciousness, utilizing abolitionist and fugitive teaching pedagogy and culturally responsive pedagogy as tools for resistance. Students will engage with novels, documentaries, historical texts, and scholarly documents to explore US and Cape Verdean education as case studies. In this course, we will consider the productive tensions between an explicit commitment to ideas of progress, and the anticolonial concepts and paradigms which impact what is created to achieve education liberation.

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.

(Offered: Spring 2025)

EDUC B308 INQUIRIES INTO BLACK STUDY, LANGUAGE JUSTICE, AND EDUCATION (1.0 Credit)

Alice Lesnick, Maurice Rippel

English Courses

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.

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.

(Offered: Spring 2025)

ENGL B363 TONI MORRISON AND THE ART OF NARRATIVE CONJURE (1.0 Credit)

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

A comprehensive study of Morrison’s narrative experiments in fiction, this course traces her entire oeuvre from “Recitatif” to God Help the Child. We read the works in publication order with three main foci: Morrison-as-epistemologist questioning what it is that constitutes knowing and being known, Morrison-as-revisionary-teacher-of-reading-strategies, and Morrison in intertextual dialogue with several oral and literary traditions. In addition to critical essays, students complete a “Pilate Project” – a creative response to the works under study.

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.” Prerequisite: At least one 200-level English course and one course in Africana Studies

(Offered: Spring 2025)

French and French Studies Courses

FREN B005 INTENSIVE INTERMEDIATE FRENCH (1.5 Credits)

Agnès Peysson-Zeiss, Corine Ragueneau

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

The emphasis on speaking and understanding French is continued; literary and cultural texts are read and increasingly longer papers are written in French. In addition to three class meetings a week, students develop their skills in group sessions with the professors and in oral practice hours with assistants. Students use internet resources regularly. This course prepares students to take 102 or 105 in semester II. Open only to graduates of Intensive Elementary French or to students placed by the department or recommended by their instructor from 002 regular. Two additional hours of instruction outside class time required. Additional meeting hours on Tuesday and Thursday will be scheduled according to students availability. Prerequisite: FREN B002IN (intensive) or Placement exam. Approach: Course does not meet an Approach

(Offered: Fall 2024)

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 2025)

FREN B211 THE ARTS AND HEALING: THE MANY FACETS OF WEST AFRICA (1.0 Credit)

Agnès Peysson-Zeiss

This course will borrow from Achille Mbembe’s views of Africa in which it is decolonization that ushered a temporal rupture which made possible a wide array of futures for the continent. After an introduction on the history of the region (background, French influence and gender relations), the 360 students will be able to examine local and global knowledge and their potentialities on the ground through a variety of approaches that include healing practices related to well-being in various areas of life, through the arts, literature, music and film. It is this exchange with both diasporic and local artists and thinkers, through lectures, readings and workshops at Bryn Mawr and in Senegal that students will be able to find some of the answers this cluster is raising. They will investigate the consequences of decolonization into the present through a series of modules and examine the differences, consequences and overlap of all the knowledge.s, creativity and futures that exist on and for the continent.

History Courses

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.

HIST B156 THE LONG 1960'S (1.0 Credit)

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

The 1960s has had a powerful effect on recent US History. But what was it exactly? How long did it last? And what do we really mean when we say “The Sixties?” This term has become so potent and loaded for so many people from all sides of the political spectrum that it’s almost impossible to separate fact from fiction; myth from memory. We are all the inheritors of this intense period in American history but our inheritance is neither simple nor entirely clear. Our task this semester is to try to pull apart the meaning as well as the legend and attempt to figure out what “The Sixties” is (and what it isn’t) and try to assess its long term impact on American society.

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

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: Fall 2024)

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.

HIST B349 TOPICS IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (1.0 Credit)

Ignacio Gallup-Diaz

Division: Social Science

This is a topics course. Topics vary.

Health Studies Courses

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 2024, Spring 2025)

Italian and Italian Studies Courses

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

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

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? In this course we will read some pivotal theoretical texts from different fields, with a focus on race&ethnicity and gender&sexuality. Each theory will be paired with a masterpiece from Italian culture (from Renaissance treatises and paintings to stories written under fascism and postwar movies). We will discuss how to apply theory to the practice of interpretation and of academic writing, and how theoretical ideas shaped what we are reading. Class conducted in English, with an additional hour in Italian for students seeking Italian credit.

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 transnational 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 will have an additional hour of class for Italian credit.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

Sociology Courses

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: Fall 2024)

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.

(Offered: Spring 2025)

Academic Catalog 2024-2025

African and Africana Studies (Bi-Co)

Learning Goals

Curriculum

Concentration Requirements

Faculty

Core Faculty at Haverford

Core Faculty at Bryn Mawr

Courses at Haverford

Africana Studies Courses

Anthropology Courses

Comparative Literature Courses

Classical Studies Courses

East Asian Languages and Cultures Courses

Education Courses

English Courses

Environmental Studies Courses

French and French Studies Courses

German Courses

Gender and Sexuality Studies Courses

History Courses

Health Studies Courses

Music Courses

Peace, Justice and Human Rights Courses

Philosophy Courses

Political Science Courses

Religion Courses

Visual Studies Courses

Writing Program Courses

Courses at Bryn Mawr

Africana Studies Courses

Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology Courses

Dance - Arts Program Courses

Classical Studies Courses

Education Courses

English Courses

French and French Studies Courses

History Courses

Health Studies Courses

Italian and Italian Studies Courses

Sociology Courses