printer friendly pageAFRICAAM 8: Conjure and Manifest: Building a Sustainable Artistic Practice (CSRE 8)
In this course, student-artists spend time investigating their artistic practice as a framework for promoting power, wellness, and creativity; and as a tangible means for navigating the first steps of their artistic careers. We spend time critically examining the philosophies and works of Black artists including James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, RZA (Wu-Tang Clan) and Nayyirah Waheed, in order to explore new visions for the artist as activist, as futurist and as spiritual healer. We then use a mixture of these ideas and our own¿along with meditation and mindfulness experiences¿to begin conjuring and manifesting intimate relationships with our art practice and ourselves. Student-artists will develop creative confidence, formulate game plans for success, and begin to find balance between the uncertainty and ultimate freedom that life as an artist can bring.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
Instructors:
Holt, A. (PI)
AFRICAAM 54N: African American Women's Lives (AMSTUD 54N, CSRE 54N, FEMGEN 54N, HISTORY 54N)
Preference to freshmen. We will examine the struggles of African American women to define their own lives and improve the social, economic, political and cultural conditions of black communities. Topics will include women's enslavement and freedom, kinship and family relations, institution and community building, violence, labor and leisure, changing gender roles, consumer and beauty culture, social activism, and the politics of sexuality.
Terms: Spr, Sum
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, GER:EC-Gender, GER:DB-Hum, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Hobbs, A. (PI)
AFRICAAM 154: Black Feminist Theory (FEMGEN 154)
This course will examine black feminist theoretical traditions, marking black women's analytic interventions into sexual and pleasure politics, reproduction, citizenship, power, violence, agency, art, representation, and questions of the body. Exploring concepts like intersectionality, matrices of violence, the politics of respectability, womanism, and other contours of a black feminist liberation politic, we will look to black feminist scholars, activists, and artists from the 19th century to today.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Caruthers, J. (PI)
AFRICAAM 166: Introduction to African American History - the Modern Freedom Struggle (AMSTUD 166, HISTORY 66, HISTORY 166)
Using the unique documentary resources and publications of Stanford's Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, this course will utilize multi-media materials to shed light on the relationship between grassroots activism and King's visionary leadership.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul
Instructors:
Carson, C. (PI)
AFRICAAM 176B: Documentary Fictions (TAPS 176B)
More and more of our best fiction, plays, and comics are being created out of documentary practices such as in-depth interviewing, oral histories, and reporting. Novels like Dave Egger¿s What is the What and plays like Anna Deavere Smith¿s Let Me Down Easy act as both witnesses and translators of people¿s direct experience and push art into social activism in new ways. This course takes a close look at a diverse range of these contemporary works and explores how to adopt their research and aesthetic strategies for work of your own. We start with a brief look back at the recent origins of this trend and look at excerpts from forerunners such as Richard Wright, Truman Capote, and Bertolt Brecht. We then turn to the rise of documentary fictions in the last few decades and read works by Eggers, Adam Johnson, G.B. Tran, Maria Hummel, and Daniel Alarcon and watch performances by the Tectonic Theater Project and Elevator Repair Service. Students write one analytic essay and then conduct or study interviews to design a work of their own. The course will feature class visits by a number of our authors and a special half-day workshop with Smith.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Willihnganz, J. (PI)
AFRICAAM 194: Topics in Writing & Rhetoric: "We Gon Be Alright": Contemporary Black Rhetorics (PWR 194AJ)
Does not fulfill NSC requirement. What does the difference between Kendrick Lamar's "We Gon Be Alright" and older movement anthems like "Let Nobody Turn Us Around" tell us about differences in perspective held by contemporary Black activists and those of other eras? What strategies are people engaged in various kinds of work to "assert their collective humanity" and "gain acceptance for ideas relative to Black survival and Black liberation" using in the pursuit of those goals? What debates are taking place inside Black communities about activism? About community itself? What is it about twitter, vines and memes that have made those spaces such rich spaces for Black expressive cultures? What stylistic or aesthetic features mark those communicative efforts? Finally, what do young people themselves have to say about activism in this moment? This course will examine Black rhetoric from overtly persuasive political and activist discourse to Scandal watch parties and everyday conversation. Prerequisite: first level of the writing requirement or equivalent transfer credit. For topics, see
https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/pwr/courses/advanced-pwr-courses.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Banks, A. (PI)
AMSTUD 54N: African American Women's Lives (AFRICAAM 54N, CSRE 54N, FEMGEN 54N, HISTORY 54N)
Preference to freshmen. We will examine the struggles of African American women to define their own lives and improve the social, economic, political and cultural conditions of black communities. Topics will include women's enslavement and freedom, kinship and family relations, institution and community building, violence, labor and leisure, changing gender roles, consumer and beauty culture, social activism, and the politics of sexuality.
Terms: Spr, Sum
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, GER:EC-Gender, GER:DB-Hum, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Hobbs, A. (PI)
AMSTUD 102: Art and Social Criticism (ARTHIST 162B, CSRE 102A)
Contemporary visual artists have long been in the forefront of social criticism in America and their key works have become anchors for discourses on racism, sexism, economic inequality, and immigrant rights. We will consider political art by artists such as ACT-UP, Judy Chicago, Fred Wilson, Guerilla Girls, Ai Weiwei and many others that raises social awareness, inspires social change and galvanizes activism. What makes their art enduring social criticism? How have they contributed to our understanding of American history?
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Hertz, B. (PI)
AMSTUD 107: Introduction to Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (CSRE 108, FEMGEN 101, TAPS 108)
Introduction to interdisciplinary approaches to gender, sexuality, queer, trans and feminist studies. Topics include the emergence of sexuality studies in the academy, social justice and new subjects, science and technology, art and activism, history, film and memory, the documentation and performance of difference, and relevant socio-economic and political formations such as work and the family. Students learn to think critically about race, gender, and sexuality from local and global perspectives.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 108: Race and the Law: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (CSRE 81)
When Obama began his presidential tenure in 2009, many commentators declared the U.S. a truly colorblind society, a place where race (read: non-whiteness) no longer served as an impediment to individual and group aspirations, indeed had become so insignificant as to be practically invisible. In late fall 2014,in the aftermath of the police-involved killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice, society is confronted with a radically different social and political landscape. Yet events like these, while doubtless underscoring the fallaciousness of the equalitarian narrative, are regrettably commonplace. What, if anything, occurred during the intervening years that might explain the apparent displacement of hope by despair? With the advent of the Black Lives Matte movement, the persistence of bias and discrimination against people of color, particularly at the interface of African American males and law enforcement authorities, has attained a place of prominence on the public agenda, presenting a significant opportunity for citizen-activists, legislators, and policymakers to combine forces to effectuate meaningful change. To take advantage of this moment, it is imperative to understand the origins and development of the entrenched structural inequalities manifest in contemporary America. What role have law and legal institutions played in hindering and facilitating the promise of equality for all citizens? How far are we from realizing that vaunted democratic aspiration? This course offers participants an opportunity to systematically engage with recent events in Baltimore, Ferguson, and elsewhere in an historically informed manner that foregrounds questions of race, citizenship, and law. Against the backdrop of the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, it considers such topics as the rise of urban ghettos and the use of segregationist practices like redlining and steering in helping to sustain them; resegregation in the late 20th-early 21st century; differential arrest and sentencing patterns; and, crucially, the extraordinary growth of the American carceral state.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Cardyn, L. (PI)
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