AFRICAAM 126: Prelude to Jamaica: Exploring Knowledge Production, Community, and Resistance in the Arts
This 1-credit course is designed to prepare students for the Summer 2025 BOSP Global Arts Seminar, "The Arts in Jamaica: Exploring Knowledge Production, Community, and Resistance." Enrollment is restricted to students accepted into this BOSP Global Seminar. We will meet in person five times this quarter on Week 2 (April 8), Week 4 (April 22), Week 6 (May 6), Week 8 (May 20), and Week 10 (June 3) in person. On most alternating weeks, students submit reflections or responses to the readings on Canvas.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 1
Instructors:
Dieter, K. (PI)
AFRICAAM 146: The Black Fantastic: Sci-Fi, Horror, and Fantasy in the Black Diaspora
Get Out. Black Panther. Lovecraft Country. From the gothic to the galactic, Black artists, writers, and filmmakers are revolutionizing sci-fi, horror, and fantasy on the page and screen. In this course, we will explore how Black creators harness supernatural, speculative, and fantastical modes of storytelling to reinterpret the past and dream up possible futures. Relying on frameworks like Gothic Blackness, Afrofuturism, and Black Quantum Futurisms as our guide, we'll time-travel through the Black speculative imaginary, moving from the cyberpunk dystopia of Janelle Monae's Dirty Computer to the haunted university halls in Mariama Diallo's Master. As we decode each text's approach to race, power, and resistance, we'll uncover how the Black Fantastic doesn't just reimagine genre conventions and tropes; it fundamentally challenges our understanding of time, space, and reality. Join us as we investigate how Black horror, science fiction, and fantasy excavate the past, confront the present, and imagine liberatory futures. Course texts include NK Jemisin's The Fifth Season, Mariama Diallo's Master, Nnedi Okorafor's Binti, and Janelle Monae's Dirty Computer.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Barrett, K. (PI)
AFRICAAM 176: Introduction to Themes in Black Studies I
Combining humanistic and social scientific approaches to the study of African, African American, and Global Black life, culture and philosophy, this course will also feature lectures by AAAS affiliates and leading scholars and public figures from beyond the University. Students will be introduced to the work of W.E.B. du Bois, Sylvia Wynter, Frantz Fanon, the Combahee River Collective, Toni Morrison, Achille Mbembe, and Antonio Benitez-Rojo, among many others. By reading key African, African American and Black thinkers from the era of Trans-Atlantic slavery to the present, this course will introduce students to the historical formation of African, African American, and Global Black identities, intellectual cultures, and political struggles in the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and beyond.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 4-5
Instructors:
Quayson, A. (PI)
AFRICAAM 180D: Designing Black Experiences (ENGR 180)
This discussion-rich course is for students to learn design thinking to more confidently navigate life and careers as members and allies of the Black community. This course will allow students to navigate identity while building community to uplift Black voices through design thinking tools to help leverage their experiences and gain a competitive edge. Students will gain a deeper understanding of intersectionality, how to create and cultivate alignment, and learn to effectively navigate life design schemas, ideas, and options.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
Instructors:
Webb, S. (PI)
AFRICAAM 191: Black History in Islam
This course is an introduction to the histories and cultures of black Muslim societies from the heartlands of Africa, the Atlantic world, and the Ottoman Empire to the arid landscapes of the Mediterranean Arab World and the Indian subcontinent. This seminar-style course will showcase the contributions of Black Muslims to the global transmission, circulation, and preservation of the centuries-old Islamic intellectual heritage. We will examine the knowledge networks, long-distance border crossing, community building, and place-making practices that have helped to sustain the transnational flow of ideas and intellectual exchanges between Black Muslims on the continent and the Global Black Diaspora. We will move beyond the narrow definition of scholarship that prioritizes written texts and authors educated in Western canons and institutions of learning alone. Throughout the quarter, we will study and engage with the primary texts and scholarship of Muslim scholars, thinkers, and 'organic i
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This course is an introduction to the histories and cultures of black Muslim societies from the heartlands of Africa, the Atlantic world, and the Ottoman Empire to the arid landscapes of the Mediterranean Arab World and the Indian subcontinent. This seminar-style course will showcase the contributions of Black Muslims to the global transmission, circulation, and preservation of the centuries-old Islamic intellectual heritage. We will examine the knowledge networks, long-distance border crossing, community building, and place-making practices that have helped to sustain the transnational flow of ideas and intellectual exchanges between Black Muslims on the continent and the Global Black Diaspora. We will move beyond the narrow definition of scholarship that prioritizes written texts and authors educated in Western canons and institutions of learning alone. Throughout the quarter, we will study and engage with the primary texts and scholarship of Muslim scholars, thinkers, and 'organic intellectuals' of African descent, most of whom did not study in European-language instruction but whose ideas shaped the past and present of Muslim societies in Africa and the Diaspora. Beyond the popular narrative of slavery and the social construction of blackness, we will ask how Black Muslims have deployed the Islamic discursive tradition in the struggle for Black racial liberation, social justice, civil rights campaigns, grassroots activism, emancipatory politics, and resilience in the face of oppression.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
Instructors:
Kassim, A. (PI)
AFRICAAM 193: Black and Brown: American Artists of Color (ARTHIST 293, CHILATST 293, CSRE 293)
This course explores the art history of African American and Latina/o/x artists in the United States, Latin America & the Caribbean. Focused on particular exhibition and collection histories, students will consider the artistic, social and political conditions that led Black and Brown artists to learn from each other, work together, and unite around issues of race, civil rights, immigration, and justice.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
Instructors:
Salseda, R. (PI)
AFRICAAM 195: Independent Study
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 2-5
Instructors:
Quayson, A. (PI)
;
Wilson, L. (PI)
AFRICAAM 200Z: Honors Thesis and Senior Thesis Research
Spring. Required for students writing an Honors Thesis. Optional for Students writing a Senior Thesis.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Dieter, K. (PI)
AFRICAAM 212: How We Free Us: Activism and Community
In this hybrid course students will examine activism through the lens of community. This course is part of the Community Engaged Learning Course curriculum in the Department of African & African American Studies and will introduce students to community-based organizing, volunteering, and activism. This course will focus on community-ties and how applied African American Studies can be harnessed as a liberatory practice in movements today. Class Organization: This course includes an in-person seminar held once a week and on-site community engagement with a community organization once a week.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
Instructors:
McNair, K. (PI)
AFRICAAM 217: Black Life, Culture, and the Emergence of the Field from Emancipation to the Present
Beginning in post-1865 and ending in the present-day, this hybrid course examines African American life, history, culture and the development of the field of African American Studies. This interdisciplinary course will explore various historical, political, social, and artistic themes that impact our understanding of Black life and identity. This course is designed for the high school dual- credit program in partnership with the Department of African & African American Studies and Stanford Digital Education.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-4
Instructors:
McNair, K. (PI)
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