printer friendly pageAFRICAAM 191B: African American Art (ARTHIST 191, CSRE 191)
This course explores major art and political movements, such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and #BlackLivesMatter, that have informed and were inspired by African American artists. Students will read pivotal texts written by Black artists, historians, philosophers and activists; consider how artists have contended with issues of identity, race, gender, and sexuality; and learn about galleries, collections, and organizations founded to support the field. Attendance on the first day of class is a requirement for enrollment.
Last offered: Spring 2021
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AFRICAAM 213: Culture and Revolution in Africa (COMPLIT 213, FRENCH 213E, HISTORY 243E)
This course investigates the relationship between culture, revolutionary decolonization, and post-colonial trajectories. It probes the multilayered development of 20th and 21st-century African literature amid decolonization and Cold War cultural diplomacy initiatives and the debates they generated about African literary aesthetics, African languages, the production of history, and the role of the intellectual. We will journey through national cultural movements, international congresses, and pan-African festivals to explore the following questions: What role did writers and artists play in shaping the discourse of revolutionary decolonization throughout the continent and in the diaspora? How have literary texts, films, and works of African cultural thought shaped and engaged with concepts such as "African unity" and "African cultural renaissance"? How have these notions influenced the imaginaries of post-independence nations, engendered new subjectivities, and impacted gender and generational dynamics? How did the ways of knowing and modes of writing promoted and developed in these contexts shape African futures?
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Seck, F. (PI)
AFRICAAM 218: Musics and Appropriation Throughout the World (CSRE 118D, MUSIC 118)
This course critically examines musical practices and appropriation through the amplification of intersectionality. We consider musics globally through recourse to ethnomusicological literature and critical race theories. Our approach begins from an understanding that the social and political contexts where musics are created, disseminated, and consumed inform disparate interpretations and meanings of music, as well as its sounds. Our goal is to shape our ears to hear the effects of slavery, colonialism, capitalism, nationalism, class, gender difference, militarism, and activism. We interrogate the process of appropriating musics throughout the world by making the power structures that shape privileges and exclusions audible.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AFRICAAM 226: Mixed-Race Politics and Culture (AMSTUD 152K, CSRE 152K, ENGLISH 152K)
Today, almost one-third of Americans identify with a racial/ethnic minority group, and more than 9 million Americans identify with multiple races. What are the implications of such diversity for American politics and culture? This course approaches issues of race from an interdisciplinary perspective, employing research in the social sciences and humanities to assess how race shapes perceptions of identity as well as political behavior in 21st-century U.S. Issues surrounding the role of multiculturalism, immigration, acculturation, racial representation, and racial prejudice in American society. Topics include the political and social formation of race; racial representation in the media, arts, and popular culture; the rise and decline of the "one-drop rule" and its effect on political and cultural attachments; the politicization of census categories and the rise of the multiracial movement. If you have any questions about enrollment or need a permission number, please contact Farrah Moreno (farrahm@stanford.edu).
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Elam, M. (PI)
AFRICAAM 254G: Black Magic: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Performance Cultures (AFRICAAM 154G, CSRE 154D, FEMGEN 154G, TAPS 154G, TAPS 354G)
In 2013, CaShawn Thompson devised a Twitter hashtag, #blackgirlmagic, to celebrate the beauty and intelligence of black women. Twitter users quickly adopted the slogan, using the hashtag to celebrate everyday moments of beauty, accomplishment, and magic. The slogan offered a contemporary iteration of an historical alignment: namely, the concept of "magic" with both Black people as well as "blackness." This course explores the legacy of Black magic--and black magic--through performance texts including plays, poetry, films, and novels. We will investigate the creation of magical worlds, the discursive alignment of magic with blackness, and the contemporary manifestation of a historical phenomenon. We will cover, through lecture and discussion, the history of black magic representation as well as the relationship between magic and religion. Our goal will be to understand the impact and history of discursive alignments: what relationship does "black magic" have to and for "black bodies"? H
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In 2013, CaShawn Thompson devised a Twitter hashtag, #blackgirlmagic, to celebrate the beauty and intelligence of black women. Twitter users quickly adopted the slogan, using the hashtag to celebrate everyday moments of beauty, accomplishment, and magic. The slogan offered a contemporary iteration of an historical alignment: namely, the concept of "magic" with both Black people as well as "blackness." This course explores the legacy of Black magic--and black magic--through performance texts including plays, poetry, films, and novels. We will investigate the creation of magical worlds, the discursive alignment of magic with blackness, and the contemporary manifestation of a historical phenomenon. We will cover, through lecture and discussion, the history of black magic representation as well as the relationship between magic and religion. Our goal will be to understand the impact and history of discursive alignments: what relationship does "black magic" have to and for "black bodies"? How do we understand a history of performance practice as being caught up in complicated legacies of suspicion, celebration, self-definition? The course will give participants a grounding in black performance texts, plays, and theoretical writings. *This course will also satisfy the TAPS department WIM requirement.*
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Robinson, A. (PI)
AFRICAAM 258: Black Feminist Theater and Theory (CSRE 258, FEMGEN 258X, TAPS 258)
From the rave reviews garnered by Angelina Weld Grimke's lynching play, Rachel to recent work by Lynn Nottage on Rwanda, black women playwrights have addressed key issues in modern culture and politics. We will analyze and perform work written by black women in the U.S., Britain and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics include: sexuality, surrealism, colonialism, freedom, violence, colorism, love, history, community and more. Playwrights include: Angelina Grimke, Lorriane Hansberry, Winsome Pinnock, Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan- Lori Parks, Ntozake Shange, Pearl Cleage, Sarah Jones, Anna DeVeare Smith, Alice Childress, Lydia Diamond and Zora Neale Hurston.)
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Brody, J. (PI)
;
Montgomery, W. (TA)
AFRICAAM 264: Crossing the Atlantic: Race Identity in the "Old" and"New" African Diasporas (COMPLIT 264, CSRE 265, FRENCH 264E)
In this course, we will think critically about what we have come to call the African diaspora. We will travel the world virtually while exploring a selection of classic and understudied texts, in order to interrogate the relationship between culture, race, gender and identity in the "old" and "new" African diasporas. From literary texts to popular culture, we will relate each weekly reading to a hot topic. Our goal is to think cross-culturally and cross-linguistically about the themes covered by putting exciting works in conversation. The diverse topics and concepts discussed will include race, class, gender, identity, sexuality, migration, Afro-Caribbean religions, performance, violence, the body, metissage, Negritude, Negrismo, multiculturalism, nationalism, Afropolitanism and Afropean identities.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Seck, F. (PI)
AFRICAAM 294: Black Brazil: Afro-Brazilian Music, Literature, and Art (CSRE 194, ILAC 194G)
More enslaved people from Africa were forced to Brazil than any other country and Brazil was the last country to abolish the practice of slavery in the Americas. How do these two facts impact the cultural history of Brazil? How and why was the country mythologized as a 'racial democracy' in the twentieth century? This class engages these questions to explore the origins, development, and centrality of Afro-Brazilian culture. We will immerse ourselves in the cities of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, explore samba and Carnaval, take a dive into syncretic religious practices such as Candomblé, observe dances like capoeira, and study literary and artistic expressions from an anti-racist perspective to gain a fuller picture of Brazilian society today. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Winterbottom, T. (PI)
;
Machado de Oliveira, M. (TA)
AFRICAST 46N: Show and Tell: Creating Provenance Histories of African Art (AFRICAAM 46N, HISTORY 46N)
Provenance refers to the chain of custody of a particular art object during its lifetime. Put another way, provenance refers to all the individuals, communities, and institutions who have owned (both legally and illegally), kept, stored, exhibited, displayed, managed, and sold an art object. Knowledge of provenance can both inflate and deflate the value of an art object and it can also shed light upon legal and ethical questions including assessing repatriation and restitution claims for African art objects. Furthermore, by telling the story of how a particular object moved through multiple pairs of hands, often over the course of centuries and across several continents, we gain nuanced appreciation of the social currency of artwork as well as of changing perceptions of aesthetic and monetary value, and insight into the extractive dynamics of colonialism and postcolonial global economies. For this class, you will have the unique opportunity to work first hand with an important African art collection in North America: the Richard H. Scheller Collection at Stanford University. You will select one object from the collection and create a detailed provenance history, documenting and detailing its origins, its movement across space and time, and its arrival to the Scheller collection in Silicon Valley. You will use archival materials from Scheller¿s collection, online databases and archives, and secondary literature. Your final project for the class will be to create a visual StoryMap that allows you to display your provenance history with narrative text and multimedia content. In this way, you will not only have completed a class assignment: you will also have constructed for posterity a remarkable hitherto unknown history of an important African art object.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
AFRICAST 58: Egypt in the Age of Heresy (AFRICAAM 58A, ARCHLGY 58, CLASSICS 58)
Perhaps the most controversial era in ancient Egyptian history, the Amarna period (c.1350-1334 BCE) was marked by great sociocultural transformation, notably the introduction of a new 'religion' (often considered the world's first form of monotheism), the construction of a new royal city, and radical departures in artistic and architectural styles. This course will introduce archaeological and textual sources of ancient Egypt, investigating topics such as theological promotion, projections of power, social structure, urban design, interregional diplomacy, and historical legacy during the inception, height, and aftermath of this highly enigmatic period. Students with or without prior background are equally encouraged.
Last offered: Autumn 2018
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
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