Summer 2021 Class Schedule
summer 2021 class Schedule
summer 2021 course descriptions
236-0-20 – Introduction to African American Studies
This course will be a focused examination of, essentially, the long black radical tradition. We will begin in the antebellum period and make our way to the contemporary moment. Topics to be discussed will include slavery, reconstruction, civil rights, black queer feminism, and activism. We will survey a range of authors and genres, including Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Alicia Garza through the literary genres of autobiography, novels, essays, and poetry.
250-0-20 – Race, Class and Gender
This course will introduce students to the importance of thinking race, class, and gender together, simultaneously. We will begin with key texts by notable black studies and black feminist scholars and lay out the foundations of why race, class, and gender are indispensable vectors of social classification. Additionally, we will rigorously consider critiques of such frameworks, developing skill in combating these critiques as well as nuancing our intersectional understandings in light of them. Authors to be read include Kimberlé Crenshaw, Jennifer Nash, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Brittney Cooper, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and more.
380-0-20 – Topics: "Hip-Hop Music and Film: The Golden Age"
This course will examine film and music produced during the Golden Era of Hip Hop (1985-1996). The goal is to better understand how a new genre unfolded from unique political economic circumstances associated with de-industrialization, the prison industrial complex, and neoliberalism following the Cold War. Students will be asked to tease out and problematize how race, gender, class, and sexuality were represented in landmark hip-hop films or albums. Much of our class time will be spent watching and listening to these works.