Undergraduate Program

A minimum of 19 points is required for the concentration. Minimum requirements are described below:

Core Requirements

Governed Electives

Majors must also complete "governed electives" from at least three departments, providing an interdisciplinary background in the field of African-American Studies.

Designated Area of Study

A Designated Area of Study, preferably within a distinct discipline (for example, history, politics, sociology, literature, anthropology, psychology, etc.) must also be completed. Students may also select courses within a particular geographical area or region or an interdisciplinary field of study.

• Any of the departmental disciplines (history, political science; sociology, anthropology, literature, art history; psychology, religion, music, etc.)
• Any of the pertinent area studies (African, Caribbean/Latin American, gender, etc.)

Please note that the major/concentrator is not allowed to “create” or “make up” a designated area of study without the direct approval of the director of undergraduate studies, and that such approval must be sought before the student has embarked on the course of designated area of study, and that such approval will be granted only in very rare and exceptional cases. For example, there conceivably could be a candidate for inclusion a Designated Area of Study that the student has labeled “Community Development and Empowerment in the African Diaspora,” which draws from courses in political science, sociology, history, etc., but only with permission from the director of undergraduate studies.

Under no circumstances should the major/concentrator hope to take a series of courses only later to “create” a Designated Area of Study around these courses.

AFRICAN AMERICAN AND AFRICAN DIASPORA STUDIES:  AFAS UN1001-001
Course Title:  Introduction to African American Studies
Instructor: Nyle Fort
Day/Time: TR 4:10pm - 5:25pm

Prerequisites: Students need to register for a section of AFAS UN1010, the required discussion section for this course.

From the arrival of enslaved Africans to the recent election of President Barack Obama, black people have been central to the story of the United States, and the Americas, more broadly. African Americans have been both contributors to, and victims of, this “New World” democratic experiment. To capture the complexities of this ongoing saga, this course offers an inter-disciplinary exploration of the development of African-American cultural and political life in the U.S. but also in relationship to the different African diasporic outposts of the Atlantic world.

The course will be organized both chronologically and thematically, moving from the “middle passage” to the present so-called “post-racial” moment—drawing on a range of classical texts, primary sources, and more recent secondary literature—to grapple with key questions, concerns, and problems (i.e. agency, resistance, culture, etc.) that have preoccupied scholars of African-American history, culture, and politics. Students will be introduced to a range of disciplinary methods and theoretical approaches (spanning the humanities and social sciences), while also attending to the critical tension between intellectual work and everyday life, which are central to the formation of African-American Studies as an academic field.

This course will engage specific social formations (i.e. migration, urbanization, globalization, etc.), significant cultural/political developments (i.e. uplift ideologies, nationalism, feminism, Pan-Africanism, religion/spirituality, etc.), and hallmark moments/movements (i.e. Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights movement, etc.). By the end of the semester, students will be expected to possess a working knowledge of major themes/figures/traditions, alongside a range of cultural/political practices and institutional arrangements, in African-American Studies.

AFRICAN AMERICAN AND AFRICAN DIASPORA STUDIES: UN 3936-001
Course Title:  Major Debates - The Long Black 1980’s
Instructor: Jafari Allen
Day/Time: Wed 2:10pm - 4:00pm

This course will explore major debates in Black Studies from the vantage of 'the long 1980s'. While questions of Black ‘community’ inclusion and naming, representation, political strategy, and resistance, for example, have long historic genealogies; the long 1980s is distinguished by an explosion of discourses transmitted through popular and scholarly media. This course will survey a number of these— with specific attention to how a newly re-emergent ‘African American Studies’ contributed to public intellectual life, thus re-shaping itself as a feature of US Academe. Faithful to the themes of the debates of the era, we will pay particular attention to the significance of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality in Black politics, culture(s), and society— tracing how Black scholars’, critics’, and artists’ (re)conceptions of ‘articulation,’ ‘intersectionality,’ ‘Afrocentrism,’’ hegemony,’ and ‘white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy," e.g., sought to explain and contextualize contemporary popular culture, and political realities like the effects of deindustrialization and dawning of neo-liberalism, “police brutality,” AIDS, Apartheid, crack, Reagan/Thatcher, and public policies launched to address the so-called “crisis of the Black family,” for example. Beginning with a brief look at genealogies of African American and African Diaspora Studies, we will take up several of its most enduring major debates through a survey of popular and scholarly literature, social theory, film, music, ethnography, and historiography. The course will require primary independent and group research, listening, and screenings.
 

AFRICAN AMERICAN AND AFRICAN DIASPORA STUDIES: UN 3943-001
Course Title: Senior Pro Seminar
Instructor: Farah J. Griffin
Day/Time: Tue 2:10pm - 4:00pm
AFAM Majors Only

This course is a seminar for seniors to either conduct a capstone project or to begin the research process for a Senior Thesis, which will be written in the Spring semester. This interdisciplinary course provides the necessary structure needed to complete either goal. This will be an interactive class in which students are required to participate and actively engage in each meeting. The classroom is designed to be a safe, respectful space in which the feedback given and received will be constructive and will assist students in working through the issues they may be experiencing with writing. Whether students will transition to academic or nonacademic spheres, this course is designed to help students cultivate effective writing and research skills and to develop oral presentation skills.
 

TOPICS IN THE BLACK EXPERIENCE: UN3930-001
Course Title:  Image Matters: Writing with photographs from the African Diaspora
Day/Time: Thur 2:10pm - 4:00pm
Instructor: Edwidge Danticat

"How should we understand the relationship between the family, the photograph, and the African diaspora?" asks the scholar Tina M. Campt in her 2012 book Image Matters. In this course, we will examine how some African American and African diaspora writers have used photographs or collaborated with photographers in writing poetry, fiction, essays, and criticism, expanding our understanding of their families, communities, and broader cultural and historical issues.

Students will "write with photographs" throughout the course and in midterm and final projects. They will develop skills in critically reading and interpreting written texts and visual imagery while exploring the intersection of literature and photography as a combined medium for storytelling and cultural expression. Students will enhance their writing skills by integrating photographs, their own and others', into their creative and analytical writing.
 

TOPICS IN THE BLACK EXPERIENCE: UN3930-002
Course Title:  Manifest Spirit: African Art and Spirituality
Day/Time: Thur 12:10pm - 2:00pm
Instructor: Rachel Grace Newman

This course is an exploration of West African spiritual and accompanying visual systems. Students will be asked to consider how African multisensory expressions of spirituality force us to reconsider what “art” means in an African context, particularly how African art is interwoven into society. Combining lectures and reading-based discussions, the class will determine what it means to distinguish between an inanimate “art object” or an animated spirit entity that has been made manifest in matter – wood, shell, metal, et cetera. The class does not adopt a survey approach. Rather, it hones in on specific phenomena in different ethnic groups: the BaKongo Dikenga (or Yowa Cross), the syncretism of Vodun in Benin and its neighboring countries, Orisha and ancestral veneration through the Egungun masquerade among the Yoruba, the mass theft of ancestral entities by the British Army in the Edo Kingdom, and masquerade and sacred architecture of the Dogon. The class will delve into the complexities of altar creation and maintenance, rites of passage, secret societies and knowledge systems, and masquerade. Given West Africa’s long history of contact with the rest of the world, we will also examine the syncretism of outside influences within Africa. The course will also ask how entities crafted for spiritual purposes are exhibited in museums and how they are antithetical to the life of works intended to be activated by the communities that created them. Further, it will examine the history of the formation of significant collections of African art, particularly those in former colonial centers, the current market for the sale of visual entities originally crafted for a sacred purpose, and issues of repatriation. Throughout the semester, we will look at installations of African art in New York. The class will culminate in student presentations, followed by a final research paper. The goal of the paper and the presentation is for students to do a deep dive into a topic of their choosing (to be approved by myself).

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES - SPRING 2024

African American Studies UN3001 - Section 001
     Sing a Black Girl's Song: The Non Fiction Writing of Ntozake Shange
Call Number: 14990   Points: 3
Day/Time: Monday, 2:10 p.m. - 4 p.m.
Instructor: Edwidge Danticut

This undergraduate seminar offers an in-depth exploration of the nonfiction work of the renowned African-American poet and playwright Ntozake Shange, whose archives are at Barnard College, her alma mater. Through readings, discussion, and visits to her archives, students will probe this lesser-examined aspect of Shange's oeuvre, including her essays on her life, the arts, food, and other artists and creators. This course invites participants to engage critically with Shange's essays and personal writings while delving into her archive.

Course Objectives:
Students will identify key themes and literary techniques in Shange's nonfiction and the historical and cultural context in which she wrote these works. We will examine how Shange's nonfiction contributes to her broader work and her perspectives on history, gender, feminism, and race as they intersect in her life as a Black woman artist. Students will develop critical thinking skills through close reading, analysis, and discussion of Shange's nonfiction and will improve their writing skills by composing reflections and essays on Shange's works. They will develop research skills and gain insights into Shange's creative process through firsthand engagement with Shange's archive at Barnard.

TOPICS IN THE BLACK EXPERIENCE - Section 001
     Finding Friends
African American Studies UN3930
Call Number: 14756  Points: 4
Section 001
Day/Time: Wednesday, 2:10 p.m. - 4 p.m.
Instructor: Farah Jasmine Griffin

This course examines the role of friendship in the creative and political lives and work of black American intellectuals, artists, and activists.  To the extent that we are able, we will seek to explore the friendships of less well-known figures as well. Together we will explore friendship as a site of creating and sustaining dimensions and definitions of self  that counter the roles society has often ascribed to black people. We will be guided by the following questions: To what extent has friendship offered a site of cultivating a sense of affirmation and  vision of possibility in a world that too often denies black people both?  Have friendships provided spaces for transcending  stereotypes and invisibility? We will also be attentive to the fraught nature of friendship as well.   Through readings, explorations of archival materials and group projects we will encounter complicated, necessary, and sometimes charged space of friendship and what it reveals about the individuals involved in them, as well as what those distinct relationships have to tell us about the broader contexts in which they exist. 

Students will work on individual as well as collaborative research projects and a portion of classes will be devoted to visiting nearby archives and in class research workshops. 

African American Studies UN3940 - Section 001
     Senior Thesis Seminar
Call Number: 14755 Points: 4
Day/Time: Thursday:  4:10 p.m. - 6 p.m.
Instructor: Megan French-Marcellin
Notes: AFAM Majors and Concentrators ONLY

The Senior Seminar will afford thesis writers the chance to workshop their idea, conduct research and/or interviews, work with the IRB protocols (if necessary), learn to work with archival materials, and perform other research activities prior to writing the thesis. Students who choose to write a capstone paper or conduct a capstone project can choose an elective course the following semester. The Thesis Seminar, conducted in the spring semester, is a workshop-oriented course for Senior Thesis writers organized around honing their writing skills while providing guidance to students in their field/disciplinary-specific projects. For example, a student may choose to write a historical biography of an artist while another may pursue a sociological study of the effects of mass incarceration on voting rights. The instructor of the Thesis Seminar, working with a faculty adviser (dependent on the specific field of inquiry in the thesis), will provide feedback and supervise the writing schedule of the students.