African-american and african studies
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- PLAP 370 - Racial Politics
- Instructor : Michael Smith
| African-American and African Studies
Course Offering Directory Spring 2005 (Please note: Listings are subject to change. Last updated: Nov. 11, 2004) AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND AFRICAN STUDIES AAS 100 – Black Nationalism (3) T 1300-1350 MCL 2008 Instructor: Claudrena Harold This course examines black nationalists’ protracted struggle for political autonomy, economic independence, and cultural self-definition in twentieth-century America. Major events to be discussed include the rise and fall of the Marcus Garvey Movement during the 1920s, the emergence of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam after the close of World War II, and the political and cultural upheavals in Afro-America during the Black Power era. Students will have the opportunity to explore the politics of a wide range of black radicals, including Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), and Assata Shakur. Scholarly investigations of black nationalism normally conclude with an analysis of the disintegration of the Black Power Movement in the early 1970s, but this course will also investigate the contemporary manifestations of black nationalism. Exploring diverse topics such as the Million Man March in 1995, the grassroots movement for the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the race consciousness articulated in the music of various hip-hop artists, students will investigate the continuing significance and visibility of black nationalism in American politics and culture. Required texts may include Tony Martin’s Race First, Ula Taylor’s The Veiled Garvey, William L. Van Deburg’s New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975, William W. Sales’ From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, and Timothy Tyson’s Radio Free Dixie: Robert Williams and the Roots of Black Power. Students will read an average of 150 pages per week. Grades will be based on class attendance and participation, two short essays, a midterm, and one fifteen-page paper. AAS 102 - Crosscurrents in the African Diaspora (4) TR 1230-1345 WIL 302 Instructor: Hanan Sabea This introductory course builds upon the histories of people of African descent in Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean surveyed in AAS 101. Drawing on disciplines such as Anthropology, History, Religious Studies, Political Science and Sociology, the course focuses on the period from the late 19th century to the present and is comparative in perspective. It examines the links and disjunctions between communities of African descent in the United States and in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. The course begins with an overview of AAS, its history, assumptions, boundaries, and topics of inquiry, and then proceeds to focus on a number of inter-related themes: patterns of cultural experience; community formation; comparative racial classification; language and society; family and kinship; religion; social and political movements; arts and aesthetics; and archaeology of the African Diaspora. AAS/ HIUS 336 – African-American History Since 1865 (3) MWF 1300-1350 CAB 311 Instructor: Claudrena Harold This course examines the major political, economic, and cultural developments in black America from the end of the Civil War to the present. Topics to be explored include blacks’ varied response to the rise of Jim Crow; the social and political upheavals brought about by the massive migration of Southern blacks to the industrial north during the First and Second World Wars; black radical politics during the Great Depression and New Deal era; the successes and failures of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements; and the continuing significance of race in American society. This course will explore the political careers of such noted black activists as Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan; however, significant attention will also be given to ordinary black women and men whose fights against racial and economic injustice led to the creation of a more democratic America. Required texts may include Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration, Tera Hunter’s To ‘Joy My Freedom, Kimberly Jones’ Alabama North, William L. Van Deburg’s New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975, Penny M. Von Eschen’s Race Against Empire, Charles Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, and Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic. Weekly reading assignments will average about 150-175 pages. Students’ grades will be based on class attendance, one short paper, and three exams AAS 406A/ HUIS 402 – Colloquium in African American History (3) T 1300-1530 Instructor: Reginald D. Butler Through the reading of contemporary and classic secondary literature and selective primary materials, this course will examine the significant developments in the history of African Americans to the Civil War. We will begin with an analysis of the role of Africa and Africans in the development of the Atlantic World. Our focus will then shift to consider the establishment of slavery in the British Colonies with particular emphasis on acculturation processes and African ethnicity, the temporal and spatial range of slave regimes, and the evolution of racial ideologies. The course then looks at slavery and freedom in the revolutionary, constitutional, and early republic eras with a focus on the role of slavery in the formation of a national identity, the economic, intellectual, and religious forces that under girded the Abolitionist movement, and the division of the nation into two societies, a free North and a slave South. The course will end with an examination of the mature plantation regimes of the Southern United States, the massive migration of slaves from the upper South to the cotton-producing states of Mississippi Alabama, and Georgia, the abolitionist movement, and the role of slavery in the Civil War. Course requirements include weekly reading assignments of 250 pages, short written responses to each week's readings, and a major research paper based on both primary and secondary materials AAS 406C – African Americans in Urban America (3) W 1300-1530 MIN 108 Instructor: Cheryl D. Hicks
M 1530-1800 CAB 132 Instructor: Corey D.B. Walker Why Marx? Why Now? In light of the massive geopolitical upheavals of 1989 and the economic hegemony of global capitalism in the 1990s, these two questions are particularly resonant for a seminar that seeks to radically rethink Marx and the Marxian legacy for the intellectual project of Critical Religious and Theological Studies. To this end, Marx, Politics, and Theology will interrogate some of the germinal texts by Marx - The German Ideology, Grundrisse, and Capital - in recasting the contemporary problematic of the relation between politics and theology. We will also consider selected texts by a number of theorists who work within the wake of Marx, most notably Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Enrique Dussel, and C.L.R. James. AAS 406E – Afro-Brazilian Civilization (3) MWF 1100-1150 CAB 224 Instructor: David Haberly
ANTHROPOLOGY ANTH 257 - Traditional Healing and Western Medicine in Africa (3) MWF 1000-1050 CAB 325 Instructor: Clare Terni Shamans. Witch-doctors. Mediums. Con artists. Soul-stealers. Visionaries. Cannibals. Are these words for the village sangomas and inyangas of South Africa? Or for the University-trained doctors in their long white coats? Through a variety of sources and media, this course explores the full spectrum of healing practice in Africa. We will pay particular attention to cultural constructions of "illness" and how people make decisions to seek care. We will also study the ways in which indigenous healing practices both resist and augment European treatments, and the political dimensions of 'health.' ANTHR 394 - Archeological Approaches to Chesapeake Slavery (3) W 1700-1930 CAB 330 Instructor: Fraser Nieman This course explores how archaeological evidence can be used to enhance our understanding of slavery and the slave-based society that evolved in the Chesapeake from the 17th through early-19th centuries. The course covers both archaeological methods and recent contributions to the historical and archaeological literatures on slavery. A central emphasis is a series of research projects that offer students the opportunity to use their newly acquired methodological and historical knowledge in the analysis of data from the Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery (http://www.daacs.org). The class format combines lecture, discussion, and computer workshops. Pre-requisite: prior coursework in archaeology. ANTH 565 - Creole Narratives (3) TR 1530-1645 CLK 102 Instructor: George Mentore We begin with 18th- and 19th-century Caribbean intellectual life. We do so from the perspective of European imperialism and its influences upon colonized values, slavery, race, class and color. We examine the persistence of these major themes through the 20th century, formalized in the battle of ideas between the elite of the mother country and the Creole upper classes. We will attempt to read the images of the Creole self and explore their claims for a crisis of identity. We will also focus on the so-called spiritual character of the Creole personality. We shall conclude by looking at the way in which the specifics of island culture have directed nation building and how they appear to have helped in the perpetuation of ideological and political dependencies. ART HISTORY ARTH/RELA 345 - African Art (3) TR 930-1045 CAB 210 Instructor: Benjamin Ray Each student will design an exhibition catalogue of African art (using MS Word) that will incorporate the results of the student's study of African art. The exhibitions will contain an introductory explanation of the exhibit's theme, selected images of African art objects, relevant field-context images, descriptive labels, and other explanatory textual materials. The images of African art will be taken from excellent collections at the Bayly Museum of the University of Virginia, the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, the Hampton University Museum, National Museum of African Art, and The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The course includes the following curricular components: a brief history of African art studies; African ritual and cosmology; analysis of African art exhibition catalogues; library research on selected art objects; the exhibition of African art in museum contexts; and the commercial treatment of African art. The aim of the course is to create exhibitions of African art that are true to the objects in their own setting while communicating effectively to a Western audience unfamiliar with African art. AMERICAN STUDIES AMST 201A - Whiteness: Color and Consciousness (3) 1400-1515 MW BRN 328 Instructor: Pensri Ho AMST 202 - Rural Poverty in Our Time (3) W 1530-1720 CHM 402 Instructor: Grace Hale This course will use an interdisciplinary format to explore the history of non-urban poverty in the American South from the 1930s to the present. Weaving together the social histories of poor people, the political history of poverty policies, and the history of representations of poverty, the course follows historical cycles of attention and neglect: rural poverty during the Great Depression, rural poverty from the war on poverty to the Reagan revolution, and rural poverty in the new Gilded Age, the present. In each section, we will examine the relationship between representations (imagining poverty), policies (alleviating poverty), and results (the effects of those representations and policies on the economic, political, and psychological status of poor people). Sources will include oral history collections, films, photographs, music, non-fiction narratives, government reports, and histories. Requirements include a midterm, a final, two short papers, and twenty hours of volunteer work with an area non-profit working with poor people. ENGLISH
MW 930-1045 CAB 215
MW 1400-1515 BRN 330 Instructor: K. Ian Grandison [Description taken from Spring 2004 COD] A student-centered, reading, seeing, discussion, and communication course, we consider the ways in which identity politics are implicated spatially in built environments. Focusing on how the campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities were shaped by—and shaped—the struggle over African-American education particularly during the Jim Crow Period, we explore built environments as arenas of cultural conflict and negotiation. How do built environments such as college campuses assign and assert the “proper” place of individuals and groups in social hierarchies? How do subordinated groups resist these processes? From the uncomfortable union of “agriculture” and “industry” and “education”—such as connoted by the label “Cow School” for land-grant institutions—to the cultural uses of gothic architecture in avowing the high status of “Ivy League” institutions, we open up discourse on built environments to engage the politics that circumscribe built environments. We will tease out working concepts and methods that help de-center the paradigm of interpreting built environments art-historically—in relation to rigorously policed canons of accepted types and styles. This will be accomplished through discussion of short readings drawn from within and beyond the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and environmentalism and through occasional field trips, workshops, and lectures. In addition to studying readings in time for class discussion, students will be also required to complete two quizzes, four group exercises, and a semester long group-project. The course will help students engage built environments by integrating knowledge gained from experiencing them with our senses, from studying them by mapping and diagramming spatial relationships, and from interrogating primary and secondary written and oral accounts.ENAM 482 - Disenfranchised Voices (3) TR 930-1045 PV8 108 Instructor: Marion Rust "Disenfranchised": African American, Native American, female, spiritual nonconformist, indentured servant, youth. "Narrative": poetry, captivity narrative, criminal narrative, spiritual autobiography, feminist theory,musical drama, slave narrative. In this class, we will read work by escaped captives, religious subversives, con men, anonymous congregations, abused wives, midwives, black seamen and Native American preachers. Possible authors include Anne Hutchinson, Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Olaudah Equiano, Martha Ballard, Abigail Abbot Bailey, Samson Occom, Sarah Pierpont Edwards, Phyllis Wheatley, Judith Sargent Murray and Stephen Burroughs. Requirements consist of active preparation and participation, a final research paper of about 15 pages, and at least two short presentations on assigned readings. ENAM 582 - Fictions of Black Identity (3) TR 1100-1215 MIN 130 Instructor: Lisa Woolfork [Description taken from Spring 2004 COD.] This senior seminar will explore the dual meaning of the title "Fictions of Black Identity." The first implication suggests the literary inventions (novels, essays, critical works) that address the meanings of blackness in an American context. The second meaning is heavily invested in the first: that Black identity is a fiction, not necessarily in the sense of falsity, but in its highly mediated, flexible, and variable condition. Questions to consider include: how does one make and measure Black identity? Can one be phenotypically White and still be Black? What is the value of racial masquerade? What does it mean to be legitimately Black? Readings include, but are not limited to, McBride's The Color of Water, Walker's Black, White, and Jewish, Beatty's White Boy Shuffle, and a range of critical essays. Mandatory assignments include weekly response papers, comparative essays, leading class discussion, midterm and final exams. ENGN/ ENMC 482 - African-American Drama (3) TR 1230-1345 BRN 332 Instructor: Lotta Lofgren FRENCH FREN 326 - African Literature and Culture (3) TR 1400-1515 CAB 247 Instructor: Kandioura Drame This course will explore aspects of African literatures and cultures. It will focus on selected issues of special resonance in contemporary African life. Oral literature and its continuing impact on all other art forms. Key issues in French colonial policy and its legacy in Africa: language, politics, education. The course will examine the image of the postcolonial state and society as found in contemporary arts, painting, sculpture, music, and cinema. Selections from painters and sculptors like Chéri Samba (Zaire), Ousmane Sow, Younousse Sèye (Senegal), Wéréwéré Liking (Cameroun), including such popular icons as Mamy Wata and forms such as Souwere glass painting; from musicians like Youssou Ndour (Senegal), Cheb Khaled (Algeria), Seigneur Rochereau, Tchala Muana (Zaire), Salif Keita (Mali), and Cesaria Evora (Cape Verde); from Mande, Peul, and Kabyle oral literature in French translation; from filmmakers D. D. Mambety, O. Sembène, G. Kaboré, Dani Kouyaté, Moussa Sène Absa. Students should keep in mind that in addition to the reading assignments, a class visit to the National Museum of African Art in Washington will be required. The final grade will be based on contribution to discussions, a mid-term exam, a paper, and a final exam. HISTORY
TR 1230-1345 CAB 345 Instructor: John Mason HIAF 202, Africa since 1800, explores the history of Africa from the decline of the Atlantic slave trade to the present. Our goal is to examine the historical roots of the continent's current circumstances, both good and bad. We will look at the slave trade and its consequences, the European conquest of most of the African continent, African resistance to colonial rule, and the reestablishment of African independence. The course concentrates on three regions: West Africa, especially Nigeria; Central Africa, especially the Congo and Rwanda; and southern Africa, especially South Africa. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which colonialism affected ordinary Africans and with the various strategies that Africans employed to resist, subvert, and accommodate European domination. Course materials include novels, autobiographies, scholarly works, music, and films. HIAF 202 is an introductory course and assumes no prior knowledge of African history. HIAF 305 History of West Africa (3) TR 1530-1645 CAB 345 Instructor: James Lafleur HIAF 305 explores the political, social, cultural, and environmental history of people living in West Africa from earliest times to the present.Though the course perspective emphasizes West Africans’ substantial contributions to historical developments elsewhere – in other regions of Africa as well as in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas – we will keep our focus on people and historical change within the region. Doing so is not only proper to the course content, but also prudent. This “part” of Africa is already by itself physically huge (only somewhat smaller than the continental United States) and therefore boasts great ecological diversity; and was (and continues to be) home to people speaking a dizzying number of languages and thinking of themselves not as belonging to the region but instead to communities with distinctive, and distinctly historical, traditions.The majority of course readings will be journal articles and book excerpts (to be made available on Toolkit). In addition, we are likely to use the following books in their near-entirety: Adu Boahen, Topics in West African History
Course requirements include: active participation in biweekly in-class discussions; four map quizzes; two mid-term exams; and a three-hour final exam. HIAF 404 - Independent Study In exceptional circumstances and with the permission of a faculty member any student may undertake a rigorous program of independent study designed to explore a subject not currently being taught or to expand upon regular offerings. Independent Study projects may not be used to replace regularly scheduled classes. Enrollment is open to majors or non-majors. HIAF 501 - Politics of Poverty in Africa (3) TR 1400-1515 CAB 345 Instructor: John Mason What's wrong with Africa? The question is intentionally provocative. It reflects a view of Africa that is reproduced daily on television, in magazines and newspapers, and even in movies: teenagers waving machine guns in the air, babies with swollen bellies and pencil-thin limbs, the devastation of Aids, the bleak, unending poverty... This is the Africa that many people think that they know. The image is not so much false as it is grossly incomplete. Africa is by no means a continent-wide disaster area. But there is enough truth in these images of human suffering to cause Africans and non-Africans alike to ask, What's wrong with Africa? There are no simple answers to this question. HIAF 501 is an introduction to the complex task of exploring the roots of Africa's multiple crises. The course looks at the problem from a variety of perspectives. We will examine both internal factors and Africa's relations with the rest of the world. We will read novels, journalism, polemics, and scholarly analyses by both African and non-African writers. At the end of the semester, students will write a paper in which they themselves investigate some aspect of the problem. HIEU 401 - The Atlantic World, 1700-1833 (4) W 1300-1530 CAB 426 Instructor: Maya Jasanoff The eighteenth-century Atlantic world was a place of opportunity, violence, discovery, danger, and tragedy. Cultures mixed, often by force; fortunes were made and lost; and buccaneers, slaves, entrepreneurs, pilgrims, and settlers brought new societies, including our own, into being. This seminar will explore the links between Britain, North America, the Caribbean, and West Africa, during an age of transformation. Focusing on the topics of slavery, migration, and national identities, we will look at specific regions around the Atlantic and consider them in wider global context. How does an Atlantic perspective affect the way we think about American or British history? We will consider this and other questions using a range of materials: memoirs, maps, images, travel accounts, and scholarly histories. At a time when America's relations with Britain and Europe are under intense pressure, understanding our shared Atlantic history seems more relevant than ever. Class will be discussion-based. Students will be asked to write one short essay (4-5 pp.) and one longer essay (10-12 pp.) on a subject of their choice. Readings (approximately 150-200 pp. per week) will include: Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America; Linda Colley, Britons; Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive; and Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative…. HIST 330 South Atlantic Migrations (3) MW 1530-1645 CAB 119 Instructor: Pablo Davis Throughout its history, the South Atlantic region (Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia on the mainland; Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean) has experienced enormous, sometimes wrenching, often creative, and always significant movements of people. Native American life, European settlement, African immigration (most of it involuntary), and the forced exodus of Cherokee and other peoples are all among the most important movements prior to the twentieth century. In the past hundred-plus years, Black and White northward migration; the Cuban expatriate community; Puerto Rican migration to the mainland, and other Caribbean and Latin American immigration have transformed the cultural, social, economic, and political life of the South Atlantic (not to mention the US as a whole). Increasingly, movement has assumed more complex shapes, at times circular. The course amounts to a collective exploration of why people have moved within, into, and out of the South Atlantic region, and how it has mattered, with particular focus on the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. HIST 519 African Ethnicity in the Atlantic World (3) W 1530-1800 Instructor: James Lafleur HIST 519 is a reading and discussion course that explores the special intellectual problems and potential of applying historical rigor to the topic of African ethnicity in the Atlantic era. “Ethnicity” is a conceptual term that comes from the social sciences, and marks an individual’s sense of belonging to a group of people. Normally in the social sciences, and in popular thinking, ethnic identity is considered to be immutable and invulnerable to alteration. This stress on continuity rather than change has been particularly tenacious in popular thinking and academic discourse about the ethnicity of Africans, who are commonly thought of as “traditional” (and, polemically, as “backward” or “stuck in the past”). In contrast, descriptions of the ethnicity of African communities on this side of the Atlantic (and particularly in this country) have tended to underestimate the remarkable degree to which persons of African descent continued to consider themselves to belong to specific ethnic communities of their ancestral homelands and the significance such ethnic notions might have played in the shaping of New World history. A list of prospective “core” materials includes: David Eltis, David Richardson, Stephen D. Behrendt, and Herbert S. Klein, eds., The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM Set and Guidebook; Michael Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South; and Sidney Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective. HIST 519 is a reading and discussion course that requires that students have the ability, and are motivated, to work independently. Students will find that the majority of their efforts are spent outside of the classroom as they prepare for weekly meetings (read, reflect, and formulate ideas to contribute). All students are expected to come to class meetings completely prepared to discuss course readings in an intelligent and collegial manner. Additionally, every student will write a research paper (expected to be in the range of some 15 pages, but in no case longer than 25 pages) on the topic of their choice, within the broad thematic/geographical parameters of this course. HIUS 100 - Brown v. Board of Education (3) M 1300-1530 CAU 112 Instructor: Gordon Hylton This seminar explores the legal and cultural significance of the United States Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education which declared unconstitutional mandatory racial segregation in schools. The course also focuses on the more general role of the Supreme Court in the history of race relations in the United States. The first portion of the seminar will explore the Supreme Court’s treatment of race and racial discrimination in the century leading up to 1954. After examining the Brown case in some detail, it will then focus on the legacy of Brown in the fifty years since the decision. Readings will be a combination of judicial decisions, legal briefs and arguments, and secondary scholarly works. The primary texts will be Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights and Richard Kluger, Simple Justice, 2nd ed. HIUS 309 Civil War and Reconstruction (3) TR 930-1045 WIL 301 Instructor: Michael Holt Through lectures and readings this course will address the following questions. Why did the North win and the South lose the Civil War? What was the purpose of Reconstruction after the war and what impact did it have on the post-war South? Why did Reconstruction ultimately fail? My larger purpose in examining these years, however, is to assess the impact of the Civil War on American society and politics and to challenge the traditional idea that the Civil War was a fundamental turning point or watershed in American history. The course will be organized in three lecture meetings a week without formal discussion sections. Student grades will be based on a midterm, an 8-10 page paper on assigned course reading, and a comprehensive final examination. Readings should average about 230 pages a week. HIUS 324 - 20th Century South (3) MW 1300-1350 PHS 204 Instructor: Grace Hale This course examines the broad history of the American South in the twentieth century, with special emphasis on racial violence, the creation of segregation, class and gender relations within the region, the cultural and economic interdependence of black and white southerners, and the Civil Right Movement and its aftermath. Sources examined will include film, fiction, and music as well as more traditional historical sources like newspapers and court opinions. Students interested in American Studies, African American Studies, and Gender Studies are also welcome. Grading: midterm 25%; paper (5-7 pp) 25%; final exam 30%; participation in discussion sections and attendance at film and documentary screenings 20% HIUS 367 - History of the Civil Rights Movement (3) TR 1400-1450 WIL 402 Instructor: Julian Bond This course will examine the origins, philosophies, tactics, events, personalities and consequences of the southern civil rights movement from 1900 to the mid-‘1960s. The movement, largely composed of grass-roots unknowns, was based on a culture of resistance instilled by racially restrictive laws and customs institutionalized by the resistant white South following the demise of Reconstruction. By employing a variety of tactics, at the end of the ‘60s decade, it had won impressive victories against state-sanctioned discrimination. Readings, lectures and videos will be the basis for the final examination. Students will be required to write two short papers. The final grade will be determined on the basis of the two papers (25% each), the final examination (30%), and discussion section participation (20%). HIUS 401 - The 60s in Stereo: The Johnson Years (4) W 1530-1800 PV8 103 Instructor: Kent B Germany In the 1960s America faced unprecedented challenges and opportunities. At home, the struggle for civil rights, a minimum wage, full employment -- in short, a greater society -- politicized a new generation, bringing many into the streets. Abroad, the Cold War with the Soviet Union reached the brink of a nuclear exchange while the strategy of containing communism led to the deaths of over 50,000 servicemen in Vietnam. Although each would wield power in his own way, presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson both understood the unusual nature of their time and chose to create an extensive historical record of what they did in the White House. Between them these presidents secretly recorded over 1,000 hours of meetings, monologues and telephone conversations, a collection of material that provides an unparalleled view into the workings of the American government at the highest levels. This semester students will be introduced to the Johnson tapes. Students will engage a wide variety of source material ranging from secondary sources, traditional primary sources, to multimedia sources and the tapes themselves to discuss historical methods, the evolution of historical interpretation, and the fragility of primary sources. What are the strengths and weaknesses of these once secret tapes as historical sources? The goal of the course is to give students the tools they need to employ these remarkable sources in a research paper on the Johnson era. HIUS 401 - Welfare in 20th Century America (4) M 1530-1800 CAB 426 Instructor: Ethan Sribnick This seminar examines the history of social welfare policy and the development of the American welfare state. Students are expected to investigate the social, legal, political or intellectual history of one aspect of welfare policy using primary sources and produce a paper of 25 to 30 pages in length. In addition, students will be required to complete a short essay (5 –7 pages) on secondary sources and several other short assignments. Readings will expose students to the history of the U.S. welfare state and various explanations for its unique development. Assigned works will include James T. Patterson, America’s Struggle Against Poverty in the Twentieth Century; Ellen Ryerson, The Best Laid Plans: America’s Juvenile Court Experiment; Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America; along with several other articles and book chapters. Approximately 150 to 200 pages of reading will be required for the first five weeks. For the remainder of the course, students will focus on their research and writing. Students are expected to participate actively in class discussions and consultations with the instructor. Grading will be determined as follows: participation-25%, essay on secondary sources-10%, prospectus and bibliography-15%, final paper-50%. This class will fulfill the CLAS second writing requirement, and the History department 400-level seminar requirement. HIUS 401 - African Americans in the Civil War (4) R 1530-1800 CAB 426 Instructor: Andre Fleche Although the Civil War represents a central event in African American history, much of the scholarship of the period remains devoted to the experiences of white participants. This Major’s Seminar seeks to close that gap by asking advanced undergraduate students in history to develop an original research paper on African Americans in the Civil War. We will use the lens of military history to examine issues of race during the war years by considering issues as diverse as African American soldiers, discrimination and activism within the army, military policy toward slaves, civilians, and freedmen, women’s roles in camp, and post-war commemorations of black service. After 4-5 weeks of shared readings in relevant scholarship, students will embark on an independent research project culminating in a 25 page paper. HIUS 401 - Southern Home Front (4) T 1530-1800 CAB B020 Instructor: K. Ray The latest generations of Civil War scholarship have employed interpretative structures more social in orientation. Historians have addressed older questions about military objectives, to be sure, but they also have posed questions of increasing complexity regarding national identity and political development, the role of the economy, and changes in gender, class and race relations among the people who created and sustained the conflict. In order to acquire these insights, historians have had to account for the experiences of all people who participated in the war. This seminar will allow students to explore some of the more recent scholarly trends before posing new questions of their own. Specifically, we will spend the first seven weeks reading and discussing secondary literature, and using it to organize research projects that will culminate in a 25-30 page paper. Possible topics include: community division in the secession crisis; the political leaders who shaped the new Confederate nation; the impact of the war on local economies; the women who served at the front lines (as nurses, cooks, and spies) and at home (as mothers, farmers, and laborers); and the enslaved and free black communities who exploited opportunities throughout the crisis to improve their position. The second half of the semester will consist of independent meetings with the instructor and self-guided research and writing, with periodic classes to discuss research ideas and finished papers. Students will be evaluated primarily on the papers they write, but performance in class discussions will also factor into final grades. HIUS 403 Documenting the Civil Rights Era (4) R 1300-1530 RFN 211 Instructor: William Thomas Permission of the Instructor Required. Students in this course will examine the archival film footage from two Virginia television stations and develop a documentary film for public television around these valuable resources. Students will be expected to contribute to a highly creative enterprise and work together toward a common goal. The course will include readings on the civil rights era and important documentary films, including Eyes on the Prize, Standing in the Shadow of Motown, A Change Was in the Air, Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, The Murder of Emmett Till, and George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire. Students will examine documentary films as a genre of historical interpretation as well as produce one of their own. This course is specially designed with support from the Mead Endowment Fund and the Seven Society, and will be an opportunity for students to work together on an exciting collaborative production. Technical skills are not necessary for this course--the course is aimed for students with creative energy, deep interest in the subject, excellent writing and communication abilities, creative talents, and diverse experiences. MUSIC
MUSI 208 – American Roots Music (3) TR 1100-1215 WIL 301 Instructor: Richard Will Scholarly and critical study of music of the Americas, with attention to interaction of music, politics, and society. Specific topics announced in advance. Prerequisite: No previous knowledge of music required. MUSI 209 – African Music (3) MW 1400-1515 MRY 209 Instructor: Heather Maxwell No description available. MUSI 212 - History of Jazz (3) MW 1300-1530 WIL 402 Instructor: Scott DeVeaux No previous knowledge of music required. Survey of jazz music from before 1900 through the stylistic changes and trends of the twentieth century; important instrumental performers, composers, arrangers, and vocalists. MUSI 309 - Performance in Africa (4) TR 1530-1620 OCH 107 Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk Explores music/dance performance in Africa through reading, hands-on workshops, discussion, and audio and video examples. The course covers both "traditional" and "popular" styles, through discussion and a performance lab. Prerequisite: Instructor permission. *Must also enroll in MUSI 369 MUSI 369 - African Drumming and Dance (2) TR 1715-1915 OCH 107 Instructor: Michelle Kisliuk *Must also enroll in MUSI 309 MUSI 369C - Afro-Pop Ensemble (2) MW 1600-1800 OCH B018 Instructor: Heather Maxwell
TR 1230-1345 OCH S008 Instructor: Heather Maxwell No description available. POLITICS
PLAP 370 - Racial PoliticsTR 1230-1345 CAB 216 Instructor: Lynn Sanders Examines how attributions of racial difference have shaped American politics. Topics include how race affects American political partisanship, campaigns and elections, public money, public opinion, and American political science. Prerequisite: One course in PLAP or instructor permission. PLAP 382 - Civil Liberties and Civil Rights (3) MN 1300-1350 MRY 209 Instructor: David Klein PLCP 212 - Politics of Developing Areas (3) MW 900-950 WIL 301 Instructor: Robert Fatton PLCP 581 - Politics of Sub-Saharan Africa (3) M 1300-1530 CAB 130 Instructor: Robert Fatton This course is not open to students who have taken PLCP 381. Studies the government and politics of sub-Saharan Africa. Includes the colonial experience and the rise of African nationalism; the transition to independence; the rise and fall of African one-party states; the role of the military in African politics; the politics of ethnicity, nation- and state-building; patromonialism and patron-client relations; development problems faced by African regimes, including relations with external actors; and the political future of Southern Africa. Prerequisite: Some background in comparative politics and/or history of Africa. PLIR - Ethics and Human Rights in West Africa (3) MW 1100-1150 MIN 125 Instructor: Michael Smith
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