Registration for the Fall 2024 semester will begin on Tuesday, April 2, 2024 and runs through Friday, April 12, 2024. Please be sure to check your PAWS account to determine when you are eligible to register.
IMPORTANT LINKS
Academic Advisement Information & Tips to prepare for registration
General African American Studies Major Overview and Requirements
Summer 2024 Course List
| Course | Title | Day/Time | Start Date | End Date | Session | Instructor | Class Number | Core College | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AAS 179-201 | AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY-1865 (crosslisted with HIS 179) | Asynchronous online | 6/10/2024 | 7/11/2024 | Session 2 (1st 5 -week session) | Chris Fisher | 60161 | Race and Ethnicity; Historical Perspectives | ||||
| AAS 252-101 | GENDER, RACE & CULTURAL PRODUCTION (crosslisted with WGS 252-101) | Asynchronous online | 5/20/2024 | 6/7/2024 | Session 1 (3 week mini-session) | Zakiya Adair | 60040 | Race and Ethnicity; Gender and Sexuality | ||||
| AAS 252-201 | GENDER, RACE & CULTURAL PRODUCTION (crosslisted with WGS 252-201) | Asynchronous online | 6/10/2024 | 7/11/2024 | Session 2 (1st 5 -week session) | Zakiya Adair | 60034 | Race and Ethnicity; Gender and Sexuality | ||||
| AAS 338-101 | AFRICAN LITERATURE (crosslisted with HGS 270-101 and LIT 338-101) | Asynchronous online | 5/20/2024 | 6/7/2024 | Session 1 (3 week mini-session) | Mindi McMann | 60168 | Race and Ethnicity; Global, and LVPA | ||||
| AAS 353-301 | ADV. CRIMINOLOGY RACE & CRIME (crosslisted with CRI-352-201) | Asynchronous online | 6/10/2024 | 7/11/2024 | Session 2 (1st 5 -week session) | Michael Mitchell | 60160 | Race and Ethnicity; BSCP |
Fall 2024 Course List
| Course | Title | Days | Time | Facil ID | Instructor | Class Number | College Core | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AAS 101 | INTRO TO AFRICAN AMERICAN STUD | Tues-Fri | 2:00-3:20pm | SOCI323 | Zakiya Adair | 82427 | Race and Ethnicity | ||
| AAS 150-01 | INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL JUSTICE (crosslisted with WGS 150-01) | Mon-Thurs | 9:30-10:50am | SOCI225 | Winnifred Brown-Glaude | 82421 | Race and Ethnicity; Gender and Sexuality | ||
| AAS 150-02 | INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL JUSTICE (crosslisted with WGS 150-02) | Mon-Thurs | 11:00am-12:20pm | tbd | Winnifred Brown-Glaude | 82423 | Race and Ethnicity; Gender and Sexuality | ||
| AAS 179 | AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY to 1865 (crosslisted with HIS 179) | Mon-Thurs | 9:30-10:50am | SOCI228 | Mekala Audain | 82437 | Race and Ethnicity; Historical Perspectives | ||
| AAS 180-01 | AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY 1865 TO PRESENT (crosslisted with HIS 180-01) | Tues-Fri | 9:30-10:50am | SOCI228 | Chris Fisher | 82438 | Race and Ethnicity; Historical Perspectives | ||
| AAS 180-02 | AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY 1865 TO PRESENT (crosslisted with HIS 180-02) | Tues-Fri | 11:00am-12:20pm | SOCI228 | Chris Fisher | 82439 | Race and Ethnicity; Historical Perspectives | ||
| AAS 351 | ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL AFRICA (crosslisted with HIS 351) | Mon-Thurs | 3:30-4:50pm | SOCI228 | Matt Bender | 82440 | Race and Ethnicity; Global; Historical Perspectives | ||
| AAS 363-01 | SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE (crosslisted with CRI 363-01) | Tues-Fri | 2:00-3:20pm | SOCI328 | Michael Mitchell | 82433 | Race and Ethnicity | ||
| AAS 363-02 | SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE (crosslisted with CRI 363-02) | Tues-Fri | 3:30-4:50pm | SOCI328 | Michael Mitchell | 82434 | Race and Ethnicity | ||
| AAS 371 | TOPICS IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LIT: Appropriating Blackness - From the Kardashians to K-Pop (crosslisted with LIT 371) | Mon-Thurs | 9:30-10:50am | BLIS228 | Cassandra Jackson | 82707 | Race and Ethnicity | ||
| AAS 375 | BLACK FEMINIST THOUGHT (crosslisted with WGS 365) | Tues-Fri | 11:00am-12:20pm | SOCI323 | Zakiya Adair | 82424 | Race and Ethnicity; Gender and Sexuality; Belief Systems | ||
| AAS 378 | AFRICAN AMER LITERATURE, 1920-1980 (crosslisted with LIT 378) | Mon-Thurs | 3:30-4:50pm | BLIS228 | Samira Abdur-Rahman | 82706 | Race and Ethnicity; LVPA |
AAS Course Descriptions
AAS 101 / Introduction to African American Studies
This course is interdisciplinary and is structured chronologically and thematically. Intersectionality serves as a foundational theory and mode of analysis in this course and thus every section will examine how gender, sexuality and class inform one another, and how they impact the experiences of African Americans. Students enrolled in this course do not need any prior experience in African American Studies and there are no prerequisites.
AAS 150 / Introduction to Social Justice
This introductory course examines how racism, classism, sexism, ableism and other patterns of inequality intersect, and thus create barriers to the realization of a more equal and just society. The course will begin with a theoretical examination of what we mean by justice, social justice and why these matter. Students will then examine the social constructions of gender, race, and sexuality and how they are shaped by particular contexts, times, and places. Using an intersectional framework, the course will then examine pressing current social justice issues such as poverty, race and incarceration, immigration, etc. and how the intersectionality of social identities and forces amplify the impact of these issues on oppressed populations. Students will examine strategies to create change, including organizing, campaigns, and advocacy. Crosslisted with WGS 150.
AAS 179 / African American History to 1865 (Summer 2024; Fall 2024)
How do anthropologists learn about people and the worlds in which they live when they can’t talk with those people or observe their day-to-day activities? Archaeology is the sub-discipline of anthropology that explores what it means to be human by examining the material things that people made, modified, and left behind. Students in this course will learn to explain how archaeologists use the material remains of human activities to understand past human relationships, behaviors, and beliefs. Simultaneously, they will grow to appreciate how interpretations and presentations of the past affect people living today. Crossslisted with HIS 179.
AAS 180 / African American History 1865 to Present
An examination of the history of African Americans from the end of slavery in the United States to the civil rights revolution of 1950s and 1960s. The course is designed to explore the history of African Americans since the Reconstruction and their contributions to the civil rights revolution of the present era. and beliefs. Crossslisted with HIS 180.
AAS 252 / Gender, Race, & Cultural Production (Summer Session 1, 2)
This course provides an overview of the various performance genre made popular in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century by African Americans. The course will make explicit connections between black diasporic cultural production and intellectualism during the period known as the Harlem Renaissance. Crosslisted with WGS 252.
AAS 338 / African Literature (Summer Session 1)
This course focuses on literature produced in Africa from the era of European imperialism through the present. LIT/AAS 338 will focus on specific topics, regions, nations, or traditions within African literature. This course will survey African writings in English against a backdrop of colonialism, neocolonialism, and globalization. Crosslisted with LIT 338.
AAS 351 / Ancient and Medieval Africa
This introductory course surveys ancient and medieval African history through the eyes of male and female royalty, archaeologists, peasants, religious leaders and storytellers. While the course reconstructs the great civilizations of ancient Africa including Egypt, Zimbabwe, Mali, and others, it is not primarily focused on kings and leaders. Rather, the course explores how ordinary Africans ate, relaxed, worshiped, and organized their personal and political lives. Crosslisted with HIS 351.
AAS 353 / Advanced Criminology: Race & Crime (Summer Session 2)
A critical examination of the correlation between race and crime in America. The course will focus on four major areas: race and the law, race and criminological theory, race and violent crime, and myths and facts about race and crime. Through critical examination of readings and official statistics, students will come to understand the complexity of the relationship between race and crime within the American Criminal Justice System and broader social context. Crosslisted with CRI 352.
AAS 363 / School to Prison Pipeline
The school-to-prison pipeline (SPP) trend involves a set of disciplinary measures, typically beginning in the classroom, which disproportionately place primarily youth of color on pathways to incarceration rather than institutions of higher education. Youth, primarily students of color, experience ‘ubiquitous criminalization’ from “a system in which schools, police, probation officers, families, community centers, the media, businesses, and other institutions systematically treat young people’s everyday behaviors as criminal activity (Rios, 2011, p. xiv). Through an interdisciplinary and critical lens, we will examine the construction of this pipeline and its relation to racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequalities in U.S. public schooling that affect our communities. Crosslisted with CRI 363.
AAS 371 / Topics in African American Literature
This course promotes intensive study in the field of African-American literature through focused inquiry into particular themes, genres, time periods, or movements in the field. As a topics course, its content will vary from semester to semester and from instructor to instructor. For Fall 2024, Dr. Cassandra Jackson is offering:
Appropriating Blackness: From the Kardashians to K-Pop
This course explores the impact of African-American culture on contemporary popular culture across the globe. The course will begin with an introduction to African-American artistic production and debates about the meaning and purposes of Black art forms. We will continue by studying how Black aesthetics have circulated in popular culture in the U.S. and abroad. We will explore music, literature, film, visual art, and social media. Note that because contemporary popular culture is ever-changing, students will have opportunities to shape the primary materials of the course. The course will be guided by the following questions: How does power inform the ethical implications of cultural borrowing? Does the meaning of Black cultural forms change when they become a commodity in a global economy? How has the spread of African-American culture informed social justice movements throughout the world? How has fast media, like TikTok, complicated the understanding of cultural ownership? Does a global commodity culture make cultural appropriation inevitable? How can we think about the relationship between colonial histories and the trafficking of Black culture today? We will also delve into how African-American producers of culture address the appropriation of Blackness in their work.
AAS 375 / Black Feminist Thought
This course traces the evolution of feminist consciousness among Africana women. Students will trace the thoughts, social and political activism and ideologies generated by women of African ancestry from the early 19th Century free black “feminist abolitionists” to contemporary times. “Womanist,” “Feminist,” “Critical Race Feminist,” and “Black Feminist” ideologies will be emphasized through course readings and assignments that explore the emergence and perpetuation of an Africana women’s feminist consciousness. Crosslisted with WGS 365.
AAS 378 / African American Literature 1920-1980
A study of literature in the African American tradition, focusing on the realist and naturalist writings of this period, as well as the prose, poetry, essays and speeches of the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement. We will interrogate how the social matrices of competing definitions of black identity are reflected in and through writing produced by African Americans, while we trouble notions of authenticity, representation, and essentialism. The course will also explore the canon of African American Literature, its literary traditions, and the intersections with and diversions from the canon of American Letters. Crosslisted with LIT 378.