Bracketed Courses 2017-2018 The courses were not offered during the 2017-2018 academic year, but were displayed as expected to be offered during 2018-2019. African and African American Studies AFRAMER 16 Sociology of the Black Community CourseID: 125925 Faculty: Next Term Offered: 2018 Fall This course examines issues of race, class, gender, and identity in the Afro-American community. Topics of special emphasis include the contemporary situation of the black family, class stratification and the conditions and prospects of the modern black middle class, black feminist thought, black educational performance, and the dynamics of race. Our objective is to arrive at a deeper sociological analysis and appreciation of the changing life experiences awaiting African Americans. AFRAMER 111 Spectral Fictions, Savage Phantasms: Race and Gender in Anti-Racist South African & African America CourseID: 126698 Faculty: Next Term Offered: 2018 Fall Why have social orders like Apartheid South Africa and White Supremacy in segregated America that are based on extreme racial, gender and national oppression always generated often violent, hallucinatory fictions of the racial and gender identities of the oppressed? And why have the oppressed in turn often internalized these sorts of fictions and also produced counter-fictions that more or less conform to the same violent, phantasmic logic? In this course, we will explore how these fictions and counter-fictions are reproduced and challenged in some of the most powerful, canonical works of drama, fiction and cinema by South African and African American authors and filmmakers. As the Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe once famously remarked: "where one thing stands, another thing will stand beside it." To this end, we will pay special attention in the course to how, both in form and in content, race and gender always seem, constitutively, to intersect in these fictions and counter-fictions. The course is thus a study in the dark, violent but generative cultural unconscious of modern racialized and gendered identities. AFRAMER 116 Autobiography and Memoir: Remembering the Self CourseID: 156935 Faculty: Jamaica Kincaid Next Term Offered: 2019 Spring Close readings of classic autobiographies: Fredrick Douglas, Booker T. Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Adams, Elizabeth Keckley; and contemporary memoirs by Ta Nahesi Coates, Hilton Als among others. A weekly critical paper is required; the final paper is a creative one, a short memoir. AFRAMER 123X Mass Incarceration in Historical Perspective CourseID: 156254 Faculty: Next Term Offered: 2018 Fall Today 1 in 3 African American boys will spend part of their lives behind bars, a profound reflection of the limitations of law and democracy in the United States. By examining the connections between race and the development of legal and penal systems over time, this course investigates the historical process that eventually gave rise to the mass incarceration of black and Latino Americans in the late twentieth century. The course is structured according to the major punitive changes that often emerged after the expansion of constitutional and civil rights for African Americans. Our historical consideration will provide us the necessary background to address the ongoing consequences of racial disparities in the criminal justice system and the momentous public policy implications of this dynamic. AFRAMER 125X Urban Inequality after Civil Rights CourseID: 156259 Faculty: Next Term Offered: 2019 Spring Why is the United States more segregated today than ever before? By examining the impact of social, political, and economic transformations in the decades after the civil rights movement, this course addresses historical developments that functioned to increase segregation and income stratification in African American communities in the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Offered jointly with the Graduate School of Design as SES 5507. AFRAMER 145X The Hiphop Cipher: "These are the Breaks" CourseID: 108837 Faculty: Marcyliena Morgan Next Term Offered: 2020 Spring The Hiphop Cipher is an in-depth look at aspects of hiphop. It is for students who have taken courses on hiphop and popular music and culture. It closely examines a particular issue and topic and includes guest lecturers and master classes on areas or issues in hiphop culture, art, scholarship and performance. These are the Breaks: The connection between vinyl from the 60's, 70's and 80's and birth of what we now know as hip-hop music, is a connection that is known by producers, DJ's and collectors of music, but not to academia. Various political, cultural, and social movements of the 1960's created an environment for the stories of soul, jazz, and funk produced in the 1970's, which in turn created the platform for our most treasured hip-hop albums (Illmatic, The BluePrint, The Chronic, College Dropout, The Minstrel Show). "Diggers" from around the world travel from country to country, from record shop to basement, in search of the original "breaks" used for these albums, in some cases for 10+ years. This course examines the important break beats in hiphop and the cultural, political and social movements and contexts that the beats, songs and production represented. AFRAMER 145Y Hiphop Theory & Philosophy: Black Comix & Imagining the Real World of Badass Superheroes CourseID: 204503 Faculty: Next Term Offered: 2019 Spring This course examines the symbolic meaning of the black superhero and how novels, graphic comics, and film are influenced by the language ideology and symbolism of the social and political black imaginary. This imaginary is constructed through social, philosophical and theorizing analyses of social class, gender and sexuality, racism and bigotry as cultural practice in the black community in general and hiphop in particular. The course is meant to provide cultural and philosophical insight into present and futuristic representations of worlds that assume the presence of diverse and shifting communities and conflicts. In doing so, it addresses why superheroes require the African American designation of badass to defend. The course includes various media, readings, films, and guest speakers. AFRAMER 165 Anthropology of the Black Community CourseID: 126725 Faculty: Next Term Offered: 2020 Spring This reading seminar examines anthropological theory, descriptions and research about practices of African American culture as well as African-diasporic identities. This course will also consider previous, recent and future debates within anthropology about African American communities and culture. The focus will be on institutions like family, the church, organizations, practices such as play, performance and the arts and social and political issues of black identity and racism. Among the topics we will address are: the black community, language and discourse, religion, social and cultural beliefs and practices, education, gender and sexuality, humor and satire and music. This course is meant to consider how popular culture, the social sciences, linguistics and socio-cultural anthropology have tried to understand and represent the complex and changing African American culture. AFRAMER 190X The Anthropology of Law: Perspectives from Africa and Elsewhere CourseID: 108678 Faculty: John Comaroff Next Term Offered: 2019 Spring The course will cover (i) classical readings in the field, (ii) conceptual questions focusing on the often counter-intuitive theoretical insights to be gained from the non-Western legal systems, (iii) law and colonialism, (iv) liberalism, difference, and the law in the postcolonial world, and (v) the judicialization of politics around the globe. Throughout, attention will be given to the lessons to be learned from legal anthropology for interrogating the present moment in the global north. Grades will be based on class participation, course presentations, and a term paper. AFRAMER 192X Religion and Society in Nigeria CourseID: 122498 Faculty: Jacob Olupona Next Term Offered: 2019 Spring The seminar examines the historical development of religion in Nigeria and explores its intersection with ethnic identity, culture, and society in pre-colonial, colonial, and contemporary periods. The course provides an understanding of various cultural tradition, historical events, and social forces that have shaped Nigeria's religious express. Many topical issues will be explored such as indigenous religious culture, Christian and Muslim identities, civil religion, and civil society and democratization, as well as religion and politics in present-day Nigeria. AFRAMER 218 Topics in African American History CourseID: 115728 Faculty: Next Term Offered: 2019 Spring This graduate readings seminar surveys African American history from the slave trade through the early twentieth century. We will examine the experiences of African Americans alongside the history of race relations in a larger American context. Topics include slavery, abolition, and the transition to freedom; regional and cultural differences among African Americans; black politics; and issues of gender and class in black communities. We will also discuss the nature of historical inquiry and differing modes of historical interpretation. AFRAMER 256 Advanced Readings in Legal Anthropology CourseID: 204463 Faculty: Next Term Offered: 2019 Spring CAPEVERD AA Cape Verdean Creole CourseID: 206836 Faculty: Next Term Offered: A study of Cape Verdean Creole the language of national identity in Cape Verde at the Elementary level (First