2019-2020 Bracketed Courses
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Bracketed Courses 2019-2020 The courses were not offered during the 2019-2020 academic year, but were displayed as expected to be offered. African and African American Studies AAAS S-171 Study/So Africa: Perspectives CourseID: 214430 Faculty: Next Term Offered: AAAS S-188 Study/So Africa: Colonialism CourseID: 214431 Faculty: Next Term Offered: AAAS 130Y Mobility, Power and Politics CourseID: 000130 Faculty: Next Term Offered: This course incorporates insights from the new mobilities paradigm in studying the linkages between movement, power and politics in the contemporary era. The course will discuss how issues of mobility are central to many lives and many organizations, and how movement intersects with the spatialization and materialization of power, difference and inequality within societies. Students will come to an understanding of how mobility, and control over mobility, both reflects and reinforces power; why mobile subjects are increasingly a risk and at risk; and the impact of the regulation and governance of mobility on conflict, security and development. Students will also benefit from the new light that this course sheds on how issues of mobility and immobility intersect with security and development in at least five core areas: (1) questions of power and government (2) spaces of regulation and intervention (3) the quandary of freedom and control in a globalized world; (4) infrastructures that enable and constrain movement; and (5) issues of justice and ethics. Confirming the analytical appeal of the mobilities paradigm, this course will serve as a melting pot for a variety of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, geography, gender studies, social work and social policy, disability and health studies, conflict analysis and resolution, urban studies, political science and international relations. Topics will include mobility and terrorism after 9/11; mobility and mobilization of the urban poor; youth, mobility and being 'stuck'; social mobility; roads, corruption and policing; mobility and il/legality; gender and mobility; and mobility as fieldwork. AAAS 196Y African Trauma Literature and the Politics of Memory CourseID: 214584 Faculty: Next Term Offered: In this course, we will examine literary representations of trauma in African postcolonial and contemporary literature and elucidate the politics of memory in Africa from the theoretical and psychoanalytic standpoint of Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Frantz Fanon, Kali Tal, Ifi Amadiume, Shoshana Felman, Cathy Caruth, Dori Laub, Judith Butler, Achille Mbembe, and others. We will focus on the various aspects of trauma theory as related to contemporary trauma narrative including memory and forgiveness, retrospective narrative, testimony and bearing witness, PTSD, mourning, war and violence, transgenerational trauma as well as healing and working through trauma. In order to understand how trauma impacts African communities and individuals in their daily life and their political, social and economic struggles, we will be analyzing "structural disorder" and "historical event" (Petar Ramadanovic) narratives, including fiction by Aminata Forna, Boubacar Boris Diop, Tayeb Salih, Yaa Gyasi, Ben Okri, Chris Abani, Jennifer Makumbi, with a special focus on the various strategies used by the individuals and communities – as represented in African literature – to cope with their traumatic experiences. AAAS 197Y Critiquing Black Muslim Reason CourseID: 213299 Faculty: Next Term Offered: This seminar asks: What does it mean to be Black in the United States? What does it mean to be a Muslim in the United States? What happens when these two identities compound or collide with one another? Well, what about Black Muslim Womanhood, for example? There are scholars who have discussed the "triple constraints" that Black Muslim Women, for example, face as they navigate the American public sphere. As well, while we directly confront questions of citizenship and belonging and without relying too heavily on critical race theory, we will take some time to think about how these sites of identity (and their reception) specifically impact Black Muslims in the United States. The primary purpose of this course—seminar—is to try to disentangle these sites of identity while understanding that for the people who are Black, Muslim, Female, and/or Migrant, there is no way to properly understand how people are subjected to various forms of marginalization, or resist structural racism or sexism, combat Islamophobia, or articulate what it means to either have or gain citizenship, or build communities where their whole selves are affirmed, by thinking that these identities are ever separable. The secondary aim of this course on Black Muslims is to think more deeply about how such a term has historically been applied to African-American Muslims (that is, American-born Muslims of African descent). Yet, our task is take up Edward Curtis' assertion that the popular use of the term 'Black Muslim' has not traditionally included Senegalese, Gambian, Somali, Sudanese, Trinidadian, or otherwise dark-skinned Muslims whose point of origin is beyond the United States. Nonetheless, Senegalese or Somali-American Muslims must contend with the othering effects of racism and Islamophobia—they are similarly impacted by police violence and structural discrimination. However, in some cases, they must also combat racially and religiously- motivated legislation that results in exclusion masked as immigration reform (e.g. Muslim Ban). AAAS 217X Themes in the History of African American Political Thought: Seminar CourseID: 216013 Faculty: Next Term Offered: This seminar will closely examine influential figures and texts in the history of African- American political thought from slavery to the contemporary era. We will critically evaluate, assess, and critique a range of African American authors and their interlocutors across genres (e.g., philosophy, literature, music, etc.) to better understand and build upon the development of key traditions, themes, and concepts. This year's theme will be the idea of "crime" in black politics and political thought, with special eye toward illuminating contemporary debates around hyperincarceration, public safety, and the political ethics of social movements. Open to graduates and undergraduates. AAAS 219A Race and Ethnicity in Latin America CourseID: 213432 Faculty: Next Term Offered: AAAS 299 Introduction to Graduate School: Skills and Practices for Scholarly Success CourseID: 212836 Faculty: Next Term Offered: The course trains graduate students in the humanities and social sciences in foundational skills that lead to scholarly success. Students learn to read journal articles swiftly and with high comprehension and retention, to write clear and persuasive prose, to teach effectively, and to identify and apply for grants. The course also leads students through a process by which they orient themselves to the major journals, scholarly organizations, and conferences in their respective disciplines. Students in the course produce a series of documents of direct, practical value: a polished academic C.V., a Harvard Scholar website, and a syllabus, among others. The purpose of this course is to reveal the "hidden curriculum" of grad school and to develop the skills and habits of mind that will benefit students in their doctoral programs and throughout their diverse careers. AFRAMER 100 Race and Modernity: W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry CourseID: 205689 Faculty: Next Term Offered: This course will examine the classic texts of the towering intellectual figures who exemplify profound interpretations of race and modernity. Works include Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, Dusk of Dawn, Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son, No Name in the Street and Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun and To Be Young, Gifted and Black. AFRAMER 123Z American Democracy CourseID: 111438 Faculty: Next Term Offered: Democracy, inequality, and nationalism in America. The white working class and American politics. Class and race. Identities and interests. Conditions for socially inclusive economic growth. Alternative directions of institutional change, viewed in light of American history. Democratizing the market and deepening democracy. Self-reliance and solidarity. Readings from classic and contemporary works on the United States. Extended take- home examination. 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 130X Richard Wright: Literature, Philosophy, and Politics CourseID: 156260 Faculty: Next Term Offered: This course examines the major fiction and nonfiction works of Richard Wright from a literary, philosophical, and political perspective. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to this wide-ranging and canonical American author, contextualizing him within the broader tradition of black letters. Readings include but are not limited to Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, Black Boy, American Hunger, 12 Million Black Voices, The Outsider, Black Power, The Color Curtain, White Man Listen!,