IF YOU PLAN TO SIGN UP FOR THE OPEEP COURSE (FLYER BELOW) THEN PLEASE DO SO BY JUNE 18TH.
Click on the COURSE SCHEDULE HERE to see which courses are being offered by semester.
Click on the tabs below to jump to the AAAS courses offered in a particular academic level.
Autumn 2025 Courses
AFAMAST 1101 - Introduction to African American and African Studies
Introduction to the scholarly study of the Africana experience, focusing on patterns of resistance, adaptation, diversity, and transnational connections.
GEN Foundation: Social and Behavioral Sciences; GEN Foundation: Race, Ethnicity & Gender Diversity
AFAMAST 1111 - Introduction to Africa
This course is a multidisciplinary introduction to the history, peoples, and cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa. Via a diverse set of sources and mediums, including films, literature, visual art, human rights reports, etc., students will be introduced to a number of important expressions, ideas, episodes, events, and trends in Africa, past and present. This course fulfills the Historical and Cultural Studies GE Foundation.
AFAMAST 2080 - African American History to 1877
The study of African American experience in America from arrival through the era of Reconstruction, focusing on slavery, resistance movements, and African American culture.
GEN Foundation: Historical and Cultural Studies; GEN Foundation: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender Diversity
Cross Listed: History
AFAMAST 2101 - Introduction to African Art and Archaeology
The Art and Archaeology of Africa with emphasis on the historic cultures of Rock Art (8,000 B.C.), Egypt (3,000 B.C.), Nok (900 B.C.), Igbo-Ukwu (695 A.D.), Ife (1200 A.D.), and Benin (1400-1900 A.D.).
GEN Foundation: Literary, Visual & Performing Arts
Cross Listed: History of Art
AFAMAST 2201 - Major Readings in African American and African Studies
This course will introduce students to some of the seminal readings and issues in African American and African Studies from its inception to the present. Specifically, students will examine the historical and socio-cultural circumstances that brought about and shaped the discipline of Black Studies as well as explore some of the major intellectual and political movements within the Africana World. Topics to be explored include Afrocentricity, Black Feminism, Pan-Africanism, Black Power, and #BlackLivesMatter.
AFAMAST 2253 - Introduction to Caribbean Literature
An introduction to Caribbean literature with a focus on prose, poetry, and drama.
GEN Foundation: Literary, Visual & Performing Arts
AFAMAST 2275 - Blackness and the Politics of Sports
The purpose of this course is to assist students in understanding the historical relationship between African Americans & the professional sports industry. We will explore how the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality function in the world of sports & investigate the cultural tendency to praise atheletic achievement over educational or career ambitions. This course fulfills the Race, Ethnicity, and Gender Diversity GE foundation.
AFAMAST 2288 - Bebop to Doowop to Hiphop: The Rhythm and Blues Tradition
Examines the aesthetic and historical evolution of rhythm and blues: black music tradition including bebop, rock and roll, and hip hop, redefining American popular culture post-WWII.
GEN Foundation: Literary, Visual & Performing Arts
Cross Listed: Music
AFAMAST 2367.01 - African-American Voices in U.S. Literature
Discussion, analysis, and writing about issues presented through the diverse voices of African American literature.
GEN Foundation: Literary, Visual & Performing Arts
AFAMAST 2367.04 - Black Women Writers: Text and Context
Writing and analysis of black women's literary representations of issues in United States social history.
GEN Foundation: Literary, Visual & Performing Arts, GEN Foundation: Race, Ethnicity & Gender Diversity
Cross Listed: Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies
AFAMAST 3083 - Civil Rights and Black Power Movements
Examines the origins, evolution, and outcomes of the African American freedom struggle, focusing on the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.
GEN Theme: Citizenship for a Diverse & Just World
Cross Listed: History
AFAMAST 3086 - Black Women in Slavery and Freedom
This course traces the experiences and struggles of African American women from slavery through the Civil Rights/Black Power era.
Prerequisite: English 1110.xx, or permission of instructor.
GEN Theme: Migration, Mobility, and Immobility
Cross Listed: History (Not open to students with credit for History 3086).
AFAMAST 3230 - Black Women: Culture and Politics
This course is an examination of the social, cultural, political, economic, and historical forces, dynamics, and processes affecting women throughout the Africana world. This course fulfills the Social Diversity in the US Legacy GE credit, and the Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations GE theme.
AFAMAST 3310 - Global Perspectives on the African Diaspora
The course studies the historical processes, key figures and ideas, and cultural expressions of the worldwide dispersion of people of African descent from different times and places. This course fulfills the Lived Environments GE requirement.
AFAMAST 3376 - Arts and Cultures of Africa and the Diaspora
An overview of African and African diaspora cultures from a historical perspective. Cultural media will include art, literature, film, dance, and photography.
GEN Theme: Migration, Mobility, & Immobility
Cross Listed: History of Art
AFAMAST 3440 - Theorizing Race
Introduction to issues of "race," consideration of the historical emergence and development of ideas of "race" and of racist practices, along with their contemporary formations.
GEN Theme: Citizenship for a Diverse & Just World
AAAS Major Requirement
Cross Listed: Philosophy
AFAMAST 3450 - The Art and Politics of Hip-Hop
Explores the world of Hip-Hop, from its birth in the Bronx to its infiltration of music, fashion, television, film, dance, print culture, and politics. It considers critically the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, nation, and geography as well as the ways in which Hip-Hop functions simultaneously as aesthetic, analytic, and politic.
GEN Theme: Citizenship for a Diverse & Just World
AFAMAST 4342 - Religion, Meaning, and Knowledge in Africa and its Diaspora
While the practice of religion in Africa is as diverse as its people, three major belief systems define the practice: African Traditional Religion, Islam, and Christianity. This course will examine classical and contemporary definitions of African Traditional Religion/s and the introduction and adaptations of Islam and Christianity in Africa.
GEN Theme: Traditions, Cultures, & Transformations
Cross Listed: Religious Studies
AFAMAST 4571 - Black Visual Culture and Popular Media
An examination of African Americans in visual culture and the theories of representation in popular media.
GEN Theme: Traditions, Cultures, & Transformations
AFAMAST 4610 - African Americans and the Law
This is an interdisciplinary course that puts major legal cases affecting African Americans into conversation with their historical underpinnings, as well as the social contexts and how those contexts manifest in African American cultural productions. A central goal of the course is to interrogate the idea of a "colorblind" justice system.
GEN Theme: Citizenship for a Diverse & Just World
AFAMAST 4921 - Intersections: Approaches to Theorizing Difference
This course examines intersections of race, ethnicity, and gender diversity in various sites within American culture (e.g., legal system, civil rights discourse, social justice movements). Fulfills the Citizenship and Diversity for a Just World GE theme credit.
Prerequisite: One course in COMPSTD, WGSST, or AFAMAST.
Cross listed in COMPSTD and WGSST.
AFAMAST 4999 - Thesis Research
AFAMAST 5240 - Race and Public Policy in the United States
This course explores Race and Public Policy in the United States from Reconstruction to the present. In particular, the class is designed to look at the long list of "hot topics" in the current policy landscape, including policing, housing, wealth gap, immigration, voting, political representation, and others.
Cross Listed: Comparative Studies and Public Affairs
AFAMAST 5650 - Blackness and the Body in Science and Medicine
This course considers the need for and pursuit of social justice when black bodies are subjected to commodification and systemic subordination. The course focuses on what Frantz Fanon called the "corporeal schema" of blackness as well as the social construction of blackness to think about the relationship between black bodies and social justice pursuits in medicine and science.
GEN Theme: Health & Well-being