Africana Studies

The program in Africana Studies provides a cross-culturally and historically comparative framework to study the rich connections and exchanges among African people, their descendants, and the various "new worlds" in which they have made and are making their lives. A particular strength of Carleton's Africana Studies program is the opportunity to explore these issues on the African continent as well as in numerous African diasporas--of varying historical depth--in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Africana Studies combines area studies and ethnic studies foci on the cultural, literary, political, social, and intellectual responses to slavery, colonialism, missionization, and racialization throughout Africa and its many diasporas.

Students can pursue their intellectual interests in Africa and its diasporas through on-campus courses and off-campus studies programs (including programs offered through Carleton's departments of History and Environmental Studies), and through a rich variety of courses in nearly all curricular exploration divisions. Through multidisciplinary training, students are encouraged to develop their analytic, research, and literary skills; they acquire the intellectual tools to critique and correct the distortions and silences about Africans and their descendants in both academic canons and public discourse.

The Africana Studies major thus prepares students for lifetime engagement in scholarship as well as in fields such as law, public policy, education, public health, social work, and the arts. Toward this end, and in addition to coursework, students are encouraged to take advantage of the rich array of speakers, exhibits, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities related to Africans and their diasporas.

Students majoring in Africana Studies create their own program of study by choosing courses in a structured and reflective manner from a variety of disciplinary departments. In developing their program, students should talk to the department about courses that have particularly high African, African Diaspora, and/or African American Studies content. They are particularly encouraged to choose these courses from among the list of relevant courses. Courses marked AFSTPERT can complement the major, but do not count toward the required nine courses plus comprehensive exercise without special permission of the Program Director. Because of the complexities of creating a meaningful program from a wide array of departmental offerings, students interested in majoring should draw up a program of study that has breadth and depth in consultation with the Director of Africana Studies before declaring their major.

Requirements for the Africana Studies Major

Admission to the program will depend upon the acceptance, by the Africana Studies Committee, of a written proposal outlining the student's program of study. Courses cannot double count for two requirements.

  • Interdisciplinary Course (6 credits). Each student must complete one interdisciplinary 6-credit course which, in part, specifically discusses Africana Studies as an interdisciplinary field:
    • AFST 112 Black Revolution on Campus
    • AFST 113 Introduction to Africana Studies
    • AFST 125 New African Migrations (not offered in 2019-20)
    • AFST 200 The Black Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century (not offered in 2019-20)
    • POSC 275 Black Radical Political Thought, 1919-1969
  • Survey Courses (18 credits). Each student must take three of the following 6-credit courses:
    • AFST 112 Black Revolution on Campus
    • AFST 113 Introduction to Africana Studies
    • AFST 120 Gender and Sexuality in the African Diaspora (not offered in 2019-20)
    • ARTH 140 African Art and Culture (not offered in 2019-20)
    • ENGL 117 African American Literature
    • ENGL 238 African Literature in English
    • HIST 125 African American History I: From Africa to the Civil War (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 126 African American History II (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 181 West Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade
    • HIST 183 History of Early West Africa (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 184 Colonial West Africa (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 218 The Black Graphic Novel as Historical Narrative (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 284 History, Culture and Commerce Program: Heritage in Africa and Arabia
    • POSC 239 The Poor and the Powerless
  • Distribution Courses (30 credits). Each student should take 30 credits of distribution that are essential to Africana Studies. Among these distribution courses, students must choose at least one 6-credit course each from among the three disciplinary groups: Humanistic Inquiry, Social Inquiry and Literary and Artistic Analysis; at least four of the distribution courses must be at the 200-level or above and at least one at the 300-level. The 300-level course should be completed in one of the two disciplines in which the student writes his/her comprehensive exercise; in this course the student must produce a substantial paper or project in Africana Studies. In addition, majors are highly encouraged to take the AMST 345 junior methods course, WGST 200, or a methods course in one of the academic disciplines that contribute to Africana Studies. Course cannot double count for two requirements.
    Literary and Artistic Analysis
    • CAMS 219 African Cinema: A Quest for Identity and Self-Definition (not offered in 2019-20)
    • DANC 266 Reading The Dancing Body (not offered in 2019-20)
    • ENGL 136 Black Speculative Fiction
    • ENGL 233 Writing and Social Justice (not offered in 2019-20)
    • ENGL 237 Black British Literature
    • ENGL 238 African Literature in English
    • ENGL 252 Caribbean Fiction (not offered in 2019-20)
    • ENGL 258 Playwrights of Color: Taking the Stage (not offered in 2019-20)
    • ENGL 350 The Postcolonial Novel: Forms and Contexts
    • ENGL 352 Toni Morrison: Novelist
    • FREN 245 Francophone Literature of Africa and the Caribbean (not offered in 2019-20)
    • FREN 308 France and the African Imagination (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 126 America's Music
    • MUSC 130 The History of Jazz (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 131 The Blues From the Delta to Chicago
    • MUSC 140 Ethnomusicology and the World's Music (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 232 Golden Age of R & B (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 245 Tradition, Innovation, and Globalization in African Music (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 332 Motown (not offered in 2019-20)

    Humanistic Inquiry
    • HIST 100 History and Memory in Africa, Nineteenth through Twenty-first Centuries
    • HIST 100 Slavery and the Old South
    • HIST 100 Black History is Labor History
    • HIST 127 The Roaring Twenties & the Rough Thirties in U.S. History
    • HIST 181 West Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade
    • HIST 184 Colonial West Africa (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 214 Sport and the Color Line
    • HIST 218 The Black Graphic Novel as Historical Narrative (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 220 From Blackface to Blaxploitation: Black History and/in Film (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 221 Nat Turner, Booker T. Washington, and Fannie Lou Hamer in History and Memory
    • HIST 222 Slavery in Film, Literature, and History (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 223 The Presidents and their Slaves
    • HIST 225 James Baldwin and Black Lives Matter
    • HIST 228 Civil Rights and Black Power (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 280 African in the Arab World (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 281 War in Modern Africa (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 282 History, Culture, and Commerce Program: Zanzibar’s Indian Ocean Links
    • HIST 283 Christian Encounter, Conversion, and Conflict in Modern Africa (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 284 History, Culture and Commerce Program: Heritage in Africa and Arabia
    • HIST 285 History, Culture and Commerce Program: Critical Historical Research
    • HIST 382 Slavery & Abolition in Africa and its Diaspora
    • HIST 383 Africa's Colonial Legacies (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 386 Africa: Art, Nation, and Politics (not offered in 2019-20)
    • PHIL 228 Freedom and Alienation in Black American Philosophy
    • PHIL 288 A Survey of Historical Ideas of Race (not offered in 2019-20)
    • PHIL 304 Epistemology and Oppression (not offered in 2019-20)
    • PHIL 305 Frederick Douglass: The Philosophies of a Slave, Citizen, and Diplomat
    • RELG 211 Race and Religion: Slavery, Colonialism, and their Afterlives
    • RELG 227 Liberation Theologies (not offered in 2019-20)
    • RELG 262 Islamic Africa (not offered in 2019-20)

    Social Inquiry
    • AFST 112 Black Revolution on Campus
    • AFST 125 New African Migrations (not offered in 2019-20)
    • AFST 200 The Black Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century (not offered in 2019-20)
    • AFST 220 Intersectionality (not offered in 2019-20)
    • EDUC 225 Issues in Urban Education (not offered in 2019-20)
    • EDUC 245 School Reform: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (not offered in 2019-20)
    • EDUC 338 Multicultural Education
    • POSC 207 Global Decline of Democracy: Urban Revanchism and Popular Resistance (not offered in 2019-20)
    • POSC 218 Schools, Scholarship and Policy in the United States (not offered in 2019-20)
    • POSC 239 The Poor and the Powerless
    • POSC 266 Urban Political Economy (not offered in 2019-20)
    • POSC 273 Race and Politics in the U.S.
    • POSC 275 Black Radical Political Thought, 1919-1969
    • POSC 302 Subordinated Politics and Intergroup Relations*
    • POSC 351 Political Theory of Martin Luther King, Jr. (not offered in 2019-20)
    • POSC 366 Urban Political Economy (not offered in 2019-20)
    • PSYC 384 Psychology of Prejudice
    • SOAN 151 Global Minnesota: An Anthropology of Our State (not offered in 2019-20)
    • SOAN 180 Anthropology and Colonialism in Africa (not offered in 2019-20)
    • SOAN 256 Africa: Representation and Conflict
    • SOAN 263 Terrorism
    • SOAN 268 African Popular Culture (not offered in 2019-20)
    • SOAN 272 Sociological Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in the United States
    • SOAN 314 Contemporary Issues in Critical Criminology
    • SOAN 395 Ethnography of Reproduction
    • WGST 140 Politics of Women's Health

    Additional Distribution Electives: Arts Practice
    • DANC 301 Contemporary Styles and Techniques: West African Dance
    • MUSC 183 World Drumming Instruction
    • MUSC 183J World Drumming Instruction (Juried)
    • MUSC 191 African Karimba Ensemble (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 192 West African Drum Ensemble
    • MUSC 195 Jazz Chamber Music (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 283 World Drumming Instruction
    • MUSC 283J World Drumming Instruction (Juried)
  • Senior Seminar/Capstone Experience (3 credits)

This 3-credit course gives Africana Studies majors and minors the opportunity to apply what they have learned by preparing for and presenting at the annual National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) conference. Under the guidance of Africana Studies faculty members, students will interrogate the origins and institutionalization of Africana Studies; revise an Africana Studies-themed research paper completed in a previous course into a conference paper; and prepare and submit a paper proposal for NCBS. At NCBS, students will present their own research and engage with the work of Africana Studies scholars at panels, plenaries and workshops. Afterward, they will write a short assessment of the conference and their experience in Africana Studies at Carleton.

  • Comprehensive Exercise AFST 400 (6 credits)

The comprehensive exercise is a substantial (approximately 34-40 page) research paper on a topic within African, African American, and/or African Diaspora studies, grounded in two complementary disciplines, advised by two faculty members chosen from these two disciplines. The student should have completed a 300-level course in one of these two disciplines. The comps process begins with a proposal in fall term of the senior year, and ends with a final written thesis and oral presentation early in spring term.

Other Courses Pertinent to Africana Studies

  • ARTH 160 American Art to 1940 (not offered in 2019-20)
  • ECON 240 Microeconomics of Development
  • EDUC 340 Race, Immigration, and Schools (not offered in 2019-20)
  • ENGL 234 Literature of the American South
  • FREN 246 Contemporary Senegal (not offered in 2019-20)
  • HIST 121 Rethinking the American Experience: American Social History, 1865-1945 (not offered in 2019-20)
  • MUSC 136 History of Rock
  • POSC 122 Politics in America: Liberty and Equality
  • POSC 241 Ethnic Conflict
  • RELG 122 Introduction to Islam

African Studies Minor

The Africana Studies minor is designed to complement a student's disciplinary major through an interdisciplinary specialization on the contexts and experiences of Africans and their many diasporas. Combining area studies and ethnic studies foci, the Africana Studies minor provides students the opportunity to explore the rich connections and exchanges among African people, their descendants, and the global locales--in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East--in which they have made and are making their lives. Students can do this through both on-campus courses and off-campus studies programs. In their senior year Africana Studies minors draw connections among these courses through an interdisciplinary reflective capstone experience.

Fostering interdisciplinary critical thinking, the Africana Studies minor prepares students for lifetime engagement in scholarship as well as in fields such as law, public policy, education, public health, social work, and the arts. Toward this end, and in addition to coursework, students are encouraged to take advantage of the rich array of speakers, exhibits, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities related to Africans and their diasporas.

Africana Studies Minor Requirements

The Africana Studies minors requires seven courses as follows. Courses cannot double count for two requirements.

One core interdisciplinary (6-credit) course which, in part, specifically discusses Africana Studies as a coherent field of study.

    • AFST 112 Black Revolution on Campus
    • AFST 113 Introduction to Africana Studies
    • AFST 125 New African Migrations (not offered in 2019-20)
    • AFST 200 The Black Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century (not offered in 2019-20)
    • POSC 275 Black Radical Political Thought, 1919-1969

Two survey courses (12 credits) that introduce the "state of the field" of African and/or African Diaspora studies within specific disciplines

    • AFST 112 Black Revolution on Campus
    • AFST 113 Introduction to Africana Studies
    • AFST 120 Gender and Sexuality in the African Diaspora (not offered in 2019-20)
    • ARTH 140 African Art and Culture (not offered in 2019-20)
    • ENGL 117 African American Literature
    • ENGL 238 African Literature in English
    • HIST 125 African American History I: From Africa to the Civil War (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 126 African American History II (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 181 West Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade
    • HIST 183 History of Early West Africa (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 184 Colonial West Africa (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 218 The Black Graphic Novel as Historical Narrative (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 284 History, Culture and Commerce Program: Heritage in Africa and Arabia
    • POSC 239 The Poor and the Powerless

Three distribution courses (18 credits) that combine depth and breadth in the field. Each student should take 18 credits chosen from at least two of the following disciplinary groups: Literary and Artistic Analysis; Humanistic Inquiry and Social Inquiry. Two of the three distributional courses must be at the 200-level or above. At least one of the distribution courses should be a 300-level course in which the student produces a substantial paper or project in Africana Studies encompassing African, African American and African Diaspora Studies. In rare cases, a student can petition to write a substantial paper in a 200-level course (i.e., be released from the 300-level course requirement), if that course is highly relevant to their own focus.

  • Literary/Artistic Analysis
    • CAMS 219 African Cinema: A Quest for Identity and Self-Definition (not offered in 2019-20)
    • DANC 266 Reading The Dancing Body (not offered in 2019-20)
    • ENGL 136 Black Speculative Fiction
    • ENGL 233 Writing and Social Justice (not offered in 2019-20)
    • ENGL 237 Black British Literature
    • ENGL 238 African Literature in English
    • ENGL 252 Caribbean Fiction (not offered in 2019-20)
    • ENGL 258 Playwrights of Color: Taking the Stage (not offered in 2019-20)
    • ENGL 350 The Postcolonial Novel: Forms and Contexts
    • ENGL 352 Toni Morrison: Novelist
    • FREN 245 Francophone Literature of Africa and the Caribbean (not offered in 2019-20)
    • FREN 308 France and the African Imagination (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 126 America's Music
    • MUSC 130 The History of Jazz (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 131 The Blues From the Delta to Chicago
    • MUSC 140 Ethnomusicology and the World's Music (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 232 Golden Age of R & B (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 245 Tradition, Innovation, and Globalization in African Music (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 332 Motown (not offered in 2019-20)
  • Humanistic Inquiry
    • HIST 100 History and Memory in Africa, Nineteenth through Twenty-first Centuries
    • HIST 100 Slavery and the Old South
    • HIST 100 Black History is Labor History
    • HIST 127 The Roaring Twenties & the Rough Thirties in U.S. History
    • HIST 181 West Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade
    • HIST 184 Colonial West Africa (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 214 Sport and the Color Line
    • HIST 218 The Black Graphic Novel as Historical Narrative (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 220 From Blackface to Blaxploitation: Black History and/in Film (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 221 Nat Turner, Booker T. Washington, and Fannie Lou Hamer in History and Memory
    • HIST 222 Slavery in Film, Literature, and History (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 223 The Presidents and their Slaves
    • HIST 225 James Baldwin and Black Lives Matter
    • HIST 228 Civil Rights and Black Power (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 280 African in the Arab World (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 281 War in Modern Africa (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 282 History, Culture, and Commerce Program: Zanzibar’s Indian Ocean Links
    • HIST 283 Christian Encounter, Conversion, and Conflict in Modern Africa (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 284 History, Culture and Commerce Program: Heritage in Africa and Arabia
    • HIST 285 History, Culture and Commerce Program: Critical Historical Research
    • HIST 382 Slavery & Abolition in Africa and its Diaspora
    • HIST 383 Africa's Colonial Legacies (not offered in 2019-20)
    • HIST 386 Africa: Art, Nation, and Politics (not offered in 2019-20)
    • PHIL 228 Freedom and Alienation in Black American Philosophy
    • PHIL 288 A Survey of Historical Ideas of Race (not offered in 2019-20)
    • PHIL 304 Epistemology and Oppression (not offered in 2019-20)
    • PHIL 305 Frederick Douglass: The Philosophies of a Slave, Citizen, and Diplomat
    • RELG 211 Race and Religion: Slavery, Colonialism, and their Afterlives
    • RELG 227 Liberation Theologies (not offered in 2019-20)
    • RELG 262 Islamic Africa (not offered in 2019-20)
  • Social Inquiry
    • AFST 112 Black Revolution on Campus
    • AFST 125 New African Migrations (not offered in 2019-20)
    • AFST 200 The Black Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century (not offered in 2019-20)
    • AFST 220 Intersectionality (not offered in 2019-20)
    • EDUC 225 Issues in Urban Education (not offered in 2019-20)
    • EDUC 245 School Reform: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (not offered in 2019-20)
    • EDUC 338 Multicultural Education
    • POSC 207 Global Decline of Democracy: Urban Revanchism and Popular Resistance (not offered in 2019-20)
    • POSC 218 Schools, Scholarship and Policy in the United States (not offered in 2019-20)
    • POSC 239 The Poor and the Powerless
    • POSC 266 Urban Political Economy (not offered in 2019-20)
    • POSC 273 Race and Politics in the U.S.
    • POSC 275 Black Radical Political Thought, 1919-1969
    • POSC 302 Subordinated Politics and Intergroup Relations*
    • POSC 351 Political Theory of Martin Luther King, Jr. (not offered in 2019-20)
    • POSC 366 Urban Political Economy (not offered in 2019-20)
    • PSYC 384 Psychology of Prejudice
    • SOAN 151 Global Minnesota: An Anthropology of Our State (not offered in 2019-20)
    • SOAN 180 Anthropology and Colonialism in Africa (not offered in 2019-20)
    • SOAN 256 Africa: Representation and Conflict
    • SOAN 263 Terrorism
    • SOAN 268 African Popular Culture (not offered in 2019-20)
    • SOAN 272 Sociological Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in the United States
    • SOAN 314 Contemporary Issues in Critical Criminology
    • SOAN 395 Ethnography of Reproduction
    • WGST 140 Politics of Women's Health
  • Additional Distribution Electives:
    • DANC 301 Contemporary Styles and Techniques: West African Dance
    • MUSC 183 World Drumming Instruction
    • MUSC 183J World Drumming Instruction (Juried)
    • MUSC 191 African Karimba Ensemble (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 192 West African Drum Ensemble
    • MUSC 195 Jazz Chamber Music (not offered in 2019-20)
    • MUSC 283 World Drumming Instruction
    • MUSC 283J World Drumming Instruction (Juried)

Senior Seminar/Capstone Experience (3 credits)

This 3-credit course gives Africana Studies majors and minors the opportunity to apply what they have learned by preparing for and presenting at the annual National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) conference. Under the guidance of Africana Studies faculty members, students will interrogate the origins and institutionalization of Africana Studies; revise an Africana Studies-themed research paper completed in a previous course into a conference paper; and prepare and submit a paper proposal for NCBS. At NCBS, students will present their own research and engage with the work of Africana Studies scholars at panels, plenaries and workshops. Afterward, they will write a short assessment of the conference and their experience in Africana Studies at Carleton.

Minors are highly encouraged to take the AMST 345 junior methods course.

Africana Studies Courses

AFST 100 To Make the World Anew: Black Liberation in the Twentieth Century This seminar employs discussion, critical reading, and college-level writing to explore how African descendants envisioned and agitated for a world free of racism, colonialism, imperialism, Fascism, and war. Questions we will engage include: what local, national, and international strategies did persons racialized as “Black” use to improve their social conditions? How did the intersections of race, class, gender, and nationality shape Black insurgencies throughout the century? Which individuals and organizations were important to these struggles? Course requirements will include student presentations, reading responses, short essays, and small group assignments. 6 credits; AI, WR1, IDS; Fall; Charisse E Burden-Stelly
AFST 112 Black Revolution on Campus This course explores the activist roots of Africana Studies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, students organized hundreds of protests that sparked a period of unrest, retaliation, negotiation, and reform that fundamentally reshaped college campuses across the United States. Black students, along with their “Third World” and progressive white allies, demanded that academe serve their communities and provide a “more relevant education.” The course will consider the influence of various movements, including Black power, anti-war, second wave feminism, and decolonization, on the creation of interdisciplinary fields including Black Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Women and Gender Studies. 6 credits; SI, WR2, IDS; Winter; Charisse E Burden-Stelly
AFST 113 Introduction to Africana Studies This survey course introduces students to the content and contours of Africana Studies as a field of study--its genealogy, antecedents, development, and future challenges. The course focuses on historic and contemporary experiences of African-descended peoples, particularly in the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. We will also give some attention to how members of the Diaspora remember and encounter Africa, and to how Africans respond to the history of enslavement, colonialism, apartheid, racism and globalization. 6 credits; HI, IDS; Fall; Charisse E Burden-Stelly
AFST 120 Gender and Sexuality in the African Diaspora This course is an interdisciplinary examination of gender and sexualities throughout the Africa Diaspora. We will study the complexities of gender and sexual experiences, practices, identities, and community formations within various cultural contexts throughout the Black world. 6 credits; SI, IS; Not offered 2019-20
AFST 125 New African Migrations African societies have long been shaped by migration--including quests for new knowledge, land, and livelihoods as well as the coercive migrations of slavery and refugee flight. Recent transformations in global political-economies and local conditions have made migration a central feature of contemporary African life. This course introduces students to African and African diaspora studies through an examination of new African migrations. Starting with the formation of "domestic diasporas" through rural-urban migration within African countries, we will explore connections and ruptures created by south-south international migrations within the African continent, and transnational migrations to the United States and Europe. 6 credits; SI, WR2, IS; Not offered 2019-20
AFST 200 The Black Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century This course focuses on theories, ideologies, frameworks, and methodologies that constitute: 1) the Black intellectual tradition in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and 2) Africana Studies as an academic discipline. The course is structured around examinations of Black intellectual strategies and struggles for justice, recognition, self-determination, and freedom. We will read and discuss classic and contemporary scholarship concerning the study of the Black experience in the United States and the African Diaspora, and that has shaped the discipline of Africana Studies. 6 credits; SI, WR2, IDS; Not offered 2019-20
AFST 220 Intersectionality This course is an in-depth examination of intersectionality, as a theory and analytic framework, and the socio/political projects out of which it emerges. We will focus on how intersecting categories of social difference such as race, class, gender, and sexuality create and maintain social inequalities in U.S. society and abroad. Some of the other intersecting forms of social difference we will explore include, ethnicity, nation/migration, dis/ability, and HIV/disease status.  6 credits; SI, IDS; Not offered 2019-20
AFST 398 Africana Studies Capstone This course gives Africana Studies majors and minors the opportunity to apply what they have learned by preparing for and presenting at the annual National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) conference. Under the guidance of Africana Studies faculty members, students will interrogate the origins and institutionalization of Africana Studies; revise an Africana Studies-themed research paper completed in a previous course into a conference paper; and prepare and submit a paper proposal for NCBS. At NCBS, students will present their own research and engage with the work of Africana Studies scholars at panels, plenaries and workshops. Afterward, they will write a short assessment of the conference and their experience in Africana Studies at Carleton.  Prerequisite: A major or minor in AFST; preferably to be taken in the senior year. 3 credits; NE; Winter; Thabiti C Willis
AFST 400 Integrative Exercise The comprehensive exercise is a substantial (approximately 34-40 page) research paper on a topic within African, African American, and/or African Diaspora studies. The student should have completed a 300-level AFST course, or a 300-level course that counts toward the AFST major. The comps process begins with a Comps Topic Development Worksheet during spring term of the junior year, a comps topic intention form followed by a proposal in fall term of the senior year, and ends with a final written thesis and oral presentation early in spring term. 1-6 credit; Winter; Thabiti C Willis