African/African American Studies (AFAM)
The program in African/African American Studies provides a cross-cultural 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 African and African American Studies program is the opportunity to explore these issues both on the African continent and in numerous African diasporas--of varying historical depth--in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. African and African American 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 four programs offered through Carleton's departments of French and Francophone Studies, 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 African and African American 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 African and African American 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 AFAMPERT 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 African and African American Studies before declaring their major.
Students must complete at least one interdisciplinary course offered by the African/African American Studies program, three survey courses introducing the "state of the field" of African and/or African Diaspora studies within specific disciplines, and at least five 200- and 300-level distribution courses. Among these distribution courses , students choose at least one course each from among humanistic inquiry, social inquiry and literary arts curricular explorations, and at least two of the total five distribution courses must be at the 300-level. The senior seminar/capstone experience can be fulfilled through a 300-level course with high African/African American Studies content and in which a major term paper in African/African American Studies is completed. This 300-level capstone should be completed in one of the two disciplines in which the student writes his/her comprehensive exercise. The comprehensive exercise is a substantial (approximately 34-40 page) research paper grounded in two complementary disciplines, advised by two faculty members chosen from these two disciplines.
Requirements for a Major
I. Admission to the program will depend upon the acceptance, by the African/African American Studies Committee, of a written proposal outlining the student's program of study.
II. Interdisciplinary Course (6 credits). Each student must complete one interdisciplinary 6-credit course which, in part, specifically discusses African/African American Studies as a discipline:
AFAM 100 Here, There, and Everywhere: African Diaspora Formations in and Beyond The Atlantic
AFAM 113 Introduction to African/African American Studies (not offered in 2012-2013)
III. Survey Courses (18 credits). Each student must take three of the following 6-credit courses:
ARTH 140 African Art and Culture (not offered in 2012-2013)
ENGL 117 African American Literature
HIST 125 African American History I
HIST 126 African American History II
HIST 180 An Historical Survey of East Africa (not offered in 2012-2013)
HIST 183 History of Early West Africa (not offered in 2012-2013)
HIST 184 Colonial West Africa
IV. Distribution Courses (30 credits). Each student should take five 6-credit courses that are essential to his or her major from the following groups. Among these distribution courses, students choose at least one course each from among humanistic inquiry, social inquiry and literary arts curricular explorations, and at least two of the total five distribution courses must be at the 300-level.
Literary and Artistic Analysis
ENGL 238 African Literature in English
ENGL 252 Caribbean Fiction (not offered in 2012-2013)
ENGL 258 Contemporary American Playwrights of Color (not offered in 2012-2013)
ENGL 350 The Postcolonial Novel: Forms and Contexts
FREN 235 Francophone Literature of Africa and the Caribbean (not offered in 2012-2013)
FREN 245 Francophone Literature of Africa and the Caribbean (not offered in 2012-2013)
FREN 308 France and the African Imagination
MUSC 130 The History of Jazz
MUSC 131 The Blues From the Delta to Chicago
MUSC 132 Golden Age of R & B
MUSC 245 Music of Africa (not offered in 2012-2013)
MUSC 332 Motown (not offered in 2012-2013)
Humanistic Inquiry
HIST 100 History and Memory in Africa, Nineteenth-Twenty-first Centuries
HIST 184 Colonial West Africa
HIST 276 The African Diaspora in Latin America (not offered in 2012-2013)
HIST 280 Africans in the Arab World
HIST 281 War in Modern Africa (not offered in 2012-2013)
HIST 282 Masquerades in Africa (not offered in 2012-2013)
HIST 286 Africans in the Arab World: On Site and Revisited
HIST 322 Civil Rights and Black Power
HIST 381 History, Memory and the Atlantic World: Ghana and the United (not offered in 2012-2013)
HIST 382 History, Memory, and the Atlantic World: On Site and Revisited (not offered in 2012-2013)
RELG 246 Religion and the Black Freedom Struggle (not offered in 2012-2013)
RELG 247 RAP and Religion: Rhymes about God and the Good (not offered in 2012-2013)
RELG 262 Islamic Africa (not offered in 2012-2013)
RELG 330 Radical Pacifism (not offered in 2012-2013)
Social Inquiry
AFAM 230 The Black Middle Class
EDUC 225 Issues in Urban Education (not offered in 2012-2013)
ENTS 264 Tanzania and Ethiopia Program: Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa
ENTS 284 Tanzania and Ethiopia Program: Cultural Studies
ENTS 285 Tanzania and Ethiopia Program: Wildlife Conservation and Livelihoods
MUSC 191 African Karimba Ensemble (not offered in 2012-2013)
POSC 266 Urban Political Economy
POSC 306 How Race Matters in American Politics* (not offered in 2012-2013)
POSC 351 Political Theory of Martin Luther King, Jr.
POSC 366 Urban Political Economy*
PSYC 384 Psychology of Prejudice
SOAN 139 Society and Social Problems (not offered in 2012-2013)
SOAN 256 Transformations in African Ethnography
SOAN 272 Race and Ethnicity in the United States
SOAN 395 Ethnography of Reproduction
Arts Practice
DANC 301 Contemporary Styles and Techniques: African Dance
MUSC 183J Ethnic Drumming Instruction (Juried)
MUSC 183 Ethnic Drumming Instruction
MUSC 191 African Karimba Ensemble (not offered in 2012-2013)
MUSC 192 African Drum Ensemble
MUSC 193 African Mbira Ensemble (not offered in 2012-2013)
MUSC 195 Jubilee Singers
MUSC 199 African Drum Class
V. Senior Seminar/Capstone Experience (6 credits)
The African/African American senior seminar/capstone experience can be fulfilled through a 300-level course with high African/African American content and in which a major term paper in African/African American is completed. This 300-level capstone should be completed in one of the two disciplines in which the student writes his/her comprehensive exercise.
VI. Comprehensive Exercise (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 capstone experience 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.
African/African American Studies Courses
AFAM 100. Here, There, and Everywhere: African Diaspora Formations in and Beyond The Atlantic "Diaspora" refers to the dispersion of a people with a common origin from an ancestral or established homeland. This course considers historical conditions in the formation of African diasporic communities in and beyond the Americas, including: (a) reasons for dispersal, (b) processes creating new identities in "host countries," and (c) issues of nostalgia and belonging. Additional topics may include: survival and expression of elements of African cultural heritage; African diaspora social and political movements; social, cultural and political crosscurrents and population movements within the African diaspora; and diasporic peoples' influences exerted globally or upon the African homeland itself. 6 cr., WR; AI, WR1, IS, Fall—L. Beck
AFAM 113. Introduction to African/African American Studies This course employs interdisciplinary approaches to critically examine selected intellectual and cultural themes in African, African American, and Black Diaspora studies. The course combines lecture and discussion formats. Members of the faculty deliver guest lectures in their own areas of specialization. Themes may vary from year to year. 6 cr., AL, WR, RAD; HI, WR2, IDS, Not offered in 2012-2013.
AFAM 130. African American Social Movements Social movements have played a critical role in African American communities, as both struggles for freedom and liberation as well as struggles for identity and recognition. This course examines several specific social movements, including the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power movement, and Black Feminism, among others, from multiple disciplinary perspectives. We will examine these movements comparatively through the disciplinary lenses of history, sociology, political science, and communication studies, and consider their trajectory through the contexts within which they emerge and develop. We will also evaluate these movements in terms of participants’ social identities as well as movements’ varying ideologies. 6 cr., SS; SI, IDS, Spring—Daniel Williams
AFAM 220. Souls of Black Folks: Afrcn Diaspora Intellectual Thinkers & Questions of Black Identity & Belonging This course surveys the writings of African diaspora people as they have historically grappled with the question of what it means to be black. We will insert black intellectual voices into the canon of important sociological, anthropological, and philosophical debates on issues of race, gender, diaspora, and belonging. Along with exploring and contextualizing the responses and dialogues of black thinkers such as Anna Julia Cooper, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Franz Fanon, we will also engage with more contemporary articulations of black intellectual thought through an engagement with the work of scholars including Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and Kobena Mercer. 6 cr., SS; SI, IS, Winter—L. Beck
AFAM 230. The Black Middle Class Since the 1960s, the Black middle class has been an object of debate and interest, both among scholars and in society. In this course, we will examine the Black middle class from an interdisciplinary perspective, specifically considering questions and problems posed in economics, sociology, history and literature. Among other topics, we will examine when and how the Black middle class emerged, its distinctiveness from its white and working-class counterparts, and its implications and larger meaning in popular culture and public discourse about race, class, and American society. 6 cr., ND; SI, IDS, Spring—D Williams
AFAM 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, grounded in two complementary disciplines, advised by two faculty members chosen from these two disciplines. The student should have completed a 300-level capstone experience 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. 6 cr., S/NC, ND, Winter—Staff