Related courses are courses offered by disciplinary departments that count toward the AFST major/minor. Pertinent courses are potentially relevant to the major/minor but do not have enough AFST content to count toward requirements without a special petition. Due to changing course offerings, this is only a partial list. Any questions about whether or how a course counts toward the major/minor should be directed to the Program Director.


  • AFST 100: Blackness and Whiteness Outside the United States

    Racial categories such as “black” and “white” are social constructions that change across national boundaries. In the U.S. “black” and “white” have historically been defined by ancestry, and have been mutually exclusive. But how are these categories defined elsewhere? In this course, we consider how blackness and whiteness are defined and constructed in non-U.S. contexts. We examine a range of topics that will help us to understand not only racial categories, but also the meanings and narratives that accompany them and the way that these play into racial inequalities. Course topics include skin color stratification, colorblindness, ethnicity and nationhood, migration and citizenship, media representations, segregation, and transnationalism and globalization.

    6 credits; Argument and Inquiry Seminar, Intercultural Domestic Studies, Writing Requirement; offered Fall 2023 · Daniel Williams
  • AFST 100: Sports, the Black Experience, and the American Dream

    With an emphasis on critical reading and writing in an academic context, this course will examine the role of sports in American politics and social organizations. The course pays attention to the African American experience, noting especially the confluence of race and sports. What can sports tell us about freedom, equality, and the pursuit of happiness? How has the Black community contributed to our appreciation of these American virtues? We will read short texts and biographies, and we will watch movies such as King Richard and The Blind Side. Students will produce short writing exercises aimed at developing their critical thinking and clear writing.

    6 credits; Argument and Inquiry Seminar, Writing Requirement; offered Fall 2023 · Chielo Eze
  • AFST 101: Ecology and Anthropology Tanzania Program: Elementary Swahili

    Elementary Swahili introduces students to the communicative use of Swahili, emphasizing communicative competence in real contexts. Ninety percent of instruction is conducted in the target language. Vocabulary and grammar are taught in context. Instruction pays attention to the cultural information in relevant contexts of communication. The main learning/teaching styles used include role plays, prepared presentations, interactive lectures, classroom conversations, and dramatization. In addition to the class textbook, authentic source materials are used, such as pictures, songs, short stories, poems and essays. Student assessment is continuous, and includes classroom participation, homework, written exams and oral exams.

    Prerequisites: Participation in Ecology & Anthropology in Tanzania 7-8 credits; Does not fulfill a curricular exploration requirement; offered Fall 2023 · Anna Estes
  • 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.

    not offered 2023–2024
  • AFST 113: Introduction to Africana Studies

    This course focuses on the histories, ideas, experiences, and dreams that have shaped the lives of people of African descent. Then and now perspectives will define our exploration of incarceration and freedom; migration and emigration; separatism versus integration; race and class; art and politics. Discussion topics and seminal ideas will be drawn from texts including the following: the anthology Call and Response (on key debates in Black studies); the historical memoir Lose Your Mother (chronicling a journey along the Atlantic slave route); a work of fiction Middle Passage (that tells a story of enslavement, revolt, and redemption).

    6 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, Intercultural Domestic Studies, Writing Requirement; offered Winter 2024 · Chielo Eze
  • AFST 115: Black Heroism in the Diaspora and Early America

    This course examines motifs of Black Heroism throughout the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and Early America. We take an interdisciplinary and Black Studies approach to topics like slave life and maroonage, freedom suits, military enlistment, and more. The course material will include fiction like Frederick Douglass’ The Heroic Slave as well as theoretical texts like Neil Roberts Freedom as Maroonage. The aim of the course is to provide a look at the multifacted lives of Black people in the diaspora and early America with an emphasis on complex and quotidian resistance to domination.

    not offered 2023–2024
  • AFST 120: Race and Racism Outside the U.S.

    In this course, we examine the ways that race structures difference and inequality in non-U.S. contexts with varying degrees of racial “diversity.” As a construct fundamentally grounded in white supremacy through encounters between Europe and its “Others,” race from its inception has been a global construct for organizing and stratifying human difference. Yet the specific ways that race is constructed varies across societies, with ethnicity and other related concepts of difference substituting for race. Foundational to this course will be how the notions of blackness and whiteness figure into the creation of racial categories, boundaries, and inequalities. Course topics include skin color stratification, “colorblindness,” ethnicity and nationhood, migration and citizenship, media representations, anti-blackness as a global phenomenon, transnational and global flows of racial ideas and categories, and social movements for racial justice.

    not offered 2023–2024
  • AFST 130: Global Islam and Blackness

    This course will introduce students to key trends and moments in Islamic thought and activism in Africa and the black diaspora. It explores the historical construction of the categories of “race” and “religion” through a focus on Islam and blackness. We will analyze how blackness and Islam, and their relationship, has been conceptualized and presented by non-Africans, as well as the history of Islam in Africa and in the black diaspora. We will explore the construction of blackness within Islamic history and cultures, highlighting the notion of the Moor in medieval times and the Nation of Islam in U.S. history.

    not offered 2023–2024
  • AFST 215: Contemporary Theory in Black Studies

    This course examines the major theories of the Africana intellectual tradition. It introduces students to major concepts and socio-political thoughts that set the stage for Africana Studies as a discipline. With the knowledge of the historical contexts of the Black intellectual struggle and the accompanying cultural movements, students will examine the genealogy, debates and the future directions of Black Studies. Students are invited to take a dedicated dive into primary scholarship by focusing on foundational thinkers to be studied such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Frantz Fanon, Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks, among others.

    6 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, Intercultural Domestic Studies, Writing Requirement; offered Fall 2023 · Chielo Eze
  • AFST 220: Color, Class, and Status in Black America

    As a racial category and identity, “Black” is often treated in a homogenous, monolithic way, obscuring the internal diversity and inequality within the black population in the U.S. In this course, we consider the inequalities within black communities and the black population living in the U.S., historically and through to the present. “Colorism,” or skin tone stratification, represents one status linked to class and ranking in society; but does colorism matter more than other statuses to class? Class differences are in fact profound within black communities, and they are correlated to multiple social statuses–skin tone, immigrant status, national origin, and even political orientation. We will examine how these status, color, and class interact, and how they shape class relations and tensions, lived experience, and notions of authenticity (“blackness”) in everday life and popular culture. Course topics include the Black middle class; education; neighborhood segregation; gender and sexuality; and media representations and popular culture.

    not offered 2023–2024
  • AFST 230: Black Diaspora, Politics of Place

    Central to diasporic identity formation and imagination is the simultaneous belonging to a multiplicity of places. For black diasporic subjects, struggles against oppression and for new political futures inspire transgression against normative political boundaries. This class explores the role of place and politics in the making of the black diaspora in Europe and the Americas. It emphasizes the intellectual and political connections and the sense of shared identity and destiny. Through an interdisciplinary approach, this course will offer a global history of race, identity, and politics through the lens of the black diaspora.

    not offered 2023–2024
  • AFST 330: Black Europe

    This course examines the history and experiences of people of African descent and black cultures in Europe. Beginning with early contacts between Africa and Europe, we examine the migration and settlement of African people and culture, and the politics and meaning of their identities and presence in Europe. Adopting a comparative perspective, we consider how blackness has been constructed in various countries through popular culture, nationalism, immigration policy, and other social institutions. We further consider how religious, gender, and immigrant identities inform notions of blackness. We conclude by examining contemporary Black European social movements.

    6 credits; International Studies, Social Inquiry, Writing Requirement; offered Winter 2024 · Daniel Williams
  • AFST 398: Africana Studies Capstone

    This three-credit course gives Africana Studies majors and minors the opportunity to reflect on their learning in Africana Studies and to prepare to apply this knowledge to future endeavors. In this capstone course, the student creates a portfolio of their work in Africana Studies and writes a five-ten page reflective essay tying these papers together. This course gives students an opportunity to seriously reflect about the courses they have taken and the work they have produced within and related to their AFST major/minor, and to draw connections among them.

    Prerequisites: A major or minor in AFST; preferably to be taken in the senior year 3 credits; Does not fulfill a curricular exploration requirement; offered Winter 2024 · Chielo Eze
  • 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; S/NC; offered Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024 · Daniel Williams, Chielo Eze

Related Courses

  • ARTH 160: American Art to 1940 · not offered in 2023-24
  • CLAS 220: From the Horn to Melqart’s Pillars: African Perspectives in the Ancient Mediterranean · not offered in 2023-24
  • ECON 240: Microeconomics of Development
  • EDUC 340: Race, Immigration, and Schools · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 234: Literature of the American South · not offered in 2023-24
  • FREN 246: Contemporary Senegal · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 125: African American History I: From Africa to the Civil War · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 126: African American History II
  • HIST 220: From Blackface to Blaxploitation: Black History and/in Film
  • HIST 228: Civil Rights and Black Power · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 304: Black Study and the University · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 136: History of Rock · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 122: Politics in America: Liberty and Equality
  • POSC 241: Ethnic Conflict
  • RELG 122: Introduction to Islam