ENROLL

Cherif Keita

Born as a response to the colonial gaze and discourse, African cinema has been a deliberate effort to affirm and express an African personality and consciousness. Focusing on the film production from West and Southern Africa since the early fifties, this course will entail a discussion of major themes such as colonialism, nationalism and independence, and the analysis of African symbolisms, world-views, and their links to narrative techniques. In this overview, particular attention will be given to the films of Ousmane Sembène, Souleymane Cissé, Mweze Ngangura, Zola Maseko, Oliver Schmitz, Abderrahmane Sissako and many others.

Extra Time Required

Alessandra L Williams

This course will look at dance as a field in which bodies articulate a history of sexuality, nation, gender, and race. Students will survey a range of dance forms in the United States and indigenous communities of the Americas as well as the Caribbean, South Asia, and South Africa. Specific explorations will include classical Indian dance, Native American performance, jazz, contact improvisation, and Hip-Hop performance. Through reading comprehension, written reflections and analyses, classroom dialogue, and oral presentation work, we will outline dance history in terms of anti-colonial and civil rights movements from Modernism through Post-Modernism—that is, from the imperialism at the dawn of the twentieth century to current late-capitalism. Students will be introduced to interdisciplinary methodologies in dance studies by learning to: conduct dance analysis in their accounts for gesture and social context; theorize according to the intersection of multiple social categories; and write autoethnographies or critical inquiries into personal experience.

Kofi Owusu

Nancy Cho

Cherif Keita

This course examines the main aspects of social change in the area formerly covered by the medieval Empire of Mali, through anthropological texts, oral narratives, novels, films and both traditional and modern music. Some of the writers, film directors and musicians who will be studied are: Amadou Kourouma, Massa Makan Diabaté, Amadou Hampaté Bâ, Souleymane Cissé, Cheick O. Sissoko, Salif Keita, and others. Conducted in French.

Prerequisite: French 200-level course or equivalent

Extra Time Required, evening films

Andy Flory