ENROLL

Kofi Owusu

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).

Ross Elfline

This course will survey the art and architecture of African peoples from prehistory to the present. Focusing on significant case studies in various mediums (including sculpture, painting, architecture, masquerades and body arts), this course will consider the social, cultural, aesthetic and political contexts in which artistic practices developed both on the African continent and beyond. Major themes will include the use of art for status production, the use of aesthetic objects in social rituals and how the history of African and African diaspora art has been written and institutionally framed.