Attention Students:
Africana Studies has seats available for the following courses:
- AFRA 3211: Introduction to Africana Studies – Tu 3:30PM – 6:00PM – Brittney Yancy
Interdisciplinary overview of African American studies, giving consideration to the artistic, intellectual, political and cultural experiences of black people in the United States, Caribbean, Europe, and Africa. Relies on a wide range of materials and perspectives with particular focus on significant movements, ideas, people and events that have shaped and continue to shape Africa and the Diaspora
- AFRA 3642: African-American Politics – MWF 1:25PM – 2:15PM – Shayla Nunnally
Political behavior, theory, and ideology of African-Americans, with emphasis on contemporary U.S. politics
- AFRA 3652: Black Feminist Politics – TuTh 12:30PM-1:45PM – Evelyn Simien
An introduction to major philosophical and theoretical debates at the core of black feminist thought, emphasizing the ways in which interlocking systems of oppression uphold and sustain each other.
- AFRA 3898 Variable Topics: African American Biographies – Mo 4:00PM – 6:30PM – William Jelani Cobb
This course will examine African American history in the first-person. Of particular interest is interplay of race, class and gender and the ways in which individual lives both represent and depart from broader narratives in the lives of Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, Jack Johnson, Billie Holiday, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, Paul Robeson, Bayard Rustin, and Barack Obama. Additionally the student will critically engage and interrogate biographies as both a powerful and flawed source of historical knowledge.
- AFRA 3898 Variable Topics: African Cinema: Adaptive & Archive – Tu 4:00PM – 6:30PM – Bhakti Shringarpure
Third Cinema began as an influential movement in the 1960s and 1970s to question, explore and intervene in colonial legacies and has since led to the emergence of several filmmakers and a flourishing of cinema across the postcolonial world. In this course we will look at history of adaptation and intertextuality in films from the African continent using Third Cinema as our main theoretical framework. Readings and screenings will be organized according to direct or referential pairings. These include stories, novels and films by Ousmane Sembène, Aimé Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism along with Abderahmane Sissako’s film Bamako, the film and novel Bab El-Oued City by Merzak Allouache, the novel Changes by Ama Ata Aidoo with the film Min Ye by Souleymane Cissé and the novel Women of Algiers in their Apartment by Assia Djebar with Moufida Tlatli’s film Silences of the Palace. Students will also work independently on a digital film database project.
- AFRA 3898 Variable Topics: Ferguson: Race, Class and Social Justice in the Age of Obama – Wed 4:00PM – 6:30PM – William Jelani Cobb
This course is an interdisciplinary examination the social, economic, gender, historical and political dynamics that have attended the Obama presidency and specifically the racial conflicts around policing and violence during this era. The course will examine Ferguson, Missouri and the conflict surrounding the death of Michael Brown as a microcosm for the broader concerns of race and social justice in the contemporary United States.
For more information, contact: Amanda Cannada at amanda.cannada@uconn.edu