Courses

This two-course sequence assumes no previous knowledge of Arabic and provides a thorough grounding in the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It starts with the alphabet and the number system and builds the four skills gradually and systematically through carefully selected and organized materials focusing on specific, concrete and familiar topics such as self identification, family, travel, food, renting an apartment, study, the weather, etc.). These topics are listed in the textbook's table of contents.  The student who successfully completes the two-course sequence will have mastered about 1000 basic words and will be able to: 1) understand and actively participate in conversations on a limited range of practical topics such as self-identification, family, school, work, the weather, travel, etc., 2) read and understand, with the help of a short list of words, passages of up to 180 words written in Arabic script, and 3) discuss orally in class and write a 50-word paragraph in Arabic.  The two-course sequence aims to take the student from the Novice to the Intermediate Mid level according to the ACTFL proficiency guidelines.

Full details for ASRC 1201 - Elementary Arabic I

In this two-course sequence learners continue to develop the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing and grammar foundation through the extensive use of graded materials on a wide variety of topics.  While more attention is given to developing native-like pronunciation and to grammatical accuracy than in ARAB 1201 and ARAB 1202, the main focus of the course will be on encouraging fluency and facility in understanding the language and communicating ideas in it.  The student who successfully completes this two-course sequence will have mastered over 1500 new words and will be able to: 1) understand and actively participate in conversations related to a wide variety of topics beyond those covered in ARAB 1201 and ARAB 1202, such as the history and geography of the Arab world, food and health, sports, economic matters, the environment, politics, the Palestine problem, etc. 2) read and understand, with the help of a short list of words, passages of up to 300 words, and 3) discuss orally in class and write a 150-word paragraph in Arabic with fewer grammatical errors than in ARAB 1202.  The two-course sequence aims to take the student from the Intermediate Mid to the Advanced Mid level according to the ACTFL proficiency guidelines.

Full details for ASRC 1203 - Intermediate Arabic I

At the inception of this department at Cornell University in 1969, the Africana Studies and Research Center became the birthplace of the field "Africana studies." Africana studies emphasizes comparative and interdisciplinary studies of Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean and other diasporas. In this course, we will look at the diverse contours of the discipline. We will explore contexts ranging from modernity and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and plantation complex in the New World to processes of decolonization and globalization in the contemporary digital age. This course offers an introduction to the study of Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean and other diasporas. This course will examine, through a range of disciplines, among them literature, history, politics, philosophy, the themes - including race/racism, the Middle Passage, sexuality, colonialism, and culture - that have dominated Africana Studies since its inception in the late-1960s. We will explore these issues in an attempt to understand how black lives have been shaped in a historical sense; and, of course, the effects of these issues in the contemporary moment. This course seeks to introduce these themes, investigate through one or more of the disciplines relevant to the question, and provide a broad understanding of the themes so as to enable the kind of intellectual reflection critical to Africana Studies.

Full details for ASRC 1500 - Introduction to Africana Studies

Focusing on political and social history, this course surveys African-American history from Emancipation to the present. The class examines the post-Reconstruction "Nadir" of black life; the mass black insurgency against structural racism before and after World War II; and the Post-Reform Age that arose in the wake of the dismantling of legal segregation. The course will familiarize students with the basic themes of African-American life and experience and equip them to grasp concepts of political economy; class formation; and the intersection of race, class and gender.

Full details for ASRC 1595 - African American History From 1865

What is the Caribbean? How did its native inhabitants fared in the aftermath of the arrival of Europeans? How did the region shift from a Spanish Lake to a heavily contested geopolitical site where all European powers vied for political and commercial superiority? What were the main production systems of the region and how did they result in dramatic environmental change? How did the eighteenth-century revolutions transform the Caribbean? In this introductory survey to Caribbean history we will answer these and many other questions through the study of the political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental transformations of the Caribbean from the arrival of Columbus to the era of the Haitian Revolution. We will follow indigenous people, Spanish conquistadors, English, Dutch, and French pirates and privateers, planters, and merchants, imperial officers, slaves, sailors, and revolutionaries as they adapted to the multiple transformations that shaped this region. Through lectures, discussions, and readings of primary and secondary sources we will navigate the Caribbean in a quest to understand the historical processes that gave shape to this tropical paradise.

Full details for ASRC 1790 - Pirates, Slaves, and Revolutionaries: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to Louverture

This course will consider three texts: Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," the US Declaration of Independence and the event of January 6th, 2021, as all belonging to the same phenomenon: the on-going history of grievance in American politics. Miller's drama about the Salem witch trials concatenates to the founding document of American grievance: the US Declaration of Independence. January 6th, as such, shows itself to be, in the history of US politics, not the exception or the aberration. It is the constitutive norm.

Full details for ASRC 1810 - FWS: Grievance: In Three Texts

This course deals with educational innovations geared to promoting equal opportunity based on gender, race and class, in Africa and the African Diaspora. After an introduction of the concepts and theories of education and innovations and the stages of innovation as planned change, the course will focus on concrete cases and different types of educational innovations. The selected case studies, in the United States, include the creation and expansion of historically black institutions with a focus on Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), Lincoln University, Spelman College, and the Westside Preparatory School in Chicago. The African cases to be studied include African languages for instruction in Nigeria, science education also in Nigeria, Ujamaa and education for self-reliance in Tanzania, classroom action research in Lesotho, Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in African higher education with a focus on African Virtual Universities (AVU), the application of the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN) in Côte d'Ivoire, and OnLine learning at the University of in South Africa (UNISA). The role of education in the making of the Afropolitan in the 21st Century is discussed.

Full details for ASRC 1825 - FWS: Educational Innovations in Africa and Diaspora

In 1884 Germany took a lead role in the Berlin Conference, formalizing the 'Scramble for Africa'. Losing its colonies at the end of WWI, this interlude of German colonialism may appear brief. However, it left a long-lasting legacy for Germany's conceptions of race not least for the Nazi regime and ensuing Holocaust. The present course considers conceptions of race in modern Germany through an Africana Studies canon. Taking Aimé Césaire's theoretical framework as its starting point, the course deploys a cultural history approach to consider three main topics/eras. The first concerns questions of mapping. We examine this by reading the Berlin Conference in the context of emerging German ethnic expositions (Völkerschauen), where Theodor Michael's autobiography serves as our core cultural text. The second pertains to the re-appropriation of Germany's formal colonial past for Nazi propaganda. Here, we examine the early German colonialist, Carl Peters, whose biography featured as a central cinematographic propaganda source for Nazi Germany in 1941. Finally, we will discuss neo-colonial elements in contemporary German humanitarian politics, where we consider recruitment advertisement produced by the German army in juxtaposition with Post-Development arguments.

Full details for ASRC 1853 - FWS: Race and Colonialism in Modern Germany

How can a linguistically and ethnically diverse Africa be treated as a single unit of analysis without reinforcing "the dangers of a single story'? How does one write about a continent where much of its knowledge, history and tradition has been passed down orally? Do African authors have an ethical obligation to publish in their indigenous languages? This course examines some of the main controversies and debates surrounding approaches to the study of African continent by exposing students to a range of novels, essays and academic texts that highlight different representations of Africa across space and time. By the end of the course, students will be equipped with the intellectual sensitivities needed to study Africa and critically engage with debates arising among Africanists.

Full details for ASRC 1859 - FWS: How to Write About Africa

An introductory interdisciplinary course focusing on Africa's geographical, ecological, social and demographic characteristics; indigenous institutions and values; multiple cultural heritage of Africanity, Islam, Western civilization, and emerging Asian/Chinese influence. Main historical developments and transition;  contemporary political, economic, social and cultural change with technological factor. Africa's ties with the United States (from trans-Atlantic slavery to the present). Its impact on the emerging world order and its contribution to world civilization will also be explored.

Full details for ASRC 2003 - Africa: The Continent and Its People

Full details for ASRC 2060 - Introduction to Africana Religions

In this course, we will study the history of Black resistance to slavery in the US. Then we will help to build an exhibit about that topic at one of the foremost museum sites that interprets the history of US slavery. Students will learn about the history of slavery and emancipation, and how the attempt to memory-hole the history of Black resistance to slavery has shaped public memory and politics. We will also study how institutions like the Whitney Plantation Museum in Louisiana are working to produce a more accurate understanding of the American past. In the second half of the course we will shift to working on the research, development, and production of the exhibit. The course will run parallel with a sibling course being taught in the University of New Orleans' MA program in Public History.

Full details for ASRC 2297 - Public History Lab: The History of People Setting Themselves Free From Slavery in the US

Since the early 20th century, perhaps no form of music has reflected more elements of American culture than jazz. At various points, jazz has signified working class defiance, African American cultural resistance, mass-mediated popular culture, expressive freedom, high-art avant-gardism, social and political protest, and third world and subaltern solidarity. This course reexamines jazz practice from the point of view of the history of Mexican and Gulf/Caribbean influences in early jazz, and considers this alongside the Underground Railroad to the South, the Afro-Mexican experience, abolition in the Atlantic world, jazz and capitalism/imperialism, Jack Johnson in 1920s Tijuana, and more. Rather than taking a purely chronological approach, this course will combine a historical timeline with weeks focusing on thematic and methodological issues relevant to Africana Studies.

Full details for ASRC 2528 - Borderlands History of Jazz: Mexico and African America

World War II was one of the most transformative periods in the history of the 20th century. As a result, scholars, writers and filmmakers continue to re-examine the war from multiple angles. Nonetheless, most accounts of the war marginalize Africa's role and the consequences of the war for African communities.   This course considers the new historiography on World War II that aims to put the 'world' back into our analysis of WW II and considers the ways in which imperialism, race and gender shaped the prosecution and the consequences of the war.  It focuses specifically on Africa's social, economic and political engagement with the powers at the center of the conflict and introduces students to emerging debates in African historiography and the historiography of World War II. 

Full details for ASRC 2543 - In the Crossfire of Empires: Africa and World War II

Each year this seven-week, one-credit course focuses on a different novel by Nobel Laureate and Cornell alumna Toni Morrison. We read and discuss each novel in the context of Morrison's life and career, her place in African American, US, and world literature, and her exploration of crucial questions regarding identity, race, gender, history, oppression, and autonomy. Please see the class roster for the current semester's featured novel. Students will read the novel closely, with attention to its place in Morrison's career and in literary and cultural history.

Full details for ASRC 2603 - The Novels of Toni Morrison

MacArthur "Genius" grant winner Octavia Butler is famously known as a science fiction writer, but her novels, short stories and essays both adhere to and disrupt expectations in the genre. Throughout her writing career, Butler explored themes of space travel, time travel, African indigeneity, gender, race, spirituality, and ecological degradation. This class, will introduce students to Octavia Butler's work and the creative fields she helped spawn. Additionally, we will investigate and contextualize these themes alongside the scholarly fields of Black feminist studies, the environmental humanities, Black speculation fiction, Afrofuturism, disability studies and more!

Full details for ASRC 2665 - Octavia Butler

This course examines major trends in the evolution of the Middle East in the modern era. Focusing on the 19th and 20th centuries and ending with the "Arab Spring," we will consider Middle East history with an emphasis on five themes: imperialism, nationalism, modernization, Islam, and revolution. Readings will be supplemented with translated primary sources, which will form the backbone of class discussions.

Full details for ASRC 2674 - History of the Modern Middle East

In this two-semester sequence, learners will be introduced to authentic, unedited Arabic language materials ranging from short stories, and poems, to newspaper articles dealing with social,  political,  and cultural issues. Emphasis will be on developing fluency in oral expression through discussions of issues presented in the reading and listening selections. There will be more focus on the development of native-like pronunciation and accurate use of grammatical structures than in the previous four courses. A primary objective of the course is the development of the writing skill through free composition exercises in topics of interest to individual students.  This course starts where ARAB 2202 leaves off and continues the development of the four language skills and grammar foundation using 18 themes, some new and some introduced in previous courses but are presented here at a more challenging level.  The student who successfully completes this two-course sequence have mastered over 3000 new words and will be able, within context of the 18 new and recycled themes to: 1) understand and actively participate in conversations, 2) read and understand, with the help of a short list of words, authentic, unedited passages of up to 400 words, and 3) discuss orally in class and write a 300-word paragraph in Arabic with fewer grammatical errors than in ARAB 2202.  The two-course sequence aims to take the student from the Advanced Mid to the Superior level according to the ACTFL proficiency guidelines.

Full details for ASRC 3100 - Advanced Arabic I

The body has been crucially important to Black liberation politics. Not only has it been a site of contestation and control, but it has also served as a productive site of protest, alliance, and collective action, in ways both real and imagined. This course explores the historical debates and theories surrounding the body with a particular focus on how blackness informs bodily meanings and negotiations across the African diaspora. Weekly topics will allow students to consider the metaphorical and material dimensions of the body while also interrogating the very concept of embodiment, the ways in which individual bodies are constituted and reconstituted over time.

Full details for ASRC 3334 - Black Body Politics: Histories, Theories, and Debates

This is the course about the role of race and racism in international politics.  Scholars of international politics have long neglected the role of race and racism in world affairs, even though the origins of international relations as an academic discipline rest in the early years of the 20th century, when questions of imperialism and governance over different races necessitated the development of new ways of thinking about inter-state and inter-racial relations. Over the past decade, however, prompted by insights from postcolonial theory but also by continued Western military engagements in the Middle East and Africa, new scholarly publications have sought to bring back the analysis of "the color line" into our conversations about global politics. The topics that these works have highlighted include – among others – the role of African-Americans in the development of international relations and U.S. foreign policy, the impact of scientific racism on Western understanding of itself and its political projects in the world, the rise of Afro-Asian solidarity and the Non- Aligned Movement during the Cold War, and different articulations of non-Western subjectivities and their prospects for having "a voice" in world affairs.

Full details for ASRC 3947 - Race and World Politics

This seminar explores the intertwined histories of sex, sexuality, and gender at the intersection of major themes in American transnational and global history: race, labour, empire, and the state. What would a queer history of American foreign relations look like? How has the legacy of sexual violence in plantation slavery underwritten the systems – such as private property, police power, white supremacy, and carcerality -- that structure modern American society and its international entanglements? How can a focus on gender help us to better understand the contemporary challenges of globalisation and the Anthropocene? Uncovering the pasts of the most marginalised historical actors – enslaved women, rape victims, trans and queer people – requires innovative methodologies and new relationships to the archive. In this seminar, then, we will also think about how we do gender history, and develop tools for reading, writing and researching that take us beyond the boundaries of the written record and into the realm of the speculative, the spectral, and the imaginary.

Full details for ASRC 4265 - Gender, Sexuality, and the U.S. in the World

This course examines the rise of nationalism as well as the process and aims of decolonization in sub-Saharan Africa. It draws on films and a variety of primary and secondary materials in order to illuminate the complex and contested arenas from which African nationalisms emerged. Throughout the course we will examine the ways in which race, ethnicity, gender, and class shaped the discourse of nationalism as well as nationalist strategies and agendas. We will also explore the ways in which the conflicts and tensions of the nationalist period continue to shape post-colonial state and society.

Full details for ASRC 4303 - Nationalism and Decolonization in Africa

It is almost a truism that the United States is the world's most litigious society. As a polity founded on an almost sacralized constitutional foundation, it is no surprise that law and the legal system are quite central to life, its conceptions, and its manifestations, as understood and led by most inhabitants of the country. This, in turn, engenders a faith in law and its attendant justice on the part of Americans. This faith encompasses certain attitudes on the part of different segments of the American populace towards legal discourse, the operation of the legal system, the justice promised by law, and so forth. In this class, we shall be exploring these diverse issues from the standpoint of Critical Race Theory. We seek to establish what CRT is and its genesis; what it does and how it does what it does, and what justification we might have or can provide for studying it. At the end of the class, participants should have a fairly robust idea of CRT, its fundamental claims, its applicability, and what insights it provides regarding the nature, function, and aims of law and the legal system in the United States of America.

Full details for ASRC 4304 - Critical Race Theory: What Is It? What Does It Do? Why Should It Matter?

The driving dialectic in post-colonial studies has been the colonizer/colonized, or the Third World vs. the West. But slowly the field is letting go of this "arrested dialectic" and in its place various triangulations are emerging: e.g. transnationalism, world literature, the global novel, and global south literary studies. Starting with a walk through the emerging theoretical concepts of world/global/transnational literature, we will primarily focus on a global south reading of African literature (itself a contested term), and perennial questions around language and translation. Specifically we will look at how writers such as Chimamanda Adichie, V.S. Naipul, NoViolet Bulawayo, and MG Vassanji challenge the post-colonial discourse and how a global south reading provides an uncomfortable conversation with transnational and world literature theories and concepts. This class counts toward the Literatures of the Global South and post-1800 requirements for English majors.

Full details for ASRC 4512 - The Global South Novel and World Literature

This seminar examines the dynamics of modern collective identities which dominated the Egyptian public sphere in the long twentieth century. We will explore the underpinnings and formation of territorial Egyptian nationalism, pan-Arabism and Islamism through close readings and class discussions of important theoretical, historiographical and primary texts.

Full details for ASRC 4650 - Contesting Identities in Modern Egypt

For senior Africana Studies majors working on honors thesis, with selected reading, research projects, etc., under the supervision of a member of the Africana Studies and Research Center faculty.

Full details for ASRC 4900 - Honors Thesis

For students working on special topics, with selected reading, research projects, etc., under the supervision of a member of the Africana Studies and Research Center faculty.

Full details for ASRC 4902 - Independent Study

This course examines the rise of nationalism as well as the process and aims of decolonization in sub-Saharan Africa. It draws on films and a variety of primary and secondary materials in order to illuminate the complex and contested arenas from which African nationalisms emerged. Throughout the course we will examine the ways in which race, ethnicity, gender, and class shaped the discourse of nationalism as well as nationalist strategies and agendas. We will also explore the ways in which the conflicts and tensions of the nationalist period continue to shape post-colonial state and society.

Full details for ASRC 6303 - Nationalism and Decolonization in Africa

From the late-1970s on, the Algerian-born philosopher Jacques Derrida began to be much troubled by his African past. Reading Derrida as an African, reading for the African in Derrida, in, we might say, deconstruction, might find its apogee in Monolingualism, Or, the Prosthesis of the Other, but this course will "trace" the moment of African articulation in Derrida to both earlier moments and other texts, including Specters of Marx, and The Other Heading.

Full details for ASRC 6515 - Derrida In/And Africa

In this seminar we will explore the Ottoman Empire's presence in the continent, and the continent's influence on the rest of the Ottoman Empire.  In addition to the focus on the history of Ottoman North Africa, we will explore the role Istanbul played in the history of the Red Sea Basin (today's Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia) and vice versa. A special focus will be placed on the role sub-Saharan African slave trade played in Ottoman society, from the ruling elite households of Istanbul to the day-to-day formulation of ideas of difference making across the Turkish and Arabic speaking parts of the Ottoman Empire. Emphasis will be placed on reading new literature on race and slavery in the Ottoman world, borrowing theoretical and analytical formulations around this topic form better-developed historiographies of other parts of the world. This seminar targets a senior and graduate students interested in the history of empire, the Middle East and Africa trans-imperial histories, and south-south relations. 

Full details for ASRC 6547 - Ottoman Africa, African Ottomans

This seminar explores the nexus of Frankfurt School Critical Theory and American Black and queer thought. While the legacy of the Frankfurt school (Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse) is often traced forward to the work of Juergen Habermas and other contemporary Germans, there is another on-going and more radical legacy taking place in American Black and queer thought. This seminar will look at central texts of Critical Theory and their resonances (as both expansion and critique) in contemporary Black and queer thinking. We will create dialogues around themes such as: Adorno, Fumi Okiji, and Fred Moten on jazz & music; Bloch and José Estaban Muñoz on hope and utopia; Marcuse and Angela Davis on liberation; Adorno and Oshrat Silberbusch on the non-identical as resistance, etc.

Full details for ASRC 6740 - German Critical Theory and American Radical Thought

Independent study course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ASRC 6900 - Independent Study

This class is the first in a two-part course sequence offered in the fall and spring semesters annually. In this hybrid theory and methods course, students will read historiographic, ethnographic, and sociological engagements about African-descended people throughout the Diaspora.

Full details for ASRC 6902 - Africana Studies Graduate Seminar

Elementary Swahili provides a foundation in listening, speaking, reading, and writing the basic grammatical structures and vocabulary. No prior knowledge of the language is required. Swahili (Kiswahili) is spoken in the East and Central parts of Africa. It is an official and national language in Tanzania, and in Kenya. During a first semester course, students engage in short conversation and communicative tasks, such as, greetings, introduction, daily routines, shopping, etc. Students learn to comprehend short and simple utterances about topics pertaining to basic personal information and immediate setting in day to day life. A Swahili second semester increases your oral fluency, grammar, vocabulary, writing, reading, and listening skills. All listening exercises will aim at preparing students to speak. Be ready to actively participate in conversations, to express yourself orally, and write stories/compositions. Literature and Cultural materials are incorporated into the course, along with audio, video, and web-based materials.

Full details for SWAHL 1100 - Elementary Swahili I

Intermediate Swahili levels I and II in general impart speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills beyond Swahili elementary level to participate with ease and confidence in familiar topics and exchange information on unfamiliar topics. Students are assigned communicative tasks such as respond to a situation with a short text and take part in a discussion after viewing short video clips and prompts to elicit speaking and listening competence and cultural awareness responses beyond elementary level. The language and cultural scenarios practiced are designed to help students demonstrate language responses beyond familiar topics, and to feel comfortable conversing with Swahili native speakers, as well as to blend in and feel welcomed as part of the community while exploring different topics such as acquaintanceship, relationships, health, festivals, education, sports, housing, politics, commerce, travel, etc. Short stories are used to depict cultural aspects such as cultural expressions, proverbs, sayings, and riddles. Literature and cultural materials are incorporated into the course, along with audio-visual and web-based material. In this course, students have an opportunity to participate in language conversation outside the classroom and explore the opportunities for study abroad in East Africa. Swahili Elementary I and II are prerequisite for this course. By the end of this course, students should be able to reach proficiency level Intermediate High according to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) www.actfl.org.

Full details for SWAHL 2101 - Intermediate Swahili I

Develops advanced speaking, reading, and writing skills with longer texts, films, advanced readings, and advanced oral discussion encompassing various topics. Examples of texts and films are; movies, novels, plays, poems, newspaper articles, essays, and speeches. Students will be prepared to narrate and describe events in a longer time frame. Students will also review and practice grammatical aspects and cultural expressions that pose challenges to non-native speakers when trying to comprehend native speakers. The course requires students to engage in small research projects during the course of study based on the student's areas of interest. During the course of study, students will have an opportunity to participate in language conversation outside the classroom and to engage in language conversational exchange with the students from the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

Full details for SWAHL 3103 - Advanced Swahili I

Topics vary by semester in relation to student needs.

Full details for SWAHL 5509 - Graduate Studies in Swahili

This course is a basic introduction to the Wolof language. It aims to build students' basic understanding of the sentence structure of the language. It combines written and oral practice based on major cultural aspects of traditional and modern Wolof society. These exercises will include production, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and writing.

Full details for WOLOF 1117 - Elementary Wolof I

This course will further your awareness and understanding of the Wolof language and culture, as well as improve your mastery of grammar, writing skills, and oral skills. Course materials will incorporate various types of text including tales, cartoons, as well as multimedia such as films, videos, and audio recordings.

Full details for WOLOF 2118 - Intermediate Wolof I

This course will further your awareness and understanding of the Wolof language and culture and improve your mastery of grammar, writing skills, and oral expression. Course materials will incorporate various text types, including tales, poetry, literature, and multimedia such as films, videos, television, and radio. The instructor will provide all course materials. At the end of the course, you will be able to understand basic Wolof and make yourself understood in everyday situations.

Full details for WOLOF 3113 - Advanced Wolof I

A two-semester beginner's course in Yoruba Language and Culture. Organized to offer Yoruba language skills and proficiency in speaking, reading, listening, writing, and translation. Focus is placed on familiar informal and formal contexts, e.g., home, school, work, family, social situations, politics, etc. Course uses Yoruba oral literature, proverbs, rhetoric, songs, popular videos, and theater, as learning tools for class comprehension. First semester focuses on conversation, speaking, and listening.  Second semester focuses on writing, translation and grammatical formation. Through the language course students gain basic background for the study of an African culture, arts, and history both in the continent and in the diaspora. Yoruba language is widely spoken along the west coast of Africa and in some African communities in diaspora.  Yoruba video culture, theater, music, and arts has a strong influence along the west coast and in the diaspora.A two-semester beginner's course in Yoruba Language and Culture. Organized to offer Yoruba language skills and proficiency in speaking, reading, listening, writing, and translation. Focus is placed on familiar informal and formal contexts, e.g., home, school, work, family, social situations, politics, etc. Course uses Yoruba oral literature, proverbs, rhetoric, songs, popular videos, and theater, as learning tools for class comprehension. First semester focuses on conversation, speaking, and listening.  Second semester focuses on writing, translation and grammatical formation. Through the language course students gain basic background for the study of an African culture, arts, and history both in the continent and in the diaspora. Yoruba language is widely spoken along the west coast of Africa and in some African communities in diaspora.  Yoruba video culture, theater, music, and arts has a strong influence along the west coast and in the diaspora.

Full details for YORUB 1108 - Introduction to Yoruba I

The intermediate course extends the development of the main language skills-reading, writing, listening, and conversation. The course deepens the development of correct native pronunciation, the accuracy of grammatical and syntactic structures; and the idiomatic nuances of the language. Students who take the course are able to (1) prepare, illustrate, and present Yoruba texts such as poems, folktales, advertisements, compositions, letters, (2) read Yoruba literature of average complexity, (3) interpret Yoruba visual texts of average difficulty, (4) comprehend Yoruba oral literature and philosophy-within the context of African oral literature and philosophy-of basic complexity. Through the Yoruba language students appreciate African oral literature and philosophy. The primary textual media are Yoruba short stories, poems, short plays, films, songs, and newspapers.

Full details for YORUB 2110 - Intermediate Yoruba I

This course will help students expand their understanding of the Yoruba language through the communicative approach. We will focus on the four skills, speaking, listening, learning, and writing.

Full details for YORUB 3110 - Advanced Yoruba I

A beginning course in conversational isiZulu, using Web-based materials filmed in South Africa. Emphasis on the sounds of the language, including clicks and tonal variation, and on the words and structures needed for initial social interaction. Brief dialogues concern everyday activities; aspects of contemporary Zulu culture are introduced through readings and documentaries in English.

Full details for ZULU 1113 - Elementary Zulu I

Development of fluency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing, using Web-based materials filmed in South Africa. Students describe and narrate spoken and written paragraphs. Review of morphology; concentration on tense and aspect. Materials are drawn from contemporary popular culture, folklore, and mass media.

Full details for ZULU 2116 - Intermediate Zulu I

Development of fluency in using idioms, speaking about abstract concepts, and voicing preferences and opinions. Excerpts from oral genres, short stories, and television dramas. Introduction to other South African languages and to issues of standardization, dialect, and language attitude.

Full details for ZULU 3113 - Advanced Zulu I