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 1202 - Elementary Arabic II

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 the 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, to investigate through one or more of the disciplines relevant to the question, and to 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

This course offers an introduction to the philosophy of race. It canvasses key debates in the field concerning the metaphysical status of race, the relationship between the concept of race and racism (and the nature of the latter), the first-person reality of race, and the connections and disconnections between racial, ethnic, and national identities.

Full details for ASRC 1650 - Philosophy of Race

What are your "dreams" and how do you articulate and communicate them to others, especially in writing? This course primarily serves as your writing laboratory with the objective of helping students think critically and write clearly as they seek to understand the ethical framework underpinning MLK's nonviolent active resistance and its applicability to our contemporary quest for justice. The primary text for this course is A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. which encompasses MLK's writings including his historic public addresses, letters, sermons, interviews, books, and essays that will serve as templates for learning various types of writings. This course challenges students to "dream" freely, think critically, and write clearly using the informal and formal writing assignments. 

Full details for ASRC 1860 - FWS: A Dream, not a Nightmare: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Quest for Justice

What comes to mind when you think of the Caribbean and its people? Do you envision a place and collective beyond the often exoticized, "underdeveloped," resource-rich, island territories rendered in the global imagination? This seminar will examine Caribbean literature that explores and inverts the "tourist gaze," the pervasive remnants of its colonial encounter, the complex power relations inherent in "sexing" the Caribbean and shaping gender, economic, and racial inequities when national and metaphorical boundaries are crossed, and the joy and resilience inherent in Caribbean living. With an interdisciplinary focus on strengthening students' writing competences, this course will concentrate on written assignments that derive from visual media and literature such as Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak!, Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place and "Girl," and the documentary film "Life + Debt."

Full details for ASRC 1861 - FWS: The Caribbean Beyond the Global Imaginary

When the "1619 Project," a special edition of the New York Times Magazine was released in August 2019, few could have anticipated the controversy that ensued. Leading U.S. historians circulated a petition outlining its perceived inaccuracies; and the project even earned a presidential rebuke resulting in the founding of the 1776 Commission, an advisory designed to challenge the project's key arguments about the nation's founding. In both instances the critiques were not merely about the content of "1619," they were also about who gets to write history and for what purpose. Reading the "1619 Project" alongside historical writing published in both academic and popular mediums, this seminar will explore how issues like audience, interpretation, and evidence shape the process of historical writing.

Full details for ASRC 1899 - FWS: The 1619 Project: Controversy and the Writing of Public History

The digital revolution has made an enormous amount of information available to research scholars, but discovering resources and using them effectively can be challenging. This course introduces students with research interests in Latino and Africana Studies to search strategies and methods for finding materials in various formats (e.g., digital, film, and print) using information databases such as the library catalog, print and electronic indexes, and the World Wide Web. Instructors provide equal time for lecture and hands-on learning. Topics include government documents, statistics, subject-specific online databases, social sciences, the humanities, and electronic citation management.

Full details for ASRC 1900 - Research Strategies in Africana and Latino Studies

This course is a seminar focused on a service-learning approach to understanding the history of neoliberal transformations of the global economy through the lens of an island (Jamaica) and a community (Petersfield). Building on the success of previous year's global service-learning course and trip to Petersfield, and now bringing the course under the auspices of both the Engaged Cornell and Cornell Abroad administrative and funding capabilities. Students will attend class each week and will also take a one-week service trip over spring break to work with the local community partner (AOC) in Petersfield. We will also work with Amizade, a non-profit based in Pittsburgh, who is the well-established partner of the AOC and which works with numerous universities on global service learning projects. They have a close relationship with CU Engaged Learning and Research.

Full details for ASRC 2006 - Understanding Global Capitalism Through Service Learning

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 2200 - Intermediate Arabic II

This course is designed for students who are interested in reading the language of the Qur'an with accuracy and understanding. The first week (4 classes) will be devoted to an introduction of the history of the Qur'an: the revelation, collection, variant readings, and establishment of an authoritative edition. The last week will be devoted to a general overview of "revisionist" literature on the Qur'an. In the remaining 12 weeks, we will cover all of Part 30 (Juz' 'Amma, suuras 78-114) and three suuras of varying length (36, 19, and 12).

Full details for ASRC 2204 - Introduction to Quranic Arabic

This seminar examines some of the political and cultural visions of Africa and Africans held by African-American intellectuals and activists in the 19th and 20th centuries. Emphasis is placed on the philosophies of black nationalism, Pan Africanism and anticolonialism and the themes of emigration, expatriation, repatriation and exile. Awareness of Africa and attitudes toward the continent and its peoples have profoundly shaped African-American identity, culture and political consciousness. Notions of a linked fate between Africans and black Americans have long influenced black life and liberation struggles within the U.S. The motives, purposes and outlooks of African-American theorists who have claimed political, cultural, or spiritual connection to Africa and Africans have varied widely, though they have always powerfully reflected black experiences in America and in the West. The complexity and dynamism of those views belie simplistic assumptions about essential or "natural" relationships, and invite critical contemplation of the myriad roles that Africa has played in the African-American mind."

Full details for ASRC 2354 - African American Visions of Africa

Historical biographies are one of the most popular forms of historical writing. In this course we will examine the challenges and opportunities of writing biographies set in the pre-1800 world by focusing on people in the black Atlantic (individuals of African descent who traveled between and lived in West Africa, Europe and the Americas). What makes for a good historical (as opposed to a literary or simply glorifying) biography? How can one add depth and context to the often limited nuggets of information about an individual life in ways that can reveal so much more? These are questions at the heart of this course.

Full details for ASRC 2415 - Biography and the Black Atlantic, 1400-1800

This course focuses on African American women in the 20th century. The experiences of black women will be examined from a social, practical, communal, and gendered perspective. Topics include the Club Woman's movement, suffrage, work, family, black and white women and feminism, black women and radicalism, and the feminization of poverty.

Full details for ASRC 2512 - Black Women in the 20th Century

This course will introduce students to Black Queer literatures and media. Since these materials decenter whiteness and patriarchal heterosexism, they often seem illegible to those approaching them from the perspective of the dominant culture. We will start with foundational texts that outline the parameters of our dominant culture. We will then discuss Black Queer contemporary novels, films, essays, and visual art in order to understand the ways that these works move past the limitations of those parameters. By engaging these literatures and media, this course investigates the exciting possibilities that emerge from understanding alternative ways of being and living in our world. This course satisfies the Literatures of the Americas requirement for English majors.

Full details for ASRC 2560 - Black Queer Writing and Media

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

When sugar "was king," that is, when it was valued in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as we might value petroleum today, European nations went to war in order to possess the sugar producing islands in the Caribbean. Sugar production, slave labor, and the transatlantic trade that they generated were crucial for European empire building and the creation of the enormous wealth that, in comparison with earlier historical periods, rapidly revolutionized agriculture, nutrition, industry, labor, and free trade; racialized Caribbean peoples; and gave rise to transatlantic debates on freedom, abolitionism, and humanitarian philanthropy. Readings include A. Stuart, Sugar in the Blood, S. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, C.L.R. James, Black Jacobins. Films include, Gutiérrez Alea's The Last Supper and M. Kalatozov's I am Cuba.

Full details for ASRC 3010 - Sweetness: How Sugar Built the Modern World

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 3101 - Advanced Arabic II

This course studies the life experiences and political struggles of black women who have attained political leadership. It will study their rise to political power through an examination of the autobiographies of women from the Caribbean, the U.S., Africa and Brazil. Political figures such as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Shirley Chisholm, Benedita da Silva will serve as some of the primary sources of analysis and discussion. Students will have the opportunity to select and follow a political leader and her challenges closely. The first half of the course will examine some of the general literature on the subject; the second half will study the women in their own words. We will attempt to have some available local political leaders visit the class.

Full details for ASRC 3206 - Black Women and Political Leadership

Put into questions, the aims of this course are as follow: Should anyone worry about China's presence in Africa? Is China's presence part of the recolonizing of the Continent? Alternatively, is China's foray part of a global struggle for positioning between an emergent China and Africa's so-called traditional allies in the West?

Full details for ASRC 3330 - China-Africa Relations

At the conclusion of World War II, the United States ushered in a new international order based on the principles of the Atlantic Charter, which became the basis for the United Nations Charter: including but not limited to the right to self-determination and global economic cooperation. All this changed when Henry Kissinger proclaimed that "The whites are (in Africa) to stay and the only way that constructive change can come about is through them. There is no hope for the blacks to gain the political rights they seek through violence, which will only lead to chaos and increased opportunities for the communists." This course examines how US Foreign policy toward Africa has been formulated and executed since the Nixon years.

Full details for ASRC 3401 - The Whites are Here to Stay: US-Africa Policy from Nixon to Date

The dominant strains in Euro-American philosophy tend either to erase or underplay the participation in and contributions to the constitution of "Western" philosophy of philosophers from the global African world. Additionally, dominant philosophical narratives are notorious for excluding African-inflected discourses from explorations of the perennial problems of philosophy. In this class, we seek to fill this absence by spending time studying the contributions to a distinct philosophical tradition—Existentialism—by thinkers from the global African world.

Full details for ASRC 3402 - Africana Philosophy: Existentialism in Black

In 1940, with the publication of his novel Native Son, Richard Wright helped to launch the protest era in African American literature. This course focuses on the development of key fiction and nonfiction genres that have shaped the development of African American literature from the mid-20th-century to the contemporary era. Genres that we will consider include poetry, fiction, the essay, the speech, autobiography, and the novel. We will explore the main periods in this literature's development such as the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and the black women's literary renaissance of the 1970s, and consider the rise of science fiction writing. Authors who will be considered include Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ishmael Reed, and August Wilson. We will also incorporate discussion of works in film and art that have been the outgrowth of writing y African American authors. The course will include screenings of scenes from the class film A Raisin in the Sun, along with the films Dutchman and Beloved.

Full details for ASRC 3508 - African American Literature: 1930s - present

Mainstream media would have us believe that driving a new Toyota Prius, recycling, and shopping "clean" at Whole Foods would make us all food environmentalists, right? Additionally, climate change and environmental degradation are often discussed as if they are phenomena that affect us all equally. Despite these dynamics, research in recent years tells us that while there might be some general ways that we experience our constantly changing physical environments—race, gender, and location very much affect how we experience "Nature." In this course we will use literature from across the African diaspora to investigate how looking at race, gender, and location produces very different ideas about environment, environmentalism, and "Nature" itself.

Full details for ASRC 3565 - Black Ecoliterature

This course provides a critical historical interrogation of what Black Marxism author Cedric Robinson called "the Black Radical Tradition." It will introduce students to some of the major currents in the history of black radical thought, action, and organizing, with an emphasis on the United States after World War I. It relies on social, political, and intellectual history to examine the efforts of black people who have sought not merely social reform, but a fundamental restructuring of political, economic, and social relations. We will define and evaluate radicalism in the shifting contexts of liberation struggles. We will explore dissenting visions of social organization and alternative definitions of citizenship, progress, and freedom. We will confront the meaning of the intersection of race, gender, class, and sexuality in social movements.

Full details for ASRC 3590 - The Black Radical Tradition in the U.S.

What impact did Africa's involvement in the slave trade and its colonization by Europe have on its long-term economic health? What role have post-independence political decisions made within Africa and by multinational economic actors (the World Bank and the IMF, for example) had on altering the trajectory of Africa's economic history? Does China's recent heavy investment in Africa portend a movement away from or a continuation of Africa's economic underdevelopment? These questions and others will be addressed in this course. 

Full details for ASRC 3652 - African Economic Development Histories

When an African and an African American meet, solidarity is presumed, but often friction is the result.  In this course, we will consider how Africans and African Americans see each other through literature.  What happens when two peoples suffering from double consciousness meet?  We will examine the influence of historical forces including slavery, colonialism and pan-Africanism on the way writers explore the meeting between Africans and African Americans. Specifically we will look at how writers and political figures such as Maya Angelou, Chimamanda Adichie, Richard Wright, Eugene Robinson, Philippe Wamba, Martin Luther King Junior and Malcolm X have understood the meeting.

Full details for ASRC 3742 - Africans and African Americans in Literature

What does it mean to be Black and Indigenous? For much of United States history, at least, to be Black and Indigenous was a legal if not social impossibility. Even as societies around the world have embraced the pluralism of multiraciality Black-Indigenous peoples have found themselves largely absent from both historical and contemporary conversations surrounding blackness and indigeneity. This course does the important work of excavating the histories of Black and Indigenous peoples in the Americas. We will do so by examining case studies alongside the writing and artwork of Black-Indigenous figures in order to understand more about the relationships, politics, and meanings of Black-Indigenous identity.

Full details for ASRC 4023 - Black and Indigenous Histories

This course examines the works of major poets and artists from the Spanish and French- speaking Caribbean from roughly 1925-1945. During this period, two movements—Negrismo and Négritude—emerged, on the one hand, as anticolonial efforts at Black self-expression in the Caribbean and, on the other, as engagements with European avant-garde movements such as Cubism and Surrealism. We will examine canonical works by Luis Palés Matos, Nicolás Guillén, Wifredo Lam, Lydia Cabrera, Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Césaire, Léon Gontran Damas, and Hector Hyppolite. Theoretical readings include Franz Fanon and Antonio Benítez Rojo. Reading knowledge of Spanish or French or both is recommended but not required. Students may write their papers in Spanish, French, or English.

Full details for ASRC 4151 - Negrismo, Negritude and Surrealism in the Caribbean

This seminar will focus on the writings of the polymorphous Martinican poet and thinker, Édouard Glissant (1928-2011).  We will attend to the historical context of French colonialism, particularly in the Caribbean, that gives his writing part of its impetus and to the anticolonial intellectuals with whom he engages (chiefly Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon) as well as to his major self-professed influences (William Faulkner, Saint-John Perse, Hegel) and to an array of interlocutors and fellow-travelers as well as a few dissenters. The seminar will examine the main preoccupations of Glissant's writing (world histories of dispossession and plantation slavery, creolization, Relation, opacity, flux, transversality, Caribbean landscapes as figures of thought, the All-World, etc.) but our focus will be on reading Glissant and attending carefully to the implications of his poetics and of his language for decolonial thought.

Full details for ASRC 4368 - Reading Édouard Glissant

In this course, we will explore the literature and history of Harlem, beginning with an examination of James Weldon Johnson's Black Manhattan and Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts's Harlem is Nowhere.  We will go on to explore selected literatures of the Harlem Renaissance by reading authors such as Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston.  Though the dates and even the very notion of the period itself are open to debate, the Harlem Renaissance peaked during the 1920s in the wake of the Great Migration to the urban North, and declined with the onset of the Great Depression.  We will consider overlapping literary movements that shaped the Harlem Renaissance profoundly, from modernism to Negritude.  This movement established important foundations for the contemporary black art scene in New York City and the development of major institutions such as the Apollo Theater, the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.  Because it encompassed a range of other art forms and media beyond literature, such as painting, photography, and music, we will explore the work of noted photographers of the period from Carl Van Vechten to James Van Der Zee, artists such as Aaron Douglas, William H. Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley, and Palmer Hayden, and musicians such as Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith.  We will read selected writings on Harlem from Malcolm X, Ralph Ellison and Chester Himes, and study the recent fictions by Mat Johnson, Colson Whitehead, Sapphire, Karla FC Holloway and A'Lelia Bundles.  We will draw on a range of media and technology, including resources based at the Library of Congress such as "Drop Me Off in Harlem" and "Guide to Harlem Renaissance Materials," along with contemporary photographic projects such as Gayatri Spivak and Alice Attie's Harlem and Harlem:  A Century in Images by Deborah Willis and several co-authors.  

Full details for ASRC 4508 - From the Harlem Renaissance to New Harlem Novels

This course takes up literatures and arts of Black speculation in the broadest terms, from science fiction and fantasy to Afrofuturism and Afropunk to Phillis Wheatley's and Outkast's poetics. We'll give special attention to speculation in African American literature to think through how Black people used art in the midst of anti-blackness to imagine worlds otherwise and for the pleasure of the craft. We'll read Black speculation through multiple forms, including novels, graphic novels, film, and music. Figures for consideration include William J. Wilson ("Ethiop"), Pauline Hopkins, Frances E. W. Harper, W. E. B. Du Bois, Octavia Butler, Ryan Coogler, Eve Ewing, N.K. Jemisin, Sun Ra, and Erykah Badu.

Full details for ASRC 4655 - Black Speculative Fiction

As renewed calls against racial violence in this country are articulated through the language of abolitionism, this course investigates how activism and projects to promote greater social justice are reorienting around an abolitionist worldview. Looking both backwards and forward, this course examines how the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade informs contemporary practices of advocating for racial justice. Over the course of the semester, we will turn to the work of social justice activists in order to interpret strategic planning documents by organizations working to promote transformative and reparative justice. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for ASRC 4678 - Abolition. Justice. Reparations.

This course combines literature, film, and other artistic projects in order to explore African forms of collective justice and repair, following the numerous conflicts that have shaken the continent in the 20th and 21st centuries, from anti-colonial struggles to civil wars. We will look at aesthetic productions from post-independence Algeria and Ghana, post-apartheid South Africa and post-genocide Rwanda, among others, in order to reflect on multiple questions, including: How do aesthetic works and state institutions offer competing narratives of a traumatic past, and what ways of healing can they generate? How do they negotiate between the retributive and the restorative impulses of justice? Is justice sufficient for resolution to take place? And conversely, can repair ever be achieved in the absence of justice? For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for ASRC 4681 - Post-Conflict Justice and Resolution in Africa

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

Full details for ASRC 4901 - 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 4903 - Independent Study

This course will examine 20th century black critical thought. We will interrogate cultural theories and literary texts from African, Caribbean, African-American, Black British and Afro-Brazilian communities. As such discourses of post-coloniality, cultural criticism, Black literary theories and philosophies, black feminist discourses, theories of decolonization will be some of the major areas of inquiry. While the specific identified texts will form the core of our discussion, analyses will draw on a variety of other works by other authors more relevant. Here, Black literature is being used as an umbrella term to bring together and examine works by men and women who adopt the term "black" as a political descriptor of their subject positions and locations in society. The major emphasis will be on the intellectual and creative contributions of people of African descent.

Full details for ASRC 6208 - Black Literary and Cultural Theory

This seminar will focus on the writings of the polymorphous Martinican poet and thinker, Édouard Glissant (1928-2011).  We will attend to the historical context of French colonialism, particularly in the Caribbean, that gives his writing part of its impetus and to the anticolonial intellectuals with whom he engages (chiefly Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon) as well as to his major self-professed influences (William Faulkner, Saint-John Perse, Hegel) and to an array of interlocutors and fellow-travelers as well as a few dissenters. The seminar will examine the main preoccupations of Glissant's writing (world histories of dispossession and plantation slavery, creolization, Relation, opacity, flux, transversality, Caribbean landscapes as figures of thought, the All-World, etc.) but our focus will be on reading Glissant and attending carefully to the implications of his poetics and of his language for decolonial thought. 

Full details for ASRC 6368 - Reading Édouard Glissant

Full details for ASRC 6652 - African Economic Development Histories

Full details for ASRC 6653 - Biography and the Black Atlantic, 1400-1800

As renewed calls against racial violence in this country are articulated through the language of abolitionism, this course investigates how activism and projects to promote greater social justice are reorienting around an abolitionist worldview. Looking both backwards and forward, this course examines how the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade informs contemporary practices of advocating for racial justice. Over the course of the semester, we will turn to the work of social justice activists in order to interpret strategic planning documents by organizations working to promote transformative and reparative justice. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for ASRC 6678 - Abolition. Justice. Reparations.

This course combines literature, film, and other artistic projects in order to explore African forms of collective justice and repair, following the numerous conflicts that have shaken the continent in the 20th and 21st centuries, from anti-colonial struggles to civil wars. We will look at aesthetic productions from post-independence Algeria and Ghana, post-apartheid South Africa and post-genocide Rwanda, among others, in order to reflect on multiple questions, including: How do aesthetic works and state institutions offer competing narratives of a traumatic past, and what ways of healing can they generate? How do they negotiate between the retributive and the restorative impulses of justice? Is justice sufficient for resolution to take place? And conversely, can repair ever be achieved in the absence of justice? For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for ASRC 6681 - Post-Conflict Justice and Resolution in Africa

Urban Justice Labs are innovative seminars designed to bring students into direct contact with complex questions about race and social justice within the context of American urban culture, architecture, humanities, and media. Drawing from Cornell's collections, such as the Hip Hop Collection, the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, the Human Sexuality Collection, holdings on American Indian History and Culture, the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library, and the Johnson Museum of Art, students will leverage archival materials to launch new observations and explore unanticipated approaches to urban justice. Urban Justice Labs are offered under the auspices of Cornell University's Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Collaborative Studies in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities grant. For current special topic descriptions and application instructions, visit our urban seminars website.

Full details for ASRC 6819 - Urban Justice Lab

This seminar is an intensive study of the political thought of W.E.B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr. Approaching texts in contexts, we will read works including The Souls of Black Folk, Darkwater, Black Reconstruction in America, Stride toward Freedom, and Where Do We Go from Here? as illocutionary interventions in major political crises and ideological disputes of twentieth century Black political thought. Topics we will explore include freedom and dignity, slavery and its afterlives, racial capitalism, leadership and mass politics, democracy and abolition, empire and decolonization, political aesthetics, and the politics of prophetic critique. We will pay special attention to Du Bois and King's respective contributions in national and transnational contexts of the global color line.

Full details for ASRC 6865 - Du Bois and King

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 6901 - Independent Study

This class is the second 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 6903 - 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

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 1101 - Elementary Swahili II

This course is intended for students who will be spending the summer in Tanzania for the Global Health Program.  To prepare students to live and learn in Tanzania, this course will provide an introduction to and foundation in basic Kiswahili.  Students will develop the capacity to communicate with Tanzanian peers and home stay families, as well as develop the competency to navigate community life in Tanzania. Since this is a one credit seminar, this course does NOT fulfill a language requirement for colleges or majors. This course is intended for students whom will be spending the summer in Tanzania for the Global Health Program.  To prepare students to live and learn in Tanzania, this course will provide an introduction to and foundation in basic Kiswahili.  Students will develop the capacity to communicate with Tanzanian peers and home stay families, as well as develop the competency to navigate community life in Tanzania.

Full details for SWAHL 1107 - Elementary Swahili for Global Health

Biomedical Engineering students who have an exchange program with Arusha Technical College (ATC) in Tanzania. The course introduces students to Swahili language and culture and equips language input to communicate with Arusha colleagues in formal and informal settings. Prior knowledge of the language is not required. Since this course is one credit, it does not fulfill the language requirement.Students will incorporate their working contexts at the beginning language proficiency level. The course aims to provide various reading, writing, speaking, and listening activities focusing on the daily interaction at work and outside. All tasks are geared to give students proficiency and competence to communicate with Swahili native speakers in Arusha, Tanzania. This course does NOT fulfill a language requirement for colleges or majors.

Full details for SWAHL 1108 - Elementary Swahili Jumpstart

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 2102 - Intermediate Swahili II

This course is a continuation of the basic introductory Wolof course. 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.

Full details for WOLOF 1118 - Elementary Wolof II

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 2119 - Intermediate Wolof II

As a continuation of WOLOF 3113, this course will continue to expand your knowledge of the Wolof language and culture. It will enhance your command of complex grammar, written forms, and oral expression. Course materials will incorporate various text types, including tales, poetry, literature, and multimedia, such as television and radio. At the end of the course, you will present an analysis of an authentic oral or written text to an audience, formulate a position surrounding the text, and respond spontaneously to questions.

Full details for WOLOF 3114 - Advanced Wolof II

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. 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 on 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 have strong influence along the west coast and in the diaspora.

Full details for YORUB 1109 - Introduction to Yoruba II

Intermediate Yoruba II is a follow-up to Intermediate Yoruba I. It is a fourth-semester Yoruba language course. The course assists students to acquire advanced level proficiency in reading, speaking, writing, and listening in Yoruba language. Students are introduced to grammatical and syntactic structures in the language that will assist them in describing, presenting, and narrating information in the basic tenses. At the end of the course, students will be able to listen to, process, and understand programs produced for native speakers in media such as television, radio, and films. They will be able to read and understand short stories, novels, and plays written for native speakers of the language.

Full details for YORUB 2111 - Intermediate Yoruba II

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 3111 - Advanced Yoruba II

Development of communication skills through dialogues and role play. Texts and songs are drawn from traditional and popular literature. Students research daily life in selected areas of South Africa.

Full details for ZULU 1116 - Elementary Zulu II

Students read longer texts from popular media as well as myths and folktales. Prepares students for initial research involving interaction with speakers of isiZulu in South Africa and for the study of oral and literary genres.

Full details for ZULU 2117 - Intermediate Zulu II

Readings may include short stories, a novel, praise poetry, historical texts, or contemporary political speeches, depending on student interests. Study of issues of language policy and use in contemporary South Africa; introduction to the Soweto dialect of isiZulu. Students are prepared for extended research in South Africa involving interviews with isiZulu speakers.

Full details for ZULU 3114 - Advanced Zulu II