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AAAS Courses by Term

Spring 2012

AAAS 10: Introduction to African-American Studies

This course is a multidisciplinary investigation into the lives and cultures of people of African descent in the Americas. Topics may include: the African background, religion and the Black church, popular culture, slavery and resistance, morality and literacy, the Civil Rights Movement, Black nationalism, theories of race and race relations.

AAAS 15: History of Africa Since 1800 (Identical to History 66)

This course explores some of the major historical processes unfolding in Africa since 1800. Our analysis will focus on social and economic history as we examine Africa's integration into the international economy during the nineteenth century, the rise of new social classes, and the creation of the colonial and post-colonial state. Our primary case studies will be drawn from east, west and southern Africa to highlight both the similarities and differences of their historical development.

AAAS 19: Africa and the World (Identical to History 5.8)

This course focuses on links between Africa and other parts of the world, in particular Europe and Asia. Readings, lectures, and discussions will address travel and migration, economics and trade, identity formation, empire, and cultural production. Rather than viewing Africa as separate from global processes, the course will address historical phenomena across oceans, deserts, cultures, and languages to demonstrate both the diversity of experiences and the long-term global connections among disparate parts of the world.

AAAS 44: Contemporary Africa: Exploring Myths, Engaging Realities (Identical to Anthropology 36)

This course focuses on processes, relationships, and experiences that have shaped, and continue to shape, the lives of Africans in many different contexts. These include issues of ecology and food production, age, gender, ethnicity, exchange, colonialism, apartheid, and development. We will then embark on in depth readings of ethnographies that engage these issues and themes. In the processes we will move beyond prevailing stereotypes about Africa, to engage the full complexity of its contemporary realities.

AAAS 65: Introduction to Postcolonial Literature (Identical to English 58)

This course offers an introduction to the themes and foundational texts of postcolonial literature in English. We will read and discuss novels by writers from former British colonies in Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean, and the postcolonial diaspora, with attention to the particularities of their diverse cultures and colonial histories. Our study of the literary texts will incorporate critical and theoretical essays, oral presentations, and brief background lectures. Authors may include Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, V.S. Naipaul, Merle Hodge, Anita Desai, Bessie Head, Nadine Gorier, Paule Marshall, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Salman Rushdie, Earl Lovelace, Arundhati Roy.

AAAS 67: Colonial and Postcolonial Masculinities (Identical to Comp Lit 67, Women's and Gender Studies 52 and English 63)

In this course, we will develop an understanding of masculinity as a construct which varies in time and space, and is constantly (re)shaped by such factors as race, class, and sexuality. The contexts of the colonial encounter and its postcolonial aftermath will set the stage for our examination of the ways in which social, political, economic, and cultural factors foster the production of specific masculinities. Texts include Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Lafferiere's How to Make Love to a Negro, and additional writings by Irish, Indian, and Australian authors. Our study will be organized around the questions of the production of hegemonic and subaltern masculinities, the representation of the colonial and postcolonial male body, the militarization of masculinity, and the relation between masculinity and nationalism. Theoretical material on masculinities will frame our readings.

AAAS 81.2: Paul Robeson and the Revolutionary Imagination (Identical to College Course 10) *crosslist pending*

Activist, performer, athlete, and scholar, Paul Robeson's life, writing, artistic production, and iconographic image offer insights into the principle political and artistic movements in the U.S. from the 1930s to the 1950s. Robeson was not only the first black man to play Othello on Broadway, he was also a key figure in black freedom movements and anti-colonial struggles in the first half of the 20th century. By analyzing Robeson's writing and performances, we will not only gain insight into what distinguishes Robeson as an iconic U.S. American but also how black freedom movements developed, flourished, and met resistance in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

AAAS 82.2: African-American Sacred Music Traditions

This course will explore music integrally linked to African American sacred traditions – spirituals, hymns, and gospel songs. Students will explore the early roots and development of these genres. Vital connections will be made between the lyrical content of the music and the times and conditions in which it was birthed. Course will also include a practicum engaging students directly in learning and singing the music.

AAAS 85.2: Afro-Latin American Literature in Translation

This course examines the development of Afro-Latin American literature. Texts represent a sampling of the literary production of writers of African ancestry from Cuba, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Uruguay, and Peru. Works will be read as literary artifacts attesting to the history of Blacks in Latin America. The major focus of analysis of literary texts will be socio-cultural and historical in order to offer an interdisciplinary approach to literary studies.

AAAS 86: Nationalism and Revolution in the Caribbean (Identical to LACS 54 and History 6)

The islands of the Caribbean have served as the site for two of the most significant revolutionary upheavals of the modern era—the Haitian Revolution and the Cuban Revolution and have produced anti-colonial luminaries such as José Marti, Frantz Fanon, Marcus Garvey, and Claudia Jones. This course will explore the origin, trajectory, and outcome of nationalist struggles in the Caribbean from the eighteenth-century to the present through primary and secondary materials, memoirs, fiction, and film.

AAAS 88: United States Afro-Latino Literature (Identical to Latino Studies 43, International Studies 17 and Comp Lit 57.2)

This course proposes to examine literature written by U.S. citizens of African and Spanish- Caribbean ancestry. This growing group of writers represents new perspectives that are challenging while broadening the scope, definition and imaginary conception of "American literature," specifically in North America. Laden with neo-cartographies of the home-space, the works of writers such as Marta Vega, Loida Maritza Perez, and Nelly Rosario challenge institutionalized notions of space, place, location, home, nation, culture, citizenship and identity.

AAAS 88.2 Women and Gender in the African Diaspora (Identical to History 6.3 and WGST 38.2)

This course focuses on the lived experiences of—and structural limitations placed upon—women of African descent from the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade through the early twentieth century. We will examine a number of critical themes, including power, labor, geography and migration, racism, sexuality, spirituality, and a host of other dynamics impacting women. Importantly, however, we will also focus on the many ways in which these women “talked back” to the larger world.

AAAS 90.3: Afro-Diasporic Dialogues: Latin America and the United States

This course investigates how people of African ancestry have forged cultural and political ties across national boundaries in the Americas. Drawing on primary sources, film, and literature, we will examine the transnational dialogue among US African Americans, Afro-Latinos, and Afro-Caribbeans from the 19th century to the present. We will also consider why efforts to mobilize Afro-descendants across the Americas have often been undermined by mutual misunderstandings, conflicting agendas, and differing conceptions of "race" and "nation."

AAAS 90.4: Africa in the African-American Mind (Identical to History 96)

This seminar examines African-American political and cultural visions of Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, emphasizing the themes of black nationalism, Pan Africanism and anticolonialism, as well as emigration, repatriation and exile. Attitudes toward Africa have profoundly shaped African-American identity and consciousness. The complexity of these views belie notions of simplistic or essential relationships between "black folk here and there," and invite critical contemplation of the roles Africa has played in the African-American imaginary

Ongoing Offerings

AAAS 89: Independent Study in African and African American Studies

Available to students who wish to independently explore aspects of African and African American Studies which are not included in courses currently offered at Dartmouth. Open to qualified students with permission of the course instructor and the Chair. (Obtain Proposal Form in the program office.) No student may take more than two such courses without the approval of the Chair. Open to sophomores, juniors and seniors.

AAAS 97: Senior Independent Research in African and African American Studies

For senior African and African American Studies majors toward the culminating experience, with permission of selected instructor and the Chair. (Obtain Proposal Form in the program office.)

AAAS 98-99: Honors Thesis in African and African American Studies, two terms of senior year with selected AAAS faculty member

The honors student will pursue the project under guidance of selected faculty member and with permission of the Chair. See "A Guide to Honors in African and African American Studies."