Courses

Further Information

Further information concerning planned graduate course offerings can be obtained by calling the Afro-American Studies Department office at (413) 545-2751, or by visiting the department’s website at www.umass.edu/afroam/.

All courses carry 4 credits unless otherwise specified.

591A Gender in Pan-African Studies
This seminar reviews the historical literature related to the social construction of masculinity and femininity for African and African-descended peoples.  The course compares the ways gendered notions of family, community, and nation have impacted local and international projects of black liberation.  In addition to the U.S. and Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America will be important regions of consideration.

690B The Civil War and Reconstruction
In this seminar we will study the revolutionary significance of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era in the United States History.  The seminar will focus on the demise of slavery during the Civil War and the role of the slaves themselves in helping to make the war for the Union into a war against slavery.  Similarly, we will look at African American political mobilization during Reconstruction.  Topics will include military history and the black military experience, causes of southern defeat, emancipation, the political and constitutional significance.

690E Blackness and Utopia
This seminar explores the vibrant history of utopian thought in Black Studies and African American literature and culture. It considers how the black radical tradition poses particular challenges to Western utopian thought as well as how the question of utopia might contribute to, or help to re-configure, the future(s) of Black Studies. Topics of discussion will include Afrofuturism, utopia and the black radical tradition, cultures of life and cultures of death in Black Atlantic, black science and speculative fiction, and blackness and metaphysics.

690P New Approaches to Early African American Literature
This seminar serves as an intensive introduction to early (pre-1900) African American literary studies.  In addition to surveying works and authors in the period (Wheatley, Walker, Douglass, Delany, Wilson, Wells Brown, Jacobs, Harper, Chesnutt, and others), the course will focus on recent methodological turns and emerging scholarship in the field, including the (re)turn to the archive; performance; gender, sexuality, and queer studies; race and science; the New Southern Studies; hemispheric and global approaches to early African American literature; the black print sphere and material culture. The course will also include an introduction to archival research on literary and cultural topics.

691C  Historiographical Methods in Afro-American Studies
This seminar will introduce you to some of the basics of what it means to read, think, and write as an historian.  We will explore what historians do and why as well as the "objectivity question," the development of African American history as an academic discipline, and one or two current controversies.  We also will learn how to locate and use the resources of the Du Bois Library such as microforms, government documents, the papers of W.E.B. Du Bois, on-line indices and collections, as well as those of such important national repositories such as the Library of Congress, the Moorland-Spingarn Collection at Howard University and the Schomburg Center of the N.Y. Public Library.

691F Black Political Struggle in America: 1776-Present
An historical examination of the black political struggle for equality and citizenship in America—the obstacles placed in the path of that struggle by the American political system in general and by the American state in particular—and the countless ways in which racial politics have shaped the system that is called American Democracy.

691G African American Poetry
An intensive survey of African American poetry from Lucy Terry to the present, focusing on how language, form, and content reflect the ways that African Americans have perceived their positions in American society and their roles as reflectors and/or shapers of African American culture. Explores sources and influences in various works of African, American, and British literature as well as works of African American folklore. Includes secondary critical works dealing with the African American poetic tradition.

692A Literary Theory
This course will take up literary theory since 1965 and how it has influenced the study of African American literature and culture.  The idea here is not to be comprehensive, but rather, to use the term popular a few years back, to stage a series of interventions into the sometimes troubled relationship between “high” theory and its successors and African American Studies. Our task will not simply be to examine different “schools” of critical theory, but to consider how theory has informed and challenged African American literary studies and vice versa.  We will also seek to historicize various critical moments or movements rather than simply view them as pieces of an intellectual toolbox.

692L Black Studies: History, Theory & Practice
This seminar begins with a discussion of antecedents to institutionalized Black Studies departments and programs that emerged on college campuses starting in 1968; explores the historical development of the field up to and including today; and concludes with informed speculation concerning challenges to its future. Readings and reflections on the origins of Black Studies on the UMass Amherst campus will specifically be covered. Topics for exploration include the interrelationship of Black Studies to traditional fields and disciplines, the transition of Black Studies from political movement to professionalized institutionalization, the changing audience involved in that transition, and interpretations of American history and culture within the Black Studies matrix that challenge standard narratives regarding these issues.

692Q African Diaspora Studies: Introduction to Concepts and Historiography
*Required foundations course for Graduate Certificate in African Diaspora Studies.
This seminar will offer an introduction to 1) key concepts and definitions e.g. diaspora, Pan-Africanism, Afro-centrism, etc. 2) the classic works in the field. 3) major trends in contemporary scholarship. We will be reading a selection of works discussing the contours and history of the field as well as examples of recent scholarship. Two papers on major themes will be required. This course is required for the Graduate Certificate in African Diaspora Studies and is open both to students pursuing the certificate and to graduate students with a general interest in the subject.

699 Master’s Thesis
Credit, 1-10.

701-702 Major Works Seminar in Afro-American Studies I and II
An intensive study of fifty major works of Afro-American Studies. Required of all first-year doctoral and masters candidates, and open only to them.

753 The Blues 
For graduate students only. An intensive study of the history of the blues. The nature of blues music and lyrics in an African and African American social, political, and musical context, and the use of the blues tradition in literature. No reading knowledge of music required or expected.

899 Doctoral Dissertation
Credit, 10.