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 course 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.

605 African Americans and the Movement to Abolish Slavery
This seminar will trace the rise of the antislavery movement in the United States from the American Revolution to the Civil War, with particular attention to the role of African Americans.  We will look at the ideology of black abolitionism, its contributions to the antislavery movement as a whole, black emigrationism, individual African American abolitionists, and African American women activists among other topics.  We will attempt to explore the nature and impact of black abolitionism on the broader movement.  In short, what difference did black abolitionism make on the rise, growth and success of the antislavery movement?  The format of the course is discussion.  Recent historical literature on the above topics will comprise the readings for the course.

690P New Approaches to Early African American Literature
This course 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 methogological 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 course 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.

691N Critical Race Theories
An interdisciplinary look at the critique of legal theory and practice mounted in recent years by a number of legal scholars of color.  Readings from history, the social sciences, and law.  Weekly papers, class presentations, and a final essay.

691R Topics in the Modern Civil Rights Movement
This seminar will explore the distinction between movements, organizations, and the activities of single individuals that has been obscured in recent discussions of the "long civil rights movement.” We will be examining the histories of organizations that were formed prior to the post-Brown Era and which have survived to this day. We will be exploring those groups and organizations that came into being post Brown and were defunct by the mid- 1970's. We will pay some brief attention to those groups and organizations that arose in the aftermath of the Civil Rights and Black liberation movements, i.e. since the mid- 1970's. The readings will include a selection from the latest scholarly monographs, as well as from memoirs and other primary sources available in print, microform and digital formats.  A lengthy (18-20 pages) reading paper analyzing the goals, activities, successes and failures of a group, organization or individual will be required. Regular class attendance and participation in discussions is assumed.

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.

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, and 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.

692S Classic Figures of 20th Century Afro-American Literature
A comprehensive and intensive examination of the work of major figures in 20^th century Afro-American literature, with an examination of the major relevant criticism.

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 Special Topics in Afro-American Literature and Culture: 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.