* AFST 0092b / TDPS 0301b, African Rhythm in Motion  Lacina Coulibaly

This first-year seminar traces the transnational migration of the polyrhythms inherent in African dance. Based in movement practice, the course considers the transformation of rhythm through time and space, moving from traditional African dances of the 20th century into the work of contemporary African artists and far-flung hybrid dance forms such as samba and tango. Part dance history, part introduction to the art of dance, the course is open to movers of all backgrounds and physical abilities.The professor works with students who require necessary adaptations of the physical material to meet special needs.  Enrollment limited to first-year students.   HU
TTh 1:05pm-2:20pm

AFST 1100a / SOCY 1100a, Media, Culture, and Society  Staff

In this class we will focus on questions anchored on the fundamental understanding of media studies as an interdisciplinary field. As a field of study, media studies is focused on examining how media produces, distributes, consumes, and interprets our lived and imagined realities. Additional it elucidates how media structures shape culture, politics, identity and everyday life. Rather than talking about media as neutral arbiters of information, we will ask how media work, who/what controls them and with what consequences. As such,  this class engages with ideas of ideology, empire, political economy, the public sphere, while thinking through how these unfold within different media platforms. We will broadly look at traditional media (newspapers, radio, television), digital media (social media platforms, streaming companies, and emerging media (AI-generated content, algorithmic systems). The class is thus an introduction to current debates and thoughts with an emphasis not just on content but also in technologies, institutions, audiences, and power relations. At the end of the semester, the class will think through how all of these questions unfold with music genres such as afrohouse and afrobeats, K-pop, and Mexico’s narcocorridos.  0 Course cr
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AFST 2252a / TDPS 2032a, African Dance as Knowledge: Embodied Histories and Contemporary Transformations  Staff

This course explores African dance as an epistemological system—a living archive of history, spirituality, philosophy, and social knowledge. Students examine African dance not merely as a performance or aesthetic form but as a mode of knowing, transmitted across generations and situated within political, social, and ritual contexts. Through case studies from Cameroon and the African diaspora, students interrogate how “African dance” has been framed within Western academic and curatorial contexts and consider the ethical and methodological challenges of embodied research. The course integrates discussion, close reading, audiovisual analysis, and guided embodied practice as analytic tools. Students develop research projects or creative work grounded in African and Afro-diasporic performance studies, fostering critical engagement, reflexivity, and ethical scholarship.  HU
MW 2:35pm-3:50pm

* AFST 2277a / ANTH 235 / ANTH 2835a / ER&M 1677a / ER&M 277, Introduction to Critical Border Studies  Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen

This course serves as an introduction into the major themes and approaches to the study of border enforcement and the management of human mobility. We draw upon a diverse range of scholarship across the social sciences as well as history, architecture, and philosophy to better understand how we find ourselves in this present “age of walls” (Tim Marshall 2019). In addition, we take a comparative approach to the study of borders—examining specific contemporary and historical cases across the world in order to gain a comprehensive view of what borders are and how their meaning and function has changed over time. And because there is “critical” in the title, we explicitly evaluate the political consequences of borders, examine the sorts of resistances mobilized against them, and ask what alternative social and political worlds might be possible.  SO
Th 1:30pm-3:25pm

* AFST 3323a / AFAM 222 / BLST 2222 / CPLT 3760a / ER&M 3532a / PORT 3220a, The Empire Sings Back: Popular Music and Cultural Resistance in Africa and Portugal

In this course students learn about the vibrant musical scene that has emerged in Lisbon, Portugal, as a result of a longstanding colonial and imperial history connecting Portugal and several countries in the African continent (Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe and Mozambique). We look closely at some of the main musical genres that originated in Africa during the colonial period, as well as those that have emerged in Portugal in recent times within African and Afro-Portuguese communities, such as Kuduro Progressivo, Kizomba, and Rap Kriolu, drawing comparisons with African American and other diasporic African popular music. We compare the social and political realities informing the respective colonial and postcolonial historical contexts, with particular attention to how race and ethnicity interact with the production, distribution, reception, and enjoyment of music, and how public perceptions of the worth of these cultural productions are shaped. Finally, we dedicate some attention to the use of a traditional genre such as Fado in LGBTQ political and social activism through the Fado Bicha project. Taught in English.  HU
MW 11:35am-12:50pm

* AFST 3344b / HIST 1344b, African Independence: A Cup of Plenty or a Poisoned Chalice?  Benedito Machava

In every African colony after World War Two there emerged nationalist movements which no longer called for civil rights as in the pre-war years but demanded self-determination. While many of them got it easy, some had to fight long and bloody wars for it. By the 1960s the colonial edifice had crumbled except for the few settler colonies in southern Africa. But even here the winds of change could not be stopped. But what did decolonization and independence mean to Africa? Did Africans get what they wanted? Was independence a cup of plenty or a poisoned chalice? In addressing these questions, this course charts the economic, political, and cultural transformations of postcolonial Africa from the 1960s to the present. The argument is this: there can be no understanding of Africa’s challenges today without an inquiry into the nature of what the continent got from the departing colonial powers.   HU  0 Course cr
MW 10:30am-11:20am

* AFST 3360a / ANTH 3860a / ER&M 1614a, African Migration and Diaspora  Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen

This seminar examines the politics of migration to, from, and within Africa. We explore intercontinental, regional, and rural-urban migratory circuits and diasporic formations to consider mobility and immobility in relation to race, colonialism, capitalism, neoliberalism, and globalization. Drawing on sources ranging from colonial travel accounts and trade diaspora histories to black critical theory and fiction, we examine theorizations and representations both about migration and by diasporic peoples to unsettle and re-theorize imaginaries of globalization, nationalism, and the politics of belonging.  SO
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

* AFST 3366a / EP&E 305 / EP&E 4305a / HIST 2367a / PLSC 3403a, Bureaucracy in Africa: Revolution, Genocide, and Apartheid  Jonny Steinberg

A study of three major episodes in modern African history characterized by ambitious projects of bureaucratically driven change—apartheid and its aftermath, Rwanda’s genocide and post-genocide reconstruction, and Ethiopia’s revolution and its long aftermath. Examination of Weber’s theory bureaucracy, Scott’s thesis on high modernism, Bierschenk’s attempts to place African states in global bureaucratic history. Overarching theme is the place of bureaucratic ambitions and capacities in shaping African trajectories.
W 1:30pm-3:25pm

* AFST 3368a / EVST 3690a / HIST 3366a, Commodities of Colonialism in Africa  Robert Harms

This course examines historical case studies of several significant global commodities produced in Africa to explore interactions between world market forces and African resources and societies. Through the lens of four specific commodities–ivory, rubber, cotton, and diamonds–this course evaluates diverse industries and their historical trajectories in sub-Saharan Africa within a global context from ~1870-1990s. Students  become acquainted with the historical method by developing their own research paper on a commodity using both primary and secondary sources.  WR, HU
W 1:30pm-3:25pm

* AFST 3377b / FREN 3700b, Caribbean Poetry in French  Thomas Connolly

An introduction to Caribbean poetry in French from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day. Topics covered will include literary, social, and political movements including surrealism, colonization, decolonization, immigration, the relation of French to other languages of the Caribbean including Créole, Spanish, and English, and points of contact between poetry, music, theater, and the visual arts. Students will learn how to read, comment on, and write about poetry. Primary authors will include Étienne Léro, Aimé Césaire, Saint-John Perse, Magloire-Saint-Aude, Édouard Glissant, René Depestre, Davertige, Jean Métellus, Raphaël Confiant, Suzanne Dracius, and Patrick Chamoiseau. Readings, assignments, and discussions in French. Ability to read, write, and discuss in French.
M 1:30pm-3:25pm

* AFST 3385a / EP&E 4350a / HIST 2391a / HIST 3344a / PLSC 3439a, Pandemics in Africa: From the Spanish Influenza to Covid-19 and Ebola  Jonny Steinberg

The overarching aim of the course is to understand the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic in Africa in the context of a century of pandemics, their political and administrative management, the responses of ordinary people, and the lasting changes they wrought. The first eight meetings examine some of the best social science-literature on 20th-century African pandemics before Covid-19. From the Spanish Influenza to cholera to AIDS, to the misdiagnosis of yaws as syphilis, and tuberculosis as hereditary, the social-science literature can be assembled to ask a host of vital questions in political theory: on the limits of coercion, on the connection between political power and scientific expertise, between pandemic disease and political legitimacy, and pervasively, across all modern African epidemics, between infection and the politics of race. The remaining four meetings look at Covid-19. We chronicle the evolving responses of policymakers, scholars, religious leaders, opposition figures, and, to the extent that we can, ordinary people. The idea is to assemble sufficient information to facilitate a real-time study of thinking and deciding in times of radical uncertainty and to examine, too, the consequences of decisions on the course of events. There are of course so many moving parts: health systems, international political economy, finance, policing, and more. We also bring guests into the classroom, among them frontline actors in the current pandemic as well as veterans of previous pandemics well placed to share provisional comparative thinking. This last dimension is especially emphasized: the current period, studied in the light of a century of epidemic disease, affording us the opportunity to see path dependencies and novelties, the old and the new.  SO
Th 1:30pm-3:25pm

* AFST 3401a / SOCY 3401a, Media and Mass Atrocities in Africa  j. Wahutu

Over the last century, several instances of mass violence have unfolded in numerous parts of the world, the most notable being the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, and ongoing atrocities in Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo. How these instances of violence have been represented will form the main body of this class. The study of western news representation of Africa (and the global south) and the dynamics of differential reporting is not new. However, what do we actually know about how African media represent genocide and mass atrocities that occur in Africa? How does the news create and reinforce knowledge about mass atrocities? How can the media both generate and rely on knowledge? Is there a difference between the knowledge produced by African media and media from the global north? These are the questions that will guide us for the semester. 
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

* AFST 4435a or b / TDPS 3302a or b, West African Dance: Traditional to Contemporary  Lacina Coulibaly

A practical and theoretical study of the traditional dances of Africa, focusing on those of Burkina Faso and their contemporary manifestations. Emphasis on rhythm, kinesthetic form, and gestural expression. The fusion of modern European dance and traditional African dance. Admission by audition during the first class meeting.  HU
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* AFST 4449a / AFAM 4249 / BLST 4249a / ENGL 4835a, Challenges to Realism in Contemporary African Fiction  Stephanie Newell

Introduction to experimental African novels that challenge realist and documentary modes of representation. Topics include mythology, gender subversion, politics, the city, migration, and the self. Ways of reading African and postcolonial literature through the lenses of identity, history, and nation. Formerly ENGL 449.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

* AFST 4457a / AFAM 4357 / AMST 4470a / BLST 4357a / ER&M 4067a / FREN 4810a, Racial Republic: African Diasporic Literature and Culture in Postcolonial France  Fadila Habchi

This is an interdisciplinary seminar on French cultural history from the 1930s to the present. We focus on issues concerning race and gender in the context of colonialism, postcolonialism, and migration. The course investigates how the silencing of colonial history has been made possible culturally and ideologically, and how this silencing has in turn been central to the reorganizing of French culture and society from the period of decolonization to the present. We ask how racial regimes and spaces have been constructed in French colonial discourses and how these constructions have evolved in postcolonial France. We examine postcolonial African diasporic literary writings, films, and other cultural productions that have explored the complex relations between race, colonialism, historical silences, republican universalism, and color-blindness. Topics include the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Black Paris, decolonization, universalism, the Trente Glorieuses, the Paris massacre of 1961, anti-racist movements, the "beur" author, memory, the 2005 riots, and contemporary afro-feminist and decolonial movements.  HU
W 1:30pm-3:25pm

* AFST 4481a / BLST 2213 / HIST 3383a / HSHM 4810a, Medicine and Race in the Slave Trade  Carolyn Roberts

Examination of the interconnected histories of medicine and race in the slave trade. Topics include the medical geography of the slave trade from slave prisons in West Africa to slave ships; slave trade drugs and forced drug consumption; mental and physical illnesses and their treatments; gender and the body; British and West African medicine and medical knowledge in the slave trade; eighteenth-century theories of racial difference and disease; medical violence and medical ethics.  HU
F 9:25am-11:20am

* AFST 4484a / AFAM 2777 / BLST 2777a / MUSI 4485a, Musical Pan-Africanisms  Michael Veal

This seminar surveys the musical conversation that has circulated around the “Black Atlantic” cultural sphere (sub-Saharan Africa, Afro-America, the Afro-Caribbean, and Latin America) for most of the twentieth century, facilitated by the advent of sound recording and broadcast technologies at the beginning of the twentieth century, and articulated through discourses of black cultural connection and concrete histories of trans-Atlantic encounter. Many –though not all– of the readings focus on the decades immediately following World War II, when “Pan-Africanism” was an explicit and prominent political discourse. Others address earlier or later eras when the idea of cross-cultural connection was more implicit but equally influential. We trace the unfolding of this conversation through a variety of sources: scholarly, personal (i.e. biographies/autobiographies), journalistic, and, of course, sonic. Specific musical artists discussed include Bob Marley, Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Arsenio Rodriguez, Laba Sosseh, Orchestra Baobab, Johnny Pacheco, Manu Dibango, Randy Weston, James Brown, Manu Dibango, and others. Scholars we will read include Paul Gilroy, Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Robin Hayes, Richard Shain, Steven Feld, Robin D.G. Kelley, Gwen Ansell, and others.  WR, HU
Th 1:30pm-3:25pm

* AFST 4491a, The Senior Essay  Veronica Waweru

Independent research on the senior essay. By the end of the sixth week of classes, a rough draft of the entire essay should be completed. By the end of the last week of classes (fall term) or three weeks before the end of classes (spring term), two copies of the final essay must be submitted.
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