AFAM 5005a, Theorizing Racial Formations  Erica Edwards

A required course for all first-year students in the combined Ph.D. program in African American Studies; also open to students in American Studies. This interdisciplinary reading seminar focuses on new work that is challenging the temporal, theoretical, and spatial boundaries of the field.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

AFAM 5610a / AMST 6612a / ENGL 5761a / FREN 7610a, Caribbean Literary and Cultural Studies  Marlene Daut

This course examines eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writing (in translation, where applicable) by writers from the Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanophone islands that make up the Caribbean. Haitian independence in 1804 ushered in a vibrant and diverse print culture that included poetry, plays, newspapers, and historical writing. From the pages of La Gazette Royale d’Hayti (1811–1820), to the poems of Jean-Baptiste Romane (1807–1858), to the historical writings of Louis-Félix Boisrond-Tonnerre (1776–1806), to the operas of Juste Chanlatte (1766–1828), there arose a distinct nineteenth-century literary culture in Haiti. Beginning with national literary developments in Haiti, this course expands to consider writing from Barbados, Cuba, Trinidad, Jamaica, Antigua, and Bermuda. These writings, both fictional and non-fictional, help us to think about whether and/or how a coherent early Caribbean literary tradition developed across geographical, linguistic, national, and imperial lines.
W 9:25am-11:15am

AFAM 6227a / ENGL 6847a, Black Environmental Thought  Jonathan Howard

What if the greatest threat to life on Earth is not humanity in general, but the specific practice of human being indexed by whiteness? Since the advent of the “modern world,” race has been a defining, though often obscured, fault line along which the human enterprise has unfolded. So what would a racial accounting of humanity’s environmental harm entail? Who else are we as a species beyond the norms and aspirations enshrined by whiteness? And who must we become before Nature phases us out? If there is a future for humanity on Earth, it will not come apart from a serious reckoning with these questions. Guided by these questions, this course interrogates how the West has mutually imagined the category of the human as an aspiring independence from and dominion over Nature, on the one hand, and white, on the other. But beyond uncovering the unspoken whiteness of “the human” and its environmental harm, this course further takes up the alternative visions of human being and nature expressed within black nature writing. By undertaking a broad survey of this literary tradition, we consider the unique environmental perspectives of those, who, once considered no more than livestock, were the nature over which their masters ruled and consequently could not so easily imagine their humanity apart from it. Perhaps for this very reason, we may ultimately come to locate in black nature writing the resources for imagining a sustainable human life in nature, rather than apart from it.
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

AFAM 7119b / HIST 8900b / HSHM 7710b, Researching and Writing Histories of Health, Medicine, and Science  Carolyn Roberts

This small graduate seminar is for students currently researching and writing histories of health, science, and medicine. Students learn about slow scholarship, the politics of the archive, and research organization and management and explore the craft of writing. Preference is given to graduate students in history, the history of science and medicine, and African American studies.
F 1:30pm-3:20pm

AFAM 7152b / AMST 8867b / HIST 8902b / HSHM 7610b, Researching and Writing Medicine, Health, and Empire  Carolyn Roberts

This small graduate seminar is for students currently engaged in research and writing projects that touch on issues related to health, medicine, science, or the body in the context of slavery, colonialism, or neocolonialism.  Students will explore their relationship to the craft of writing, their identity as “authors,” the politics of the archive, the methodological and evidentiary challenges in their work, and tools that will level up their research organization and management skills.  The course provides graduate students with a balance of support and independence as they further their research and writing projects.  Graduate students in any discipline are warmly invited to participate in a compassion-based research community that prioritizes values of deep listening, presence, and care
F 9:25am-11:15am

AFAM 7196b / AMST 7796b / HIST 8130b, Slave Systems in World History  Edward Rugemer

Slavery has been a protean institution in world history, with pre-historic origins and nearly countless manifestations across time and place. This readings course explores the history of slavery over the longue duree, moving through time from the ancient world through the nineteenth century with readings on some of the major slave systems in world history. One goal of the course is to situate the well-known slave systems of the Americas within a broader historical context. Student writing includes a historiographical essay on one of the major slave systems discussed in the course.
W 9:25am-11:15am

AFAM 7771a / AMST 7771a, Affect Theory  Tav Nyong'o

This graduate seminar traces the emergence of affect, sense, feeling, and mood as critical keywords in American studies. Particular attention is paid to the manner in which queer theorists such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Lauren Berlant, Ann Cvetkovich, Heather Love, Jennifer Doyle, Jonathan Flatley, and José Esteban Muñoz developed the concept in what has been called “the affective turn” in queer and feminist aesthetics. The philosophical basis of affect theory in the writings of Spinoza, Heidegger, and Deleuze forms the core of the seminar. We also look to an alternate genealogy for affect politics in the writings of Bergson and Deleuze on fabulation. We consider the psychoanalytic take on affect, in particular, the object relations school of Klein and Winnicott, and we read critics who contrast affect theory with trauma theory. Marxist contributions to affect theory include readings from Virno (on humor), Hardt and Negri (on affective labor), and Ranciere (on the distribution of the sensible). The writings of Jasbir Puar and Brian Massumi on the affective politics of contemporary war, empire, and societies of control are also  considered, as are writings by Fred Moten, Saidiya Hartman, and Frank Wilderson on optimism and pessimism as moods/modalities of black studies.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

AFAM 7973a / SOCY 6300a, Workshop in Urban Ethnography  Elijah Anderson

The ethnographic interpretation of urban life and culture. Conceptual and methodological issues are discussed. Ongoing projects of participants are presented in a workshop format, thus providing participants with critical feedback as well as the opportunity to learn from and contribute to ethnographic work in progress. Selected ethnographic works are read and assessed.
M 11:30am-1:20pm

AFAM 7978a / PSYC 7280a, Research Topics in Racial Justice in Public Safety  Phillip Atiba Solomon

In this seminar, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows have a chance to present their research, and undergraduate research assistants learn about how to conduct interdisciplinary quantitative social science research on racial justice in public safety. The course consists of weekly presentations by members and occasional discussions of readings that are handed out in advance. The course is designed to be entirely synchronous. Presenters may request a video recording if they can benefit from seeing themselves present (e.g., for a practice talk). This course is intended for graduate students, postdocs, and undergraduates interested in conducting original quantitative social science research about race and public safety. Permission of the instructor is required.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

AFAM 8095a, Dissertation Prospectus Workshop  Shane Vogel

A noncredit, two-term course, which graduate students in their third year of study must satisfactorily complete. This workshop is intended to support preparation of the dissertation proposal.  0 Course cr
W 9:25am-11:15am

AFAM 8128b / HIST 7430b, Politics and Belonging in Post-Emancipation Americas  Anne Eller

This course examines literature about emancipation contests throughout the Americas, with a preponderance of texts about the Caribbean and the US South. The hemispheric approach seeks working peoples' negotiations within, outside, and across national frames. The course builds on decades of literature that dismantle old binaries between enslavement and “freedom,” considering contests from 1804 through World War I. The course ponders freedom's many meanings, from the intimate to the electoral. Land, gendered power and violence, state services, and state abuse are key themes.  Finally, alternative political allegiances and local authorities, often outside the auspices of a formal state, will animate discussions.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

AFAM 8250a / AFST 9937a / ENGL 6137a, African Urban Cultures: Mediations of the City  Stephanie Newell

This course approaches the study of African cities and urbanization through the medium of diverse texts, including fiction, nonfiction, popular culture, film, and the arts, as well as scholarly work on African cities. Through these cultural “texts,” attention is given to everyday conceptualizations of the body and the environment, as well as to theoretical engagements with the African city. We study urban relationships as depicted in literature and popular media in relation to Africa's long history of intercultural encounters, including materials dating back to the 1880s and the 1930s. Previously ENGL 937.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm