AFS-100 Introduction to Africana Studies

This course exposes students to the historical, political, economic, cultural, and artistic contributions that Black Africans and African Diaspora people have made to human civilization globally and in the United States. As an interdisciplinary field, Africana Studies draws on social sciences and humanities to provide complex, nuanced, culturally situated, and shifting understandings of the meanings of “Black” and “African” identities and experiences; it pushes us to reexamine geographical boundaries and paradigms surrounding the production of knowledge about Africa and the African Diaspora. This course focuses on the period from the beginning of the European trade in enslaved Africans that started in the mid-1400s to the mid1800s when 4 million enslaved Black Americans gained freedom during the Civil War. This course design compels students to explore critical aspects of Black life and thought throughout the diaspora. Students will compare and contrast traditional Western orthodoxy with new and alternative paradigms and theories. The course will show how early African people in the Americas shaped and challenged public discussions about race, ethnicity, religion, class, citizenship status, gender, economics, and patriotism. Following the steps of African people in the Americas from the colonial period through the Reconstruction era encourages the student to think critically about the early identity construction of people of all races and the changing meanings of their identities. 4 credits