AFST 2550 - Introduction to Africana Studies (CZ or SB)

(3) Credit Hours

This course offers a survey of Africana Studies. It is concerned with the histories, ideas, social and political life of Africa and the African Diaspora, including literature, the arts, cultural studies, history, politics, religion, sociology, economics, creative production, psychology, philosophy, feminism, and the legacy of scientific racism. These fields help construct an analysis of the Africana experience, the historical and current relationship of African Americans to the larger society, and the sociopolitical problems that often resulted from Black/white interactions.

In this course, students will be introduced to the concepts and methods of the discipline of Africana Studies, and will use them to study select narratives, data, and or text derived from and or related to African world experience, with particular emphasis on the period of late modernity (1500 to the present). As such, this course provides students with an alternative to traditional Western orthodoxy by exploring new and alternative paradigms and theories. Although extensive, this course is not a comprehensive approach to the Africana experience, but rather an introductory examination designed to immerse students in the history and culture of Africans and the African continent, the history of African Americans, and the Africana experience throughout the Diaspora. Once an academic year.
General Education Category: Behavioral and Social Science or Individual and Global Citizenship