AFAM 360 | The American South: Race, Place, Memory and Identity

This course focuses on the Civil Rights and Black Power Era- a period in which the meaning and making of racial identities intersected directly with contests over power. It employs multiple disciplinary lenses, especially those of African American Studies, history, and memory studies, and will explore the range of tensions that run throughout the period- between legal and practical realities, between those fighting for racial justice and the white supremacist forces that opposed them, between grassroots activists and national organizations, between those who embraced non-violence as a way of life and those who advocated for Black nationalism and Black Power, and between the hopeful and the hopeless. This course includes a study-away component at the conclusion of the semester. Students will take their studies into the field in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. This course fulfills the university EXLN requirement.