AFAM

The purpose of this course is to enhance students' understanding of diversity issues as they relate to the study of communication. The course looks at how the media, its images and discourses, shape one's understanding of experiences, shape the experiences of women, and the experiences of people of color. The course also explores the ways in which elements of the media socially reproduce prejudice and foster resistance to prejudice. As a result of engagement in the course, students gain the ability to critically analyze and evaluate media products.

For fifty years the decision in Roe prevented states from criminalizing or outlawing abortion, though restrictions placed upon a person seeking to terminate a pregnancy varied widely from state to state. Now, in a post-Roe world, abortion bans are proliferating across the country. This course draws upon the expertise of faculty members from across our campus as we seek to understand the deep history of abortion, abortion restrictions, coerced reproduction, and other state interventions in people's sexual and reproductive lives.

This course employs an interdisciplinary approach to explore the history and expressive culture of the civil rights era. Emphasizing what historians call the "long civil rights movement," the course explores earlier strategies of resistance, the civil rights and black power movements, and legacies of these movements. An interdisciplinary approach is particularly applicable for a course focused on the civil rights movement because the literature of racial protest and of the "black arts" was not simply parallel to the political upheavals.

This course examines the distinct historical experience of African American women and explores the importance of race and of gender in the American past. Some of the topics considered include African American women and slavery, free black women in antebellum America, African American women and reform, issues of the family in slavery and freedom, sexuality and reproductive issues, African American women and the world of work, African American women in the struggle for education, and African American women and organized politics.

This course explores the relationship between African Americans and American law, especially but not exclusively American constitutional law. The first part of the course examines important antebellum cases such as Scott v. Sanford (Dred Scott).The second part of the course traces two conflicting trajectories of legal decisions that emerged as the federal courts sought to determine whether and how the fourteenth amendment altered race relations in America.

This course is designed to be an introduction to major racial and ethnic groups which comprise the population of the United States. Emphasis will be according to the history and culture of racial/ethnic peoples in America as well as the role of race and nationality in the pursuit and achievement of the "American Dream." Also highlighted will be an exploration of the linkage between social power and the concepts of race and ethnicity in the United States and how this linkage affects personal identity formation and worldview assumptions.

This is a study abroad course with a 4-week intensive journey to Ghana, West Africa. Combining academic preparations with incountry cultural site visits and excursions, alongside structured interning opportunities, students immerse themselves into Ghanaian society. Ghana is often cited as the gateway to Africa because of its history and contemporary influences on African American expressions of African cultures. In their collective journey through Ghana, students spend time at an internship site several days a week to connect with local communities and engage in societal structures.

This special topics course is dedicated to an international Black population with the additional course component of a faculty-led study abroad after the semester concludes. It provides students the opportunity to connect the literature-based course curriculum, along with additional content on historical, environmental, political, health, and gender related materials, with a guided experience within the African Diaspora. West African novels provide the primary curriculum of this course, covering various time periods and experiences.

This course is an integrative course in the humanities that explores various constructions of black female identity. The course looks at black womanhood as it's represented in the public imaginary, feminist theories, critical race theories, and in literature and literary criticism written by black women writers. One of the questions the course asks is: How have scholars and writers addressed fundamental questions of black female identity? To answer this question, students read and view a wide survey of materials including novels, essays, memoir, and film.

This course is designed to be both an introduction and a deep dive into the interconnectedness of African Americans and Capitalism within the United States. Capitalist ideologies are continually at the foundation of the captivity (oppression) of African Americans. Emphasis is on the ways in which African Americans have financed the capitalist gains in this country, and the ways that capitalism in the U.S. has harmed African Americans. The necessities of life--healthcare, education, job and food security--are more accessible to some than all, and one's status within the U.S.