Fall 2009 Course Descriptions
AFST 20082 Intro to Africana Studies Jacquetta Page
TR 12:30p.m. – 1:45p.m.
Through a multidisciplinary and cross-cultural exploration, this course will (1) introduce students to key concepts, themes, and theories in the field of Africana Studies; and (2) introduce students to the identities and experiences of black populations throughout the glgobal African Diaspora. Over the course of the semester, we will tackle the following questions: What is Africana Studies? What are the historical, intellectual, and political origins of Africana Studies? What are race and ethnicity? What is blackness? What roles do class, culture, gender, nationality, and religion, play in blackness? What is the African Diaspora? What role does Africa play in blackness? How do the arts humanities, and social sciences help us investigate, analyze, conceptualize, represent, and understand this thing we refer to as "blackness?" What are some of the historical geographical, socio-political, and cultural points of divergence observable between populations of African descent throughout the Diaspora and what, if any, are the points of commonality that unite these dispersed populations?
AFST 20112 American Novel John Staud
MWF 9:35a.m. -10:25a.m.
We will read, discuss, and study selected novels of significant importance within the American literary tradition. As we explore these novels within their historical and cultural context, we will consider the various reasons for their place within the canon of American literature. Indeed, we will scrutinize the very nature of this literary canon and self-consciously reflect on the inevitably arbitrary nature of this, or any, reading list. Even so, we will see, I hope, that these authors share deep engagement with ideas and themes common to American literature and do so, through their art, in ways that both teach and delight.
Required Texts: Moby-Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Awakening, The Great Gatsby, Invisible Man, The Old Man and the Sea, The Bluest Eye
AFST 20113 Second City: Lit on Loc in Antonette Irving
MW 4:30p.m.-5:45p.m.
A study of literature that takes up the history, urban concerns, and national pretense of what for much of the twentieth century was America's second largest city.
AFST 20149 Black Reconstruction
James Ford
MW 1:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
If "critique" refers to the analysis of the present towards the transformation of society then this course considers how African American literature has functioned in this creative and critical mode from its inception. Through lecture and class discussion, this course focuses on writings from African American authors pondering the possibilities and goals of reconstructing their communities and the United States at large. We will cover various periods of literary activity, including antebellum slave narratives, the post-Reconstruction era, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Black Arts movement. We will cover multiple literary genres - including poetry, slave narrative, novel, and the essay, among others - used in the African American literary tradition placed in their historical, cultural, and institutional contexts. By reading the African American literary tradition in these contexts, we will pursue a number of questions, regarding issues of political agency, the role of the writer as intellectual, the relationship of literature to the folk, and literature a an avenue of recovering alternative histories.We will read material from Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, Ann Petry, Amiri Baraka, and others.
AFST 20376 U.S. Latino Spirituality Virgilio Elizondo
TR 11:00a.m.-12:15p.m.
US Latino spirituality is one of the youngest spiritualities among the great spiritual traditions of humanity. The course will explore the indigenous, African, and European origins of US Latino spirituality through the devotions, practices, feasts, and rituals of the people
AFST 20382 Societies & Cultures of Africa Rahul Oka
TR 3:30p.m.- 4:45p.m.
Sub-Saharan Africa is a geographically massive territory distinguished by a tremendous diversity of cultures, customs, languages, histories, identities, and experiences. In this course, we explore this wealth of diversity, alongside a survey of some of the broad historical and contemporary trends and movements that have characterized the subcontinent. A brief introduction to African geography is followed by an overview of African history in the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial eras. The remainder of the course is devoted to the study of present-day Africa, including readings on social organization, religion, music, art, popular culture, politics, economics, as well as on the contemporary crises and challenges of warfare, poverty, and HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Readings will include historical, ethnographic, literary, and autobiographical texts, and will be supplemented by a number of African-directed films.
AFST 20401 Introduction to Jazz Larry Dwyer
MWF 12:50p.m.-1:40p.m.
A music appreciation course requiring no musical background and no prerequisites. General coverage of the history, various styles, and major performers of jazz, with an emphasis on current practice.
AFST 20600 Comparative Politics Andrew Gould
MW 935a.m. -10:25a.m.
In this course students learn to think more clearly about politics, especially about how and why political life takes place as it does around the world. We study why nation-states are the dominant form of political organization today and why nation-states differ, especially in their economic and political development. Why are some countries democracies? Why are others dictatorships? Why do political movements participate in elections, start civil wars, or engage in terrorism? We develop answers to these questions by focusing on the experiences of Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, China, Iran, India, Mexico, and South Africa.
AFST 20703 Intro to Social Problems Robert Brenneman
MWF 11:45a.m. -12:35p.m.
Analysis of selected problems in American society such as crime, narcotic addiction, alcoholism, delinquency, racial and ethnic conflict, prostitution, and others. Discussions, debates, films, tapes, and readings.
AFST 30111 Thinking Through Crisis
James Ford
MW 3:00 p.m.-4:15 p.m.
What does it mean to be in a "crisis?" We live only a few years after a "natural disaster" ravaged the southern coast of the United States; we live only a few years after incidents of racial violence and judicial mishaps culminated in national protest; finally, these issues have been swallowed up by our worry over an economic breakdown that has been called a mere "downturn" by some, a "recession" by others, and even fewer have called it a depression. But none of these descriptions help us understand what we mean by "crisis" and what potential there is to think and act in such turbulent times. The same sorts of issues troubling our present also troubled Americans living in the Great Depression. African American writers of that period wrote novels, short stories, autobiographies, historiographies, poetry and other literary pieces that were both aesthetically rich and experiments in thinking critically about these issues. This course simply asks: How can Depression-era African American literature help us understand what it means to think during a "crisis," and see the word as a concept, not just a media buzz word? Readings will include canonical authors like W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B Wells, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Carter G Woodson, studied alongside artistic and theoretical responses to Hurricane Katrina, Jena 6, and other recent events.
AFST 30216 The US, 1900-1945 Thomas Blantz
MWF 9:35a.m. -10:25a.m.
The purpose of this course is to study the political, diplomatic, economic, social, and cultural development of the United States from 1900 to 1945. Major topics will include the background for Progressive reform, the New Nationalism and New Freedom administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the diplomacy of the early 20th century, the causes and results of World War I, the Republican administrations of the 1920s, the New Deal administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, isolationism and neutrality in the inter-war period, and the American home front during World War II. There will be a required reading list of approximately seven books, two shorter writing assignments, and three major examinations, including the final.
AFST 30217 Sport in American History John Soares
MW 11:45a.m. -1:00p.m.
Sport, a major part of American entertainment and culture today, has roots that extend back to the colonial period. This course will provide an introduction to the development of American sport, from the horseracing and games of chance in the colonial period through the rise of contemporary sport as a highly commercialized entertainment spectacle. Using a variety of primary and secondary sources, we will explore the ways that American sport has influenced and been influenced by economics, politics, popular culture, and society, including issues of race, gender and class. Given Notre Dame's tradition in athletics, we will explore the university's involvement in this historical process.
AFST 30251 African History To 1800 TBA
TR 3:30p.m.- 4:45p.m.
This course introduces students to major themes in African history to 1800. It investigates agricultural and iron revolutions, states and empires, religious movements, and patterns of migration and labor exploitation. The latter part of the course focuses on Africa in the era of trans-Atlantic slave trade, from 1550 to 1800. We will study the various methods that historians use to investigate the past; we will also delve into some of the intellectual debates surrounding pre-colonial Africa and the slave trade. By the end of the course, students will have a firm understanding of states and societies in Africa in the pre-colonial period.
AFST 30279 Lincoln’s America 1809-1865 Daniel Graff
MW 3:00p.m.-4:15p.m.
This course explores the social, economic, intellectual, cultural, and political history of the the early to mid-nineteenth-century United States through the prism of Abraham Lincoln's biography. Topics may include trans-Appalachian migration and settlement, US-Native American relations, race and slavery, gender and family, market developments and labor relations, formal and informal politics, the law, and the promise and limits of studying history through singular lives.
AFST 30578 Slave rebellions & Peasant uprisings: Revolution in Haiti & France 1789-1804 Julia Douthwaite
TR 3:30p.m.-4:45p.m.
This course will take an interdisciplinary literary-historical approach to revolutionary movements that electrified populations around the world: the revolt of the sans-culottes in France (1789-1794) and the slave uprisings in colonial Saint-Domingue (1791-1804). Through analysis of short stories and novels by authors such as Condorcet, Balzac, and Hugo, and readings in nineteenth-century and modern-day historiography by scholars such as Michelet, Soboul, James, and Dubois, students will appreciate the controversies that have perplexed observers for centuries.
AFST 30652 Pol of M.East & N.Afr Monarchies Alexander Bligh
TR 9:30a.m.-10:45a.m.
This course examines the politics of monarchies in the Middle East and North Africa. The course examines how these regimes developed and their effect on politics in these regions, and explores the prospect for democratization in such countries.
AFST 40114 New African-Amer. Poetry Cornelius Eady
MW 3:00p.m. -4:15p.m.
A survey of poets from the Black Arts Movement to Cave Canem.
AFST 40275 Gandhi’s India Jayanta Sengupta
TR 2:00p.m. -3:15p.m.
The dominant figure in India's nationalist movement for nearly thirty years, M. K. "Mahatma" Gandhi has also been the twentieth century's most famous pacifist, and a figure of inspiration for peace and civil rights movements throughout the world. This course offers an examination of Gandhi and the nature of his unconventional and often controversial politics. It charts Gandhi's careeragainst the background of events in London, South Africa, and India. Examines the evolution and practical application of his ideas and techniques of non-violent resistance, and his attitudes toward the economy, society and state. Gandhi's influence on Indian politics and society is critically assessed and his reputation as the "apostle of non-violent revolution" examined in the light ofdevelopments since his death in 1948. Some of the questions that will be discussed are: how far did the distinctive character of Gandhian politics derive from his absolute commitment to India's nationalist struggle? Was his success due to the force and originality of his political ideas and hisadvocacy of nonviolent action? Can his achievements be explained by political wiliness and pragmatism, or by willingness to embark on new experiments with the truth? Though helpful, a prior knowledge of Indian history is not required for this course.
AFST 40575 Fictions of the South Atlantic Isabel Ferreira Gould
TR 3:30p.m. -4:45p.m.
Taught in English, this seminar offers a comparative study of 19th, 20th, and 21st-century fiction writing in the Lusophone South Atlantic, particularly exploring the historical connections and the cultural links between Brazil and Angola. Topics for discussion include the slave trade, colonialism, luso-tropicalism, race relations, religion, diaspora, postcolonial identities, and the charged notion of Lusophone black cultures. Readings in Brazilian and Angolan fiction, as well as in historical and anthropological writing. Among the authors to be considered are, on the Brazilian side, Machado de Assis, Lima Barreto, Jorge Amado, and António Olinto, and, on the Angolan side, Luandino Vieira, Pepetela, José Eduardo Agualusa, and Ondjaki.
AFST 45100 Internship Richard Pierce
TBA
A capstone of the AFAM supplementary major is the senior project, which may be either a senior internship or senior thesis. Either option provides seniors with an opportunity to reflect upon the larger implications of their course work and, should they desire, to incorporate a service-learning component. A written proposal describing the intended internship must be submitted to the AFAM director for formal approval. If accepted, the student will be assigned a supervisor/advisor and required to write a 10-15 page project summation. The final version of the senior project is due at the end of the term. An oral presentation on the senior project must also be made to the director and advisory committee during the week of final examinations in order to complete degree requirements.
AFST 48100 Thesis Richard Pierce TBA
A capstone of the AFAM supplementary major is the senior project, which may be either a senior internship or senior thesis. Either option provides seniors with an opportunity to reflect upon the larger implications of their course work and, should they desire, to incorporate a service-learning component. A written proposal describing the intended thesis must be submitted to the AFAM director for formal approval. If accepted, the student will be assigned a supervisor/advisor and required to write a 30- to 40- page paper for the senior thesis. The final version of the senior project is due at the end of the term. An oral presentation on the senior project must also be made to the director and advisory committee during the week of final examinations in order to complete degree requirements.