Catalogue

Africana Studies

africana.bard.edu

Faculty

John Ryle (director), Susan Aberth, Myra Young Armstead, Christian Ayne Crouch, Tabetha Ewing, Nuruddin Farah, Donna Ford Grover, Kwame Holmes, A. Sayeeda Moreno, Dina Ramadan, Peter Rosenblum, Drew Thompson, Wendy Urban-Mead (MAT), Yuka Suzuki

Overview

Africana Studies is an interdisciplinary concentration that examines the cultures, histories, and politics of African peoples on the African continent and throughout the African diaspora. The Africana Studies concentration teaches students to use diverse historical, political, ethnographic, artistic, and literary forms of analysis. Through these interdisciplinary studies, students trace the historical and cultural connections between Africa and the rest of the world, and explore their importance for African peoples and the nature of modern global society.

Requirements

Concentration in Africana Studies must be combined with a major in a traditional disciplinary program. Ideally, a student moderates simultaneously in Africana Studies and the disciplinary program. Before Moderation, a student is expected to take at least three Africana Studies courses or Africana Studies cross-listed courses, including the core course, Africana Studies 101, Introduction to Africana Studies, or the equivalent. To graduate, the student must take two additional Africana Studies or cross-listed courses, including one 300-level seminar. The Moderation and Senior Project boards should each include one Africana Studies core faculty member.

Courses

Introduction to Africana Studies
Africana Studies 101
CROSS-LISTED: HISTORICAL STUDIES
This course uses texts by W. E. B. Du Bois, Aimé Césaire, Alice Walker, and Saidiya Hartman, among others, to consider the genealogy and ambitions of Africana studies as an intellectual and political tradition. To illuminate these theoretical readings, the course also uses film, music, painting, and literature to chart networks of migration and consider how communities living in and identifying with Africa and the diaspora construct and respond to shared histories of slavery, colonization, racism, globalization, and struggles for independence.