AFRS BC 3110x (Section 01) Africana Colloquium: Critical Race Theory

Students will examine the origins and development of race-thinking in the Anglo‑American world with a particular focus on representation and reading practices. Our conversations will draw upon a number of articulations of race theory, including specific post-1980s Critical Race Theory. The course examines "race" narratives as well as critical readings on race from psychoanalytic, post‑colonial, feminist, and critical legal perspectives. These readings will be framed by several interlocking questions: how does representation both respond to and influence socioeconomic conditions? What is the relationship of race to color, ethnicity, and nation? How does race interact with other categories such as class, sexuality and gender? What cultural work is performed by racial definitions and categories such as hybridity and purity? - K. F. Hall
Prerequisites: Students must attend first day of class and admission will be decided then. Enrollment limited to 18 students. Priority will be given to Africana majors and CCIS students (Africana Studies, American Studies and Women's Studies majors; minors in Race and Ethnic Studies). General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC). General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC).
4 points

AFRS BC 3110y (Section 02) Africana Colloquium: Diasporas of the Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean has been called the cradle of globalization. We consider the Indian Ocean and east African diasporas and their aesthetic histories by engaging literary and other cultural exchanges (including film, visual arts, music, and dance). This course considers the overlapping transnational vectors that have characterized Indian Ocean history and we do so specifically through questions about the creation of diasporic public space and cultural memory, while also considering material cultures. We ask, for example, how the lived experience is recorded within those long histories of trade and imperialism. We engage with memoirs, epistles, newspapers, music and performance. We turn to archives, contemporary novels, memoir and song, dance and other visual arts to read how they chronicle and transmit cultural memory. We focus on: Durban (South Africa), Bombay (India), Zanzibar (Tanzania) and the Mascarenes (Port Louis in Mauritius and Saint Denis in La Reunion) and the Seychelles. This year, our course will be taught simultaneously between Barnard in New York and the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Students from both campuses will be encouraged to interact electronically and to establish a blog and website. The course will also have live-streamed guest speakers from chosen sites around the Indian Ocean. Because of time zones, we have chosen the most practical times (Cape Town is six, then seven hours ahead of New York). How does this influence the course methodology? Come and find out. - Y. Christianse
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor.
4 points