Course Listing - Graduate
Graduate Courses - Fall 2009
(* indicates seminar course, U indicates that a graduate course is available to undergraduate students as well)
AFAM 505a/AMST 643a, THEORIZING RACIAL FORMATIONS.
Jonathan Holloway.
Thursdays, 9:25 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. 81 Wall Street, Room 201.
A required course for all first-year students in the joint Ph.D. in African American Studies; also open to students in American Studies. This interdisciplinary reading seminar focuses on new work that is challenging the temporal, theoretical, and spatial boundaries of the field.
AFAM 563au/AMST 651au, RALPH ELLISON IN CONTEXT.
Robert Stepto.
Mondays, 1:30 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.
This seminar pursues close readings of Ralph Ellison’s essays, short fiction, and novels, Invisible Man and Juneteenth. The “in context” component of the seminar involves working from the Benston and Sundquist volumes on Ellison to discern a portrait of the modernist African America Ellison investigated, with at least Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Romare Bearden also in view. The texts include Ellison, The Collected Essays, Flying Home and Other Stories, Invisible Man, and Juneteenth; K. Benston, Speaking for You; E. Sundquist, Cultural Contexts for Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man; A. Nadel, Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon.
AFAM 596a/AMST 641a/ENGL 947a, AFRICAN AMERICAN POETS OF THE MODERN ERA.
Robert Stepto.
Wednesdays, 1:30 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.
The African American practice of poetry between 1900 and 1960, especially of sonnets, ballads, sermonic, and blues poems. Poets studied include Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Walker, and Robert Hayden. The classes include sessions at the Beinecke Library for inspection and discussion of original editions, manuscripts, letters, and other archival materials.
AFAM 709a/AMST 709a/HIST 736a/WGSS 736a, RESEARCH IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY U.S. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY.
Glenda Gilmore.
Thursdays, 3:30 p.m. - 5:20 p.m.
Projects chosen from the post-Civil War period, with emphasis on twentieth-century social and political history, broadly defined. Research seminar.
AFAM 723a/AMST 645a/CPLT 949a, CARIBBEAN DIASPORIC INTELLECTUALS.
Hazel Carby.
Mondays, 2:30 p.m. - 4:20 p.m.
This course examines work by writers of Caribbean descent from different regions of the transatlantic world. In response to contemporary interest in issues of globalization, the premise of the course is that in the world maps of these black intellectuals we can see the intertwined and interdependent histories and relations of the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Thinking globally is not a new experience for black peoples and we need to understand the ways in which what we have come to understand and represent as “Caribbeanness” is a condition of movement. Literature is most frequently taught within the boundaries of a particular nation, but this course focuses on the work of writers who shape the Caribbean identities of their characters as traveling black subjects and refuse to restrain their fiction within the limits of any one national identity. We practice a new and global type of cognitive mapping as we read and explore the meanings of terms like black trans-nationalism, migrancy, globalization, and empire. Diasporic writing embraces and represents the geopolitical realities of the modern, modernizing, and postmodern worlds in which multiple racialized histories are inscribed on modern bodies.
AFAM 729a/HSAR 779a, NEW YORK MAMBO: MICROCOSM OF BLACK CREATIVITY.
Robert F. Thompson
Tue. & Thu. 11:35 a.m. - 12:50 p.m.
Rise, development, and philosophic achievement of the world of New York mambo and salsa. Emphasis on Palmieri, Cortijo, Roena, Harlow, and Colón. Examination of parallel traditions, e.g., New York Haitian art, Dominican merengue, reggae and rastas of Jamaican Brooklyn, and the New York school of Brazilian capoeira.
AFAM 739a/AFST 781a/HSAR 781a, PROBLEM AND THEORY IN AFRO-ATLANTIC I: AFRICA.
Robert F. Thompson
Thursdays, 3:30 – 5:20 p.m.
The seminar addresses a new frontier-rebuilding the inner cities. This refers to Latino and mainland black cities within the cities of America. Accordingly, the course focuses on major roots of Latino and black traditional architecture. Topics include the architecture of Djenne, Berber art and architecture, Mauritanian sites, the monumental stone architecture of Zimbabwe, the sacred architecture of Ethiopia, and Muslim-influenced architecture from Rabat to Zanzibar. Then comes a case-by-case examination of some of the sites of African influence on the architecture of the Americas- the Puerto Rican casita; the southern verandah; the round-houses of New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Mexico, Panama, and Colombia; Ganvie, the Venice of West Africa, and its mirror image among the tidal stilt architectures of blacks on the Chocó area in Pacific Colombia.
AFAM 773a/SOCY 630a, WORKSHOP IN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY.
Elijah Anderson.
Tuesdays, 11:30 a.m. - 1:20 p.m.
The ethnographic interpretation of urban life and culture. Conceptual and methodological issues are discussed. Ongoing projects of participants are presented in a “workshop” format, thus providing participants with critical feedback as well as the opportunity to learn from and contribute to ethnographic work in progress. Selected ethnographic works are read and assessed.
AFAM 779a/REL 830a/RLST 845a, METAPHORS OF EVIL.
Emilie Townes.
Mondays, 1:30 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.
This course is an examination of the ways in which metaphors and symbols function at the intersection of various forms of oppression that coalesce into lifestyles of misery to produce social patterns of domination and subordination. We consider how conversations between Christian ethics and theology as well as other disciplines help frame possible trajectories of justice and justice making.
AFAM 821a/REL 742a/RLST 847a , WARRIOR CHANTS AND UNQUIET SPIRITS.
Emilie Townes
Tuesdays, 8:30 – 10:20 a.m.
An exploration of the spiritual writings and social actions of significant representatives of the Christian protest tradition. Study of public and private documents, analysis of personal disciplines and basic commitments for social justice form the framework for exploring the nature of a spirituality that is a social witness.
AFAM 805a/AFST 949a/CPLT 987a/FREN 949a, NOVEL, FILM, AND HISTORY IN FRENCH AFRICA.
Christopher L. Miller.
Thursdays, 1:30 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.
African history as represented in historiography, novels, and films. Limited to French and Francophone Africa. Themes include empire and epic; orality and literacy; the slave trade; contact, conquest, and resistance; the Congo Free State; the role of colonial intermediaries; the two world wars; decolonization and neocolonialism; and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Reading knowledge of French required.
AFAM 814au/PLSC 823au, RACE AND ETHNICITY.
Khalilah Brown-Dean.
Tuesdays, 1:30 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.
This course is an introduction to research on race and ethnicity in American politics. Topics include the social construction of race; intersections between race and gender; black, Latino, and Asian American public opinion and political participation; minority representation; the relationship among race, racism, and public policy; immigration and citizenship; state politics; the psychology of racial politics; and the role of race in campaigns. We discuss and debate the empirical contributions of this literature, as well as questions of theory, methodology, and research design.
AFAM 880a, DIRECTED READING. By arrangement with faculty.
AFAM 895a, DISSERTATION PROSPECTUS WORKSHOP.
Glenda Gilmore.
A noncredit, year-long course required of all third-year students. Fall term consists of biweekly work-in-progress talks by Yale faculty, advanced graduate students, and outside speakers. Spring term consists of biweekly workshops that focus on the dissertation prospectus.
Graduate Courses - Spring 2010
(* indicates seminar course, U indicates that a graduate course is available to undergraduate students as well)
AFAM 588bu/AMST 710bu/ENGL 948bu, AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN AMERICA.
Robert Stepto.
Mondays, 1:30 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.
At least a dozen North American autobiographies are studied, mostly from the “American Renaissance” to the present. Discussion of various autobiographical forms and strategies as well as of various experiences of American selfhood and citizenship. Slave narratives, spiritual autobiographies, immigrant narratives, autobiographies of childhood or adolescence, relations between autobiography and class, region, or occupation.
AFAM 706b/AMST 714b/HIST 735b, READINGS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY U.S. HISTORY.
Glenda Gilmore.
Thursdays, 3:30 p.m. - 5:20 p.m.
Recent trends in American political history from the 1800s, with an emphasis on the social analysis of mass politics and reform.
AFAM 728b/AFST 778b/HSAR 778b, FROM WEST AFRICA TO THE BLACK AMERICAS.
Robert F. Thompson
Tue. & Thu. 11:35 a.m. - 12:50 p.m.
Art, music, and dance in the history of key classical civilizations south of the Sahara - Mali, Asante, Dahomey, Yoruba, Ejagham, Kongon - and their impact on the rise of New World art and music.
AFAM 731bu7/FILM 717bu/WGSS 705bu, THEORIES OF BLACK WOMEN AND FILM. Terri Francis.
Tuesdays, 1:30 p.m. - 3:20 p.m. Screenings, Mondays, 9:00 p.m.
Study of films and videos made by women of African descent during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Focus on filmmaking as a critical practice and an art form, particularly how it engages cinematic perceptions of black womanhood. Films placed in a matrix of African American film history, feminist film theory, and legacies of black feminist writing and image making. Topics include film language, authorship, performance, and the question of audience.
AFAM 735b/AMST 807b, PERFORMANCE HISTORIOGRAPHY.
Paige McGinley.
Tuesdays, 7:00 p.m. - 8:50 p.m.
This course examines methodological issues and research strategies employed by scholars doing historical research on performance. What is the relationship among history, memory, and performance? Where does performance “live” in the archive? How can one study the embodied events of the past? How can we make scholarly claims about performances that seem to disappear? This course looks at the work of scholars who have wrestled with these questions, paying specific attention to studies of African American performance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Students also work with Beinecke Library collections in areas of their own interest. Scholars to be examined may include Hartman, Roach, Brooks, Young, and Brody.
AFAM 739b/AFST 781b/HSAR 781b, PROBLEM AND THEORY IN AFRO-ATLANTIC ARCHITECTURE II: THE BLACK AMERICAS.
Robert F. Thompson
Thursdays 3:30 - 5:20 p.m.
A continuation of AFAM 739a, this seminar continues to address the new frontier - rebuilding the inner cities. This refers to Latino and mainland black cities within the cities of America. Accordingly, the course focuses on major roots of Latino and black traditional architecture. Topics include the architecture of Djenne, Berber art and architecture, Mauritanian sites, the monumental stone architecture of Zimbabwe, the sacred architecture of Ethiopia, and Muslim-influences architecture from Rabat to Zanzibar. Then comes a case-by-case examination of some of the sites of African influence on the architecture of the Americas - the Puerto Rican casita; the southern verandah; the round-houses of New York, Virginian, North Carolina, Mexico, Panama, and Colombia; Ganvie, the Venice of West Africa, and its mirror image among the tidal stilt architectures of blacks on the Chocó area in Pacific Colombia.
AFAM 749b/AMST 648b/WGSS 735b, TRANSNATIONAL IMAGINARIES.
Hazel Carby.
Mondays, 2:30 p.m. - 4:20 p.m.
We tranverse the boundaries of conceptual, disciplinary, historical, and theoretical imaginings of the transnational. How the transnational has been imagined is posed as a series of questions rather than as a fixed definition: for example, what constitutes the transnational; how do we think the transnational; why should we think in terms of the transnational; and what is the relation or difference among the transnational, the cosmopolitan, and globalization? We consider creative responses to the consequences of the unquenchable, demonic thirst of European and American powers for the control of trade, land, and resources, attempts to render visible what Amitav Ghosh refers to as “the results of the five hundred years of pure, undistilled violence and terror unleashed in the name of modernity.” We analyze the spatial, temporal, and historical dimensions of the creation of literary and visual narratives which seek to represent the displacement of peoples, the formation of diasporas, the invention and reinvention of subjects and subjectivities, and the politics of knowledge and power. Final paper.
AFAM 757b/AMST 722b/HIST 722b, RESEARCH SEMINAR IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN HISTORY.
David Blight.
Wednesdays, 3:30 p.m. - 5:20 p.m.
Some class sessions focus on matters of craft: research techniques, styles of writing, narrative and analysis; judging scholarly work; and philosophical dimensions of doing history in the early twenty-first century. Primary focus of course is for each student to complete his/her own major research paper. Students in any field of American history are welcome.
AFAM 773b/SOCY 630b, WORKSHOP IIN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY.
Elijah Anderson.
Tuesdays, 11:30 a.m. - 1:20 p.m.
The ethnographic interpretation or urban life and culture. Conceptual and methodological issues are discussed. Ongoing projects of participants are presented in a “workshop” format, thus providing participants with critical feedback as well as the opportunity to learn from and contribute to ethnographic work in progress. Selected ethnographic works are read and assessed.
AFAM 829b/WGSS 715b, AMERICAN LEGAL HISTORY: CITIZENSHIP AND RACE. Kathleen Cleaver.
Thursdays, 2:30 p.m. - 4:20 p.m.
The seminar examines the evolution of U.S. citizenship as defined and interpreted by courts during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular attention to the way historical events that defined race have affected citizenship. Topics of study include the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the 1866 Civil Rights Act, Reconstruction legislation, immigration restrictions imposed on Asians, legislation impacting the racial classification of Mexicans, statutes governing the citizenship of indigenous native peoples, racially based prohibitions against voting, education, and employment, and efforts to reduce them by civil rights legislation culminating with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Each seminar participant has to research several topics and make a presentation to the class on at least one topic. Engagement in seminar discussion and the drafting of research papers are the basis for grading. This seminar is open to seniors.
AFAM 835b/AMST 822b/CPLT 697b/ENGL 929b, THE BIG EASY: LITERARY NEW ORLEANS.
Joseph Roach.
Tuesdays, 1:30 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.
An exploration of the sources of creative inspiration that writers find in NOLA, including its cultural mystique, its colonial history, its troubled assimilation into Anglo-North America, its tortured racial politics, its natural and built environment, its spirit-world practices, its raucous festive life, its eccentric characters, its food, its music, its predisposition to catastrophe, and its capacity for reinvention and survival.
AFAM 838bu/ENGL 988bu, CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY.
Elizabeth Alexander.
Wednesdays, 1:30 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.
In this course we study African American poetry of the contemporary era, from 1960 to the present. We also cover predominant theoretical approaches to African American poetry and poetics. Authors include late Gwendolyn Brooks and Robert Hayden, Amiri Baraka, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, Yusef Komunyakaa, Rita Dove, Michael Harper, and poets of the new generation.
AFAM 845b/REL 828b/RLST 850b, WHAT’S IN A TEXT?: SAMUEL HUNTINGTON’S CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS.
Emilie Townes.
Thursdays, 3:30 p.m. - 5:20 p.m.
A detailed examination of one formative text for moral discourse to explore a thinker’s ideas and how he or she states a theme, develops an argument, and is able to argue his or her case in a persuasive manner. Attention to consistency, reasoning, style, and rhetoric are also a part of the course. Finally, we consider the book in relation to the renewal of the church, its implication for ministry, and its place in enriching scholarly debate and thought. Students may repeat the course as different texts are studied. The text we consider this time is the classic text, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations.
AFAM 851b/CPLT 989b/FREN 943b, CREOLE IDENTITIES AND FICTIONS.
Christopher L. Miller.
Thursdays, 1:30 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.
Focusing on the French and English Caribbean, this course analyzes the quintessential but ambiguous American condition: that of the “Creole.” Encompassing all non-native cultures, this term is inseparable from issues of race and slavery. Readings of historical and literary texts: Moreau de Saint-Mery, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Madame de Stael, Charlotte Bronte (and reinventions of Wuthering Heights by Jean Rhys and Maryse Conde), the Creolistes of Martinique. Attention to Louisiana and to the Haitian Revolution.
AFAM 880b, DIRECTED READING. By arrangement with faculty.
AFAM 895b, DISSERTATION PROSPECTUS WORKSHOP.
Glenda Gilmore.
HTBA. 81 Wall Street, Room 201
A noncredit, year-long course required of all third-year students. Fall term consists of biweekly work-in-progress talks by Yale faculty, advanced graduate students, and outside speakers. Spring term consists of biweekly workshops that focus on the dissertation prospectus.
