African American Studies
81 Wall St., 432.1170
www.yale.edu/afamstudies/
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Chair
Robert Stepto
Director of Graduate Studies
Gerald Jaynes (81 Wall St., gerald.jaynes@yale.edu)
Professors
Elizabeth Alexander, David Blight, Hazel Carby, William Foltz, Glenda Gilmore, Ezra Griffith, Jonathan Holloway, Matthew Jacobson, Gerald Jaynes, Serene Jones, Christopher L. Miller, Patricia Pessar, Joseph Roach, Robert Stepto, John Szwed, Robert Thompson, Emilie Townes
Associate Professors
Kamari Clarke, Susan Lederer, Michael Veal
Assistant Professors
Khalilah Brown-Dean, Terri Francis, Ange-Marie Hancock, Alondra Nelson, Naomi Pabst, Diana Paulin, Edward Rugemer
Lecturers
Kathleen Cleaver, Flemming Norcott, Deborah Thomas, Jennifer Wood
Fields of Study
African American Studies offers a combined Ph.D. in conjunction with several other departments and programs. Departments and programs which currently offer a combined Ph.D. with African American Studies are: American Studies, Anthropology, English, Film Studies, French, History, History of Art, Political Science, Psychology, Religious Studies, Sociology, and Spanish and Portuguese. Within the field of study, the student will select an area of concentration in consultation with the directors of graduate studies of African American Studies and the joint department or program. An area of concentration in African American Studies may take the form of a single area study or a comparative area study: e.g., Caribbean or African American literature, a comparison of African American literature in a combined degree with the Department of English; an investigation of the significance of the presence of African cultures in the New World, either in the Caribbean or in Latin and/or South America in a combined degree with the Spanish and Portuguese department. An area of concentration may also follow the fields of study already established within a single discipline, e.g., race/minority/ethnic studies in a combined degree with Sociology. An area of concentration must either be a field of study offered by a department or fall within the rubric of such a field. Please refer to the description of fields of study of the prospective joint department or program.
Special Admissions Requirements
Strong undergraduate preparation in a discipline related to African American studies; writing sample; description of the fields of interest to be pursued in a combined degree. This is a combined degree program. To be considered for admission to this program you must indicate both African American Studies and one of the participating departments/programs listed above. Additionally, please indicate both departments on all supporting documents (personal statement, letters of recommendation, transcripts, etc.).
Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
Students will be subject to the combined Ph.D. supervision of the African American Studies department and the relevant participating department or program. The student’s academic program will be decided in consultation with an adviser, the director of graduate studies of African American Studies, and the director of graduate studies of the participating department or program and must be approved by all three. Students are required to take four designated core courses in African American Studies. Core courses are (1) Theorizing the Racial Formation of the United States in the Early Twenty-First Century (AFAM 505a/AMST 643a/HIST 772a), which is a required course for all first-year graduate students in the combined program; (2) American Legal History: Citizenship and Race (AFAM 829b/WGSS 715b), which is a required course for all first-year graduate students in the combined-program spring term; (3) Interdisciplinary Analysis in the Social Sciences (AFAM 827b), which is a required course for all second-year graduate students in the combined-program spring term; (4) Research Workshop (AFAM 895). After completion of course work, students will be required to attend the one-year research workshop during their third year. This research workshop is intended to support preparation of the dissertation proposal. Each student will be expected to present his or her dissertation prospectus during that year. The research workshop will also feature seminars in which students present chapters of their dissertations-in-progress. The expectation is that this workshop will be voluntarily attended by students even during terms when they are not required to register for it. The workshop will be an important part of each graduate student’s professionalization and will serve as a vital stimulus to intellectual activity.
Qualifying examinations and the dissertation proposal will be administered jointly by the program and participating department and must be passed within the time required by the participating department. The total number of courses required will adhere to the requirements of the participating department or program. For details of these requirements see the special requirements of the combined Ph.D. for the particular department printed in this publication. Students will be required to meet the foreign language requirements of the participating department (see Policies and Regulations: Degree Requirements). Students will not be admitted to candidacy until all requirements, including the dissertation prospectus, have been met and approved by the Graduate Studies Executive Committee of the African American Studies department and the participating department. If a student intends to apply for this combined Ph.D. in African American Studies and another department, he or she should contact the prospective department and request a description of all Ph.D. requirements and courses.
The faculty in African American Studies consider teaching to be an essential component of graduate education, and students therefore will teach in their third and fourth years.
Master’s Degrees
M.Phil. See Graduate School requirements.
M.A. (en route to the joint Ph.D.). Students will be awarded a combined M.A. degree in African American Studies and the relevant participating department or program upon successful completion of all course work except the Research Workshop, which is taken in the student’s third year of study. See also Graduate School requirements.
Program materials are available upon request to the Director of Graduate Studies, African American Studies, Yale University, PO Box 203388, New Haven CT 06520-3388.
Courses
AFAM 505a, Theorizing the Racial Formation of the United States in the Early Twenty-First Century. Jonathan Holloway.
T 1.30–3.20
A designated core course for students in the joint Ph.D. program; also open to students in American Studies and History. The interdisciplinary seminar includes readings from the fields of critical legal studies, cultural studies, literary history, history, politics, and sociology. Also AMST 643a, HIST 772a.
[AFAM 525bu, Psychosocial Study of Black Autobiography.]
AFAM 538b, The Creolization of Literatures. John Szwed.
HTBA
The development of literatures considered in light of sociolinguistics, with special attention to Creolization (the creation of new cultural forms from the fusion of historically unrelated traditions). Topics include dialect writing in several countries, literature in the anglophonic West Indies, and the role of the “minority” writer in complex language situations.
[AFAM 563bu, Ralph Ellison in Context.]
[AFAM 588bu, Autobiography in America.]
AFAM 596a, African American Poets of the Modern Era. Robert Stepto.
T 1.30–3.20
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 Beinecke Library for the inspection and discussion of original editions, manuscripts, letters, and other archival materials. Also AMST 641a, ENGL 947au.
[AFAM 687a, Race and Races in American Studies.]
AFAM 706a, Readings in Twentieth-Century United States Political and Social History. Glenda Gilmore.
Th 1.30–3.20
Recent trends in American political history from the 1800s, with an emphasis on the social analysis of mass politics and reform. Also AMST 714a, HIST 735a.
AFAM 709b, Research in Twentieth-Century United States Political and Social History. Glenda Gilmore.
Th 3.30–5.20
Projects chosen from the post-Civil War period, with emphasis on twentieth-century social and political history, broadly defined. Research seminar. Also AMST 709b, HIST 736b.
[AFAM 710a, Readings in African American History since 1865.]
AFAM 719bu, Race, Racisms, and Social Theory. Alondra Nelson.
T 2.30–4.20
In this seminar we examine some of the ways in which “race” has been defined, delineated, and critiqued by social analysts. Bearing in mind that some regard the idea of race as always signaling notions of inferiority and superiority, while others regard it as a positive sign of shared history and collective identity, we consult a range of opinions as to what race is and how perceptions of racial difference shape the social world. We consider the interplay of race with class and gender, and the consequences of this “intersectionality” for how racism is deployed and experienced. We examine the role of medicine, scientific knowledge, and the body in the constitution of race. We also turn our attention to explanations of how race and racism are reflected in the structure of institutions, in the formation of the nation-state, and in the production of cultural representations, among other sites. Also SOCY 654bu.
AFAM 723a, Caribbean Diasporic Intellectuals. Hazel Carby.
W 1.30–3.20
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. Also AMST 645a, CPLT 949a.
AFAM 726b, Black Travel and Transnationality. Naomi Pabst.
Th 1.30–3.20
This course examines literary writings that feature themes of African American and black diasporic border crossing and transnational movement. With an eye to issues of representation and narrative strategy as well as textual content, the course explores historical and present-day black transnational border crossing and its influence on the cultural, political, and ideological parameters of black identity. The course establishes the forms, varieties, conflicts, and dilemmas of black transnational movement, travel, and tourism trans-historically. Also AMST 674b.
AFAM 728bu, From West Africa to the Black Americas: The Black Atlantic Visual Tradition. Robert Thompson.
TTh 11.35–12.50
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. Also AFST 778bu, HSAR 778bu.
AFAM 729au, New York Mambo: Microcosm of Black Creativity. Robert Thompson.
TTh 11.35–12.50
Rise, development, and philosophic achievement of the world of New York mambo and salsa. Emphasis on Palmieri, Cortijo, Roena, Harlow, and Colon. 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. Also HSAR 779au.
[AFAM 731bu, Black Women’s Film and Video.]
[AFAM 732au, Film and the Harlem Renaissance.]
AFAM 739a, Problem and Theory in Afro-Atlantic Architecture I: Africa. Robert Thompson.
Th 3.30–5.20
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 of the Choco area in Pacific Colombia. Also AFST 781a, HSAR 781a.
AFAM 739b, Problem and Theory in Afro-Atlantic Architecture II: The Black Americas. Robert Thompson.
Th 3.30–5.20
A continuation of AFAM 739a. Also AFST 781b, HSAR 781b.
[AFAM 742b, Black Religion in the Public Square.]
AFAM 747b, Performativity. Diana Paulin.
T 1.30–3.20
What does it mean to perform identity? The graduate seminar addresses this question through the study of theories of performance and performativity in order to come to a working definition of these terms and to apply this critical framework to multiple sites of cultural production (both historical and contemporary), including the stage, the page, the screen, the street, and the courtroom. Racial performance, because of its inextricable link with the body, serves as a point of entry to this study, since performativity and performance highlight both bodily conditions and discursive systems that construct and produce racial identity, simultaneously. We consider how race is performed in and through its intersection with other categories of identity, such as sexuality, gender, and nation. Along these lines, we evaluate how the lens of performance and performativity might aid in the process of critiquing, reconfiguring, and resisting restrictive formulations of race and identity, as well as generate space for more productive possibilities. Authors include Judith Butler, Rachel Lee, Anna Deveare Smith, Harry Elam, Jose Munoz, Sadiya Hartman, Joseph Roach, and Karen Shimakawa. Also AMST 675b.
[AFAM 748au, Rethinking the African American Literary Canon.]
AFAM 749b, Transnational Imaginaries. Hazel Carby.
W 1.30–3.20
We traverse 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. Also AMST 648b, WGSS 735b.
AFAM 757b, Research Seminar in Nineteenth-Century United States History. David Blight.
W 1.30–3.20
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. Also AMST 722b, HIST 722b.
AFAM 764a, Readings in Nineteenth-Century American History, 1820–1877. David Blight.
T 1.30–3.20
This course explores recent trends and historiography on several problems through the middle of the nineteenth century: sectionalism; expansion; slavery and the Old South; northern society and reform movements; Civil War causation; the meaning of the Confederacy; why the North won the Civil War; the political, constitutional, and social meanings of emancipation and Reconstruction; violence in Reconstruction society; the relationships between social/cultural and military/political history; problems in historical memory; the tension between narrative and analytical history writing; and the ways in which race and gender have reshaped research and interpretive agendas. Also AMST 715a, HIST 715a.
AFAM 767a, Race and Rights in the Twentieth Century. Stephen Pitti, Jonathan Holloway.
M 1.30–3.20
This research seminar explores topics in U.S. history related to demands for political rights by African Americans, Latinos, and others, and to the broader articulations and social movements linked to race and ethnicity in the twentieth century. Also AMST 765a, HIST 766a.
[AFAM 783b, Colonizer and Colonized in Africa.]
[AFAM 809a, Intersecting Identities: Nation, Race, and Gender.]
AFAM 812b, Women and Politics. Ange-Marie Hancock.
T 1.30–3.20
This course surveys the various approaches to studying gender in political science. It explicitly crosses the subfields of political theory, American politics, and comparative politics in course content and discussions of research design and methodology. Students intending to write dissertations involving gender analyses or preparing for the gender politics special field exam are encouraged to enroll in the class. Also PLSC 843b.
[AFAM 814a, Race and Ethnicity.]
AFAM 823a, The Political Economy of Misery. Emilie Townes.
T 1.30–3.20
This course is an examination of the ways in which the intersection of various forms of oppression—such as racism, sexism, ageism, heterosexism, and classism—coalesce to form life styles of misery that produce social patterns of domination and subordination. Consideration of how conversations between Christian ethics and other disciplines help frame possible trajectories of justice and justice making. Also REL 826a.
AFAM 827b, Interdisciplinary Analysis in the Social Sciences. Gerald Jaynes.
W 1.30–3.20
A survey of some of the most influential social science texts in the field of African American Studies. The seminar is designed to introduce students to the various theoretical and methodological paradigms common across social science disciplines. Readings include both classic and contemporary works and emphasize, when possible, interdisciplinary research methods.
AFAM 829b, American Legal History: Citizenship and Race. Kathleen Cleaver.
Th 2.30–4.20
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. Also WGSS 715b.
[AFAM 831bu, August Wilson and His Contexts.]
AFAM 837b, African American Moral and Social Thought. Emilie Townes.
T 1.30–3.20
This course concentrates on the theo-ethical perspectives of selected African American Christian and humanist thinkers. This term, the course focuses on the writings of Maria Stewart, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Barbara Jordan, Peter Paris, Katie Cannon, and Traci West. Attention is given to implications for the contemporary church. Also REL 825b.
[AFAM 840a, Africa in American Theater, Drama, and Performance.]
[AFAM 843a, Theory and Practice of Ethnomusicology.]
AFAM 845a, What’s in a Text? Charles Long’s Significations. Emilie Townes.
M 3.30–5.20
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 is 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 by Charles H. Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion. Also REL 828a.
AFAM 846a, Postcolonial Theory and Its Literature. Christopher L. Miller.
Th 9.25–11.15
A survey of theories relevant to colonial and postcolonial literature and culture. The course focuses on theoretical models (Orientalism, hybridity, métissage, créolité, “minor literature”), but also gives attention to the literary texts from which they are derived (francophone and anglophone). Readings from Said, Bhabha, Spivak, Mbembe, Amselle, Glissant, Deleuze, Guattari. Taught in English. Also AFST 746a, CPLT 725a, FREN 946a.
[AFAM 847a, African-Caribbean Connections in French.]
AFAM 851b, Creole Identities and Fictions. Christopher L. Miller.
Th 9.25–11.15
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 Staël, Charlotte Brontë (and reinventions of Wuthering Heights by Jean Rhys and Maryse Conde), the Creolistes of Martinique. Attention to Louisiana and to the Haitian Revolution. Reading knowledge of French required. Also CPLT 989b, FREN 943b.
[AFAM 854a, The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade.]
AFAM 880a or b, Directed Reading.
By arrangement with faculty.
AFAM 895, Research Workshop. Gerald Jaynes.
A noncredit, yearlong 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 has biweekly workshops that focus on the dissertation prospectus.
For course offerings in African languages, see African Studies.
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