African American Studies

493 College, 432.1170
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Chair
Hazel Carby

Director of Graduate Studies
Paul Gilroy [F] (493 College, paul.gilroy@yale.edu)
Christopher L. Miller [Sp] (493 College, christopher.miller@yale.edu)

Professors
Hazel Carby, Cathy Cohen, William Foltz, Glenda Gilmore, Paul Gilroy, Ezra Griffith, Matthew Jacobson, Gerald Jaynes, Vera Kutzinski, Christopher L. Miller, Joseph Roach, Robert Stepto, John Szwed, Robert Thompson

Associate Professors
Elizabeth Alexander, Serene Jones, David Krasner, Patricia Pessar

Assistant Professors
Jennifer Baszile, Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Kamari Clarke, Nadine George, Jonathan Holloway, Kellie Jones, Diana Paulin, Michael Veal

Lecturers
Flemming Norcott, Gerald Thomas

Fields of Study
African American Studies offers a combined Ph.D. with a number of other departments and programs. Departments and programs which currently offer a combined Ph.D. with African American Studies are: American Studies, Anthropology, English, French, History, History of Art, Italian Language and Literature, 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
A writing sample of reasonable length should accompany the application and should describe the fields of interest that would be pursued in a combined degree. Applicants must specify African American Studies as their proposed department/field of study along with a participating department or program in their application (see Fields of Study).

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 Late Twentieth Century (AFAM 505a), which is a required course for all first-year graduate students in the combined program; (2) Readings in Twentieth-Century American Political and Social History (AFAM 706a/AMST 714a/HIST 735a) and/or Readings in African American History since 1895 (AFAM 710b/AMST 742b/HIST 740b); (3) Transnationalism, Modernity, and Diaspora (AFAM 573a/ANTH 595a) and/or Recasting Gender: Religion, Science, and the Body (AFAM 683b/ANTH 596b); (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 concerned. 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.

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 Late Twentieth Century. Hazel Carby. Monday 1.30-3.20
A designated core course for students in the joint Ph.D. program; also open to students in American Studies. The interdisciplinary seminar includes readings from the fields of anthropology, critical legal studies, cultural studies, literary history, history, politics, and sociology. Also AMST 643a.

[AFAM 516b, Deconstructing Black Identities: Methods from the Humanities and Social Sciences.]

AFAM 525bu, Psychosocial Study of Black Autobiography. Ezra Griffith. Wednesday 2.30-4.20
Autobiographies of black men and women analyzed especially for an understanding of their coping mechanisms, with attention to problems, satisfactions, disappointments, grief, and fulfillments.

AFAM 542au, Comparative Approaches to Recounting Stories of Black Lives. Ezra Griffith. Wednesday 2.30-4.20
A comparative analysis of several methodologies used by writers to recount the story of a black life. Systematic attention is given to the framework established by Erik Erikson and Daniel Levinson to study single life development. Then this framework is applied to the study of black autobiographies, biographies (e.g., Charles Hamilton's Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.), and other genres of storytelling as seen, for example, in Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot's I've Known Rivers, James Comer's Maggie's American Dream, and James McBride's The Color of Water. The strengths and weaknesses of these different techniques of black single life study are considered.

AFAM 557au, Introduction to Jazz Studies. John Szwed. Tuesday 1.30-3.20
An overview of the music and its cultural history, with consideration of the influence of jazz on the visual arts, dance, literature, and film; an introduction to the scholarship and methods of jazz studies. Also AMST 703au, ANTH 681au.

[AFAM 562bu, Miles Davis.]

AFAM 563a, Ralph Ellison in Context. Robert Stepto. Thursday 10.30-12.20
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 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, 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. This course is open to senior majors. Also AMST 921a, ENGL 921a.

[AFAM 568b, Modern American Literature: Race and Nationality.]

AFAM 573a, Transnationalism, Modernity, and Diaspora. Kamari Clarke. Wednesday 2.30-4.20
As anthropologists continue to grapple with changing notions of "the field" from local to global, this course covers recent and emerging scholarship that explores theoretical problems of modernity, transnationalism, and diaspora in specific historical and ethnographic context. Drawing on a range of ideas from world systems theories of globalization and notions of the invention of diasporas, to postmodern ideas of social constructions, the emphasis is on the interrelations between local and global cultural processes. These processes disrupt the once- homogenizing tendencies of ethnography and instead push us to examine different criteria for analyzing and constructing communities. Also ANTH 595a.

AFAM 588bu, Autobiography in America. Robert Stepto. Monday 1.30-3.20
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. Also AMST 710bu, ENGL 948bu.

[AFAM 590b, Race, Gender, and the Culture Industry in Twentieth-Century America.]

AFAM 595a, Problems in the Study of African American Literature. Elizabeth Alexander. Wednesday 1.30-3.20
A consideration of critical problems such as: slave narratives as literary texts; dialect, folklore, and the vernacular; genre definition and practice; women writers and canon definition; points of contact between African American and American letters. Includes African American literature before 1900. Literary and visual material. Also AMST 640a, ENGL 940a.

AFAM 596au, Twentieth-Century African American Poetry. Robert Stepto. Tuesday 1.30-3.20
The Afro-American practice of poetry between 1900 and 1960. Poets include Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Walker, Robert Hayden. Also AMST 641a.

AFAM 632b, Race and Memory. Alicia Schmidt Camacho. Thursday 1.30-3.20
A seminar in critical theory and methods for studying social movements and popular, vernacular cultures. Issues of modernity and "development," racialization, class formation, sexual and gender difference in the Americas through readings in subaltern studies, postcolonial theory, and ethnic studies. The course pairs primary texts with secondary, critical texts. We address the evocations of collective, popular memory by communities to recall or contest the condition of subaltern status. The course focuses on the Americas and U.S. imperial projects dating from the nineteenth century to the current moment. Also AMST 644b.

AFAM 656bu, Social Change and Popular Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa. Kamari Clarke. Monday 2.30-4.20
Explores social transition in various countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. In understanding the tensions between tradition and modernity, the crises of underdevelopment, and the role of cultural brokers I contributing to the globalization of various African cultural practices, we examine the ways in which various modes of popular culture reflect and shape new social phenomena. Also ANTH 542bu.

[AFAM 673a, Roots and Routes: Identity and Travel in African American Political Culture.]

AFAM 682au, Race, Class, and Public Policy. Dalton Conley. Tuesday 2.30-4.20
An investigation into the state of black-white inequality since the 1960s. This research seminar addresses theories of race; the role of societal institutions in perpetuating or ameliorating racial inequality; the race-class debate; the issues of affirmative action and social policy. Also SOCY 652au.

AFAM 683bu, Recasting Gender: Religion, Science, and the Body. Kamari Clarke. Wednesday 2.30-4.20
A central goal of the seminar is to identify ways of disarticulating the production of gender by examining how these roles are both naturalized and disrupted in local and global spheres. Also ANTH 596bu.

AFAM 687a, Race and Races in American Studies. Matthew Jacobson. Friday 1.30-3.20
This reading-intensive seminar examines influential scholarship across the discipline on "the race concept" and racialized relations in American culture and society. Rather than attempting vainly to cover the field exhaustively, the focus here is upon selected themes, approaches, methods, debates, and problems in a variety of scholarly genres. Major topics include the cultural construction of race; race as both an instrument of oppression and an idiom of resistance in American politics; the centrality of race in literary, anthropological, and legal discourse; the racialization of U.S. foreign policy; "race mixing" and "passing," vicissitudes of "whiteness" in American politics; the centrality of race in American political culture; and "race" in the realm of popularly cultural representation. Writings under investigation include classic formulations by scholars like Winthrop Jordan and Ronald Takaki, as well as more recent efforts by Cheryl Harris, Kevin Gaines, Tomas Almaguer, and Louise Newman. Seminar papers give students an opportunity to explore in depth the themes, periods, and methods which most interest them. Also AMST 701a, HIST 751a.

AFAM 706a, Readings in Twentieth-Century American Political and Social History. Glenda Gilmore. Thursday 10.30-12.20
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 American Political and Social History. Glenda Gilmore. Wednesday 10.30-12.20
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 710b, Readings in African American History since 1895.]

[AFAM 712b, Modernity and Its Others: Self, Subject, and Cultural Differences.]

AFAM 715bu, Black Communities in the Twentieth Century. Derrick Gilbert. Tuesday 2.30-4.20
A review of historical and contemporary issues confronting urban black communities in twentieth-century America. Using ethnographic studies, an exploration of the social, economic, political, and cultural history of the black experience within the context of community. Also SOCY 615bu.

AFAM 728bu, From West Africa to the Black Americas. Robert Thompson. Tues/Thurs 11.30-12.45
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 HSAR 778bu.

AFAM 729au, New York Mambo: Microcosm of Black Creativity. Robert Thompson. Tues/Thurs 11.30-12.45
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 730b, The Face of the Gods: Icons and Architecture of the Black Atlantic World.]

AFAM 739a or b, Problem and Theory in Afro-Atlantic Architecture. Robert Thompson. Thursday 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-Ituri Forest and Namibian spatial solutions, Berber casbah architecture and its interactions with the Jews on Djerba isle and in Morocco, the concept of the Muslim assatayah creolized into the Iberia azotea and the spread of this terrace-roof style throughout Latin America. 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. The seminar ends with the shrine architecture of New World adherents of the classical religions of Dahomey. Also HSAR 781a or b.

AFAM 746a, Race and Representation in U.S. Literature and Culture. Diana Paulin, Sanda Lwin. Thursday 3.30-5.20
This seminar introduces theories of difference through the lens of Asian American and African American literary and cultural productions. We draw from theoretical readings in fields such as gender studies, performance/theater studies, postcolonial studies, and legal studies. This comparative approach aims to interrogate conventional black/white paradigms that tend to dominate inquiries on race in American Studies. By reading foundational texts in critical theory alongside theories of difference, we look at subject formation in relation to the intersecting categories of race, national, gender, sexuality, and class. Topics to be considered may include racial/sexual minorities, history and memory, alliances across racial and national boundaries, and the politics of inclusion/exclusion. Also AMST 672a, ENGL 942a.

[AFAM 756a, Imperialism and Identity in Early North America.]

AFAM 758b, Readings in African American History to Emancipation. Jennifer Baszile. Wednesday 3.30-5.20
This seminar surveys classic and recent scholarship on the African diaspora in North America. Topics include regional and temporal varieties of slavery and freedom, gender, religion, race, work, resistance, and emancipation. Attention is given to urban and rural communities. Also AMST 706b, HIST 708b.

AFAM 759b, Magic Realism in the Americas. Vera Kutzinski. Monday 10.30-12.20
This seminar focuses on remappings of the subject within twentieth-century counterrealist writing from different parts of the Americas. Authors include Isabel Allende, Robert Antoni, Erna Brodber, Alejo Carpentier, William Faulkner, Janet Frame, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, Wilson Harris, Pauline Melville, Juan Rulfo, and Lawrence Scott. Also AMST 767b, CPLT 854b, ENGL 922b.

AFAM 768b, Issues in Performance Art. Kellie Jones. Tuesday 1.30-3.20
Wedged between the rudiments of theater and the gestures of visual art, performance art came to prominence at the end of the twentieth century. This course concentrates on artists and practices after 1960. However, we also consider the roots of this form in the first part of the twentieth century as well as in earlier periods. Central to our investigations are discussions surrounding performance as catalytic process, as temporal art, and issues of the body as form. African American performance art is the focus for the semester. Also HSAR 696b.

[AFAM 772a, African, Oceanic, and Native American Perceptions of "Primitivist Modernism": Challenging the West as Arbiter of Art.]

[AFAM 839b, Postcolonial Drama: From Shaw to Soyinka.]

[AFAM 846a, Postcolonial Theory and Its Literature.]

AFAM 854b, The French Atlantic Triangle and the Literature of the Slave Trade. Christopher L. Miller. Thursday 10.30-12.20
An analysis of the Atlantic world that was created by the slave trade, in its French version, as seen through history, philosophy, and literature from the eighteenth through the twentieth century. Readings from Voltaire, the journal of a slave-trading sailor, Rousseau, Madame de Duras, Baron Roger, Mérimée, Sue, Césaire, Sembene, T. Mandeleau. In English. Also AFST 739b, CPLT 723b, FREN 939b.

AFAM 880a or b, Directed Reading.
By arrangement with faculty.

AFAM 895, Research Workshop.Faculty.
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.

Next: African Studies