African American Studies
493 College, 432.1170
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Chair
Paul Gilroy
Director of Graduate Studies
Matthew Jacobson (493 College, matthew.jacobson@yale.edu)
Professors
Hazel Carby, 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, Jonathan Holloway, Serene Jones, David Krasner, Patricia Pessar
Assistant Professors
Jennifer Baszile, Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Kamari Clarke, Nadine George, Kellie Jones, Naomi Pabst, Diana Paulin, Michael Veal
Lecturers
Alondra Nelson, 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, 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 African American Studies as your "Proposed Department/Program of Study" and then indicate one of the participating departments/programs listed above as your "Combined Program/Specialty/Subfield/Track." Additionally, please indicate African American Studies as your "Proposed Department/Program of Study" 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 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 706b/AMST 714b/HIST 735b) and/or Readings in African American History since 1865 (AFAM 710a/AMST 742a/HIST 740a); (3) Modernity and Its Others: Self, Subject, and Cultural Differences (AFAM 712b/SOCY 650b); (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.
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 Late Twentieth Century. Paul Gilroy. T 9.30–11.20
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. W 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. W 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. Th 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 562au, Miles Davis. John Szwed. T 1.30–3.20
A survey of the life and music of Miles Davis, examining the social history and musical traditions that shaped his work and exploring his influence on music, literature, and society. Also ANTH 535au.
AFAM 563au, Ralph Ellison in Context. Robert Stepto. W 3.30–5.20
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 to discern a portrait of the modernist African American 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 921au, ENGL 921au.
AFAM 568a, Race, Nation, and American Modernisms. Vera Kutzinski. M 3.30–5.20
Examination of the intimate and vexed relations between modernism and its cultural others in early to mid-twentieth-century literature from the United States. We read select fiction and poetry from this period in order both to question and to understand the different ways in which U.S. American writers tackled, or evaded, politically and socially pressing (and thus anxious) questions of difference relative to gender, sexuality, race, and class, as they struggled to articulate a viable national identity and/or poetics. Also AMST 766a, ENGL 923a.
[AFAM 573a, Transnationalism, Modernity, and Diaspora.]
AFAM 588bu, Autobiography in America. Robert Stepto. M 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.
[AFAML59ob, Race, Gender, and the Culture Industry in Twentieth-Century America.]
AFAM 595a, Problems in the Study of African American Literature. Elizabeth Alexander. T 1.30–3.20
This course focuses on poetry, reading the complete works of selected African American poets and doing extensive bibliographic research toward original scholarship on the work of several authors—Wheatley, Dunbar, Hughes, Brown, Brooks, Baraka, Sanchez, Clifton, Lorde, Harper, Wright, Komunyakaa, Dove—as well as looking at very contemporary poets of the present so-called New Negro Renaissance. In-class reports, library exercises, and a major seminar paper. Also AMST 640a, ENGL 940a.
[AFAM 632b, Race and Memory.]
[AFAM 656bu, Social Change and Popular Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa.]
[AFAM 673a, Roots and Routes: Identity and Travel in African American Political Culture.]
[AFAM 683bu, Recasting Gender: Religion, Science, and the Body.]
AFAM 687a, Race and Races in American Studies. Matthew Jacobson. T 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 706b, Readings in Twentieth-Century American Political and Social History. Glenda Gilmore. W 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 714b, HIST 735b.
[AFAM 709b, Research in Twentieth-Century American Political and Social History.]
AFAM 710a, Readings in African American History since 1865. Glenda Gilmore. W 10.30–12.20
An introduction to major primary and secondary scholarship in twentieth-century African American history. Critical analyses of social movements and gender, culture, and class politics. Methodological issues of particular importance to minority populations are also explored. Also AMST 742a, HIST 740a.
AFAM 712b, Modernity and Its Others: Self, Subject, and Cultural Differences. Paul Gilroy. T 9.30–11.20
This social theory course explores aspects of the political, philosophical, and sociological debates that have emerged around the concept of modernity. It looks particularly at articulations of modernity and "race" following four interlinked lines of inquiry: how has the subject of modernity been imagined and articulated; what attributes and experiences have qualified that subject as properly human and rational; where has identity been recognized as coming from, culturally and materially; and where has cosmopolitan loyalty emerged as a demand to see and act beyond the boundaries of immediate particularity? Also SOCY 650b.
AFAM 728bu, From West Africa to the Black Americas. Robert Thompson. TTh 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. TTh 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 73ob, The Face of the Gods: Icons and Architecture of the Black Atlantic World.]
AFAM 739a,b, Problem and Theory in Afro-Atlantic Architecture. 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—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,b.
[AFAM 746a, Race and Representation in U.S. Literature and Culture.]
[AFAM 758b, Readings in African American History to Emancipation.]
[AFAM 759b, Magic Realism in the Americas.]
[AFAM 768b, Issues in Performance Art.]
[AFAM 772a, African, Oceanic, and Native American Perceptions of "Primitivist Modernism": Challenging the West as Arbiter of Art.]
AFAM 789a, Music of Sub-Saharan Africa. Michael Veal. M 1.30–3.20
An introduction to the music of Sub-Saharan Africa, through a focus on several regional, national, and/or local cultures. The seminar provides an overview of the musicological and critical issues fundamental to the study of African music and surveys several scholarly approaches to this music both within and outside of Africa. Also AFST 830a, MUSI 930a.
AFAM 839b, Postcolonial Drama: From Shaw to Soyinka. Joseph Roach. W 1.30–3.20
The course explores works of anglophone playwrights from different colonial and postcolonial situations on the Atlantic rim—Nigeria, England, Trinidad, Ireland, South Africa, and the United States—with particular attention to the cultural work that such texts do both as literature and as blueprints for performance. In addition to the play texts, readings include critical essays by leading theorists of postcoloniality and drama, including prefaces and manifestos by the dramatists themselves. Also ENGL 946b.
AFAM 846a, Postcolonial Theory and Its Literature. Christopher L. Miller.Th 10.30–12.20
A survey of theories relevant to colonial and postcolonial literature and culture. Focus on theoretical models (Orientalism, hybridity, métissage, créolité, "minor literature"), but also on the literary texts from which they are derived (francophone and anglophone). Readings from Said, Bhabha, Spivak, Mbembe, Amselle, Glissant, Deleuze, Guattari. In English. Also AFST 746a, CPLT 725a, FREN 946a.
[AFAM 854b, The French Atlantic Triangle and the Literature of the Slave Trade.]
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.
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