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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Of the many things that distinguish Africana Studies from other fields of knowledge, most remarkable are its creative uses and critiques of disciplinary perspectives. In some instances, a scholar in the field might move between disciplines; in others, a scholar might integrate two or more disciplines into one point of view. Disciplinary creativity accommodates the array of information--written texts, music, visual art, film--that contributes to our understanding of the African Diaspora. This seminar will illuminate the disciplinary nuances and challenges of studying people of African descent. After outlining genealogies of Africana Studies and the field's complicated relationships to social science disciplines, students will closely read classic texts by some of the pioneers in the field and explore their uses of disciplinary perspectives. In the latter half of the course, students will have the opportunity to design and conduct their own research projects with the aforementioned disciplinary concerns in mind.
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3.00 Credits
Any student of Africana Studies swiftly recognizes there is a limitless breadth to what constitutes "Africana experience" and that there are diverse means through which Africana experience is examined. For example, while some scholars utilize a more historical approach to chronicle Africana experience, others study the black body via performance to unearth nuanced meanings of Africana experience. This capstone seminar will explore a variety of methods and strategies for crafting research within the field of Africana Studies. We will focus on approaches that derive from traditional disciplines as well as techniques that have emerged with the advent of dynamic new media and digital technologies. Some of the methodologies we will engage include: historiography; archival research; digital archiving; quantitative data analysis; ethnographic and qualitative analysis; critical textual analysis; reading the body as art and text; blogging and digital publishing; and evaluating films as text. Serving as a practicum, the course will provide considerable background in a variety of methods as well as hands-on learning. Students will have the opportunity to craft a final research project that is best explored through one or more of the methods we examine.
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3.00 Credits
What is the relationship between real life in urban communities and the multiple ways in which they are imagined? What does it mean to be "urban," to live in an "urban community," or to be the product of an "urban environment"? Who do we think the people are who populate these spaces? This course takes a critical look at specific populations, periods, and problems that have come to dominate and characterize our conceptions of the quality, form, and function of U.S. urban life. A few of the topics we will cover include historical accounts of the varied ways in which poverty has been studied; race, class, and housing; the spatial practices of urban youth and the urban elderly; and gendered perspectives on social mobility and community activism. Finally, this course will explore how diverse social actors negotiate responses to their socio-spatial and economic circumstances, and, in the process, help envision and create different dimensions of the urban experience. The course fulfills the Exploring Diversity Initiative requirement as it explores how various forms of urban inequality affect the collective experience of social actors in diverse race and class categories. It focuses on the complex and contradictory ways in which urban residents confront, negotiate, and at times challenge social and structural inequalities and the changing political economy of U.S. cities.
Prerequisite:
Prior course(s) in American Studies, Latina/o Studies, or permission of instructor; not open to first year students
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3.00 Credits
Edward Said (1935-2003), one of the major critics of the last century, is best known for his groundbreaking 1978 book Orientalism, which inaugurated the field of postcolonial studies, and for his activist work on behalf of the Palestinian peoples. But his intellectual interests were wide-ranging: from French literary theory to Vico to Middle East politics to Glenn Gould. A true public intellectual, Said was a rarity among university academics. Besides writing several important scholarly books, he also wrote for various non-academic publications, such as The Nation, Al-Ahram, and The London Review of Books; co-founded, with the musician Daniel Barenboim, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra; and, from 1977-1991, served as a member of the Palestinian National Council. In this course, we will focus on works that represent different, though interconnected, facets of Said's oeuvre: his more strictly literary critical work (Beginnings and The World, The Text, and the Critic), his work on society and culture (Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism), his writings on the Palestinian question and the Middle East (The Question of Palestine, Covering Islam, From Oslo to Iraq), his writings on music (Parallels and Paradoxes co-authored with Daniel Barenboim), and his late work (On Late Style). We will also examine criticism of his work--Orientalism in particular.
Prerequisite:
Some literature background helpful
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3.00 Credits
California has long been considered a land of "sunshine and noir," unique in the national and international imagination as a land of physical recreation and destruction, a land of opportunity and social unrest. In this course, we will study the visual arts and culture of California from the 1960s to the present. Although we will focus on southern California, particularly Los Angeles, we will also consider movements in San Diego and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area. The course will approach California pop, conceptual, funk, performance, installation, public, and media arts to pursue questions of influence and interpretation concerning the relations between space, place, identity, and style in the visual arts and popular culture. Alongside analyzing California's visual culture, we will examine the region's cultural geography through historical and theoretical readings. Particular attention will be given to the region's special relations to Hollywood, the automobile, beach-surf culture, and the great diversity that characterizes the state.
Prerequisite:
ArtH 101-102
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3.00 Credits
While "race" and "ethnicity" have always played fundamental roles in shaping the course of American culture and the definition of who is or who can be an "American," our understanding of these concepts of race and ethnicity has often been less than clear. The purpose of this seminar is to examine how Americans have defined and articulated the concepts of race and ethnicity at various points in our history and how these ideas have been expressed in art, policy, practice, and theory. This course fulfills the Exploring Diversity Initiative because it examines various dynamics of power structures based on race and ethnic politics, as well as class and gender relations.
Prerequisite:
Previous upper division courses in History
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3.00 Credits
American Studies honors project.
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3.00 Credits
American Studies honors project.
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3.00 Credits
An exploration of how one makes sense of the social world through fieldwork. Some of the key questions of the course are: What are the philosophical and epistemological underpinnings of social inquiry? How does one frame intellectual problems and go about collecting, sifting, and assessing field materials? What are the uses and limits of statistical data? What is the importance of history to sociological and anthropological research? How can one use archival and other documentary materials to enrich ethnographic research? What are the empirical limits to interpretation? What is the relationship between empirical data and the generation of social theory? How does the social organization of social research affect one's inquiry? What are the typical ethical dilemmas of fieldwork and of other kinds of social research? How do researchers' personal biographies and values shape their work? We will approach these problems concretely rather than abstractly through a series of case studies, drawing upon the field experiences of departmental faculty and guest speakers from different professional backgrounds. There will also be some practical training in basic field methods, census and survey interpretation, and archival research.
Prerequisite:
Anthropology 101 or Sociology 101 or permission of instructor
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3.00 Credits
An introduction to social theory in anthropology and sociology. The course explores both disciplines' stances toward the puzzles of tradition and modernity through the works of major thinkers such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Freud, and others. In particular, the course examines ways in which the two disciplines approach the fundamental problems of human experience: how do men and women in different societies and epochs construct and maintain social order? How do they allocate authority, responsibility, and blame, as well as social prestige, power, and material wealth? How do they regulate sexual relationships and organize work? What systems of beliefs and reinforcing symbols do they fashion to come to grips with evil, misfortune, transgression, and mortality? What epistemological frameworks underpin their worlds? What happens when social worlds fall apart? The course also reconstructs the intellectual trajectories and social histories of both disciplines.
Prerequisite:
ANTH 101 or SOC 101 or ANSO 205 or permission of the instructor
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