Africana Studies (AAS) -For a syllabus or more detailed course information, please contact the department at 610-758-6335.

Course Listings

  Course#       Course Title (Credit Hours)           CRN           Day/Time             Location    Session   Instructor

Course Descriptions

3. Introduction to Africana Studies:  An interdisciplinary examination of the roots, culture, and politics of the modern black world through study of classic works in Africana Studies with emphasis on the continuities among African peoples worldwide and the social forces that have shaped contemporary black life in Africa and the Americas. SS

196.  Black Images in the Media:  A virtual map of reality, mass media impacts directly and indirectly the ways in which societies perceive and interact with people of African descent (here referred to as “Black”) as well as the ways in which “Black” people perceive and interact with themselves. This course will critically examine the role of the media in enabling, facilitating, and/or challenging the social construction of “Blackness.” We will consider the mass media to be one among many other social institutions such as religion, education, family, and the legal system, which strongly influence our everyday notions of what it means to be “Black.” Throughout the course of the semester, we will seek to challenge the representations of “Blackness” within various forms of media including but not limited to advertising, film, TV programming, newspapers, magazines, radio and the recording industry.  

198. Cuba: Revolution and Culture:  This interdisciplinary course analyzes the role of race and “culture” in the Afro Cuban struggle for equality. By focusing on the arts; particularly music, film and literature, this course will analyze the development of race during Cuba's colonial period; the Afro Cuban challenge to the “race blind” political and cultural movements of the Cuban Republic. We will then wrap-up the semester by addressing the significance of Hip-Hop as a contemporary cultural movement that challenges the social issues currently facing Afro Cubans.

295. Global Theories of Race and Racism:  What is the meaning of race in the contemporary U.S.? How does race affect every aspect of our daily lives? These are the central questions that will inform our discussions in this class throughout this term. We will be examining race sociologically. Meaning, we will look at how individual behavior and everyday beliefs are shaped by many social forces and social structures. We will consider how concepts like “race” and “ethnicity” has been defined over time and how they have been institutionalized in law, government, social policy and social thought. We also consider how individual racial or ethnic identity is shaped through social interactions. Students will leave this course with an understanding of the nature and dynamics of the relationship between minority and majority groups, and the relation of these groups to social stratification, economics, political and educational institutions in the culture.