Undergraduate Major
Overview
The undergraduate major in African American Studies is designed to provide students with a solid disciplinary understanding of African American Studies and critical interdisciplinary scholarship.
The major features three distinctive areas of curricular emphasis:
- Arts, Aesthetics, and Expressive Cultureย focuses on the forms, frames, theories, and traditions of African American and African diasporic artistic and cultural productions;
- Ethics, Politics, and Societyย focuses on the normative, ideological, and institutional dimensions that form and inform experiences and expressions of individual and collective life of African Americans and of people of African descent in the diaspora; and
- History, Culture, and Theoryย focuses on the intellectual, material and theoretical expressions and (self) representations of the experiences of people of African descent in the United States and in the diaspora across space and time.
This curricular feature offers students the opportunity to develop distinct competence in a particular area of concentration in African American Studies.
The African American Studies Atelier is the capstone experience for African American Studies majors. The Atelier enables African American Studies majors to develop a significant capstone project. The Atelier brings together students, faculty, artists, writers, and activists to create new knowledge grounded in the critical and comprehensive study of African and African diasporic peoples, cultures, and ideas across space and time. The Atelier is also a space for faculty to rethink their conception and approach to their research and teaching in a unique space underwritten by an ethics of community, creativity, and collaboration.
African American Studies, B.A. Requirements
Requires a minimum of 30 hours in the major.
Core Courses (12 Credits)
| Course Number | Course Name |
|---|---|
| AAS 100 | Introduction to African American Studies |
| AAS 200 | Theories and Methods in African American Studies |
| One course which substantially engages slavery and race in the making of the modern world | |
| AAS 399 | African American Studies Atelier |
| Select at least three courses from among the following areas (at the 200 or 300 level) (9 Credits) |
|---|
| I. Arts, Aesthetics, and Expressive Culture |
| II. Ethics, Politics, and Society |
| III. History, Culture, and Theory |
| Select nine hours of electives (9 Credits) |
I. Arts, Aesthetics, and Expressive Culture
| Course Number | Course Name | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| AAS 207 | Black Popular Culture | 3 |
| AAS 220 | African American Cultural Criticism | 3 |
| AAS 294 | Black Art in the US and Great Britain since 1945 | 3 |
| AAS 370 | Special Topics in Arts, Aesthetics, and Expressive Cultures in African American 3 Studies | 3 |
| HMN 223 | African and Caribbean Literature | 3 |
| ENG 301 | Individual Authors (when topic is Toni Morrison) | 3 |
| ENG 302 | Ideas in Literature (when topic is Black is Beautiful: African American Poetics 3 and Aesthetics 1919-2019) | 3 |
| ENG 356 | Literature of the Caribbean | 3 |
| ENG 381 | Studies in African-American Literature (when topic is appropriate) | 3 |
| ENG 387 | African-American Fiction (when topic is appropriate) | 3 |
| ENG 389 | African-American Poetry | 3 |
| REL 376 | Race, Religion, and Film | 3 |
| THE 376 | Multicultural American Drama | 3 |
II. Ethics, Politics, and Society
| Course Number | Course Name | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| AAS 310 | Organic Leadership: Lessons from the Black Freedom Struggle | 3 |
| AAS 330 | Politics of Black Religion | 3 |
| AAS 340 | Ethics of Black Power | 3 |
| AAS 350 | Politics of Black Liberation | 3 |
| AAS 380 | Special Topics in Ethics, Politics, and Society in African American Studies | 3 |
| ANT 335 | Anthropology of Space and Place in the U.S | 3,4 |
| SOC 364 | Power, Politics, and Protest | 3 |
| SOC 384 | Special Topics Seminar in Crime and Criminal Justice (when topic is 3 appropriate) | 3 |
| POL 213 | Economic Inequality and American Politic | 3 |
| POL 223 | African American Politics | 3 |
| POL 226 | American Constitutional Law: Civil Rights and Liberties | 3 |
| REL 246 | Religion and Race | 3 |
| REL 338 | Religion, Ethics, and Politics | 3 |
| REL 374 | Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms | 3 |
| REL 375 | Race, Myth, and the American Imagination | 3 |
| WGS 364 | Women of Color, Feminisms, and the Politics of Resistance in the U.S. | 3 |
| WGS 383 | Race, Gender, and the Courts | 3 |
III. History, Culture, and Theory
| Course Number | Course Name | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| AAS 106 | Atlantic World since 1500 | 3 |
| AAS 105 | Africa in World History | 3 |
| AAS 110 | Introduction to Africana Philosophy | 3 |
| AAS 120 | Introduction to Black Women’s Studies | 3 |
| AAS 205 | Black Cultural Studies | 3 |
| AAS 210 | African American Intellectual Traditions | 3 |
| AAS 266 | The History of the Slave South | 3 |
| AAS 271 | African American History to 1870 | 3 |
| AAS 300 | Black Feminist Theory | 3 |
| AAS 272 | African American History since 1870 | 3 |
| AAS 315 | African American Social and Political Thought | 3 |
| AAS 320 | Philosophy and Race | 3 |
| AAS 322 | Critical Theories of Race | 3 |
| AAS 324 | Race and the Modern World | 3 |
| AAS 341 | Africans in the Atlantic World, 1750-1815 | 3 |
| AAS 355 | Africana Political Philosophy | 3 |
| AAS 375 | Black Lives | 3 |
| AAS 387 | Black Radical Tradition | 3 |
| AAS 378 | Race, Memory, and Identity | 3 |
| AAS 376 | Civil Rights and Black Consciousness Movements | 3 |
| AAS 391 | Themes in Africana Philosophy | 3 |
| AAS 392 | Seminar in African American Studies | 3 |
| AAS 396 | Independent Study in African American Studies | 3 |
| AAS 397 | Directed Reading in African American Studies | 3 |
| ANT 111 | Understanding Culture Through Ethnography | 3 |
| ANT 325 | Roots of Racism: Race and Ethnic Diversity in the U.S. | 3 |
| ENG 387 | African-American Fiction (when topic is appropriate) | 3 |
| HMN 200 | Introduction to Humanities: Themes in Literature, Culture, and Film | 3 |
| REL 107 | Introduction to African Religions | 3 |
| REL 345 | The African-American Religious Experience | 3 |
| REL 348 | Race, Memory, and Identity | 3 |
| REL 373 | Special Topics in African-American Religious Traditions | 3 |
| REL 393 | Topics in Religions of Africa | 3 |
| SOC 359 | Race and Racism | 3 |
| WGS 322 | Feminist, Womanist, Murjerista Theologies: Constructive Perspectives on 3 Christian Thought | 3 |
Spring 2025 Courses
Take a look at our spring 2025 undergraduate courses.