Catalog Course Descriptions
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Courses
Undergraduate
Interdisciplinary introduction to the field of African American studies. Includes comparative analysis of approaches, methodologies, and key concepts related to the study of people of African descent in the United States, continental Africa, and throughout the African diaspora. Lectures and discussion integrate attention to such issues as diversity and multiculturalism from national and global perspectives. Limited to three attempts.
Focuses on the sub-Saharan region and examines evolving systems of kinship power, spirituality, and slavery. Explores the interactions between Africans and global influences from the religions of the book and colonialism to the politics of development and continuities and changes in production. HIST 261 surveys African history from the earliest times to 1800. HIST 262 surveys African history from 1800 to the present. Limited to three attempts.
Focuses on the sub-Saharan region and examines evolving systems of kinship power, spirituality, and slavery. Explores the interactions between Africans and global influences from the religions of the book and colonialism to the politics of development and continuities and changes in production. HIST 261 surveys African history from the earliest times to 1800. HIST 262 surveys African history from 1800 to the present. Limited to three attempts.
Study of selected topics related to the study of people of African descent in Africa, the United States, the Caribbean, Latin Americas and throughout the African Diaspora. Notes: May be repeated when topic is different. May be repeated within the term for a maximum 12 credits.
Explores scientific methods of classification as a reflection of social values. Explains the harms of “race” and eugenics committed under the aegis of science. While critiquing the biological concept of race, considers how the social construction of race becomes part of living bodies through racism. Details modern human variation as a product of evolutionary forces. Limited to three attempts.
Introduces concepts of power, influence of mass media. Allows students to see themselves as products, producers of media influence, and gives sense of the roles in the media or lack thereof, of groups based on their gender, race and/or class. Limited to three attempts.
Covers deeply rooted, intractable, or protracted social conflicts around core issues of identity, including race, ethnicity, religion, and nationalism. Explores cultural, symbolic, and discursive approaches to identity conflict. Limited to three attempts.
Covers challenges of communicating across differences of age, gender, language, culture, political orientation, and contextual situations. Students will engage in preparing and analyzing communication strategies in conflict situations and will participate in a dialogue over the term that explores the meaning and experience of difference on the Mason campus. Limited to three attempts.
Explores the significance of social inequality (especially race and gender inequality) for several crime and criminal justice issues. Examines variations in criminal offending and victimization, and explores disparities in criminal justice processing. Limited to three attempts.
Issues of economic development as applied to Africa. Includes overview of early economic history in Africa and post-independence development, and contemporary development problems. Limited to three attempts.
Introduces educational issues. Explores psychological, sociological, educational, and physical aspects of diverse populations in today's schools for early and middle education. Emphasizes litigation and legislation pertaining to education of diverse populations. Notes: Requires school-based field experience during course. Limited to two attempts.
Introduces interpretive practices associated with cultural studies. Limited to three attempts.
Concentrating on such poets as Phillis Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon, Lucy Terry, and George Moses Horton, examines significant African American literary, social, and political texts produced through 1865. Special attention to narrative accounts of enslavement and freedom by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Olaudah Equiano; political writings and orations of David Walker and Sojourner Truth; fiction of Harriet Wilson and William Wells Brown; and nonwritten cultural artifacts such as slave songs and spirituals. Limited to three attempts.
Emphasizes several major writers from Reconstruction to beginning of 20th century, concluding with W.E.B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk . Concentrating on evolution of African American fiction and poetry as well as political and social discourses on "race," explores how authors such as Frances E.W. Harper, Charles Chesnutt, Pauline Hopkins, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Booker T. Washington, and DuBois shaped the foundation for 20th-century African American literary art and aesthetics. Limited to three attempts.
Focusing on fiction, poetry, drama, and autobiography, explores evolution of African American literature and aesthetics and major social, cultural, and historical movements such as the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and emergence of black naturalism, realism, and modernism in the 1930s-40s. Major authors include Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Jessie Fauset, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Margaret Walker, Chester Himes, Richard Wright, and Ann Petry. Limited to three attempts.
Encompassing array of genres and forms, examines black writing from mid-20th century to present. Engages textual, critical, political, and theoretical issues related to cardinal literary movements, such as Black Arts Movement of 1960s and Third Renaissance of 1980s-90s. Examines how musical forms such as blues, jazz, and rap shaped literary production. Major authors include Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Alice Walker, Ernest Gaines, Gloria Naylor, August Wilson, and Toni Morrison. Limited to three attempts.
History of African American experience in United States including African origins; trans-Atlantic slave trade; development of slavery in colonial, revolutionary, and antebellum periods; abolitionist movements; and African American participation in Civil War and during Reconstruction. Limited to three attempts.
History of African American life in post-slavery America, and rise and consequences of racial segregation in 19th and 20th centuries. Examines African American response to continued racial inequality and repression. Covers great migration, urbanization, black nationalism, and civil rights era, as well as contemporary debates about race. Limited to three attempts.
Traces history of American participation in the Olympics from 1896 to the present. Topics may include American leadership in the Olympic Movement, the historical legacy of American Olympic host cities, American Imperialism, Nazism, issues of race, gender and ethnicity in the Olympics, the Cold War and Olympic boycotts, and commercialization of sport. Limited to three attempts.
Explores the historical processes that led to the rise of African kingdoms, colonialism, industrialization, resistance movements, and legalized segregation. Limited to three attempts.
Study of historical topics or periods of special interest in global, Latin American, African, Asian, or Middle Eastern history. Notes: Topics announced in advance. May be repeated for credit when topic is different. May be repeated within the term.
Study of historical topics or periods of special interest. Notes: Topics announced in advance. May be repeated for credit when topic is different. May be repeated within the term.
Investigates race, sex, sexual orientation, and social class in contemporary American society. Examines commonalities in the construction of these categories and experiences of those who occupy them. Limited to three attempts.
Explores how race and ethnicity have been shaped by policies and practices in Western and non-Western societies. Explores the evolution of racial and ethnic attitudes from a global and historical perspective. Examines how changing demographic racial patterns may affect definitions of race and ethnicity and the ways in which people individually and collectively act to create new futures. Limited to three attempts.
Studies class structures and implications for individuals and groups in modern society. Explores issues of race and ethnicity, language and immigration status, sex and gender, social class, age, and sexual orientation. Examines critically the theory and research that explore the construction, experience, and meaning of such differences. Limited to three attempts.
Introduces the research interests of the faculty, offering new courses that reflect current issues not yet incorporated into the curriculum. Offers, in addition, advanced study into topics covered in the standing curriculum. Topics change by semester. May be repeated within the term for a maximum 6 credits.
Examines racialized gendered conceptions of popular culture, violence, and the legal system and their role in structuring systems of segregation, discrimination and exclusion. Looks at the gendered strategies and conflicts of organizations that arose to combat racial violence and overturn legal and social barriers to equal opportunity and citizenship rights. Limited to three attempts.
Approved work-study program in cooperation with specific organizations including area museums; NGOs; and local, state, and federal agencies. Students should arrange for an internship in the semester before they wish to enroll. Permission required from program director. Limited to three attempts.
Investigation of an area related to African American studies according to individual interest, with emphasis on research. Permission required from program director. May be repeated within the term for a maximum 9 credits.
Examines how gender, sexuality, race, and class come together as analytically distinct, yet practically intertwined, systems of meaning and practice. Examples highlight questions of political economy and history while focusing on specific ethnographic or historical readings. Limited to three attempts.
Examines political, economic, and social impact of public policies and implications for race, gender, and age. May be repeated within the term for a maximum 9 credits.
Studies First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, assembly, association, and religion; right to privacy; and Fourteenth Amendment equal protection. Equivalent to CRIM 423.
Explores philosophical, legal, and political issues at heart of modern international human rights movement. Examines historical background legal architecture of modern human rights movement. Limited to three attempts.
Builds on MGMT 303 by emphasizing intrapersonal, interpersonal, organizational, and societal phenomena relevant to issues of diversity. Examines phenomena and processes in general and with regard to specific dimensions such as gender, race, and ability. Designed to increase students' knowledge of diversity in organizations, understanding of others' perspectives, and ability to work well with people who differ from themselves. A third attempt will require academic advisor approval. Limited to two attempts.
Study of historical topics or periods of special interest in global, Latin American, African, Asian, or Middle Eastern history. Notes: Topics announced in advance. May be repeated for credit when topic is different. May be repeated within the term.
Study of historical topics or periods of special interest. Notes: Topics announced in advance. May be repeated for credit when topic is different. May be repeated within the term.
Introduces the research interests of the faculty, offering new courses that reflect current issues not yet incorporated into the curriculum. Offers, in addition, advanced study into topics covered in the standing curriculum. Topics change by semester. May be repeated within the term for a maximum 6 credits.
Graduate
Study of selected topics central to contemporary women and gender studies. Topics vary but include representation and images, violence, public policy, international development, transmigration of labor, myth and ritual, history and politics of sexuality, psychoanalysis, and religion. Notes: May be repeated for credit when topic is different. May be repeated within the term.
Study of selected topics central to contemporary women and gender studies. Topics vary but include representation and images, violence, public policy, international development, transmigration of labor, myth and ritual, history and politics of sexuality, psychoanalysis, and religion. Notes: May be repeated for credit when topic is different. May be repeated within the term.
