Africana Studies

The program in Africana Studies provides a cross-culturally and historically comparative framework to study the rich connections and exchanges among African people, their descendants, and the various “new worlds” in which they have made and are making their lives. A particular strength of Carleton’s Africana Studies program is the opportunity to explore these issues on the African continent as well as in numerous African diasporas–of varying historical depth–in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Africana Studies combines area studies and ethnic studies foci on the cultural, literary, political, social, and intellectual responses to slavery, colonialism, missionization, and racialization throughout Africa and its many diasporas.

Students can pursue their intellectual interests in Africa and its diasporas through on-campus courses and off-campus studies programs (including programs offered through Carleton’s departments of History and Environmental Studies), and through a rich variety of courses in nearly all curricular exploration divisions. Through multidisciplinary training, students are encouraged to develop their analytic, research, and literary skills; they acquire the intellectual tools to critique and correct the distortions and silences about Africans and their descendants in both academic canons and public discourse.

The Africana Studies major thus prepares students for lifetime engagement in scholarship as well as in fields such as law, public policy, education, public health, social work, and the arts. Toward this end, and in addition to coursework, students are encouraged to take advantage of the rich array of speakers, exhibits, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities related to Africans and their diasporas.

Students majoring in Africana Studies create their own program of study by choosing courses in a structured and reflective manner from a variety of disciplinary departments, complementing some core Africana Studies courses. In developing their program, students should talk to the department about courses that have particularly high African, African Diaspora, and/or African American Studies content. They are particularly encouraged to choose these courses from among the list of relevant courses. Courses marked AFSTPERT can complement the major, but do not count toward the required nine courses plus comprehensive exercise without special permission of the Program Director. Because of the complexities of creating a meaningful program from a wide array of departmental offerings, students interested in majoring should draw up a program of study that has breadth and depth in consultation with the Director of Africana Studies before declaring their major.

The Africana Studies major requires 63 credits; courses cannot double count for two requirements.

• Interdisciplinary Course (6 credits). Each student must complete one interdisciplinary 6-credit course which, in part, specifically discusses Africana Studies as an interdisciplinary field:

• AFST 100: Blackness and Whiteness Outside the United States
• AFST 100: Blackness and Whiteness Outside the United States
• AFST 112: Black Revolution on Campus (not offered 2023-24)
• AFST 113: Introduction to Africana Studies
• AFST 115: Black Heroism in the Diaspora and Early America (not offered 2023-24)
• AFST 120: Race and Racism Outside the U.S. (not offered 2023-24)
• AFST 220: Color, Class, and Status in Black America (not offered 2023-24)
• AFST 230: Black Diaspora, Politics of Place (not offered 2023-24)
• POSC 275: Black Political Thought

• Survey Courses (18 credits). Each student must take three of the following 6-credit courses:

• AFST 100: Blackness and Whiteness Outside the United States
• AFST 100: Blackness and Whiteness Outside the United States
• AFST 112: Black Revolution on Campus (not offered 2023-24)
• AFST 113: Introduction to Africana Studies
• AFST 120: Race and Racism Outside the U.S. (not offered 2023-24)
• AFST 215: Contemporary Theory in Black Studies
• ARTH 140: African Art and Culture (not offered 2023-24)
• ENGL 117: African American Literature (not offered 2023-24)
• ENGL 238: African Literature in English
• HIST 126: African American History II
• HIST 181: West Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade (not offered 2023-24)
• HIST 183: History of Early West Africa (not offered 2023-24)
• HIST 184: Colonial West Africa (not offered 2023-24)
• HIST 220: From Blackface to Blaxploitation: Black History and/in Film
• HIST 284: History, Culture, and Commerce Africa and Arabia Program: Heritage in Africa and Arabia
• POSC 239: The Poor and the Powerless (not offered 2023-24)
• SOAN 108: In & Out of Africa: How Transnational Black Lives Matter (not offered 2023-24)

• Distribution Courses (30 credits). Each student should take 30 credits of distribution that are essential to Africana Studies. Among these distribution courses, students must choose at least one 6-credit course each from among the three disciplinary groups: Humanistic Inquiry, Social Inquiry, and Literary and Artistic Analysis; at least four of the distribution courses must be at the 200-level or above and at least one at the 300-level. The 300-level course should be completed in one of the two disciplines in which the student writes his/her comprehensive exercise; in this course the student must produce a substantial paper or project in Africana Studies. In addition, majors are highly encouraged to take the AMST 345: Theory and Practice of American Studies junior methods course, GWSS 200: Gender, Sexuality & the Pursuit of Knowledge, or a methods course in one of the academic disciplines that contribute to Africana Studies. Courses cannot double count for two requirements.

• Senior Seminar/Capstone Experience (3 credits)

This 3-credit course gives Africana Studies majors and minors the opportunity to apply what they have learned by preparing for and presenting at the annual National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) conference. Under the guidance of Africana Studies faculty members, students will interrogate the origins and institutionalization of Africana Studies, revise an Africana Studies-themed research paper completed in a previous course into a conference paper, and prepare and submit a paper proposal for NCBS. At NCBS, students will present their own research and engage with the work of Africana Studies scholars at panels, plenaries, and workshops. Afterward, they will write a short assessment of the conference and their experience in Africana Studies at Carleton.

• Comprehensive Exercise AFST 400 (not offered 2023-24) (6 credits)
  

The comprehensive exercise is a substantial (approximately 34-40 page) research paper on a topic within African, African American, and/or African Diaspora studies, grounded in two complementary disciplines, advised by two faculty members chosen from these two disciplines. The student should have completed a 300-level course in one of these two disciplines. The comps process begins with a proposal in fall term of the senior year, and ends with a final written thesis and oral presentation early in spring term.

The Africana Studies minor is designed to complement a student’s disciplinary major through an interdisciplinary specialization on the contexts and experiences of Africans and their many diasporas. Combining area studies and ethnic studies foci, the Africana Studies minor provides students the opportunity to explore the rich connections and exchanges among African people, their descendants, and the global locales–in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East–in which they have made and are making their lives. Students can do this through both on-campus courses and off-campus studies programs. In their senior year Africana Studies minors draw connections among these courses through an interdisciplinary reflective capstone experience.

Fostering interdisciplinary critical thinking, the Africana Studies minor prepares students for lifetime engagement in scholarship as well as in fields such as law, public policy, education, public health, social work, and the arts. Toward this end, and in addition to coursework, students are encouraged to take advantage of the rich array of speakers, exhibits, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities related to Africans and their diasporas.

The Africana Studies minor requires 39 credits (seven courses) as follows. Courses cannot double count for two requirements.

One core interdisciplinary (6-credit) course which, in part, specifically discusses Africana Studies as a coherent field of study:

• AFST 100: Blackness and Whiteness Outside the United States
• AFST 100: Blackness and Whiteness Outside the United States
• AFST 112: Black Revolution on Campus (not offered 2023-24)
• AFST 113: Introduction to Africana Studies
• AFST 115: Black Heroism in the Diaspora and Early America (not offered 2023-24)
• AFST 120: Race and Racism Outside the U.S. (not offered 2023-24)
• AFST 220: Color, Class, and Status in Black America (not offered 2023-24)
• AFST 230: Black Diaspora, Politics of Place (not offered 2023-24)
• POSC 275: Black Political Thought

Two survey courses (12 credits) that introduce the “state of the field” of African and/or African Diaspora studies within specific disciplines:

• AFST 100: Blackness and Whiteness Outside the United States
• AFST 100: Blackness and Whiteness Outside the United States
• AFST 112: Black Revolution on Campus (not offered 2023-24)
• AFST 113: Introduction to Africana Studies
• AFST 120: Race and Racism Outside the U.S. (not offered 2023-24)
• AFST 215: Contemporary Theory in Black Studies
• ARTH 140: African Art and Culture (not offered 2023-24)
• ENGL 117: African American Literature (not offered 2023-24)
• ENGL 238: African Literature in English
• HIST 126: African American History II
• HIST 181: West Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade (not offered 2023-24)
• HIST 183: History of Early West Africa (not offered 2023-24)
• HIST 184: Colonial West Africa (not offered 2023-24)
• HIST 220: From Blackface to Blaxploitation: Black History and/in Film
• HIST 284: History, Culture, and Commerce Africa and Arabia Program: Heritage in Africa and Arabia
• POSC 239: The Poor and the Powerless (not offered 2023-24)
• SOAN 108: In & Out of Africa: How Transnational Black Lives Matter (not offered 2023-24)

Three distribution courses (18 credits) that combine depth and breadth in the field. Each student should take 18 credits chosen from at least two of the following disciplinary groups: Literary and Artistic Analysis, Humanistic Inquiry and Social Inquiry. Two of the three distributional courses must be at the 200-level or above. At least one of the distribution courses should be a 300-level course in which the student produces a substantial paper or project in Africana Studies encompassing African, African American and African Diaspora Studies. In rare cases, a student can petition to write a substantial paper in a 200-level course (i.e., be released from the 300-level course requirement), if that course is highly relevant to their own focus.

Senior Seminar/Capstone Experience (3 credits)

• AFST 398: Africana Studies Capstone

This 3-credit course gives Africana Studies majors and minors the opportunity to apply what they have learned by preparing for and presenting at the annual National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) conference. Under the guidance of Africana Studies faculty members, students will interrogate the origins and institutionalization of Africana Studies, revise an Africana Studies-themed research paper completed in a previous course into a conference paper, and prepare and submit a paper proposal for NCBS. At NCBS, students will present their own research and engage with the work of Africana Studies scholars at panels, plenaries, and workshops. Afterward, they will write a short assessment of the conference and their experience in Africana Studies at Carleton.

Minors are highly encouraged to take the AMST 345: Theory and Practice of American Studies junior methods course.

• AFST 100 Blackness and Whiteness Outside the United States

  Racial categories such as “black” and “white” are social constructions that change across national boundaries. In the U.S. “black” and “white” have historically been defined by ancestry, and have been mutually exclusive. But how are these categories defined elsewhere? In this course, we consider how blackness and whiteness are defined and constructed in non-U.S. contexts. We examine a range of topics that will help us to understand not only racial categories, but also the meanings and narratives that accompany them and the way that these play into racial inequalities. Course topics include skin color stratification, colorblindness, ethnicity and nationhood, migration and citizenship, media representations, segregation, and transnationalism and globalization.

  • Offered: Fall 2023
  • Credits: 6
  • Liberal Arts Requirements: Argument and Inquiry Seminar Intercultural Domestic Studies Writing Requirement
  • Tags: Africana Studies Core Africana Studies Survey Course
  • Faculty: Daniel Williams 🏫 👤

• AFST 100 Sports, the Black Experience, and the American Dream

  With an emphasis on critical reading and writing in an academic context, this course will examine the role of sports in American politics and social organizations. The course pays attention to the African American experience, noting especially the confluence of race and sports. What can sports tell us about freedom, equality, and the pursuit of happiness? How has the Black community contributed to our appreciation of these American virtues? We will read short texts and biographies, and we will watch movies such as King Richard and The Blind Side. Students will produce short writing exercises aimed at developing their critical thinking and clear writing.

  • Offered: Fall 2023
  • Credits: 6
  • Liberal Arts Requirements: Argument and Inquiry Seminar Writing Requirement
  • Tags: Africana Studies Core Africana Studies Survey Course
  • Faculty: Chielo Eze 🏫 👤

• AFST 101 Ecology and Anthropology Tanzania Program: Elementary Swahili

  Elementary Swahili introduces students to the communicative use of Swahili, emphasizing communicative competence in real contexts. Ninety percent of instruction is conducted in the target language. Vocabulary and grammar are taught in context. Instruction pays attention to the cultural information in relevant contexts of communication. The main learning/teaching styles used include role plays, prepared presentations, interactive lectures, classroom conversations, and dramatization. In addition to the class textbook, authentic source materials are used, such as pictures, songs, short stories, poems and essays. Student assessment is continuous, and includes classroom participation, homework, written exams and oral exams.

  • Offered: Fall 2023
  • Credits: 7-8
  • Liberal Arts Requirements: Does not fulfill a curricular exploration requirement
  • Prerequisites:

    Participation in Ecology & Anthropology in Tanzania

  • Faculty: Anna Estes 🏫 👤

• AFST 112 Black Revolution on Campus

  This course explores the activist roots of Africana Studies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, students organized hundreds of protests that sparked a period of unrest, retaliation, negotiation, and reform that fundamentally reshaped college campuses across the United States. Black students, along with their “Third World” and progressive white allies, demanded that academe serve their communities and provide a “more relevant education.” The course will consider the influence of various movements, including Black power, anti-war, second wave feminism, and decolonization, on the creation of interdisciplinary fields including Black Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Women and Gender Studies.

  Not offered in 2023-24

  • Credits: 6
  • Liberal Arts Requirements: Intercultural Domestic Studies Social Inquiry Writing Requirement
  • Tags: Africana Stds Social Inquiry Philosophic & Legal Inq 2 Amst Race Ethnicity Indigeneit Africana Studies Core

• AFST 113 Introduction to Africana Studies

  This course focuses on the histories, ideas, experiences, and dreams that have shaped the lives of people of African descent. Then and now perspectives will define our exploration of incarceration and freedom; migration and emigration; separatism versus integration; race and class; art and politics. Discussion topics and seminal ideas will be drawn from texts including the following: the anthology Call and Response (on key debates in Black studies); the historical memoir Lose Your Mother (chronicling a journey along the Atlantic slave route); a work of fiction Middle Passage (that tells a story of enslavement, revolt, and redemption).

  • Offered: Winter 2024
  • Credits: 6
  • Liberal Arts Requirements: Humanistic Inquiry Intercultural Domestic Studies
  • Tags: Africana Studies Survey Course Africana Studies Core American Music Foundations
  • Faculty: Chielo Eze 🏫 👤

• AFST 115 Black Heroism in the Diaspora and Early America

  This course examines motifs of Black Heroism throughout the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and Early America. We take an interdisciplinary and Black Studies approach to topics like slave life and maroonage, freedom suits, military enlistment, and more. The course material will include fiction like Frederick Douglass’ The Heroic Slave as well as theoretical texts like Neil Roberts Freedom as Maroonage. The aim of the course is to provide a look at the multifacted lives of Black people in the diaspora and early America with an emphasis on complex and quotidian resistance to domination.

  Not offered in 2023-24

  • Credits: 6
  • Liberal Arts Requirements: Humanistic Inquiry Intercultural Domestic Studies Writing Requirement
  • Tags: Africana Studies Core Africana Studies Humanistic in

• AFST 120 Race and Racism Outside the U.S.

  In this course, we examine the ways that race structures difference and inequality in non-U.S. contexts with varying degrees of racial “diversity.” As a construct fundamentally grounded in white supremacy through encounters between Europe and its “Others,” race from its inception has been a global construct for organizing and stratifying human difference. Yet the specific ways that race is constructed varies across societies, with ethnicity and other related concepts of difference substituting for race. Foundational to this course will be how the notions of blackness and whiteness figure into the creation of racial categories, boundaries, and inequalities. Course topics include skin color stratification, “colorblindness,” ethnicity and nationhood, migration and citizenship, media representations, anti-blackness as a global phenomenon, transnational and global flows of racial ideas and categories, and social movements for racial justice.

  Not offered in 2023-24

  • Credits: 6
  • Liberal Arts Requirements: International Studies Does not fulfill a curricular exploration requirement Writing Requirement
  • Tags: Africana Studies Survey Course Africana Studies Core

• AFST 130 Global Islam and Blackness

  This course will introduce students to key trends and moments in Islamic thought and activism in Africa and the black diaspora. It explores the historical construction of the categories of “race” and “religion” through a focus on Islam and blackness. We will analyze how blackness and Islam, and their relationship, has been conceptualized and presented by non-Africans, as well as the history of Islam in Africa and in the black diaspora. We will explore the construction of blackness within Islamic history and cultures, highlighting the notion of the Moor in medieval times and the Nation of Islam in U.S. history.

  Not offered in 2023-24

  • Credits: 6
  • Liberal Arts Requirements: International Studies Social Inquiry Writing Requirement
  • Tags: Middle East Supporting Group 1 Africana Studies Humanistic in

• AFST 215 Contemporary Theory in Black Studies

  This course examines the major theories of the Africana intellectual tradition. It introduces students to major concepts and socio-political thoughts that set the stage for Africana Studies as a discipline. With the knowledge of the historical contexts of the Black intellectual struggle and the accompanying cultural movements, students will examine the genealogy, debates and the future directions of Black Studies. Students are invited to take a dedicated dive into primary scholarship by focusing on foundational thinkers to be studied such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Frantz Fanon, Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks, among others.

  • Offered: Fall 2023
  • Credits: 6
  • Liberal Arts Requirements: Humanistic Inquiry Intercultural Domestic Studies Writing Requirement
  • Tags: Africana Studies Survey Course GWSS Elective GWSS Additional Credits
  • Faculty: Chielo Eze 🏫 👤

• AFST 220 Color, Class, and Status in Black America

  As a racial category and identity, “Black” is often treated in a homogenous, monolithic way, obscuring the internal diversity and inequality within the black population in the U.S. In this course, we consider the inequalities within black communities and the black population living in the U.S., historically and through to the present. “Colorism,” or skin tone stratification, represents one status linked to class and ranking in society; but does colorism matter more than other statuses to class? Class differences are in fact profound within black communities, and they are correlated to multiple social statuses–skin tone, immigrant status, national origin, and even political orientation. We will examine how these status, color, and class interact, and how they shape class relations and tensions, lived experience, and notions of authenticity (“blackness”) in everday life and popular culture. Course topics include the Black middle class; education; neighborhood segregation; gender and sexuality; and media representations and popular culture.

  Not offered in 2023-24

  • Credits: 6
  • Liberal Arts Requirements: Intercultural Domestic Studies Does not fulfill a curricular exploration requirement Quantitative Reasoning Encounter Writing Requirement
  • Tags: Africana Stds Social Inquiry Africana Studies Core

• AFST 230 Black Diaspora, Politics of Place

  Central to diasporic identity formation and imagination is the simultaneous belonging to a multiplicity of places. For black diasporic subjects, struggles against oppression and for new political futures inspire transgression against normative political boundaries. This class explores the role of place and politics in the making of the black diaspora in Europe and the Americas. It emphasizes the intellectual and political connections and the sense of shared identity and destiny. Through an interdisciplinary approach, this course will offer a global history of race, identity, and politics through the lens of the black diaspora.

  Not offered in 2023-24

  • Credits: 6
  • Liberal Arts Requirements: Humanistic Inquiry International Studies
  • Tags: Africana Studies Core

• AFST 330 Black Europe

  This course examines the history and experiences of people of African descent and black cultures in Europe. Beginning with early contacts between Africa and Europe, we examine the migration and settlement of African people and culture, and the politics and meaning of their identities and presence in Europe. Adopting a comparative perspective, we consider how blackness has been constructed in various countries through popular culture, nationalism, immigration policy, and other social institutions. We further consider how religious, gender, and immigrant identities inform notions of blackness. We conclude by examining contemporary Black European social movements.

  • Offered: Winter 2024
  • Credits: 6
  • Liberal Arts Requirements: International Studies Social Inquiry Writing Requirement
  • Tags: Africana Stds Social Inquiry EUST transnatl supporting crs SOAN Pertinent Course
  • Faculty: Daniel Williams 🏫 👤

• AFST 398 Africana Studies Capstone

  This three-credit course gives Africana Studies majors and minors the opportunity to reflect on their learning in Africana Studies and to prepare to apply this knowledge to future endeavors. In this capstone course, the student creates a portfolio of their work in Africana Studies and writes a five-ten page reflective essay tying these papers together. This course gives students an opportunity to seriously reflect about the courses they have taken and the work they have produced within and related to their AFST major/minor, and to draw connections among them.

  • Offered: Winter 2024
  • Grading: S/CR/NC
  • Credits: 2
  • Liberal Arts Requirements: Does not fulfill a curricular exploration requirement
  • Prerequisites:

    A major or minor in AFST; preferably to be taken in the senior year

  • Tags: Africana Studies Capstone
  • Faculty: Chielo Eze 🏫 👤

• AFST 400 Integrative Exercise

  The comprehensive exercise is a substantial (approximately 34-40 page) research paper on a topic within African, African American, and/or African Diaspora studies. The student should have completed a 300-level AFST course, or a 300-level course that counts toward the AFST major. The comps process begins with a Comps Topic Development Worksheet during spring term of the junior year, a comps topic intention form followed by a proposal in fall term of the senior year, and ends with a final written thesis and oral presentation early in spring term.

  • Offered: Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024
  • Credits: 1-6
  • Faculty: Daniel Williams 🏫 👤 · Chielo Eze 🏫 👤

• ARTH 160: American Art to 1940 (not offered 2023-24)
• CLAS 220: From the Horn to Melqart’s Pillars: African Perspectives in the Ancient Mediterranean (not offered 2023-24)
• ECON 240: Microeconomics of Development
• EDUC 340: Race, Immigration, and Schools (not offered 2023-24)
• ENGL 234: Literature of the American South (not offered 2023-24)
• FREN 246: Contemporary Senegal (not offered 2023-24)
• HIST 125: African American History I: From Africa to the Civil War (not offered 2023-24)
• HIST 126: African American History II
• HIST 220: From Blackface to Blaxploitation: Black History and/in Film
• HIST 228: Civil Rights and Black Power (not offered 2023-24)
• HIST 304: Black Study and the University (not offered 2023-24)
• MUSC 136: History of Rock (not offered 2023-24)
• POSC 122: Politics in America: Liberty and Equality
• POSC 241: Ethnic Conflict
• RELG 122: Introduction to Islam