African-American Studies

This undergraduate seminar examines a diverse group of black intellectuals' formulations of ideologies and theories relative to racial, economic and gender oppression within the context of dominant intellectual trends. The intellectuals featured in the course each contributed to the evolution of black political thought, and posited social criticisms designed to undermine racial and gender oppression, and labor exploitation around the world. This group of black intellectuals' work will be analyzed, paying close attention to the way that each intellectual inverts dominant intellectual trends, and/or uses emerging social scientific disciplines to counter racism, sexism, and classism. This seminar is designed to facilitate an understanding of the black intellectual tradition that has emerged as a result of African-American thinkers' attempts to develop a unified response to an understanding of the black condition. This course explores of a wide range of primary and secondary sources from several different periods, offering students opportunity to explore the lives and works of some of the most important black intellectuals. We will also consider the way that period-specific intellectual phenomenon-such as Modernism, Marxism, Pan-Africanism, and Feminism-combined with a host of social realities.

The seminar will explore some recent treatments of race, racial oppression, and racial politics by political philosophers and political theorists. Our readings will reflect a variety of theoretical traditions (e.g., pragmatism, genealogy, phenomenology, hermeneutics and Anglo-American analytical philosophy) and include the writings of Alia Al-Saji, Elizabeth Anderson, Cristina Beltrán, Robert Gooding-Williams, Sally Haslanger, Ladelle McWhorter, Tommie Shelby, Shannon Sullivan, Charles Taylor, and George Yancy. A seminar presentation (10% of final grade), regular class participation (10% of final grade), and one 20-25 page term paper (80% of final grade), due on May 11.

This course examines the organization of contemporary advertising industry. A special emphasis is placed on the role of diversity and difference, including but not restricted to the ways that race, ethnicity, and other demographic/social difference impact both the profession and the creative process. Advertising is a polyglot organizational field consisting of traditional advertising agencies, but also digital companies and social media firms that use creative marketing techniques, such as crowdsourcing and viral marketing. We will consider the ways that corporations and those in their service produce and consume information and image, in an effort to shape individual and collective identities, and to market goods and services. The course is organized around collective discussion.

This seminar examines the intersection of race, gender, and nation in the formation of hierarchical social systems and their legitimating ideologies. A leading premise of this course is that racial ideologies are, foundationally, claims about the heritability of socially produced and imagined differences—claims that muster, mimic, and articulate notions of differences associated with a variety of social distinctions, including sex/gender, class, and nation-based identities. This seminar will situate the process of racialization within the wider problematic of political subjectivity and direct attention to the symbolic and structural organization of modern, hierarchical social systems.

This course will examine the relationship between popular music and popular movements. We will be taking a historical, as well as a thematic, approach to our investigation as a way to trace various legacies within popular music that fall under the rubric of "protest music" as well as to think about the ways in which popular music has assisted various communities to speak truth to power. We will also consider the ways in which the impact of the music industry has either lessened or enhanced popular music's ability to articulate "protest" or "resistance" to hegemonic power.

Introduction to third world studies; an introduction to the methods and theories that inform the field of third world studies (aka ethnic studies), including imperialism, colonialism, third world liberation movements, subjectivities, and racial and social formation theories;