Graduate Courses

Fri 11:15am-2:00 pm

Introduces students to the field of African Diaspora Art History. Each week we look at a different problems of diasporic beginnings, language, archives, giving students various entry points into the issues that shape the sub-field.

Meets with CAS AH 571

Tue 12:30pm-3:15pm

Within a global and comparative context, this course explores the simultaneous, mutualistically symbiotic emergence and sustained codependent development of autonomous individuality and white supremacy in western Europe and the United States from the 18th century to the present day.

Meets with CASHI 580

Thu 3:30pm-6:15pm

Understanding the role of women in African history. Topics include the Atlantic slave trade, power, religion, the economy, resistance movements, health, the state, and kinship. Emphasis on the period before independence.

Meets with CASHI 588

Tue/Thu 12:30pm-1:45pm

An introduction to the cultural criticism of African-America and the Black Diaspora. This ranges from literary, theoretical and public conversations centered on race, and interrelated issues such as gender, sex, and migration. The course hones in on specific trends, themes, topics and characteristics of this work and assesses its relationship to historical and contemporary political and social contexts.

Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing.

Meets with CASEN 537

Tue 3:30pm-6:15pm

A multi-disciplinary course delving into the influence of religion and race on human behavior and non-human, planetary realities at local and global scales. It focuses on the historical, systemic, and societal implications associated with ongoing climate change debates. Fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Social Inquiry I.

Mon/Wed/Fri 2:30pm-3:20pm

A survey of important genres and movements in the history of Black American cinema, with possible focus on race films, civil rights dramas, horror and Blaxploitation films, postcolonial cinema, the LA Rebellion school, Black independent film, afrofuturism, and/or more.

This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Aesthetic Exploration.

Mon 12:30pm-3:15pm

Formation and position of ethnic minorities in the United States, including cross-group comparisons from England, Africa, and other parts of the world. Readings and field experience. Also offered as GRS SO 808.

Wed 8:00am-10:45am

Graduate seminar in African American history surveys shifts in historiography in the last 25 years in slavery studies, Black women’s, Black youth history, Great Migration, the histories of racial justice and coalitional movements (CR, BP, BLM), and the recent turn in carceral studies.