Dept. Code: AAS
Introduction
Africana Studies offers students the opportunity to confront and critically analyze distinctive Black intellectual and social-cultural traditions, and political-economic and historical structures. Situated in Miami, Florida, we are uniquely positioned in and between the U.S. South and the Global South. Therefore, our translocal perspective finds blackness and Black people everywhere in the world. As the university’s center for Africana Studies, the Program reaches beyond undergraduate study -- inviting a wide variety of local and international graduate students, artists, scholars, and community advocates into our intellectual community.
Africana Studies’ interdisciplinary structure offers students an opportunity to satisfy the increasingly rigorous expectations of graduate and professional school admissions committees and prospective employers, offering a broad liberal arts perspective that complements specialized knowledge of a field. Our curriculum and programmatic efforts uniquely help to prepare students to understand and effectively work toward social justice. We encourage all students, regardless of major, to enroll in Africana classes. Africana Studies can be taken either as a primary major, as one of two majors, or a minor.
Educational Objectives
- To help students research, acquire, and disseminate information about the historical and social experiences of Africans and people of African descent on all sides of the Atlantic basin, but with special emphasis on the United States.
- To facilitate students’ understanding of the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, globalized society of our time.
- To help students think critically about the global black experience.
- To prepare students for graduate work and professional careers.
Departmental Honors
Carter G. Woodson Award - Best all-round student who combines intellectual excellence and community service.
Advanced Writing Requirement
To satisfy the College of Arts & Sciences writing requirement in the discipline, students majoring in Africana Studies should take at least one English course or one History course related to Africana Studies and is listed as an advanced writing course, and any Africana Studies course with the Writing Credit designation.
AAS 150. Introduction to Africana Studies. 3 Credit Hours.
Experiences of African American and other African-descended peoples with emphases on social, cultural, political, etc.
Components: LEC.
Grading: GRD.
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring, & Summer.
AAS 260. History of Slavery in the Atlantic. 3 Credit Hours.
The emergence and eventual abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and its effects on both old and new world.
Components: LEC.
Grading: GRD.
Typically Offered: Fall.
AAS 290. Special Topics. 3 Credit Hours.
Content varies by semester.
Components: LEC.
Grading: GRD.
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring, & Summer.
AAS 350. Black Leadership in the U.S.. 3 Credit Hours.
Black leaders and leadership organizations. Emphasis on their role in overcoming oppression and barriers to advancement.
Prerequisite: 3 Credits in AAS.
Components: LEC.
Grading: GRD.
Typically Offered: Fall & Spring.
AAS 360. Black Miami Studies. 3 Credit Hours.
Miami is an experiment in the American future-- that is, the future of the wider Americas, including but not exclusively the US. Longstanding ethnic and national diversity among peoples of Africa and African descent in South Florida makes it a model for changing demographics around the US and the hemisphere. Thus, this course will focus on social-cultural, spatial, aesthetic and historical factors that have created contemporary Black Miami-- an important yet understudied crossroad of the US south and the global south-- identifying, documenting, and ‘mapping’ Black Miami arts and aesthetics, built environment, and community capacity, for example. The City of Miami and its environs provide us a very rich ‘field’ to practice seeing (for example, like an anthropologist/ethnographer, or a cultural critic, or an architect, or an epidemiologist…), as we engage various local communities as our ethnographic research field. Through engaging interdisciplinary works and assignments; and regular guest appearances; students will participate in the creation and nurturing of new knowledge and generative linkages between the university, local and global Black Miami institutions, communities and discourses. Our sessions will typically combine theoretical and methodological discussions, close readings of assigned works, and ‘workshop’ elements— including sharing of work and occasional short in-class writing. Assignments will be re-iterative, and focus on refining writing and critical skills, in a community of scholars.
Components: LEC.
Grading: GRD.
Typically Offered: Fall & Spring.
AAS 370. Special Topics in Africana History. 3 Credit Hours.
Experimental courses and selected themes important in the history of Africa or the African diaspora. Topics will vary by instructor and the course will often be combined with other departments.
Components: LEC.
Grading: GRD.
Typically Offered: Offered by Announcement Only.
AAS 390. Special Topics in Africana Literary & Cultural Studies. 3 Credit Hours.
Content varies by semester. Special topics or issues in the literature and culture of people of African descent, including aesthetic or artistic movements, genres, and groups of artists.
Components: LEC.
Grading: GRD.
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring, & Summer.
AAS 490. Senior Seminar in Africana Studies. 3 Credit Hours.
Content varies by semester.
Components: LEC.
Grading: GRD.
Typically Offered: Fall & Spring.
AAS 502. Service Learning in Africana Studies. 3-6 Credit Hours.
On-site experience which takes place in a civic engagement project or internship at a cultural institution focusing on the Black experience, or takes place in Latin America, the Caribbean, or Africa.
Components: IND.
Grading: GRD.
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring, & Summer.
AAS 590. Advanced Topics in Africana Studies. 3 Credit Hours.
Topics and approaches may vary. Focus may be thematic, comparative, or pertain to a specific subfield in Black Studies.
Prerequisite: AAS 150 and Junior/Senior Standing.
Components: LEC.
Grading: GRD.
Typically Offered: Offered by Announcement Only.
