Courses
AFAM-150D P5 Int AfricanAmer Studies (3)
This course addresses the social, political, and economic issues confronting people of African descent, particularly in the United States. The course is comparative and focuses on Black history and contributions as essential perspectives within world history and development. The course exposes students to the formation, development, and persistence of the Black experience over time and space; establishes the scholarly, intellectual basis for the study of African American life and culture; and highlights various perspectives and modalities for the study of Black life. We review events, trends, and biographical materials that reflect how African Americans view themselves, as well as how they have been regarded by society. Developing an appreciation for the African American experience as a pivotal and central experience within the American mosaic assists students to become positive and productive citizens in a multicultural world.
Attributes: AMSS P5 YLIBAFAM-205P From Bebop to Hip Hop (3)
This course offers a concentrated focus on several popular music genres in the African American secular tradition. Using a substantial range of readings, the class explores the influences of hip hop and jazz on American history, popular culture, music, literature, and visual art. Class discussions examine hip hop representations of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Students read literary works, study the work of well-known jazz lyricists, and closely examine the raps and rhythms of significant hip hop lyricists. The class also screens films and studies soundtracks that feature interviews, documentaries, and Hollywood representations of jazz and hip hop music.
Attributes: YLIBAFAM-240 CC Struggle Civil Rghts (3)
The struggle for civil rights is one important dimension of the general African American quest for equality in political, social, and economic terms. This course is meant to pass on the lessons from this period in our social history to the next generation of Americans in the protracted struggle for equality and civil rights.
Attributes: AMUS CC YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Class: FreshmanAFAM-250 CC Topics AFAM Expression (3)
An interdisciplinary seminar-based topics course which focuses on topics not ordinarily covered. Topics center on persuasive, expressive and performance-based written and oral cultural production as sites of resistance, representation, and activism. It situates the contemporary moment as an extension and reimagination of African America political, social and cultural legacies from the nineteenth century forward.
Fall 2020 CC Tpc: Equality v. Equity
Attributes: AMHU CC YLIB
This course is designed to enhance cross-cultural understanding, relationships, and engagement among all cultures with the African American community and the impacts of equality and equity in politics, economics, society, technology, legal, and the environment. Students are introduced to an analytical framework through which they can explore, recognize and honor the influence of cultural background on patterns of equality and equity as it relates to race. The tools presented foster personal reflection on the impact of culture. Rather than describing selected cultural groups, this class cultivates knowledge, dialogue and interaction. This course is designed to enhance student cultural competence, facilitate bridge building, and encourage engagement in diversity, inclusion, equality, and equity.AFAM-282P Black Church Issues (3)
Students explore views of the black church on contemporary social issues and challenges (homosexuality, gender equity, race relations) faced in reference to church doctrine, traditions, and beliefs. Cross-listed with REST 282P.
Attributes: AMHU WGST YLIBAFAM-290D Afro-Rochester Leaders (3)
Freedom is the theme of this course. Students investigate why freedom as a founding principle of the United States is never free. Evidence of the forward progress of African Americans since the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade is posited as strides toward freedom. Through readings and audiovisual presentations, reinforced with reenactments and oral discourse, students are guided in evaluating and assessing parallels in the lives of the following Rochester 19th-century African American leaders: Frederick Douglass, Thomas James, and Austin Steward and their contemporaries. Students discuss, role-play, and create character journals which examine autobiographies, timelines of major events, legislative acts, and public policy as documentation of the African American quest for freedom. Students also participate in one of the Rochester-Monroe County Freedom Trail Commission’s efforts to interpret the Underground Railroad era as living history.
Attributes: YLIBAFAM-302P Topics: AFAM (3)
An opportunity to examine an issue or area not regularly offered.
Attributes: YLIBAFAM-304P African Amer Images: Film (3)
This course explores historical and contemporary images of African Americans in Hollywood film. We analyze these images, engage in debates about racial authenticity, and examine significant innovations in the history of African American filmmaking. The class screens a large number of films but also reads a selection of books, articles, and film reviews that address some of the thematic and technical interests of the class, such as issues in race, whiteness, gender, sexuality, and class; film language and cinematic metaphors; film narrative technique and visual rhetoric; and uses of African American music in film.
Attributes: WGST YLIBAFAM-305P P5 BlackThought:20th/21stC (3)
This course introduces students to African America’s economic, social, political, religious, gender, racial, and ethnic backgrounds through an exploration of the lives, words, and deeds of the most influential minds within the race. Scholars, religious leaders, and community activists guided the largest U.S. racial minority through segregation to the present participation in political and economic institutions. Their struggle inspired freedom movements throughout the world. The course promotes an understanding of multidisciplinary learning, self-examination, and intercultural unity. The long-term goal is that pupils understand the cycle of racial oppression in the United States and how African Americans have worked to break it.
Attributes: AMSS P5 YLIBAFAM-450 African American Culture (3)
Participants conduct comparative research on the customs and mores of the social environments in communities of color in the greater Rochester area. The research methodology should infuse a deeper understanding of how factors such as poverty or race shape human lives. Students spend at least two hours weekly in the classroom and two hours on-site, interacting or working with a community-based organization. Through classroom and community activities, participants are guided to develop a comprehensive report that compares and contrasts the cultural environments.
Attributes: YLIB
Pre-requisites: AFAM-150P D- OR AFAM-150T D-AFAM-1001 Civil Rights & Civil Wrongs (3)
In this learning community, students will explore historical and contemporary African American Civil Rights movements, examining legal, cultural, spiritual, and/or social reasons that inspired widespread peaceful activism across the country, including the involvement of various populations (religious communities, artists, students, teachers, children, etc.) committed to activism, and the key role of nonviolence in these efforts. Students will gain a historical understanding of the importance of the 1950s-1960s Civil Rights movement, as well as making connections to current protest movements, such as Black Lives Matter. Civil ?rights? can be seen in multiple contexts, such as the legal human rights for which activists fight, as well as discussing whether there are ?right? ways to go about achieving social change. Civil ?wrongs? can also be seen in multiple contexts, such as denial of basic human rights to African American citizens, as well as whether there are ?wrong? ways protestors (or counter-protestors) can achieve their goals.
Attributes: LC YLIB
Restrictions: Including: -Attribute: New Core 20-21AFAM-1299 Research-based Writing (3)
Students study and practice skills relates to academic and professional research through the development of independent inquiry-based projects. In their projects, students assert, support, and integrate their own positions into scholarly conversation based in research. Students develop competency in the location, evaluation, analysis and documentation of sources that represent a range of different perspectives on important issues.
Attributes: RW YLIB ZRES
Restrictions: Including: -Class: Freshman, Sophomore -Attribute: New Core 20-21AFAM-2101 Race Equity:Talk to Action (3)
In this course, students will read important and timely texts on racism in America today, with a particular focus on the fight for race equity of Black and Brown peoples. This course has different areas of focus each year, such as police brutality, healthcare, education, and other cultural and political issues of the moment. Each time the course is offered, students focus on a key issue, as students learn the skills to better communicate with one another and to better understand key aspects of this community issue from multiple perspectives. This class is primarily discussion-based, with multiple opportunities for self-reflection, group interaction, and dialogue. Students will engage with the community (in different forms, whether on campus or in Rochester), as students develop a group project (such as a speaker series or interviewing community members), in order to put learning into practice (through campus dialogues on race or written proposals to local politicians). Focus for fall 2021 will be ?police brutality,? with selected texts, such as All American Boys, The Hate U Give, and The New Jim Crow.
Attributes: CCE YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanAFAM-2102 Intro to Anti-racism Prac (3)
This course offers an introduction to anti-racism practice. What are different definitions and types of racism? What does it mean to be an anti-racist? Students will engage with the Rochester community in their exploration of these questions, putting theory into practice. Depending on the semester, this could be achieved through speakers, workshops, and/or a group project. Students will also reflect upon their new learning throughout the course, as they connect scholarly and other readings with life experiences and collaborative efforts through writing exercises.
Attributes: CCE YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: FreshmanAFAM-2350 Equal v Equity:Afric Am Exp (3)
This course is designed to cultivate students? cross-cultural understanding, relationships, and engagement among various groups within African American communities, as well as to deepen students? understanding of the impacts of equality and equity in politics, economics, society, technology, law, and/or the environment. Students will be introduced to analytical frameworks through which they can explore, recognize, and honor the influence of a person?s cultural background on patterns of race equality and race equity. This course is designed to develop students? cultural humility; to facilitate bridge-building; and to encourage engagement in diversity, inclusion, equality, and equity initiatives. Through personal reflection, group dialogue, and group interaction, students explore the changing demographics of our communities; become familiar with core, secondary, and organizational dimensions of diversity; participate in powerful reflection and identity exercises; and articulate opportunities for inclusion in all areas of the work of their future professions.
Attributes: DEI YLIB
Restrictions: Excluding: -Class: Freshman