Fall 2026 Undergraduate Courses in African and African American Studies
AFAS 1002: Foundations in African & African American Studies
Instructor: Wilmetta Toliver-Diallo
Time: Monday, 4:00–5:20 PM
This introductory course explores key issues in African and African American Studies, examining the artistic, cultural, and historical expressions of Africa and its diaspora. Open to all students.
Requirement: Major/Minor Requirement
AFAS 1022: The Rioting on the Wall: Crisis and Graffiti
Instructor: Kyle Proehl
Time: Monday/Wednesday, 4:00–5:20 PM
This course examines graffiti from its emergence in 1970s New York to its role in global protest movements, exploring graffiti as art, vandalism, political discourse, and a form of public monument.
Credits: 3
AFAS 1103: First-Year Seminar: Monumental Anti-Racism
Instructor: Geoff Ward
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 1:00–2:20 PM
This course examines how public monuments and commemorative landscapes shape racial memory and inequality while also serving as key sites of anti-racist activism.
Credits: 3
AFAS 1104: First-Year Seminar: Contextualizing Contemporary Africa
Instructor: Mungai Mutonya
Time: Monday/Wednesday, 1:00–2:20 PM
This first-year seminar challenges common stereotypes about Africa by exploring contemporary African innovations in technology, conservation, the arts, and youth leadership.
Credits: 3
AFAS 1105: First-Year Seminar: Imagining and Creating Africa: Youth, Culture, and Change
Instructor: El Hadji Samba Diallo
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 10:00–11:20 AM
This first-year seminar explores how African youth shape social change through activism, culture, and creative industries such as music, fashion, and media.
Credits: 3
AFAS 1610: Beginning Swahili
Instructor: Mungai Mutonya
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 4:00–5:20 PM
An introduction to Swahili emphasizing reading, writing, and conversational skills while exploring the cultures of Swahili-speaking communities across Africa.
Credits: 3
AFAS 2060: Blackness and the Politics of Recognition in Latin America
Instructor: Kia Caldwell
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 11:30 AM–12:50 PM
This course examines how race is defined and governed in Latin America through censuses, affirmative action, and debates over Afro-descendant identity in racially mixed societies.
Credits: 3
AFAS 2090: Mapping Urban Languages and Resistance in Africa
Instructor: Mungai Mutonya
Time: Monday/Wednesday, 4:00–5:20 PM
This course examines how urban languages, youth-led resistance movements, migration, and technology intersect across African cities, using digital mapping to visualize these connections.
Credits: 3
AFAS 2232: Gender and Sexuality in the African Diaspora
Instructor: Marlon Bailey
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 4:00–5:20 PM
An interdisciplinary examination of gender and sexuality across the African diaspora, focusing on identity, culture, community formation, and social power.
Credits: 3
AFAS 2450: Bones, Burials and Black Worlds: Mortuary Archaeology and Critical Heritage Studies of African and African American Funerary Practices
Instructor: Tomos Evans
Time: Monday/Wednesday, 10:00–11:20 AM
This course explores African and African diasporic funerary practices through archaeology and heritage studies, tracing burial traditions from West and Central Africa to Black communities across the Americas.
Credits: 3
AFAS 2550: Introduction to Africana Studies
Instructor: Samuel Shearer
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 10:00–11:20 AM
An introduction to Africana Studies examining the histories, ideas, and global experiences of people of African descent across Africa and the diaspora.
Credits: 3
Requirement: Major/Minor Requirement
AFAS 2990: Undergraduate Teaching Assistant
For students serving as undergraduate teaching assistants. Permission required.
Credits: 1–3
AFAS 2998: Independent Work
Independent work approved by the sponsoring faculty member and department chair.
Credits: 1–3
AFAS 2999: Internship
Credit is awarded for a faculty-approved AFAS-related community internship with a signed Learning Agreement. Deliverables are set with the faculty sponsor. Paid work cannot count for credit.
Credits: 1–3
AFAS 3006: Feminist Fire!: Radical Black Women in the 20th Century
Instructor: Jonathan Fenderson
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 4:00–5:20 PM
This course examines Black feminist thought and activism within the Black radical tradition, focusing on key thinkers, organizers, and movements of the 20th century.
Credits: 3
AFAS 3040: A History of African American Theater
Instructor: Ronald Himes
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 11:30 AM–12:50 PM
A survey of African American theater from the post–Civil War era to the Black Arts Movement, examining major playwrights and the development of Black theatrical traditions.
Credits: 3
AFAS 3070: Topics on Africa: African Urban Futures
Instructor: Samuel Shearer
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 11:30 AM–12:50 PM
This course explores Africa’s rapid urbanization and how residents shape cities through informal planning, economic innovation, and new forms of urban life.
Credits: 3
AFAS 3120: African Immigration to the United States of America
Instructor: El Hadji Samba Diallo
Time: Monday/Wednesday, 4:00–5:20 PM
This course examines contemporary African migration to the United States, exploring transnational identities and the experiences of diverse African immigrant communities.
Credits: 3
AFAS 3160: African Civilization to 1800
Instructor: Timothy Parsons
Time: Monday/Wednesday, 11:30 AM–12:50 PM
A survey of African civilizations and cultures from the Neolithic period to 1800, introducing key historical methods and debates in African history.
Credits: 3
AFAS 3255: Black Masculinities
Instructor: Zach Manditch-Prottas
Time: Monday/Wednesday, 10:00–11:20 AM
This course explores how Black masculinities are constructed and contested across historical, cultural, and political contexts.
Credits: 3
AFAS 3320: Visualizing Blackness: Histories of the African Diaspora Through Film
Instructor: Sowande Mustakeem
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 2:30–3:50 PM
This course examines histories of the African diaspora through film, exploring how Blackness, Black bodies, and Black culture have been represented on screen. Moving from the slave trade to contemporary Black movements and icons, students consider how film shapes historical memory, cultural representation, and visions of the future.
Credits: 3
AFAS 3451: Topics in African American Literature: Black American Writers in the Age of Lynching & Resistance
Instructor: Gerald Early
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 10:00–11:20 AM
This seminar examines African American literary responses to lynching and racial violence, exploring themes of resistance, identity, and political struggle.
Credits: 3
AFAS 3503: Barack Obama and the Idea of an African American Presidency
Instructor: Gerald Early
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 1:00–2:20 PM
This course explores the historical pursuit of the U.S. presidency by African Americans, culminating in an in-depth study of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and presidency.
Credits: 3
AFAS 3591: Topics in African American History: Medicalized Racism, Reparative Research, and the Archive
Instructors: Monisola Vaughan Smith and Rebecca Dudley
Time: Wednesday/Friday, 2:30–3:50 PM
This course is intended for students participating in the Taylor Research Fellowship.
Credits: 3
AFAS 4104 / 5104: Black Decolonial Thought: Conceptualizing Epistemic Violence from Frantz Fanon to Achille Mbembe
Instructor: El Hadji Samba Diallo
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 1:00–2:20 PM
This course examines African and diasporic decolonial thought, focusing on critiques of Eurocentric knowledge and frameworks for understanding African societies on their own terms.
Credits: 3
AFAS 4110 / 5110: The Black South Atlantic
Instructor: John Mundell
Time: Monday/Wednesday, 1:00–2:20 PM
Shaped by the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism, this course reorients the “Black Atlantic” toward the South Atlantic to examine Black intellectual, cultural, and political exchange between Africa and Latin America.
Credits: 3
AFAS 4250 / 5611: Construction and Experience of Black Adolescence
Instructor: Bronwyn Nichols Lodato
Time: Wednesday, 2:30–5:20 PM
This course examines how Black adolescence is constructed and experienced, drawing on social science research and narratives produced by Black youth.
Credits: 3
AFAS 4781: Human Rights and Democracy in African Diaspora Communities
Instructor: Kia Caldwell
Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 4:00–5:20 PM
This course examines human rights and democratic struggles in African diaspora communities, focusing on issues such as incarceration, reparations, and reproductive rights.
Credits: 3
AFAS 4890 / 5890: Catholicism and Slavery
Instructor: Kelly Schmidt
Time: Monday/Wednesday, 2:30–3:50 PM
This course explores the role of Catholicism in the global history of slavery, examining church doctrine, regional contexts, and enslaved people’s religious resistance.
Credits: 3
AFAS 4997: Independent Work for Senior Honors: Thesis
Intended for students writing a Senior Honors Thesis.
Credits: 3
AFAS 4999: Independent Study
An advanced independent research course requiring permission of the sponsoring faculty member and department.
Credits: 1–3