Five College Course Information

This form is displaying subjects and courses being taught for the semester 2022F.

During the first week of course preregistration for spring and fall terms, you may register for a total of four academic courses, including a maximum of two Five College courses. This limit does not apply during the add/drop periods. However, According to Amherst College policy, students may register for a maximum of two Amherst College courses per semester.

Note: Co-curricular courses are not included in course limits.

Course	Title (click to view description)	Credits	Meeting Info
AFCNA-142-01	Intro Precolonial African Hst	4.00	MW 01:45PM-03:00PM Skinner Hall 216
	This course surveys the social, political and economic history of Africa from earliest times to 1750. We will consider developments in early significant units of the continent such as Ethiopia, Kush, Zimbabwe, and Egypt. We will focus on themes such as human origins, agriculture, migration, Islam, gender, slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. By the end of the course, students will have a sound understanding of key developments in African history from ancient times to the eve of European expansion in Africa.
AFCNA-181-01	Intro African Diaspora Relig.	4.00	MW 11:30AM-12:45PM Skinner Hall 212
	Over the last century, religionists have labored to discover the meaning of African dispersal beyond the continent and its accompanying spiritual lineages. What theories of encounter sufficiently adjudicate the synthetic religious cultures of African-descended persons in North America, South America, and the Caribbean? What are the cross-disciplinary methodologies that scholars utilize to understand African religious cultures in the Western hemisphere? Firstly, this course will introduce the field of Africana religious studies. This background will inform the second and primary objective of the course: thematizing and exploring West and Central African religious traditions housed in the Americas.
AFCNA-208-01	Critical Race Theory	4.00	MW 01:45PM-03:00PM Kendade 303
	This course examines the discursive relationship between race, power and law in contemporary U.S. society. Readings examine the ways in which racial bodies are constituted in the cultural economy of American society where citizens of African descent dwell. We explore the rules and social practices that govern the relationship of race to gender, nationality, sexuality, and class in U.S. courts and other cultural institutions. Thinkers covered include W.E.B. DuBois, Kimberle Crenshaw, Derrick Bell, and Richard Delgado, among others.
AFCNA-241EU-01	European Expansion in Africa	4.00	MW 10:00AM-11:15AM Skinner Hall 212
	Between the 1870s and 1910s, Africa was conquered by and divided among European powers. Why were European powers interested in informal and formal control of Africa? Why were they in competition with one another? How did Africans respond to European conquest and rule? What were the impacts of colonial rule in Africa? This course answers these and many other questions. The course is divided into two phases. The first focuses on the activities of the European powers in the late nineteenth century. The second examines the post-conquest period and examines African responses to the European conquests and rules in the early twentieth century.
AFCNA-241PE-01	African Performance Aesthetics	4.00	W 01:30PM-04:20PM W 01:30PM-04:20PM Rooke Theatre LBBY Rooke Theatre THEA
	This class explores African approaches to performance, premised on the interdisciplinarity of theatre in many African societies. We take our inspiration from centuries of apprentice-style artist training in some indigenous West African societies. The evolution of oral and popular performance traditions into literary theatre has also necessitated a similar trend in the training of the modern actor. The primary object of this class is to be able to embody a plethora of idiomatic expressions. Thus, we will move to the energy of the drums, we will train the ears to transmit the complex musicality of several sonic elements and raise our voices in song and apply them in scene explorations. Ultimately, we intend to unlock new ways of using our minds, bodies, and voices as conduits of exciting storytelling.
AFCNA-241PT-01	Poetry of the African Diaspora	4.00	TTH 01:45PM-03:00PM Shattuck Hall 118
	What is African poetry and how has it evolved over time from oral to written literature? In this course, we will read and respond creatively and critically to poetry by people of the African diaspora with a focus on people with ties to the Sub-Saharan region. We will explore both oral and written poetry as well as themes of identity, nationhood, and spirituality. By the end of the semester, students will create a chapbook with (20-30) poems and will be encouraged to submit their poems to journals for publication.
AFCNA-241SV-01	Slavery & Emancipation in Afr	4.00	MW 07:15PM-08:30PM Skinner Hall 212
	Slavery and emancipation is a broad theme in the history of the modern world. The study of this theme has usually been centered on the Atlantic world and the focus has always been on the enslavement of Africans in the Americas. Yet, slavery was a global phenomenon. Slavery has been one of the most common historical settings in all regions of the world. This course focuses on Africa and examines the meanings and nature of slavery, methods of enslavement, slave use in Africa, internal and external slave trades, the place of women, slave resistance, abolition, and the persistence of slavery in Africa during the colonial rule. We will compare slavery in Africa and other regions of the World.
AFCNA-257-01	African American Literature¹	Variable	TTH 09:00AM-10:15AM Shattuck Hall 319
	¹This course is variable credit: Course will open to non-majors in the second week of pre-registration.
	This course surveys Black literary production with special attention to the idea of genre as a choice of form made by Black writers from the antebellum era through the present to communicate critique, effect political change, and render new worlds. Structured around debates about the genre status of Black writing, this course introduces students to slave era texts by Harriet E. Wilson, David Walker, Phillis Wheatley; 20th century works by Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Amos Tutuola, Chester Himes, Bill Gunn, James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara; and contemporary work by Saidiya Hartman, Octavia Butler, Jeremy O. Harris, and Rita Dove. Reading, writing, and critical viewership will be central to the course.
AFCNA-341AE-01	Race, Gender & Sexual Aesthet	4.00	W 01:30PM-04:20PM Shattuck Hall 318
	Reading across a spectrum of disciplinary focuses (e.g. philosophies of aesthetics, post-structural feminisms, Black cultural studies, and queer of color critique) this course asks the question what is the nature of aesthetics when it negotiates modes of difference? This course explores the history and debates on aesthetics as it relates to race, gender, and sexuality with particular emphasis on Black diaspora theory and cultural production. Drawing on sensation, exhibitions, active discussion, observation, and experimentation, emphasis will be placed on developing a fine-tuned approach to aesthetic inquiry and appreciation.
AFCNA-341AF-01	Afr. Amer. Spirit. of Dissent	4.00	M 01:30PM-04:20PM Clapp Laboratory 126
	This course seeks to understand how protest fuels the creation and sustenance of black religious movements and novel spiritual systems in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will examine the dissentive qualities of selected African American activists, community workers, scholars, spiritual/religious leaders and creative writers. By the end of this course, students will be able to thoughtfully respond to the questions, "What is spirituality?"; "What is dissent?"; and "Has blackness required resistive spiritual communities?"