Honors Introduction to African American Studies

Catalog description

54 hours lecture per term. This Honors-enhanced course introduces the interdisciplinary field of Black Studies/African American Studies, centering the historical and contemporary experiences of African Americans and their contributions to U.S. society and culture. Students engage with foundational theories and key concepts including double consciousness and the veil (Du Bois), intersectionality (Crenshaw), Black feminist thought (Cooper, Lorde, hooks, Collins), critical race theory (Bell, Matsuda, Delgado, Crenshaw), Afro-pessimism (Wilderson, Sexton, Hartman), the Black radical tradition (Robinson, James, Davis), diaspora and Pan-Africanism (Gilroy), Afrofuturism (Butler, Sun Ra, Monáe), theories of resistance and agency (Scott, Kelley), and theories of culture and identity (post-Blackness, queer of color critique). Through these frameworks, students explore African origins; the social construction of race and racialization; African American cultural production in music, literature, and visual arts; class, gender, sexuality, and family life; political activism; and liberation movements from abolition and Reconstruction to Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Lives Matter. Students analyze African American creative, intellectual, and political traditions as central to struggles for equity, justice, and self-determination. (Degree Credit) (CSU) (UC) AA GE, CSU GE, IGETC, Cal-GETC