Course Catalog 2024-2025
Africana Studies
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Meredith M. Gadsby, Associate Professor of Africana Studies; chair
Yveline Alexis, Associate Professor of Africana Studies
Justin L. Emeka, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Theater
Melissa G. George, Lecturer of Africana Studies and Director of the Afrikan Heritage House
Everett F. Hardy, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies
Caroline B. Jackson-Smith, Professor of Africana Studies and Theater
Darko K. Opoku, Associate Professor of Africana Studies
Charles F. Peterson, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Director of the Lemle Center
Thomas (Talawa) Prestø, Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Dance
Michael B. Roman, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Studio Art
Visit the department web page for up-to-date information on department faculty, visiting lecturers, and special events.
The Department of Africana Studies at Oberlin College is a multidisciplinary program of study that seeks, through the humanities and social sciences, to explore key aspects of the Black experience in a systematic and structurally integrated fashion. Its broad educational purposes are to engender among all students an intellectual appreciation of life, culture, and history in Africa, the Americas, and the diaspora; to enrich the Oberlin College curriculum; and to increase the relevance of an Oberlin education to a culturally diverse world. Thus, the department strives to provide the general student body with substantive knowledge of the Africana experience and to provide majors with a range of critical, intellectual, artistic, and evaluative skills useful in any of their future pursuits. The department is aided in its efforts by the Afrikan Heritage House, which serves as the college’s African diasporan communal and cultural center.
Learn more about identity-based program housing supported by the department.
See information about Research, Internships, Study Away, and Experiential Learning (RISE).
Explore Winter Term projects and opportunities.
Majors, Minors, and Integrative Concentrations
Curriculum
The Africana studies department curriculum offers extensive study of the Black experience in a diasporic setting, including but not limited to, Africa, North America, and the Caribbean. These offerings are arranged in three categories: introductory, intermediate, and advanced. All introductory courses are open without prerequisite, except as indicated in the course description. AAST 101 and other beginning courses may serve as prerequisites to all intermediate and advanced courses.
Private Reading Courses in the Department
- Students may schedule an Africana studies private reading course during their junior or senior years.
- No more than one Africana studies private reading course may be taken in any one semester.
- No more than two Africana studies private reading courses may be taken during a student’s undergraduate program.
Courses- AAST 101 - Introduction to Africana Studies
- AAST 102 - A Dark History: Race, Ethics, and Human Medical Experimentation on Black Bodies in the US
- AAST 122 - Caribbean Survey: Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic: Indigenous to 1898
- AAST 123 - Caribbean Survey: Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic: 1898-1986
- AAST 124 - Earth Science and Social Justice
- AAST 126 - Archives ReImagined
- AAST 131 - Traditional African Cosmology and Religions: Shifting Contours and Contested Terrains
- AAST 132 - Introduction to African Studies: Patterns, Issues and Controversies
- AAST 139 - American Political Thought
- AAST 144 - History of African and Caribbean Dance
- AAST 161 - Capoeira Angola I
- AAST 170 - Intro to Africana Dance and Choreographic Practices
- AAST 171 - Introduction to African American Music I
- AAST 172 - Introduction to African American Music II
- AAST 173 - Introduction to Sequential Illustration: Serial Comic Strips
- AAST 190 - West African Dance Forms I
- AAST 191 - West African Dance Forms II
- AAST 199 - Dance Forms of the African Diaspora
- AAST 199H - Dance Forms of the African Diaspora
- AAST 202 - African American History Since 1865
- AAST 213 - Long Walk to Freedom: South Africa Since 1948
- AAST 215 - I’m That Gworl: The Intersection of Black Women and Queerness in Hip-Hop
- AAST 216 - Lifting as We Climb: Historically Black Colleges and the Cultural Ideology of Education
- AAST 217 - Unspoken Images: Complex Identities in Black Film
- AAST 218 - M4BL: History and Practice of An Idea
- AAST 219 - Freedom Movements: Civil Rights and Black Power
- AAST 220 - Doin’ Time: A History of Black Incarceration
- AAST 221 - Historic and Contemporary Debates in African American Education
- AAST 222 - Historic and Contemporary Debates in African American Education II
- AAST 223 - Fingerprints Across Time: Re-memoring and Africana Identity
- AAST 224 - Beginning Choreography in Cultural Traditions
- AAST 225 - Social Justice in Dance
- AAST 229 - Radical Thinkers and Movements in the Caribbean
- AAST 231 - African American Politics
- AAST 232 - Africana Philosophy
- AAST 234 - Africana Popular Culture
- AAST 235 - Government and Politics of Africa
- AAST 236 - Politics and Society in Africa since the 1980s
- AAST 242 - Framing the Hood: Examining the “Hood Film” and its Significance in Black Art Culture
- AAST 244 - Modern African Literature
- AAST 248 - Resistance and Voice: Literature of the African Diaspora
- AAST 249 - Afrofuturism and Black Speculative Fiction: Black to the Future
- AAST 251 - How Black Women Made Modern America
- AAST 253 - African American Political Thought
- AAST 257 - African American History Through Film
- AAST 261 - Framing Blackness: African Americans and Film in The United States, 1915 to the Present
- AAST 262 - Capoeira Angola II
- AAST 263 - Black English and Voice: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
- AAST 264 - African American Drama
- AAST 268 - Black Arts Workshop
- AAST 273 - Intermediate Trust the Process: The Art of the Study in Formal and Conceptual Design
- AAST 278 - Workshop: Playwrighting and Performance in the Time of the Black Lives Matter Movement
- AAST 280 - Africana Philosophies of Education
- AAST 281 - Practicum in Tutoring
- AAST 283 - African American Business History
- AAST 285 - African American Women’s History
- AAST 289 - Black Wall Streets: African American Urban Experience from Progressive Era to the Great Depression
- AAST 291 - The Abolitionist Movement
- AAST 302 - Marxism and the Black Radical Tradition
- AAST 304 - Africana Humanities in Dialogue
- AAST 323 - Folkloric Foundations
- AAST 337 - Seminar: African Capitalists and African Development
- AAST 341 - Critical Race Theory in Education
- AAST 346 - Contemporary African American Literature, 1937 to the Present
- AAST 347 - Culture, History, and Identity: Caribbean Literature and the Politics of Survival
- AAST 348 - The Evolution of Black Queer Performance and Storytelling: 1920’s-Now
- AAST 350 - Intermediate Seminar: Research and Practice in Africana Studies
- AAST 355 - Feminist Theory
- AAST 357 - Empire and Resistance in the Caribbean
- AAST 368 - Black Arts Workshop II: African Diasporan Culture in Perfomance from Blues to Hip Hop
- AAST 372 - The Word and The Beat
- AAST 382 - Seminar: James Baldwin
- AAST 450 - Senior Seminar
- AAST 501F - AAST Junior Honors - Full
- AAST 501H - AAST Junior Honors - Half
- AAST 502F - AAST Senior Honors - Full
- AAST 502H - AAST Senior Honors - Half
- AAST 995F - Private Reading - Full
- AAST 995H - Private Reading - Half
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