Courses

• CAS AA 510: African American Drama
  A study of African American and Afro-Caribbean dramatic literature. Focus on the work of August Wilson, Lorraine Hansberry, Aimé Césaire, and Derek Walcott in the context of Western drama. Also offered as CAS EN 588.
• CAS AA 514: Comparative Slavery
  The institution of slavery in history with a special focus on slavery and the slave trade in Africa and the Americas in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Attention to cultural and political issues as well as economic and social aspects of slavery. Also offered as CAS HI 584.
• CAS AA 537: Studies in West Indian Literature
  Two topics are offered Spring 2010. Students may take either or both for credit. Topic for Section A1: Caribbean Fiction. Modern Caribbean fiction written in English, with attention to cultural and political background. Authors such as Sam Selvon, V. S. Naipaul, Earl Lovelace, Robert Antoni (Trinidad); Wilson Harris, Pauline Melville (Guyana); Roger Mais, Olive Senior (Jamaica); Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua). Topic for Section B1: Postcolonial Theater. The emergence of a national theater movement as a feature of decolonization. “Writing back” to traditions in world-class Anglophone dramatists from Ireland (Gregory, Synge, Yeats), Trinidad (Walcott, Matura, Lovelace), Nigeria (Soyinka, Ladipo), and South Africa (Fugard and “township theater”). Also offered as CAS EN 586.
• CAS AA 538: Studies in West Indian Literature: Caribbean Poetry
  Caribbean Poetry. Study of twentieth-century Caribbean poetry written in English(es). Anthologies and major figures (Walcott, Brathwaite, Goodison, Roach). Consideration of poetry in small societies, creole vs. standard language, oral vs. literate norms, relation to literary traditions, African and European. Also offered as CAS EN 586.
• CAS AA 559: Reckoning with the Past: Reparations and Justice in Comparative Perspective
  The debate about reparations for slavery and Jim Crow segregation in the United States examined critically as conversation about, and movement for, retrospective justice. Includes discussion of war crimes tribunals and truth commissions. Also offered as CAS PO 559.
• CAS AA 563: Race and the Development of the American Economy: A Global Perspective
  Surveys the economic history of African Americans within the context of the development of the American and global economies. Topics include the economics of slavery; race and industrialization; the Great Migration; anti-discrimination legislation; and the historical origins of contemporary racial inequalities. Also offered as CAS EC 563.
• CAS AA 564: From Slavery to Freedom: Abolition in Comparative Perspective
  How did legalized slavery, a world-wide practice for thousands of years, end? The process of abolition in the Americas, Africa, and elsewhere is examined and compared to the later regulation of forced labor and to contemporary slavery. Also offered as CAS PO 564.
• CAS AA 569: African American Economic History
  Introduction to current research in African American economic history. Topics include slavery and its aftermath, the long-term evolution of racial economic differences, segregation, voting rights, and anti-discrimination legislation. Also offered as CAS EC 569.
• CAS AA 571: African American Art
  Studies African American art and craft production from the early nineteenth century to the present against the background of the diaspora, reconstruction, and the modernist movements of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Also offered as CAS AH 571.
• CAS AA 580: The History of Racial Thought
  Study of racial thinking and feeling in Europe and the United States since the fifteenth century. Racial thinking in the context of Western encounters with non-European people and Jews; its relation to social, economic, cultural, and political trends. Also offered as CAS HI 580.
• CAS AA 586: African Americans Abroad
  Develops awareness of the global nature of the African American experience through study of Black Americans' involvement in aspects of world development besides slavery and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Focus on Europe and the Americas; some attention to Africa and Asia. Also offered as CAS HI 586.
• CAS AA 588: Women, Power, and Culture in Africa
  Understanding the role of women in African history. Topics include the Atlantic slave trade, power, religion, the economy, resistance movements, health, the state, and kinship. Emphasis on the period before independence. Also offered as CAS HI 588.
• CAS AA 590: The World and the West
  Explores relations between the West and the Third World from 1850, focusing on national and cultural movements in the Third World, and places the African American struggle for freedom in the United States in global and comparative perspective. Also offered as CAS HI 590.
• CAS AH 111: Introduction to Art History I: Antiquity to the Middle Ages
  An introduction to art history and the analysis of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Study of masterpieces from prehistoric to medieval times. Focus on monuments of Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages, with a survey of Egyptian and Near Eastern art.
• CAS AH 112: Introduction to Art History II: Renaissance to Today
  Major monuments and artists. Sequential development, from the Renaissance to the modern period, of major styles in architecture, sculpture, painting, graphic arts, and photography. Relationship of visual art to social and cultural trends.
• CAS AH 201: Understanding Architecture: Theoretical Approaches to the Built Environment
  Introduces a range of approaches to the analysis of architecture. Learn how scholars and architects have interpreted meaning in architecture through the rubrics of art, structure, language, nonverbal communication, experience, and culture.
• CAS AH 204: Topics in Religion and the Visual Arts
  Explores interplay between religion and art through the study of historical, contemporary examples. Topic changes each year. May be repeated for credit. Topic for Fall 2010: Buddhist Art of Asia. Study of the philosophical underpinnings, use, and social significance of select genres of Buddhist Art in India, Tibet, China, and Indonesia. Special attention to the representation of key Buddhist concepts and practices through the use of visual narrative strategies. Also offered as CAS RN 204.
• CAS AH 205: Architecture: An Introduction
  Examination of the factors involved in architectural design including program, spatial composition, structure, technology, iconography, and the role of architecture in society. Discussion of major monuments of Western architecture and urbanism from ancient Egypt to the twenty-first century.
• CAS AH 208: Art and Politics
  History and theory of the relationship between visual culture and the major social and political forces from the American and French revolutions to the present. Selected topics in the areas of painting, sculpture, photography, prints, and the popular arts.
• CAS AH 210: Learning to See
  Strengthens the student as observer and writer. Lectures and museum visits focus on fundamental aspects of design and visual expression in works of art and architecture. Assignments involve the description and comparison of objects in exhibition spaces and the visual environment.

Note that this information may change at any time.

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