African American Studies

Overview

The Department of African American Studies was founded on the assumption that the study of African American history and culture, and of the role that race has played in shaping the life and the institutions of the United States, is central to an American liberal education. Given the continuing and evolving centrality of race in American political, economic, social and cultural life, and indeed, in every region of the world, reflection on race and on the distinctive experiences of Black people is indispensable for all Princeton students as global citizens. Drawing on a core of distinguished faculty in areas such as art and archaeology, comparative literature, English, history, philosophy, law and political science, psychology, religion and sociology, the program promotes teaching and research of race with a focus on the experience of African Americans in the United States.

Program Offerings

Offering type
A.B.

The Department of African American Studies (AAS) offers an undergraduate major in the study of the historic achievements and struggles of African-descended people in the United States and their relationship to African and African-descended people around the world. Drawing on methodologies from the humanities and social sciences and spanning areas of inquiry across different fields, the AAS major emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary research and analysis to its scholarly mission.

Students in AAS are trained in the methods, themes and ideas that inform interdisciplinary scholarship, with a particular focus on race and racial inequality. The major allows students to focus their studies in one of three thematic subfields:

  1. African American Culture and Life (AACL)
  2. Global Race and Ethnicity (GRE)
  3. Race and Public Policy (RPP)

With a combination of courses and interdisciplinary research opportunities, students who complete the requirements for the AAS major are equipped with the analytical and research skills that are desirable in a range of professions. Majors are also highly qualified to pursue professional or graduate degrees in a number of fields.

For the final year, AAS also offers the certificate in African American Studies for students majoring in another department. Class of 2025 students may apply for formal admission to the certificate program at any time once they have taken and achieved satisfactory standing in any AAS course.  Beginning with the Class of 2026, students will be able to pursue a minor in African American Studies where they will gain access to an extraordinary bibliography that prepares them to think about race and power in sophisticated ways, expanding and deepening their understanding of race in the United States and in the world.

Goals for Student Learning

Coursework in AAS prepares students to conduct independent work in their junior and senior years. The goals for student learning through coursework and independent work are to:

  • build a comprehensive base of knowledge of African-descended peoples in the United States and in the diaspora, and explore how this background facilitates a critical approach to dominant knowledge formations;
  • understand what interdisciplinary research and analysis entails in an educational context of disciplinary knowledge formation, and explain why interdisciplinarity is essential to the study of African-descended peoples in the United States and in the diaspora;
  • identify methodologies from the humanities and social sciences that may be applied to one’s area of inquiry, and propose how these methods might be revised or combined to address interdisciplinary research questions;
  • hone skills in primary-source research, analytical interpretation, critical thinking and ethical reasoning as components of interdisciplinary study in AAS; and 
  • demonstrate these skills through written and verbal communication, with the option of pursuing other means of communication such as performance, media-making and creative writing as they relate to the scholarly mission of AAS.

 

Prerequisites

Prerequisite for entry into the AAS major is the successful completion on a graded basis of one core survey course. Core survey courses are identified in the program of study.

Program of Study

Majors are required to complete nine (9) courses: two (2) core survey courses, AAS 300 Junior Seminar: Research and Writing in African American Studies, and six (6) additional African American Studies courses. All majors are also required to participate and complete the senior colloquium milestone.

Students complete two (2) core survey courses listed below.  At least one (1) of these must be a Pre-20th Century course. Students are strongly encouraged to complete both survey courses by the end of junior year.

Pre-20th Century

  • AAS 244 Introduction to Pre-20th Century Black Diaspora Art
  • AAS 353 African American Literature: Origins to 1910 OR AAS 253 Introduction to African American Literature: Origins to 1910
  • AAS 366 African American History to 1863 OR AAS 267 Introduction to African American History to 1863

 20th Century and Beyond

  • AAS 245 Introduction to 20th Century African American Art
  • AAS 359 African American Literature: Harlem Renaissance to Present OR  AAS 254 Introduction to African American Literature since the Harlem Renaissance
  • AAS 367 African American History Since Emancipation OR AAS 268 Introduction to African American History Since Emancipation

At the end of their fall semester, juniors declare a subfield to pursue, choosing from the following:

  • African American Culture and Life (AACL)
  • Global Race and Ethnicity (GRE)
  • Race and Public Policy (RPP)

Four (4) courses must be taken in the chosen subfield, with two (2) additional courses as follows:

  • If the chosen subfield is AACL or RPP, then the two (2) additional courses must be selected from the GRE courses. 
  • If the chosen subfield is GRE, then one (1) must be an AACL course and one (1) must be an RPP course. 

Students are permitted to take up to two (2) approved cognate courses in other departments. See the department website for the lists of courses and approved cognates by subfield. Majors will complete junior and senior independent work, participate in a senior colloquium and a departmental comprehensive oral examination based on feedback from the senior thesis.

With a combination of courses and interdisciplinary research opportunities, students who complete the African American Studies major will be equipped with the critical and analytical skills that will prepare them for a range of professions. They will be highly qualified to pursue graduate work in the field or its cognate disciplines and prepared to enter a society in which race continues to be salient.

Class of 2025 students who pursue the certificate in AAS must complete two core survey courses as listed above and three additional courses in AAS, cross-listed by AAS, or from our approved cognates list. Of these additional courses, one must be in the GRE subfield.

Class of 2026 and beyond students who pursue the minor in AAS must complete two core survey courses as listed above and three additional courses in AAS, cross-listed by AAS, or from our approved cognates list. Of these additional courses, one must be in the GRE subfield.  In addition, students who have completed the program of study by graduation will compose a 700-word reflection essay describing how the AAS minor has informed their independent work in their major.

Departmental Tracks

The AAS Program of Study is organized into three thematic subfields. Majors can take courses in each subfield and choose one as a primary area of inquiry.

  1. African American Culture and Life (AACL): Students encounter the intellectual tradition and cultural practices that inform the emergence and development of African American Studies as a field of study in the academy. Focusing on aesthetic repertoires and historical dynamics situated primarily in the United States, students learn how to examine the patterns and practices that have defined and transformed Black people’s lives. Courses in the AACL subfield are typically cross-listed with English, History, Religion and American Studies.
  2. Race and Public Policy (RPP): Students deploy and interrogate social science methodologies to examine the workings of the American state apparatus and other social and political institutions. Fostering critical approaches to empirical research and analysis, students examine the formation and development of racial and ethnic identities in the United States, with a particular focus on different perceptions and measures of inequality. Courses in the RPP subfield are typically cross-listed with the School of Public and International Affairs, Sociology, and Politics.
  3. Global Race and Ethnicity (GRE): Students take up comparative methodologies in studying inter- and intraracial group dynamics in a global frame. Comparison yields an understanding of the aesthetic repertoires and historical dynamics of African and African-descended people in the diaspora outside the United States, as well as non-African-descended people of color within the United States. Courses in the GRE subfield are typically cross-listed with Comparative Literature, Art & Archaeology and African Studies.

Independent Work

During the fall semester, junior majors are required to enroll in AAS 300: Research and Writing in African American Studies. This course introduces students to the theories and methods of research design in the field of Black studies. During the spring semester, juniors conduct independent research and writing toward the completion of the junior paper (JP). Juniors work closely with a faculty adviser, who is assigned to them at the completion of AAS 300. The adviser assesses and assigns a grade for the JP at the end of the semester.

In senior year, majors are required to participate in the year-long senior colloquium, a milestone that provides a space for students to share ideas and gain feedback on their step-by-step plans for the senior thesis. The colloquium adviser helps students achieve departmental benchmarks for drafting their thesis, while individual faculty advisers address students’ field-specific questions and provide substantive feedback on drafts. A second reader is assigned to read the thesis at the end of the semester. The thesis adviser and second reader independently submit comments and suggest a grade. If the grades differ, then the adviser and second reader confer and collectively decide the final grade.

Additional Requirements

The senior comprehensive statement is completed after the senior thesis and has a dual purpose: to narrate the student’s scholarly development in AAS, and to describe any work beyond the classroom that reflects the student’s commitment to the intellectual, political and artistic traditions of Black studies as a field. The statement is consulted during the senior departmental examination and is used to help calculate honors in the major.

Senior Departmental Examination

The senior departmental examination involves the senior thesis adviser and assigned second reader of the thesis. It consists of two parts: a 10-minute presentation articulating the thesis's main argument and responding to the readers’ reports assessing the work, and a discussion of the student’s independent work and course of study. Aspects of the senior comprehensive statement may be cited during the discussion part of the exam.

Study Abroad

Students have the opportunity to study abroad in programs related to AAS for a semester, a year or a summer. In order for study abroad coursework to count toward the major, students must gain approval for their programs from the department. The director of undergraduate studies reviews all requests and helps students identify which study abroad courses fit into AAS’s Program of Study.

Additional Information

The Undergraduate Board of Advisers (UBA) acts as the voice for students in the department and plans events each semester. The UBA aims to integrate students into the intellectual life of the department beyond the classroom and offers input on curricular and programming matters. Students on the UBA serve as ambassadors for the department and provide a support network for all students who are enrolled in AAS courses.

Offering type
Minor

For the final year, AAS offers a certificate in African American Studies for students majoring in another department. Class of 2025 students may apply for formal admission to the certificate program at any time once they have taken and achieved satisfactory standing in any AAS course. 

Students in the Class of 2026 and beyond can opt to pursue a minor in African American Studies (AAS) where they will gain access to an extraordinary bibliography that prepares them to think about race and power in sophisticated ways, expanding and deepening their understanding of race in the United States and in the world. Students are trained in the methods, themes and ideas that inform interdisciplinary scholarship, with a particular focus on race and racial inequality.  Earning a minor is straightforward and allows students to experience an enriching course of study that complements any Princeton major.
 

 

Goals for Student Learning

The goals for student learning in the AAS minor are to:

  • build a comprehensive base of knowledge of African-descended peoples in the United States and in the diaspora, and explore how this background facilitates a critical approach to dominant knowledge formations;
  • understand what interdisciplinary research and analysis entails in an educational context of disciplinary knowledge formation, and explain why interdisciplinarity is essential to the study of African-descended peoples in the United States and in the diaspora;
  • identify methodologies from the humanities and social sciences that may be applied to a student’s area of inquiry, and propose how these methods might be revised or combined to address interdisciplinary research questions;
  • hone skills in primary-source research, analytical thinking, and ethical reasoning as components of interdisciplinary study; and
  • demonstrate these skills through written and verbal communication, with the option of gaining experience in other modes of communication such as performance, media-making and curation.

Admission to the Program

The minor may be pursued by students majoring in any department. Students may apply for formal admission to the minor once they have taken and achieved satisfactory standing in one AAS core survey course. Students are encouraged to declare the minor at the end of their sophomore year so that projected coursework may be sequenced in conjunction with their junior independent work and other plans (e.g., study abroad). The final deadline for students to declare the minor is the end of the spring term of junior year.

Program of Study

Students must complete two AAS core survey courses. These courses serve as an introduction to the methods and areas of interdisciplinary study in the field. They are the cornerstone of the AAS minor, and thus there are no replacements for or exemptions from this requirement.

  • AAS 244 Introduction to Pre-20th Century Black Diaspora Art
  • AAS 245 Introduction to 20th Century African American Art
  • AAS 253 Introduction to African American Literature to 1910 OR AAS 353 African American Literature: Origins to 1910
  • AAS 254 Introduction to African American Literature since the Harlem Renaissance OR AAS 359 African American Literature: Harlem Renaissance to the Present
  • AAS 267 Introduction to African American History to 1863 OR AAS 366 African American History to 1863
  • AAS 268 Introduction to African American History since Emancipation OR AAS 367 African American History Since Emancipation

Students must take three additional courses in AAS, cross-listed by AAS, or from our approved cognates list (which may be accessed on the department’s website, for a total of five courses. At least one of these five courses must be situated in the Global Race and Ethnicity (GRE) subfield.

Students may count one course taken for their major toward the minor if the course is cross-listed with AAS or has been approved as a cognate by the AAS director of undergraduate studies before the course is taken.

The PDF option counts toward the minor if the course is primary-listed with AAS, cross-listed with AAS, or has been approved as a creative or practice-based cognate by the AAS director of undergraduate studies before the course is taken. Only one PDF course may count toward the minor.

Students must receive passing grades in all five courses in order to complete the program of study for the minor.

Departmental Tracks

The program of study for the AAS minor is organized into three subfields.

  1. African American Culture and Life (AACL): Students encounter the intellectual tradition and cultural practices that inform the emergence and development of African American studies as a field of study in the academy. Focusing on aesthetic repertoires and historical dynamics situated primarily in the United States, students learn how to examine the patterns and practices that have defined and transformed Black people’s lives. Courses in the AACL subfield are typically cross-listed with English, History, Religion, American Studies, and the Lewis Center for the Arts.
  2. Race and Public Policy (RPP): Students deploy and interrogate social science methodologies to examine the workings of the American state apparatus and other social and political institutions. Fostering critical approaches to empirical research and analysis, students examine the formation and development of racial and ethnic identities in the United States, with a particular focus on different perceptions and measures of inequality. Courses in the RPP subfield are typically cross-listed with the School of Public and International Affairs, Sociology, and Politics.
  3. Global Race and Ethnicity (GRE): Students take up comparative methodologies in studying inter- and intraracial group dynamics in a global frame. Comparison yields an understanding of the aesthetic repertoires and historical dynamics of African and African-descended people in the diaspora outside the United States, as well as non-African-descended people of color within the United States. Courses in the GRE subfield are typically cross-listed with Comparative Literature, Art & Archaeology, African Studies, Latino Studies and Latin American Studies.

Additional Requirements

Students who have completed the program of study by graduation will compose a 700-word essay describing how the AAS minor has informed their independent work in the major. The reflection may touch on the Junior Paper, the Senior Thesis, or both. The reflection essay will be due during reading period of the graduating semester. The AAS Curriculum Committee, which is chaired by the director of undergraduate studies, will review and assess the essays, thereby approving the completion of the program of study.

Faculty

  • Chair

    • Tera W. Hunter
  • Director of Undergraduate Studies

    • Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
  • Director of Graduate Studies

    • Anna Arabindan Kesson
  • Professor

    • Wendy Laura Belcher
    • Ruha Benjamin
    • Wallace D. Best
    • Lorgia García Peña
    • Eddie S. Glaude
    • Tera W. Hunter
    • Chika O. Okeke-Agulu
    • Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
  • Associate Professor

    • Joshua B. Guild
    • Anna Arabindan Kesson
    • Naomi Murakawa
    • Kinohi Nishikawa
    • Autumn M. Womack
  • Assistant Professor

    • Reena N. Goldthree
  • Associated Faculty

    • Tina M. Campt, Art and Archaeology
    • Rafael Cesar, Spanish & Portuguese
    • Jacob S. Dlamini, History
    • Paul Frymer, Politics
    • Hanna Garth, Anthropology
    • Simon E. Gikandi, English
    • William A. Gleason, English
    • V. Mitch McEwen, Architecture
    • Dan-El Padilla Peralta, Classics
    • Laurence Ralph, Anthropology
    • John N. Robinson, Sociology
    • J. Nicole Shelton, Psychology
    • Stacey A. Sinclair, Psychology
    • LaFleur Stephens-Dougan, Politics
    • Nicole M. Turner, Religion
    • Keith A. Wailoo, History
    • Leonard Wantchekon, Politics
    • Judith Weisenfeld, Religion
    • Frederick F Wherry, Sociology
    • Ismail K. White, Schl of Public & Int'l Affairs
  • Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts

    • Marcus A. Lee

For a full list of faculty members and fellows please visit the department or program website.

Courses

AAS 201 - African American Studies and the Black Intellectual Tradition (also PHI 291) Fall CD or EC

This course introduces students to the field of African American Studies through an examination of the complex experiences, both past and present, of Americans of African descent. Through a multidisciplinary perspective, it reveals the complicated ways we come to know and live race in the United States. Students engage classic texts in the field. All of which are framed by a concern with epistemologies of resistance and of ignorance that offer insight into African American thought and practice. AAS Subfield: AACL E. Glaude

AAS 223 - Intro Topics in African American Culture & Life (also ENG 231) Spring LA

This course examines the selected non-fiction writings of one of America's most influential essayists and public intellectuals: James Baldwin. Attention will be given to his views on ethics, art, and politics--with a particular consideration given to his critical reflections on race and democracy. E. Glaude

AAS 228 - Intro Topics in Race and Public Policy (also AMS 230) Not offered this year CD or HA

This topics course explores the complex interplay between political, economic, and cultural forces that shape our understanding of the historic achievements and struggles of African-descended people in the United States and their relation to others around the world. K. Taylor

AAS 239 - Introduction to African Literature and Film (also AFS 239/COM 239/HUM 239/TRA 239) Fall CD or LA

African literature and films have been a vital (but often unacknowledged) stream in and stimulant to the global traffic in invention. Nigerian literature is one of the great literatures of the 20th century. Ethiopian literature is one of the oldest in the world. South Africans have won more Nobel Prizes for Literature in the past forty years than authors from any other country. Senegalese films include some of the finest films ever made. In this course, we will study the richness and diversity of foundational African texts (some in translation), while foregrounding questions of aesthetics, style, humor, and epistemology. W. Belcher

AAS 244 - Introduction to Pre-20th Century Black Diaspora Art (also ART 262/LAS 244) Fall CD or LA

This course focuses on the networks, imaginaries, and lives inhabited by Black artists, makers, and subjects from the 18th through 19th centuries, revolving around the Caribbean (particularly the Anglophone Caribbean), North America, and Europe. We will reflect on how pre-20th-century Black artists are written into history or written out of it. We will explore the aesthetic innovation of these artists and the visionary worlds they created and examine their travels, their writings, along with the social worlds and communities they formed. The course incorporates lectures and readings and, if possible, museum visits. AAS Subfield: AACL, GRE A. Kesson

AAS 245 - Introduction to 20th-Century African American Art (also ART 245) Not offered this year LA

This surveys history of African American art during the long 20th-century, from the individual striving of late 19th century to the unprecedented efflorescence of art and culture in 1920s Harlem; from the retrenchment in Black artistic production during the era of Great Depression, to the rise of racially conscious art inspired by the Civil Rights Movement; from the Black feminist art in the 1970s, to the age of American multiculturalism in the 1980s and 1990s; and finally to the turn of the present century when ambitious "postblack" artists challenge received notions of Black art and racial subjectivity. AAS Subfield: AACL, GRE C. Okeke-Agulu

AAS 253 - Introduction to African American Literature to 1910 (also ENG 352) Not offered this year LA

This introductory course traces the emergence of an African American literary tradition, from the late-18th century to the early 20th. In readings, assignments, and discussion we will consider the unique cultural contexts, aesthetic debates, and socio-political forces underpinning African American literary cultural and practice. Over the course of the semester, we will investigate the poetry of Phillis Wheatley and Paul L. Dunbar, the political oratory of Sojourner Truth and David Walker, slave narratives by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Wilson, writing by W.E.B. DuBois, and novels by Frances Harper. AAS Subfield: AACL A. Womack

AAS 268 - Introduction to African American History Since Emancipation (also HIS 268/URB 268) Fall CD or HA

This course offers an introduction to the major themes, critical questions, and pivotal moments in post emancipation African American history. Traces the social, political, cultural, intellectual, and legal contours of the black experience in the United States from Reconstruction to the rise of Jim Crow, through the World Wars, Depression, and the Great Migrations, to the long civil rights era and the contemporary period of racial politics. Using a wide variety of texts, images, and creative works, the course situates African American history within broader national and international contexts. AAS Subfield: AACL J. Guild

AAS 300 - Junior Seminar: Research and Writing in African American Studies Fall SA

As a required course for AAS concentrators, this junior seminar introduces students to theories and methods of research design in African American Studies. Drawing on a wide-ranging methodological toolkit from the humanities and social sciences, students will learn to reflect on the ethical and political dimensions of original research in order to produce knowledge that is intellectually and socially engaged. This is a writing-intensive seminar with weekly essay assignments. R. Goldthree, T. Hunter

AAS 303 - Topics in Global Race and Ethnicity (also GHP 313/GSS 406/HUM 347) Not offered this year HA or SA

This seminar uses the prevailing analytical tools and critical perspectives of African American Studies to consider comparative approaches to groups, broadly defined. Students will examine the intellectual traditions, socio-political contexts, expressive forms, and modes of belonging of people who are understood to share common boundaries/experiences as either (1) Africans and the African Diaspora outside of the United States; and/or (2) non-African-descended people of color within the United States. Staff

AAS 304 - Topics in African American Culture & Life (also HIS 305) Spring CD or HA

This course surveys histories of Black health activism and their legacies in the US. It addresses the pursuit of Black health and healing from the Atlantic slave trade through twenty-first century Black feminist manifestos on radical self-care. We will center the political labor and social movements of Black patients, doctors, scientists, and organizers - and their efforts to secure health equity for Black Americans - as fundamental to the arc of the long Civil Rights movement. Topics include: the Black Panthers' free clinics, Black eugenics, reproductive justice, "citizen" science, the anti-psychiatry movement, and HIV/AIDS activism. K. Henry

AAS 306 - Topics in Race and Public Policy Fall/Spring CD

This seminar uses and interrogates social science methodologies in examining the condition of the American state and American institutions and practices. With an analysis of race and ethnicity at the center, students will examine the development of institutions and practices, with the growth and formation of racial and ethnic identities, including changing perceptions, measures, and reproduction of inequality. Staff

AAS 321 - Black Rage and Black Power (also REL 321) Not offered this year HA

This course examines the various pieties of the Black Power Era. We chart the explicit and implicit utopian visions of the politics of the period that, at once, criticized established Black religious institutions and articulated alternative ways of imagining salvation. We also explore the attempt by Black theologians to translate the prophetic Black church tradition into the idiom of Black power. We aim to keep in view the significance of the Black Power era for understanding the changing role and place of Black religion in Black public life. E. Glaude

AAS 325 - African American Autobiography (also ENG 393/REL 366) Not offered this year LA

Highlights the autobiographical tradition of African Americans from the antebellum period to the present as symbolic representations of African American material, social, and intellectual history and as narrative quests of self-development. Students will be introduced to basic methods of literary analysis and criticism, specifically focusing on cultural criticism and psychoanalytic theory on the constructed self. Staff

AAS 326 - Topics in African American Culture & Life (also AMS 388/HIS 226) Fall CD or HA

In this seminar, students encounter the theoretical canon and keywords, which shape the contemporary discipline of African American Studies. Accessing a range of interdisciplinary areas, situated primarily in the United States, students will learn to take a critical posture in examining the patterns and prat order and transform Black subjects and Black life. Staff

AAS 346 - The American Jeremiad and Social Criticism in the United States (also REL 367) Not offered this year HA

An examination of the religious and philosophical roots of prophecy as a form of social criticism in American intellectual and religious history. Particular attention is given to what is called the American Jeremiad, a mode of public exhortation that joins social criticism to spiritual renewal. Michael Walzer, Sacvan Bercovitch, and Edward Said serve as key points of departure in assessing prophetic criticism's insights and limitations. Attention is also given to the role of Black prophetic critics, such as James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., and Cornel West. E. Glaude

AAS 351 - Law, Social Policy, and African American Women (also GSS 351) Not offered this year SA

Journeying from enslavement and Jim Crow to the post-civil rights era, this course will learn how law and social policy have shaped, constrained, and been resisted by Black women's experience and thought. Using a wide breadth of materials including legal scholarship, social science research, visual arts, and literature, we will also develop an understanding of how property, the body, and the structure and interpretation of domestic relations have been frameworks through which Black female subjectivity in the United States was and is mediated. I. Perry

AAS 359 - African American Literature: Harlem Renaissance to Present (also ENG 366) Not offered this year LA

A survey of 20th- and 21st century African American literature, including the tradition's key aesthetic manifestos. Special attention to how modern African American literature is periodized and why certain innovations in genre and style emerged when they did. Poetry, essays, novels, popular fiction, a stage production or two, and related visual texts. AAS Subfield: AACL K. Nishikawa

AAS 362 - Race and the American Legal Process: Emancipation to the Voting Rights Act Not offered this year SA

This course examines the dynamic and often conflicted relationships between African American struggles for inclusion, and the legislative, administrative, and judicial decision-making responding to or rejecting those struggles, from Reconstruction to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. In tracing these relationships we will cover issues such as property, criminal law, suffrage, education, and immigration, with a focus on the following theoretical frameworks: equal protection, due process, civic participation and engagement, and political recognition. I. Perry

AAS 366 - African American History to 1863 (also HIS 386) Not offered this year HA

This course explores African American history from the Atlantic slave trade up to the Civil War. It is centrally concerned with the rise of and overthrow of human bondage and how they shaped the modern world. Africans were central to the largest and most profitable forced migration in world history. They shaped new identities and influenced the contours of American politics, law, economics, culture, and society. The course considers the diversity of experiences in this formative period of nation-making. Race, class, gender, region, religion, labor, and resistance animate important themes in the course. AAS Subfield: AACL T. Hunter

AAS 368 - Topics in African American Religion (also REL 368) Not offered this year LA

Assesses the value of religion and its impartations of the historical, ethical, and political in African American life. Courses will also critique African American religion from a broader contextual basis by establishing commonalities and differences across historical and cultural boundaries. W. Best

AAS 372 - Postblack - Contemporary African American Art (also AMS 372/ART 374) Fall CD or LA

As articulated by Thelma Golden, postblack refers to the work of African American artists who emerged in the 1990s with ambitious, irreverent, and sassy work. Postblack suggests the emergence of a generation of artists removed from the long tradition of Black affirmation of the Harlem Renaissance, Black empowerment of the Black Arts movement, and identity politics of the 1980s and early 90s. This seminar involves critical and theoretical readings on multiculturalism, race, identity, and contemporary art, and will provide an opportunity for a deep engagement with the work of African American artists of the past decade. AAS Subfield: AACL, GRE C. Okeke-Agulu

AAS 392 - Topics in African American Literature (also ENG 392/GSS 341) Spring LA

A historical overview of Black literary expression from the 19th century to present day. Will emphasize a critical and analytical approach to considering the social, cultural, and political dimensions of African American literature. Staff

AAS 411 - Art, Apartheid, and South Africa (also AFS 411/ART 471) Not offered this year CD or LA

Apartheid, the political doctrine of separation of races in South Africa (1948-1990), dominated the (South) African political discourse in the second half of the 20th century. While it lasted, art and visual cultures were marshaled in the defense and contestation of its ideologies. Since the end of Apartheid, artists, filmmakers, dramatists, and scholars continue to reexamine the legacies of Apartheid, and the social, philosophical, and political conditions of non-racialized South Africa. Course readings examine issues of race, nationalism and politics, art and visual culture, and social memory in South Africa. AAS Subfield: GRE C. Okeke-Agulu

AAS 477 - The Civil Rights Movement (also HIS 477) Not offered this year HA

This course critically examines the development of the southern Civil Rights Movement and the rise of the Black Power insurgency from the end of World War II through the end of the 1960s. We will examine historical research, oral histories, literature, documentaries and other kinds of primary and secondary documentation. AAS Subfield: AACL J. Guild, I. Perry

AFS 450 - Critical African Studies (also AAS 451) Fall CD or HA

Critical African Studies is a colloquium designed as a capstone course for African Studies Certificate students. The course is designed to introduce students to cutting-edge scholarship in African Studies. Students engage with African Studies scholars from Princeton University and beyond. In addition to attending the African Studies Lecture Series and Works-in-Progress series, students in Critical African Studies will workshop their junior or senior independent research. This capstone course is open to junior and senior certificate students and must be taken to fulfill the African Studies Certificate requirements. C. Rouse

AMS 404 - Advanced Seminar in American Studies (also AAS 405/ANT 414) Spring CD or SA

Advanced seminars bring students into spaces of collaborative exploration after pursuing their individual paths of study in American studies, Asian American/diasporic studies, and/or Latino studies. To students culminating programs of study toward one or more of the certificates offered by the Effron Center for the Study of America, advanced seminars offer the important opportunity to integrate their cumulative knowledge. P. Fernández-Kelly

ANT 403 - Race and Medicine (also AAS 403/GHP 403) CD or EM

This course examines culture's role in reproducing health inequalities in the United States. Different populations have very different levels of access to care, environmental exposures, and cultural beliefs about health and well-being. Institutional cultures also influence how different patients are treated, how evidence is used to determine treatments, and how healthcare priorities are articulated and funded. Additionally, this course explores how medical care is influenced at a national level by health policies. These factors ultimately impact population health and patients' experiences with life, death and chronic disease. C. Rouse

ART 373 - What is Black Art: Art History and the Black Diaspora (also AAS 373) Not offered this year LA

An introduction to the history of African American art and visual culture from the colonial period to the present. Artists and works of art will be considered in terms of their social, intellectual, and historical contexts. Students will consider artistic practices as they intersect with other cultural spheres, including science, politics, religion, and literature. Topics and readings will be drawn from the field of art history as well as from cultural studies, critical race theory, and the history of the Atlantic world. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 3 distribution requirement. Two lectures, one preceptorial. A. Kesson

DAN 211 - The American Experience and Dance Practices of the African Diaspora (also AAS 211) Fall/Spring LA

A studio course introducing students to African dance practices and aesthetics, with a focus on how its evolution has influenced American and African American culture, choreographers and dancers. An ongoing study of movement practices from traditional African dances and those of the African Diaspora, touching on American jazz dance, modern dance, and American ballet. Studio work will be complemented by readings, video viewings, guest speakers, and dance studies D. Harvey Salaam

ENG 358 - Caribbean Literature and Culture (also AAS 343/AMS 396/LAS 385) CD or LA

The Caribbean is an archipelago made up of islands that both link and separate the Americas - islands that have weathered various waves of colonization, migration, and revolution. How do narratives of the Caribbean represent the collision of political forces and natural environments? Looking to the many abyssal histories of the Caribbean, we will explore questions of indigeneity, colonial contact, iterations of enslavement, and the plantation matrix in literary texts. How do island-writers evoke gender and a poetics of relation that exceeds tourist desire and forceful extraction? Staff

ENG 388 - Topics in Critical Theory (also AAS 391/COM 399) Fall/Spring LA

Frantz Fanon is among the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. In this course we will concentrate on two of Fanon's major books: Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. We will read Fanon's contemporaries like Aimé Césaire and Léopold Senghor as well as responses to Fanon by Jean-Paul Sartre, Hanna Arendt, Judith Butler, Sylvia Wynter, Ng'g wa Thiong'o, and others. Topics we will cover are decolonization, infrastructural critique, systemic racism, existentialist phenomenology, négritude, violence, dialectics, psychiatry (vs. psychoanalysis), national consciousness, revolution, poesis, praxis. A. Cole

ENG 397 - New Diasporas (also AAS 397/COM 348) Not offered this year LA

This course will explore the works of contemporary authors of the African and Caribbean diaspora in Europe and North America in relation to the changing historical and cultural context of migration and globalization. The course will consider how these writers have represented the process of relocation, acculturation, and the transnational moment. What is the role of the imagination in the rethinking of identities lived across boundaries? Why and how do these authors use the term diaspora to describe their experiences? How do the works of a new generation of writers from Africa and the Caribbean transform theories of globalization? S. Gikandi

ENG 411 - Major Author(s) (also AAS 413/AMS 411) CD or LA

A close study of the works of one or two authors. May include Austen, Dickinson, Wordsworth, George Eliot, Dickens, Melville, Faulkner, James, Stevens, or Woolf, among others. Two 90-minute seminars. E. Cadava

ENG 414 - Major Author(s) (also AAS 455) Spring LA

A close study of the works of one or two authors. May include Austen, Dickinson, Wordsworth, George Eliot, Dickens, Melville, Faulkner, James, Stevens, or Woolf, among others. One three-hour seminar. R. Rainof

HIS 315 - Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (also AAS 315/AFS 316/URB 315) Fall HA

The impact of European colonial rule on the traditional societies of Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the dominant themes will be the emergence of the intelligentsia in colonial areas as proponents of nationalism. Two lectures, one preceptorial. J. Dlamini

HIS 388 - Unrest and Renewal in Urban America (also AAS 388/AMS 380/URB 388) Not offered this year CD or HA

From colonial settlement to the present, this course weaves a comprehensive history of American cities. Over centuries, cities have symbolized democratic ideals of "melting pots" and innovation, as well as crises of disorder, decline, crime, and poverty. Urban life has concentrated extremes like rich and poor; racial and ethnic divides; philanthropy and greed; skyscrapers and parks; violence and hope; downtown and suburb. The course examines how cities in U.S. history have brokered revolution, transformation and renewal, focusing on class, race, gender, immigration, capitalism, and the built environment. Two lectures, one preceptorial. A. Isenberg

HIS 393 - Race, Drugs, and Drug Policy in America (also AAS 393/AMS 423/SPI 389) Not offered this year HA

From "Chinese opium" to Oxycontin, and from cocaine and "crack" to BiDil, drug controversies reflect enduring debates about the role of medicine, the law, the policing of ethnic identity, and racial difference. This course explores the history of controversial substances (prescription medicines, over-the-counter products, black market substances, psychoactive drugs), and how, from cigarettes to alcohol and opium, they become vehicles for heated debates over immigration, identity, cultural and biological difference, criminal character, the line between legality and illegality, and the boundaries of the normal and the pathological. K. Wailoo

HIS 459 - The History of Incarceration in the U.S. (also AAS 459/AMS 459/GSS 459) Not offered this year HA

The prison is a growth industry in the U.S.; it is also a central institution in U.S. political and social life, shaping our experience of race, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and political possibility. This course explores the history of incarceration over the course of more than two centuries. It tracks the emergence of the penitentiary in the early national period and investigates mass incarceration of the late 20th century. Topics include the relationship between the penitentiary and slavery; the prisoners' rights movement; Japanese internment; immigration detention; and the privatization and globalization of prisons. Staff

MUS 262 - Jazz History: Many Sounds, Many Voices (also AAS 262) Spring LA

An introduction survey examining the historical development of jazz from its African origins through the present. The course will place emphasis on the acquisition of listening skills and explore related musical and social issues. Staff

POL 344 - Race and Politics in the United States (also AAS 344/AMS 244) Fall CD or SA

This course focuses upon the evolution, nature, and role of black politics within the American Political System, in the post- civil rights era. The concern is with black people as actors and creators and initiators in the political process. Specifically, this course will examine various political controversies that surround the role of race in American society. These controversies or issues, affect public opinion, political institutions, political behavior, and salient public policy debates. Thus this course will assess and evaluate the contemporary influence of race in each of these domains while also exploring their historical antecedents. L. Stephens-Dougan

REL 373 - Studies in Religion (also AAS 320/LAS 322) Not offered this year SA

A study of a selected topic such as mysticism, scriptures of the world religions, or of particular religious movements, leaders, and thinkers. Staff

REL 377 - Race and Religion in America (also AAS 376/AMS 378) Not offered this year CD or SA

In this seminar we examine how the modern constructed categories of "race" and "religion" have interacted in American history and culture. We explore how religious beliefs and practices have shaped ideas about race and how American racialization has shaped religious experience. We consider the impact of religion and race on notions of what it means to be American and how these have changed over time. Topics include race and biblical interpretation; religion and racial slavery; religion, race, and science; popular culture representations; race, religion, and politics; and religious resistance to racial hierarchy. J. Weisenfeld

SOC 221 - Inequality: Class, Race, and Gender (also AAS 221/GSS 221) Not offered this year SA

Inequalities in property, power, and prestige examined for their effects on life chances and lifestyles. Primary focus on socioeconomic classes in modern societies. Special attention to the role of religious, racial, and ethnic factors. Comparisons of different systems of stratification in the world today. Two lectures, one preceptorial. Staff

SPI 331 - Race and Public Policy (also AAS 317/POL 343/SOC 312) Fall SA

Analyzes the historical construction of race as a concept in American society, how and why this concept was institutionalized publicly and privately in various arenas of U.S. public life at different historical junctures, and the progress that has been made in dismantling racialized institutions since the civil rights era. I. White