Courses

• CAS AA 103: Introduction to African American Literature
  An introduction to the political, cultural, and historical roots of the African American experience through readings of a range of African American literature from Colonial to Contemporary. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. Also offered as CAS EN 129.
• CAS AA 207: Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
  Social definition of race and ethnicity. The adjustment of different ethnic groups and their impact upon U.S. social life. How prejudice and discrimination create class identities and how caste relations have affected patterns of integration during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS. Also offered as CAS SO 207.
• CAS AA 215: Arts of Africa and Its Diaspora
  Exploration of a diversity of visual and performing arts from Africa, including ceramics, textiles, royal regalia, masquerades, and contemporary painting. Examines how the dispersal of Africans, due to the transatlantic slave trade and immigration, contributed to the cultural richness of the Americas. Also offered as CAS AH 215. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS AA 304: Introduction to African American Women Writers
  Examines the African American female literary tradition through selected texts by African American women, written from slavery to the present. Topic for Fall 2015: Toni Morrison's American Times. Examines four of the Nobel Laureate's novels, using primary and secondary materials to construct historical contexts and critical perspectives. Also offered as CAS EN 370.
• CAS AA 305: Toni Morrison's American Times
  Examines four of the Nobel Laureate's novels, using primary and secondary materials to construct historical contexts and critical perspectives. Also offered as CAS EN 370.
• CAS AA 306: Experiencing Cuba: History, Culture, and Politics
  Expeditionary course, team taught by BU and local faculty in Havana, Cuba. Firsthand study of the island's history, culture, and politics, toward understanding of the local, international, and transnational processes that shaped and continue to shape this unique society. Also offered as CAS HI 395 E and CAS IR 246 E.
• CAS AA 316: African Diaspora Arts in the Americas
  Study of the transmission of African artistry in the Caribbean, South America, and the United States from the period of slavery to the present. Topics include Kongo and Yoruba arts and their influence on the arts of Santería, Vodun, and carnival. Also offered as CAS AH 316.
• CAS AA 355: Science, Race, and Society
  Explores social, cultural, and political debates surrounding scientific authority. Focuses on how racial differences come to be understood as "natural" and how scientific practice and social orders impact one another. Also considers how gender, class, and nationality have shaped scientific understandings of racialized bodies and populations. Also offered as CAS SO 355.
• CAS AA 363: 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 363.
• CAS AA 371: African American History
  The history of African Americans from African origins to the present; societies in West and West Central Africa, slavery and freedom in colonial America, Civil War and Reconstruction, freedom and struggles in a globalizing America-Reconstruction, civil rights and beyond. Also offered as CAS HI 298.
• CAS AA 382: History of Religion in Pre-Colonial Africa
  The study of the development of religious traditions in Africa during the period prior to European colonialism. An emphasis on both indigenous religions and the growth and spread of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the continent as a whole. Also offered as CAS HI 349 and CAS RN 382.
• CAS AA 385: Atlantic History
  Examines the various interactions that shaped the Atlantic World, connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas between 1400 and 1800. Begins by defining the political interaction, then emphasizes cultural exchange, religious conversion, and the revolutionary era. Also offered as CAS HI 350.
• CAS AA 388: Black Radical Thought
  Black radical thought in America, Europe, and Africa since the eighteenth century through writings of abolitionists, leaders of revolutions and liberation movements, Black nationalists, and Black socialists. Emphasizes the global nature of the "Black World" and its role in world history. Also offered as CAS HI 361.
• CAS AA 395: Power, Leadership, and Governance in Africa and the Caribbean
  Haitian Revolution; British Caribbean, leadership, governance, and power in Africa during the period of legitimate trade; visionaries, dictators, and nationalist politics in the Caribbean; chiefs, western elites, and nationalism in colonial Africa; road to governance in post-colonial Caribbean and Africa. Also offered as CAS HI 352 and IR 394.
• CAS AA 408: Seminar: Ethnic, Race, and Minority Relations
  Formation and position of ethnic minorities in the United States, including cross-group comparisons from England, Africa, and other parts of the world. Readings and field experience. Also offered as CAS SO 408.
• CAS AA 489: The African Diaspora in the Americas
  Topic for Spring 2015: African American History in Comparative Perspective. African American history in an international framework. Examines development of racial categories during and after the transatlantic trade, Black participation in the wars of independence in the Americas, diverse Black communities in the twentieth century. Also offered as CAS HI 489.
• CAS AA 491: Directed Study in African American Studies
  
• CAS AA 492: Directed Study in African American Studies
  
• CAS AA 501: Topics in African American Literature
  Topic for Fall 2013: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic. Considers the first century of literature written in English by authors of African descent, including Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, and Frederick Douglass. How did these writers represent the early modern world? How did they work to change it? Also offered as CAS EN 579 A1.
• CAS AA 502: Topics in African American Literature
  Topic for Spring 2016: Tracking Changes in the Twentieth-Century African American Novel: Negotiations of Genre and Gender. Readings of Slave Narratives and Neo Slave Narratives, and the Urban Novel. Authors include Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Walter Mosley. Also offered as CAS EN 588.

Back to full list of College of Arts & Sciences