The Black Experience Through Culture

• Course Code: 01:014:302
• Semester(s) Offered: Spring
• Credits: 3

This course will survey the work of Spike Lee through screenings, lectures and group discussions. Students will expand their understanding of the narrative film genre as well as that of storytelling. This course will also examine the use of film as a medium and conduit for change, conversation and understanding. Spike Lee's films, both narrative and non-narrative will be compared and contrasted for their similarities and differences. In addition, students will gain first-hand experience with the film industry through guest lecturers including actors, filmmakers, casting directors and set designers.

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• Course Code: 01:014:317
• Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Spring
• Credits: 3

This course explores the historical role that humor and comedy have played in African American political resistance, cultural history, and creative expression, from the era of Slavery to the contemporary moment. We will examine works from a wide array of genres - including folktales, essays, short stories, Spoken Word poetry, stand-up routines, sketchshows, sitcoms, and films - to understand how comedy can serve as a vehicle for social and political commentary and change. We will study the comedic profiles and works of key Black artists who have distinguished themselves in the fields of humor and entertainment, including: Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Dick Gregory, Moms Mabley, Ishmael Reed, Chester Himes, Isabel Sanford, Sherman Hemsley, Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, Whoopi Goldberg, Queen Latifah, Wanda Sykes, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Martin Lawrence, Chris Rock, Bernie Mac, Kevin Hart, Mo’Nique, Boots Riley, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Anthony Anderson, to name a few.

• Course Code: 01:014:386
• Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer
• Credits: 3

Sports touch our lives unlike almost anything else. Apart from perhaps music, nothing reaches all segments of society simultaneously to the degree that sports do. Both the custodial staff and the board of directors of America’s top companies stop their lives to watch the same Super Bowl. Countries at war order cease-fires during international sports competitions so that their nations can devote complete attention to sports. In 2006, for example, the civil war that had been waged in the Ivory Coast for four years took a hiatus as both sides of the conflict paused to celebrate and support the nation’s national soccer team in World Cup play. The widespread penetration of sports into our lives, regardless of our station, makes sports a unique tool to examine people’s racial, economic, political, and social interactions.

In this course, we will look at the role that sports have played in African Americans ’quest for freedom, equality, and full recognition as human beings in America. We will examine the notion that African Americans ’success on fields of play translates into success in the larger American society. Perhaps most importantly, we will also examine the role race plays in sports and the relationship between capital and labor within the $71 billion American sports industry.

• Course Code: 01:014:304
• Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer
• Credits: 3

Afromusicology explores the evolution of Black music in America beginning with the Ring Shouts and Work Songs of enslaved blacks circa 1619 to the current Hip Hop Era of the 21st Century. This course will examine Africanisms that shaped African American music, culture and oral tradition. Students will recognize the evolution of the Blues, Jazz, R&B, Soul, Funk and Hip-Hop as art forms and their impact as a vehicle and voice for social equality and protest against discrimination and oppression in American society past and present. Within this context, their relevance and impact will be viewed relative to the African American experience, and how Black music has helped to shape and define African American culture in particular and American culture in general.

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