African Diaspora Minor

The African Diaspora* minor is one of four minors that the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity was mandated to develop through a curricular focus on traditionally marginalized, under-represented, or misrepresented groups in the U.S. The point of such a focus is to prepare students to meet the increasingly complex demands of living in a multiracial, multiethnic, and poly-cultural world.

The courses will cover a broad range of issues, from the historically constructed and contested nature of identity to issues of cultural representation and social justice and will allow students to:

• study the Self in relationship to the Other
• use historical and comparative methodologies for developing a contextual understanding of the issues being studied
• combine epistemological /theoretical concerns with an analysis of "real-life" problems as a way to understand the relationship between theory and practice
• develop a critical approach to the processes of knowledge construction
• explore the linkages between U.S. and global politics, economics, culture, etc.             

Required Courses:

CSCR 10600 Intro to African Diaspora                     
CSCR 22300 Intro to Culture, Race, & Ethnicity Concepts                           

Electives:

Policy and Praxis:
Select 3 credits from the following

CSCR 35200 Punishment, Prisons, Democracy

CSCR 43300 Education, Oppression, Liberation (highly recommended)

EDUC 34000 Social and Cultural Foundations of Education

HLTH21300 Wellness: Multicultural Perspectives on Health and Healing

HPS 20500 Critical Health Issues

POLT 31900 Race & US Politics

SOCU 20700 Race and Ethnicity                           

Culture and History:
Select 3 credits from the following

ANTH 10400 Cultural Anthropology

ANTH 2500 Human Variation

CLTC 10000 Introduction to Culture and Communications

CSCR 25000 Hip-Hop Cultures

ENGL 22100 Survey of African American Literature

ENGL 36900 Studies in Multicultural American Literature:

                        The Body in Multicultural Writing of the US

ENGL 47000 Adolescence in Multicultural Lit                            
HIST 20900 Ethnic US since the Civil War                   
HIST 37100 Slavery and the Union 

JAZZ 16100 Survey of Jazz History                                          
MUNM 25900 African American Music                       
MUNM 25600 Bessie Smith to MTV  

Power and Liberation:
Select 3 credits from the following  

CSCR 32400 Critical Race Theories

ENGL 22000 Black Women Writers

IISP 30000 Forces and Resistance in Cultural Contact

POLT 14100 Power: Race, Sex, and Class

POLT 34200 Liberalism and Marxism

POLT 40100 Cuba and Haiti

SOCI 20800 Social Change

SPMM 40700 Sport in the Civil Rights Movement 

Comparative and International:
Select 3 credits from the following

ANTH 39000 Africa

PHIL 34000 Global Ethics

POLT 12900 Introduction to Global Studies

POLT 33200 Africa Through Film: Images and Reality

POLT 34003 Africa Through Film

POLT 34004 Music of African Diaspora

POLT 40200 Elsewheres

All courses are 3 credits, unless otherwise noted.

*By Diaspora we mean a study of Africans in the Americas, that is to say, not only African-Americans, but also people of African descent in the so-called “new world.” We opted against using the term “new world” in the title of the minor itself because of its association with colonialist discourse.