Faculty of Arts & Sciences

This course introduces students to the general outlines of African archeology, history and geography, as well as key concepts in the study of African health, social life , economic situation, arts, and politics. Our aim is to give students a fundamental vocabulary and interdisciplinary methodology for the study of Africa. Throughout, we assume that Africa is not a unique isolate but a continent bubbling with internal diversity, historical change, and cultural connections beyond its shores. The course is open to all students who are interested in exploring various dimensions of African life and cultures in ancient and modern periods.

This introduction to African languages and cultures explores how sub-Saharan Africans use language to understand, organize, and transmit (culture, history, etc.) indigenous knowledge to successive generations. Language serves as a road map to comprehending how social, political, and economic institutions and processes develop: from kinship structures and the evolution of political offices to trade relations and the transfer of environmental knowledge. As a Social Engagement course, AAAS 20 will wed scholarly inquiry and academic study to practical experience and personal involvement in the community. Students will be given the opportunity to study Africans, their languages, and their cultures from the ground up, not only through textbooks and data sets but through personal relationships, cultural participation, and inquisitive explorations of local African heritage communities. Throughout the semester you will be asked to employ video production, ethnographic research, creative writing, "social-portraiture," GIS mapping, and linguistic study as you engage with Africans, their languages, and their cultures. By examining linguistic debates and cultural traditions and interrogating their import in the daily lives of Boston-area Africans, we hope to bridge the divide between grand theories and everyday practices, between intellectual debates and the lived experiences of individuals, between the American academy and the African world. Ultimately, this course aims to place Africans themselves in the center of the academic study of Africa.

Individualized study of Amharic at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Hassaniyah at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Malagasy at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Bemba at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Cape Verdean Creole at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Dinka at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Hausa at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Kinyarwanda at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Oromo at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Tigrinya at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Xhosa at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Krio at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Sudanese Arabic at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Ibibio at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Individualized study of Kikongo at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

Students wishing to enroll must petition the Director of Undergraduate Studies for approval, stating the proposed project, and must have permission of the proposed instructor. Ordinarily, students are required to have taken some coursework as background for their project.

Students wishing to enroll must petition the Director of Undergraduate Studies for approval, stating the proposed project, and must have the permission of the proposed instructor. Ordinarily, students are required to have taken some coursework as background for their project.

Thesis supervision under the direction of a member of the Department.

This course functions, first and foremost, as a map of the major landmarks in twentieth-century black intellectual history. Using primary sources (that is, work written by black intellectuals rather than about them), the course engages the idea of a "black radical tradition". The black radical tradition is bound together as a set of ideas that constructs and reconstructs philosophical and political connections across the rupturing history of black dispossesssion, displacement, and disenfranchisement. The black radical tradition, then, exists in dialectical tension with many of the key idioms of Enlightenment and liberal philosophy (freedom, progress, history, justice, civilization). We pay particular attention to how the black radical tradition has framed the relationship of black history to modernity and global historical developments; how it has posited black selfhood and black liberation over and against attempts to conscript the end of slavery into a seamless narrative about the triumph of liberal values; and finally, whether black desires and black life itself can ever be validated in the midst of ongoing anti-black racism.

Africa has occupied a central place in the making of anthropology as a discipline. If early ethnographic studies of African contexts generated leading theories of society and political organization, contemporary anthropologists made African livelihoods key contexts for understanding modernity, globalization, and the dynamics of late capitalism. Taking "Africa" as both an ideological category of knowledge and power and a geo-political context of life, this course traces the ways in which lives, subjectivities, and intimacies in Africa mediate and are shaped by global historical processes. We examine diverse themes and theories that deal with local and regional economies; kinship and socio-political organization; ritual, sexuality, and the life course; colonial and missionary reforms; labor migration and urbanization; development and witchcraft; law and criminality in the postcolonial state; the effects of market liberalization; and the commodification of African identities. We ask: What do ethnographies of Africa offer us by means of understanding the world at large?

This course explores how discourses and embodied encounters have produced Otherness through racial and ethnic categorizations and how such categories mediate political and economic interventions in the colonial and postcolonial world. How do discourses of racial, ethnic, and cultural difference shape the lived worlds of those they claim to represent? How does alterity emerge and how is it embodied by subjects of difference? And what is the role of globalization, commodification, and consumption in the regeneration, reconfiguration, or erasure of markers of difference? Students will revisit classic texts in postcolonial theory and critical race theory in order to explore how their conceptual insights can be translated into ethnographic practice and historical analysis. If anthropology has long been invested in various categories of difference, this course also sets out to rethink what the discipline can offer towards a critical investigation of the production of alterity in the (post)colonial world.

New technology and democratized access to digital media powerfully impact strategies aiming to heighten global awareness of local issues and are integral to efforts seeking to inspire empathy, political engagement, social activism, and charitable giving. With a focus on race, gender, and identity, this course will explore the portrayal of the human condition across cultures in feature films, documentaries, and photography. Students will have the opportunity to create their own multimedia projects.

This course explores the cultural richness of African American humor through analyses of stand-up, drama, the visual arts and literature from the 19th century onward. Artists include but are not limited to Richard Pryor (and many other important figures in black comedy), the painter Robert Colescott, the artists Kara Walker, writer William Wells Brown, Charles W. Chesnutt, George Schuyler, and Ishmael Reed.

Against the background of radical theories of racial formation and identity politics in America, this course will comparatively explore controversial images of African Americans and Italian Americans in selected films of two of the most important contemporary American filmmakers, Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee. On their road to becoming iconic figures in America's contemporary cinematic and artistic avant-garde, Scorsese and Lee radically transformed received or conventional perceptions of Italian Americans and African Americans in mainstream American film. In this course, we will explore both similar and contrastive styles and approaches by the two filmmakers. Special attention will be paid to popular and scholarly discourses that the selected films of Scorsese and Lee have generated.

This course surveys African American History from the first migrations of Africans to the Americas during the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the eve of the U.S. Civil War. Atlantic in scope, our studies will consider black US history in the context of broader regional variations, highlighting both the distinctive and the unexceptional features of black society, culture, and politics. Lectures, readings, discussions, and assignments will emphasize several key themes: the indispensability of slavery to the colonial development of the Americas, the entrenchment of race as a mode of categorical belonging and discrimination, the continuity of multivalent struggles for dignity, freedom, and equality, and the shaping force of gender, geography, and imperial warfare in the transformations of the period. Special attention will be paid to the interpretive possibilities of representing this history in the form of data, argumentative prose, storytelling, and works of visual art.

A study of African American practices of performance from the 19th century through the present. This seminar will meet twice each week: first, in a classroom to discuss scholarship on black performance, and second, in a Harvard archive to work directly with primary materials. Topics include abolitionism, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and hiphop.

Today 1 in 3 African American boys will spend part of their lives behind bars, a profound reflection of the limitations of law and democracy in the United States. By examining the connections between race and the development of legal and penal systems over time, this course investigates the historical process that eventually gave rise to the mass incarceration of black and Latino Americans in the late twentieth century. The course is structured according to the major punitive changes that often emerged after the expansion of constitutional and civil rights for African Americans. Our historical consideration will provide us the necessary background to address the ongoing consequences of racial disparities in the criminal justice system and the momentous public policy implications of this dynamic.

Why is the United States more segregated today than ever before? By examining the impact of social, political, and economic transformations in the decades after the civil rights movement, this course addresses historical developments that functioned to increase segregation and income stratification in African American communities in the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

This course examines the major fiction and nonfiction works of Richard Wright from a literary, philosophical, and political perspective. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to this wide-ranging and canonical American author, contextualizing him within the broader tradition of black letters. Readings include but are not limited to Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, Black Boy, American Hunger, 12 Million Black Voices, The Outsider, Black Power, The Color Curtain, White Man Listen!, and Eight Men. The course also explores major influences in Wright's development including the work of Marx, Sartre, and Freud.

Since Emancipation African American religious leaders and their congregants have employed religion not only as a means of achieving social and political mobility, but also as a means of securing economic growth and independence in light of the conditions created under American capitalism. These approaches have varied from the pragmatic strategies of Booker T. Washington, the socialist leanings of Rev. George Washington Woodbey, the "poor people's campaign" of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the increasingly popular prosperity ministries of today's neo-Pentecostal and Word of Faith communities. Such changes in strategies often coincide with changes in America's political economy over the past century. This course attempts to interrogate the development of these various strands of economic thought using texts by scholars like Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism), E. Franklin Frazier (The Black Bourgeoisie), and David Harvey (An Introduction to Neoliberalism) as anchoring texts to frame the social, economic and political contexts in which these strategies emerge. Other texts, including autobiographies, ethnographies, and histories offer details of how these religious understandings are framed and practiced.

An exploration of recent fiction and films on the African and Caribbean immigrant communities of Europe and North America.

Hiphop is a global phenomenon that influences social life far beyond the music and entertainment industries. Yet beyond descriptions and critiques of its mass appeal, few have considered hip-hop's development of standards and evaluations across all artistic areas and culture. Moreover, the consequences of an audience trained in the changing standards of hip-hop and charged with upholding them, has not been thoroughly explored. This course provides a critical examination of hip-hop in the US and its role as a cultural, political and artistic resource for youth. It will explore the artistic, social, cultural, linguistic and political implications of hip-hop. It is taught from the perspective of cultural and linguistic anthropology and media studies. Each year the course will include a special topic with guest lecturers. Topics include: gender and sexuality, spirituality, health, psychology, philosophy, education, politics, art, nationalism, etc.

This course examines how Hiphop political and social activism has changed how young Americans understand citizenship and active participation in society. We draw on prior research on youth activism in the U.S. and the racial and social class critique introduced in what is known as the `golden era' of Hiphop. The `golden era' occurred between the late 1980s and the mid 1990s. It is generally described as a period of experimentation in music and the introduction of socially conscious lyrics. It was during this period that social activists argued that Hiphop culture would lead to social change. In fact several Hiphop related organizations did develop including: Russell Simmons Hiphop Summit, League of Pissed Off Voters, Bad Boy's Vote or Die campaign and Black August. The overall influence of hiphop activism became apparent in 2005, when Katrina devastated the Gulf areas. For example, Lil Wayne's "Tie My Hands" told the heartbreaking, yet important, story of New Orleans' destruction after Hurricane Katrina and the political mismanagement that compounded the tragedy. The movement against police conduct in Ferguson has also resulted in Hiphop's response. While many are supportive, established leaders lament what they perceive to be a lack of leadership. This course addresses key questions: How do we define activism in the age of Hiphop? What is the relationship and differences between movements like Freedom Summer and Katrina and Ferguson activism. In addition to the traditional aspects of assigned readings, lectures and class discussions, this class will include a significant research component on Katrina and Ferguson protests. There will also be visits with experts in the field, and several activities beyond the classroom.

This course is a historical survey of the centuries-old Christian traditions in Africa. It begins with an outline of the trajectory of Christianity's origins and presence in Africa from its beginning in ancient Mediterranean lands through the early period of European missionaries to the contemporary period. The course provides the ethnography of the old mission churches, indigenous independent African churches, and contemporary evangelical and Pentecostal Charismatic movements. The course explores the role of Christianity in relation to historical, cultural, social, and material realities of the African continent. It examines a broad range of topical issues related to conversion, missionization, and the development and growth of Christian agencies in Africa in relation to the construction of social, theological, and religious identities, as well as Christianity's response to cultural pluralism, nationhood, citizenship, and civil society.

This seminar explores historical, theoretical, methodological, and conceptual issues central to the study of indigenous religions of the world. It examines the critique of indigeneity and explores emerging topics about the role that religion plays in indigenous peoples' lives, communities, and societies. Special topics will explore issues related to land, environment, conversion, health, the state, gender, aggression, violence, justice, and human rights. The seminar examines the interface of indigenous religions and modernity, colonial and postcolonial conditions, and local and global forces that shape the practices of indigenous traditions in various regions of the world.

This course examines anthropological theory, research and practice that relates to constructions of blackness as well as African-diasporic identities. African-diasporic contributions to anthropology as well as anthropological research and theory concerning Africana identities will be explored. This course introduces students to basic concepts and qualitative methods in the social sciences including ethnographic fieldwork and the analysis of face-to-face communication. It focuses on the details of everyday activities across a number of communities and interactive environments. It is meant to provide a bridge between communications, the social sciences, linguistics and socio-cultural anthropology through the introduction of concepts and analytical techniques that privilege observation, participation, video recording and transcription of spontaneous interaction (as opposed to experimental tasks or introspection).

While diseases are often imagined to be scientific, medical conditions, they are also social constructs. In the nineteenth century, for example, the condition of Dysaesthesia Aethiopis (an ailment that made its sufferers "mischievous") was considered nearly universal among free blacks. Today, diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis are often associated with personal attributes, while the social forces at work to structure risk for acquiring these illnesses are glossed over. This course examines the ways people reproduce and challenge contemporary visions of society through the lens of social injury, and in the process cultivate subjectivities that are marked by race, gender, class.

This class explores the ways in which both race and class are implicated in the development and practice of religion in the U.S. Through historical, anthropological and sociological works we explore the theoretical underpinnings of race and class and ponder their influence upon varying expressions of Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

An advanced seminar in theories and processes of theory-making by queer people of color in the US from the Harlem Renaissance through the present. Topics include feminism, AIDS, spirituality, community, migration, affect, and performance. Texts include works by Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzladua, Marlon Riggs, Cathy Cohen, E. Patrick Johnson, Jose Esteban Munoz, Cheryl Dunye, David Eng, Sharon Bridgforth, Omi Osun Joni Jones, Roderick Ferguson, and Jewelle Gomez.

This course is a basic introduction to the history and phenomenology of traditional religions of the African peoples. Using diverse methodological and theoretical approaches, the course will explore various forms of experiences and practices that provide a deep understanding and appreciation of the sacred meaning of African existence: myth, ritual arts, and symbols selected from West, East, Central, and Southern Africa.

This course examines the changing place of medicine in the long history of modernity. Focusing on key moments - the birth of the clinic, the colonial frontier (where biomedicine met its therapeutic "others"), the consolidation of medicine as self-governing profession, the age of genomics and biocapital - it explores the distinctive role of medical knowledge in the making of modernist persons, identities, and social worlds. Readings are drawn from across the social sciences, with material from Africa, Europe, and North America. Part lecture, part discussion, the class will be open to upper-level undergraduates and graduates.

This seminar focuses on biographical and autobiographical writings in a historical examination of the role of the individual in the American legal process. We will seek to understand how specific African Americans (as lawyers, judges, and litigants) made a difference-how their lives serve as a "mirror to America"-and also to understand the ways personal experience informs individual perspectives on the law and justice.

How do we understand development in Africa? This introductory course explores the question of sustainable development through a number of methods and perspectives, such as education, health, governance, (post-)conflict, and human rights. The course will examine the challenges of development, understood as the interaction between economic, environmental, political, and social processes. Students will gain the tools needed to examine African contexts today, including policy choices and the use of indicators and comparative analysis.

This course focuses on the history of "race" as a category of difference and explores why "race" has become a globally-accepted idiom to classify humans. It assesses the prominent roles that science and scientists have played in the process of naturalizing "race" and analyzes how "scientific" theories of race were developed and disseminated globally in the modern period. We trace the formation of these ideas in the North Atlantic, their diffusion to various areas of the world, and the manner in which cultural and political elites adopted or challenged them. We will devote considerable time to the emergence of eugenics, the science of racial improvement, in Europe, the Americas, and Africa and study the process of institutionalization of this science in Nazi Germany and elsewhere, including the United States. A final section of the course discusses the impact of contemporary science on ideas of race. Students in this class will work with texts and archival materials related to these scientists, some of whom were Harvard faculty.

In a story titled Africa Rising (2011), The Economist argued that the continent epitomizes both the "transformative promise of [capitalist ] growth and its bleakest dimensions. This workshop will explore Africa's changing place in the world - and the new economies, legalities, socialities, and cultural forms that have arisen there. It will also interrogate the claim that the African present is a foreshadowing of processes beginning to occur elsewhere; that, therefore, it is a productive source of theory about current conditions world-wide. The workshop, open to faculty and students, will meet Mondays from 6:00-7:30. 15 students will be permitted to take it as a course; they will also meet on Mondays, 12:00-1:30. Grades will be based on participation and a term essay.

The Entrepreneurship in Africa (EIA) course, AAAS 212 is designed for students who have a passion for development in Africa. The goal of the course is to inspire and equip potential (social) entrepreneurs with knowledge and skills necessary for driving economic and social development in Africa. Students will examine challenges and innovation in various spheres, dialogue on solutions and identify viable routes to leapfrog change on the continent. The course will expose students to the important role of leadership and how entrepreneurs can leverage their ideas to create policy-level change. The course is designed to run as a seminar course, featuring faculty from across and beyond Harvard. A distinctive feature of the AAAS 212 course is the sessions with successful entrepreneurs from Africa who will come in to share practical experience, interact with students and reinforce learning. Students will form teams to develop a project or business plan that address enterprise and development needs. The course is open for cross-registration to all Harvard graduate students, limited by capacity to college students.

This proseminar introduces students to some of the main themes and core literature in the history of modern Africa. The focus of this proseminar will be on the major questions that have dominated the historiography, as well as current and future trends in the field. Sources and methods will be an implicit part of this course, as will theory, ranging from classical theorists, such as Marx and Weber, to more recent theorists such as the Comaroffs, Chakrabarty, and others. This course is designed to let students sample ways of interpreting the histories of modern Africa, and to provide a framework that will enable them to think critically when reading the field on their own.

This yearlong seminar introduces students to current questions and debates in the study of race and ethnicity in Latin America. The course analyzes how different "racial formations," incorporating different combinations of indigenous, African, and European peoples and their descendants, have developed in Latin America since colonial times. Through the systematic comparison of several cases, the course discusses how ideas of race and nation have interacted in Latin America, shaping opportunities for mobilization and public policies; how racial identities have been formed and invoked for different cultural and political purposes; and how ideas of race and ethnicity have contributed to the stratification of Latin American societies, which are among the most unequal in the world. A final section looks at the creation of transnational networks of cooperation by indigenous and black activists and how their exchanges have shaped ideas of race and forms of mobilization in their respective societies. Students in this class will have the opportunity to meet with the authors of some of the works we are reading.

This seminar introduces students to the booming historiography of slavery and the law in Latin America and the United States. Earlier generations of scholars of race and slavery (Frank Tannenbaum, Stanley Elkins) relied heavily on the law to draw sharp contrasts between U.S. and Latin American slavery. Although the social historians of the 1970s and 1980s were highly critical of this approach, due to its lack of attention to economic and social factors, in the last twenty years scholars have turned again to the study of slave legal regimes. The most recent scholarship, however, does not approach the legal history of slavery through the study of legal codes, as previous scholars used to do, but through slaves' own legal initiatives and actions. In short, these scholars analyze how slaves themselves participated in the creation of legal institutions, understandings, and "rights." How do slave regimes in the United States and Latin America compare in light of this recent scholarship? New works of comparative synthesis are just beginning to appear.

Students are introduced to major themes, classic texts, and representative current work in the broad interdisciplinary field of African and African American Studies, with a focus on the Humanities (Literature, Art, Music, and Religion).

Allows students to work with an individual member of the faculty in a weekly tutorial.

Requires students to identify a major essay and carry it out under the guidance of a member of the faculty. Graduate students may use this course to begin to work on the research paper that is a requirement of admission to candidacy.

Gikuyu is a Bantu language spoken by Kenya's most populous ethnic group. The Gikuyu are among Africa's most recognized peoples because of the Mau Mau freedom fighters who were mainly Gikuyu.

Advanced reading in Gikuyu.

A study of the lingua franca of East Africa at the elementary level. Contact hours supplemented by language lab sessions. Emphasis on written expression, reading comprehension, and oral fluency.

Advanced reading in Swahili.

Twi is one of the regional languages of the Akan speaking peoples of Ghana, constituting the largest ethnic group in Ghana. Twi is fast becoming the lingua franca of the country. This course aims to help students acquire the Twi language at the basic or elementary level.

Advanced reading in Twi.

Yoruba is spoken in the West African countries of Nigeria, Benin Republic, and parts of Togo and Sierra Leone, therefore constituting one of the largest single languages in sub-Saharan Africa. Yoruba is also spoken in Cuba and Brazil. Students will acquire the Yoruba language at the basic or elementary level.

Advanced reading in Yoruba.