Undergraduate Program

Framed as a historical introduction to Islamic traditions, this course will explore the political, social, and intellectual histories of Islam as a global tradition from its emergence through the modern period. The goal of the course is to introduce students to the central texts, personalities, events, geographies, institutions, and schools of thought that make up Islamic histories. We will begin by tracing Islam’s political history as it spreads from the Arabian Peninsula and encounters diverse cultures and peoples, before moving on to discuss the development of intellectual sciences and social institutions. In the process of studying Islamic histories, the course will engage several critical issues in the academic study of Islam such as orientalism, authority and writing history, authenticity, and gendered representations of Muslim societies.

Location

(TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

This course invites you to learn about Black history, life, and experience through the field of Black Studies. During the 1960s, a wave of student activism — amid a period marked by broader social activism, Black freedom struggle, and decolonial movements — echoed across the United States. Legacies of chattel slavery, colonialism, and racial capitalism were being challenged in all edges of American society. Through sit-ins, strikes, and protests, activists along with community members and organizers sought to compel colleges and universities to recognize the importance of studying Black life, history, and culture. This grassroots movement laid the foundation which led to the formation of Black Studies as a field across campuses.

This course will begin by first establishing a shared understanding of Black Studies, including its historical origins and key theories, concepts, methods, and debates. We then draw on insights that span the humanities and social sciences, including literature, popular culture, music and engagement with cultural studies, history, political theory, and ethnography. Ultimately, we will bridge the historical and contemporary, exploring how insights from Black Studies are essential for addressing present-day challenges and struggles for justice. 

Location

(MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM)

In this introductory course, students will engage with a variety of musical genres, instruments, and performance techniques from different areas of the world. Through reading assignments, listening examples, film clips, and participatory activities, students will study how people in difference places engage with music as a sonic and social practice. Students will also learn how to write about music as a form of social practice through short reading responses and structured essay assignments.

Location

(TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

The course will study the Black American Christian musical beginnings and includes forms of worship, early musical practices, the Spiritual, evolution of Gospel. An examination of ante-bellum musical activities follows including secular song types, character of the folk music with respect to poetic and musical form, language and themes. Attention will be given to significant literary and aesthetic developments, especially during the Harlem Renaissance and the poetry of several writers of that era will be surveyed. The course will treat Blues, its origins evolution through the 1940s. Surveys of classical music forms from the 18th to mid-20th century; music of the theater from minstrelsy to Broadway; precursors of jazz, the syncopated dance orchestra and brass bands; early jazz to bebop round out the course offerings.

Location

(MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

After a brief review of the primary features of pre-European African society, we will examine the affect of the 'Middle Passage' -- the transportation of enslaved Africans to the Western Hemisphere. We will then focus on the process of 'Americanization'; as the Africans became African-Americans. The struggle for freedom and citizenship will conclude our survey. The main course readings will be a representative sample of African-American autobiographies, and short selections from a secondary text. Using the autobiographies as historical source material, we will produce a brief history of the values and cultural practices of Africans in America, and the ways in which African-Americans adapted to and shaped American life and society.

Location

(TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

In Black Gospel Music, we will examine the historical development of gospel music, beginning with 19th century slave spirituals and ending with an examination of 21st century gospel music practices. Throughout this course, we will attempt to answer the following questions: what is gospel music how are the parameters of the genre defined? How has gospel music participated in constructions of black identity and spiritual formation? How has the sound and presentation of gospel music evolved, i.e. instrumentation, vocal aesthetic, performance persona, and technique?

Lectures and discussions will also highlight some of the perpetually controversial tensions that have come to define gospel music history and culture. Such tensions involve the commercialization of gospel music, the ambiguity of lyrical meaning, gospel music's flirtations with sensuality and sexuality, and debates about what constitutes authentic gospel music.

Location

(MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This introductory survey focuses on the Spanish and Portuguese conquests and colonization of the region that we now know as Latin America. Contrary to popular belief, the Conquest was constantly negotiated. Indigenous and African rebels, French and Dutch pirates and religious minorities eroded the Iberian hold on this vast territory. Primary source readings are an important component to this class and will introduce you to the writings of Inca nobles, Spanish conquistadors, and free African merchants. As a result, our course focuses on the vibrant societies defined as much by their cultural mixture as by their inherent political, social and economic inequality. The course ends with a brief glimpse at the Latin American independence movements. No prior knowledge of Latin American history or Spanish/Portuguese language is necessary for this course. 

Location

(MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course investigates the relationship between humans, machines, and urban environments by examining how the industrial history of the Rust Belt, particularly in Detroit, has shaped music and sound culture. Through practice-based research, students will conduct field recordings of their local urban areas and transform these sounds into musical compositions using non-screen-based hardware devices.  Not Open to Seniors.  Studio Art lab supply fee applied. ​

Location

(MW 10:25AM - 1:05PM)

The Eastman Mbira Ensemble provides a hands-on introduction to the ancient and sophisticated musical tradition of the Shona mbira of Zimbabwe. Visiting Zimbabwean guest artists will also offer students the opportunity to delve more deeply into traditional musical practices and their cultural and spiritual context. Songs are taught aurally so no musical experience or training is required. May be repeated for credit.

Location

(M 6:30PM - 8:00PM)

Led by Master Drummer Fana Bangoura, the West African Drumming Ensemble is dedicated to the dynamic percussive traditions of Guinea. The ensemble combines the iconic djembe hand drum with a trio of drums played with sticks, known as dunun, sangban, and kenkeni. The powerful, multi-part relationships established by this trio of drums provide a rhythmic foundation for the ensemble, enabling djembe players to develop technique in executing both accompaniment and solo parts. Drawing upon his experience as a soloist with the internationally acclaimed groups Les Percussions de Guinée and Les Ballets Africains, Fana engages ensemble players with a wide repertory of music from various regions of Guinea, including the rhythms of the Susu, Malinke, and Baga language groups.

Location

(MW 7:30PM - 8:45PM)

Drake, Sexxy Redd, Kodak Black and several other contemporary rap artists operate within long traditions of hip hop that make religious claims.  This course provides an overview of histories and contexts of hip hop genres (trap, conscious, dance/party, mumble, drill…) in correlation with contexts of Black religious groups (Black Israelites, Moorish Science Temple of America, Five Percenters, Christianity, Nation of Islam, Yoruba, Atheism…).  This course will be interactive, consisting of listening parties, (guests) lectures, DJ presentations, discussions, and a field trip to a Black religious and/or hip hop experience. By the end of the class, students will have a playlist that professes a religious claim.

Location

(MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

An art form of self-defense with aerobic and dance elements that brings together these harmony of forces. Through looking into history, movement and culture, students will gain self-confidence, power, flexibility, and endurance in a positive environment with proper progressions. Open to those of any background and fitness level. Capoeira allows you to balance the body, mind, and soul by enabling one to break through limits and revitalize oneself for everyday life.

Location

(MW 6:30PM - 7:45PM)

Sansifanyi is an ensemble that provides various performance opportunities both on and off-campus for intermediate and advanced students of African dance & drumming. Instructor Kerfala Bangoura trains ensemble members in a performance style that integrates dance, drumming, vocal song, and narrative elements. Dancers who enroll in Sansifanyi will learn choreographic techniques for West African dance and gain experience dancing as soloists. Dancers will also learn focus on rhythmic timing and on drumming while dancing. Drummers enrolled in Sansifanyi will learn extended percussion arrangements and techniques for accompanying choreography. They will also learn how to play the breaks required of lead drummers.
Prerequisites: Audition on First day of class OR for Drummers one of the following: MUSC168A, MUSC168B, MUSC146. For Dancers of the following: DAN181&182, DAN 283, DAN 253, DAN 285. Email kerfala.bangoura@rochester.edu with questions.

Location

(TR 6:45PM - 8:15PM)

This is an undergraduate course designed to explore the role that race and ethnicity play in American politics. In this class students will focus on the big questions surrounding race: What is race? Can race be measured and, if so, how? How have questions about race and ethnicity shaped American legal, social, cultural, and political institutions? How have Americans thought about race and immigration throughout the 21st century, and how have these opinions shaped political engagement and behavior? This course will focus on political science theories and research about race and politics, though we will also draw on work from history, sociology, law, and economics.

Location

(MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

American Culture? Is there such a thing? This class will explore, discuss and debate this question and some more: If there is an American culture, how can we tackle it? How does anthropology, famous for its research away from home, help us understand current major debates in the United States? How do outsiders understand and evaluate American culture? Is there a return of religion to American public life? How do Americans address power relations, class, gender, ethnicity and race? To tackle these questions we will use assigned readings, films, and current events seen through print and electronic media.

Location

(F 10:00AM - 12:00PM)

This course provides an introduction to the key concepts and theories in the field of Black Geographies. We will draw on a range of interdisciplinary texts to explore how Black communities continue to shape and interact with space, place, and the environment. In doing so, we will pay particular attention to Black place making, memory work, and spatial politics. In addition, we will explore how the field of Black Geographies provides us with tools to further understand political struggles against legacies of anti-Blackness, enslavement, colonialism, carcerality, and policing. 

This course has three main areas of focus: First, we will read foundational texts in order to establish a shared basis for what constitutes Black Geographies, as well as the origins of the field of study. Next, we will work through key branches of Black Geographies, with focus areas that include racial capitalism; plantation logics; diaspora; gender and sexuality; food; ecology, carcerality and policing; and urban space. Lastly, drawing on Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s premise that “freedom is a place”, we will explore the transformative visions of Abolition Geography. 

Location

(TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course is a study of Black Paris, as imagined by three generations of Black cultural producers from the United States, the Caribbean and Africa. Paris is a space of freedom and artistic glory that African American writers, soldiers and artists were denied back home. For colonized Africans and Antilleans, Paris was the birthplace of Negritude, the cultural renaissance informed by the dreams and teachings of the Harlem Renaissance.

Location

(MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM)

 What is the sound of Black womanhood? How do we hear and listen to Black women? Where do we hear sonic Black womanhood? When, where, and how does sound become (un)gendered and/or queered? Are we really listening? In this course, we will explore the diverse and multivocal sonic cultures of Black women, femmes, and gender-oppressed people. We learn from the vocality of early twentieth century blues women singers, locate the often erased yet long history of Black women in country music, wrestle with the complex politics of Black women’s sexuality in popular music (in genres such as disco, hip hop, and pop), and listen to the screams, the noise, the break, and the grunt as emitted by Black women, femmes, and gender-oppressed voices. We expand the definition of “sound” and contemplate its emergence across critical and cultural texts including albums, films, television, theatre, performance, literature, and more. Working with methods in sound studies, performance studies, and music/musicology, this course will “listen in detail,” as performance scholar Alexandra T. Vasquez offers, to the multiple ways that Black women create sound.

Location

(MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course provides a comprehensive exploration of the historical and contemporary intersections of race, class, and policing in the United States. By examining the evolution of policing from its earliest forms in slave patrols to modern-day policing practices, students will gain insights into how policing and criminalization have shaped, and continue to shape, society. The course will analyze the roles of policing in various social and historical contexts, such as colonial policing, labor movements, immigration control, Black Freedom Movements, and the War on Drugs. Special emphasis will be placed on understanding the expansion of police resources and power over time and its impact on Black and marginalized communities. Discussions will include the growth of abolitionist movements and community-based safety approaches amid recent activism in response to police violence. 

Location

(TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

Experience dancing African styles from traditional cultures of Guinea, West Africa, as well as studying cultural history and context from which and in which they are practiced and performed. Technical emphasis will focus on musicality and complex choreographic arrangement. Students will practice dances and drum songs. Required outside work includes performance attendance, video viewing, text and article analysis, research and written work.

Location

(MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Experience dancing African styles from traditional cultures of Guinea, West Africa, as well as studying cultural history and context from which and in which they are practiced and performed. Technical emphasis will focus on musicality and complex choreographic arrangement. Students will practice dances and drum songs. Required outside work includes performance attendance, video viewing, text and article analysis, research and written work.

Location

(F 3:30PM - 4:45PM)

Biographies of Emancipation in the Black World explores the sites and emblematic figures who contributed to the emancipation of the Black world, understood here as the African continent and peoples of African descent. Ghana, under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah, assumed a decisive role in the articulation of the narrative of black emancipation. The course introduces students to charismatic figures such as Kwame Nkrumah, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela who all have articulated a powerful network of black international to counter racism in the United States of America, apartheid in South Africa or colonialism on the African continent. Cultural producers, activists and writers such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Billie Holiday, Lorraine Hansberry, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, and Maryse Condé have contributed advance the global struggle for the emancipation of the Black world.

Location

(MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course focuses on the historical experiences of Africans and their descendants in the Latin American region. Beginning with the Declaration of Haitian Independence in 1804, we will analyze the complexity of Black participation in the wars for (and against) independence. The course then shifts to Cuba’s 1844 Escalera Rebellion and the diaspora of free people of color. The abolition of slavery, passage of free womb laws and struggle for political inclusion will lead us to Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, while arguing for an Afro-Latino experience that transcends national borders. Our historical analysis necessarily includes the study of visual, musical, and literary representations of Blackness in the twentieth century through the poetry of Nicolas Guillen and others. Students will write two essays, including a research paper on a topic of their choice.

Location

(MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

Have you ever wondered about what is really going on when we talk about outer space? Are narratives about outer space and space travel just about going from one place to another—like traveling on a train from New York City to Canada, or is something else going on here? Calling all Trekkies! In this class, we will dig deep and go “far out” to answer these questions in the context of what it means to represent and dream of space travel in the context of ecology, race, gender, sexuality, and class. From Star Trek to Star Wars, to Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series and Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon album, this class engages film, television, music, literature, and social media that represent intergalactic travel, aliens, and narratives of “first contact.” Emphasizing creativity of thought and form, this class is both a fascinating and fun engagement that brings together quantum analytical modalities and discussion to enable a deeper understanding of what drives our human obsession with space and how it shows up in our cultural production.

Location

(TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

Dynamic dance traditions of Guinea, West Africa. Accompanied by live music, students learn footwork and movements for several rhythms and acquire familiarity with the physical stance common to many styles of West African dance. Learn to execute movements together with the rhythmic foundation provided by our drummers and become familiar with the origins and cultural significance of each dance, and the songs that accompany them.

Location

(MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

What does it mean to travel while Black? How have historically marginalized communities created their own sense of pleasure through mobility, gathering, and exploration? If tourism is a “desire machine,” what desires of self and other are present in Black travel? In this course, we explore the history of Black Americans’ leisure travel and the political stakes of such actions. We study the historical realities of traveling under segregation such as the Green Book and Black beaches as well as contemporary trends such as Passport Bros and the Black Travel Movement. We approach the tourism encounter in its various forms including domestic and international; pleasure and heritage; all-inclusive and eco-tourism. In doing so, the course takes seriously how Black Americans have engaged in the alternative world-building possibilities of leisure travel through space and time.

Location

(MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

What did it mean to free yourself from enslavement in different parts of the Americas? What constitutes success? How does agency, resistance, and complicity emerge in the transition from unfreedom to freedom? What are the legacies of such actions in the contemporary moment? By focusing on flight from enslavement, we will trace the contours of colonization in the Americas, how maroons challenged the naturalness of the colonial order and shaped larger geopolitical relations among colonial powers. First, we will take a nuanced approach to broad themes such as freedom, independence, and resistance as we examine case studies from Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America. We will then explore how these narratives of freedom and resistance have been used in the present day for a variety of purposes from commemoration to tourism to activism. By following the lives and afterlives of maroons in the Americas, this course asks us to critically engage with the often ignored co-authors of the hemisphere’s past, present, and future.

Location

(MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course will examine the varieties of thought about, and practice of, civil disobedience within social movements, with an emphasis on contemporary activism. When, why, and how do communities choose to push back against structures of violence and injustice? Throughout the semester, we will study canonical “texts” of modern resistance history – speeches, writing, direct action protests, art – and will consider the role of this form of counter-conduct within larger campaign strategies to build power from below and get free.

Location

(T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

The purpose of this course is to explore what has been called "democratic community economics" (Jessica Gordon-Nembhard) and its relevance for addressing deep, persistent political-economic problems in African American Communities. The focus will be on a set of alternative institutional arrangements including producer and consumer cooperatives, community development credit unions and community land trusts and specifically their roots in African American politics, their various current manifestations, and their potential contemporary policy relevance for promoting sustainable, local, community development.

Location

(MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course explores photography in Africa and the African Diaspora. We will focus mainly on black
photographers and the ways in which they have used their camera to capture the contours of black
life during key historical moments. Through a case study approach, we will learn how to read
photographs and will pay attention to artists’ image making and curatorial practices. We will
explore both social documentary photography traditions as well as portraiture and art photography

Location

(T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

Sansifanyi offers experienced dancers the opportunity to study West African dance forms as well as studying cultural history and context from which and in which they are performed at a professional level. This course requires a high degree of student commitment. Dancers who enroll in Sansifanyi will learn choreographic techniques for West African dance and gain experience dancing as soloists. They will also focus on rhythmic timing, and on advanced skills such as how to combine movement with drumming. In addition to the time students spend in class, dancers in the ensemble are expected to spend several hours per week researching, reading, writing, viewing videos, text and article analysis, practicing, and choreographing various rhythms, songs, movements, and sequences. Dancers must also be available for performances both on and off campus throughout the semester.   Clusters: Improvisation and the Creative Process, Movement and Culture, Dance and Performance. Prerequisite: Audition on first day of class or for dancers, one of the following: DANC 181/182, DANC 283, DANC 253, DANC 285: For drummers one of the following: MUSC 168A, MUSC 168B, MUSC 146

Location

(TR 6:45PM - 8:15PM)

Mexico and Brazil are countries with complex cultural, racial and ethnic histories. This seminar will explore the process by which these two countries grappled with their diverse populations during the modern era and how policies and attitudes impacted citizens, residents and perceptions. The course will investigate the limitations that arose from Mexico’s pursuit of a “cosmic race” and how the myth of Brazil’s “racial democracy” was created and dispelled. We will debate the durability of these constructions and the limitations that arise from cross-country comparisons. The course will also challenge students to think theoretically regarding the salience of racial binaries. In addition to thought-provoking scholarly studies, students will read translated discourses from leading Mexican and Brazilian intellectuals and will generate their own final research papers. 

Location

(T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

Independent study project on a topic(s) not covered by the existing curriculum. Proposal for an independent study is developed and agreed upon between the student and a member of the University faculty. 

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed through the Independent Study Form​

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

Experience in an applied setting, supervised on site. Internships are approved, sponsored, and graded by a member of the University faculty based on mutually agreed upon requirements.

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)