Undergraduate Program

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

Morey Room 501 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

Engaging an extraordinary diversity of sound, this course explores some of the world's major traditions of musical performance, including classical, ritual, and ceremonial music from around the globe. Through weekly reading and listening assignments, we will study musical sound structures within a variety of social, political, and religious contexts, investigating relationships between music, people, and place. In addition to well-known modes of music making, we will look at many fascinating but less familiar forms of musical expression, such as aboriginal pop music from Australia, the throat-singing traditions of Tuva and Mongolia, and the freedom songs of South Africa. The course will culminate in a semester-long final project.

Location

Strong Auditorium Room 011 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

Location

Lattimore Room 210 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course will examine the relationship between the religious and theological beliefs of African American musicians and their musical artistry. We will journey through various African American music genres of the 20th centuryblues, jazz, gospel, soul, funk, hip hop, etcand will study how religion has influenced performance style, lyrical content, vocality, melodic and harmonic contour, among a host of other factors.

Location

O'brien Hall Room 105 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This introductory survey examines the history of African Americans from 1860 to the present. We will examine African Americans’ pursuit of freedom and justice as defined during different periods. Topics of study include the Reconstruction era; formation of Jim Crow segregation; Black migrations; the Civil Rights and Black Power movements; and the contemporary “color line” in the United States. Students will explore the impact of Black activism and cultural expression on national and international politics. By the end of the semester, students will understand key concepts and events that shaped post-emancipation Black history.

Location

Morey Room 504 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

This course surveys African American literature of a variety of genres—primarily fiction, poetry, and non-fiction essays—from the early 20th century to the present. The course interprets this tradition not only as the creative expression of American writers of African descent, but also as a set works displaying formal characteristics associated with black cultural traditions. Discussion topics will include the meanings of race, the construction of black identity, and intra-racial differences of class, gender, and sexuality, as well as how experimentation, 1960s black radicalism, and the contemporary Movement for Black Lives have shaped black literature. Our readings will traverse a range of influential writers, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Claudia Rankine, and Danez Smith.

Location

Meliora Room 218 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

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Location

Eastman Theatre Room B12A (M 6:30PM - 8:00PM)

In this course, students will work on expanding their repertory of rhythms from Guinea, West Africa, and on improving their playing technique on the djembe, dunun, sangban, and kenkeni. In particular, we will concentrate on learning extended solo sequences for the djembe, and more advanced arrangements played on the dunun, sangban, and kenkeni. Students will also work on developing skills specific to performance, adding choreographed onstage movement to complement their drumming. Pre-requisite: At least one semester of previous enrollment in the Intro West African Percussion Ensemble.

Location

Dewey Room B315 (MW 7:30PM - 8:45PM)

How does a country with five percent of the world's population, a country that nominally values freedom above all else, come to have nearly a quarter of the world's incarcerated people? In this survey course we investigate the history of imprisonment in the United States--as theorized and as practiced--from the founding of the republic to the present day. Special attention is paid to the politics, economics, race politics, and religious logics of contemporary mass incarceration, and to the efforts afoot to end mass incarceration.

Location

Bausch & Lomb Room 109 (MWF 10:25AM - 11:15AM)

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: One of the following: DANC181&182, DANC 283, DANC 253, DANC 285. For Drummers one of the following: MUR168A, MUR168B, MUR146 OR to audition, email kerfala.bangoura@gmail.com

Location

Spurrier Gymnasium Room 104 (TR 6:45PM - 8:45PM)

North Africa and the Middle East is in a mess: Instead of democracy, the Arab Spring delivered a military dictatorship to Egypt; Iraq and Syria are melting into warring tribal enclaves; Saudi Arabia is waging a savage war in Yemen; and the Palestinians remain an unprotected stateless people. There is a crisis, and this course introduces students to the predicament, arguing that since the first Industrial Revolution in England, the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East have refashioned their destinies in partnership with the West. Students will examine how the following encounters helped make the region as we know it: the Anglo-Turkish Convention of 1838, transition from Ottoman to West European colonialism, discovery of huge and easily extractable oil reserves, creation of the state of Israel, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the US Invasion of Iraq in 2003. The class will also explore how the above patterns of engagement shaped the histories of the region's working classes, women, and the peasantry.

Location

Meliora Room 218 (R 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

 In 1903 when Du Bois wrote that the “problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” early cinema and photography were already well-established technologies shaping discourses of race and the boundaries between black and white. In this course we will examine the relationship between visual culture and race, particularly blackness. We will ask the following questions: What is the relationship between visuality and modern understandings of race? How does visual culture shape perceptions of race and racialized bodies? After establishing the historical context, we will consider how contemporary artists from the African diaspora imagine blackness otherwise by playing with, challenging, and subverting overdetermined stereotypes of blackness. We will explore this subject matter by examining the visual and performance art practices of black filmmakers, photographers, curators, fine artists, etc. Potential artists include Spike Lee, Kara Walker, Kehinde Whiley, Mary Sibande, Athi-Patra Ruga, Wangechi Mutu, Grace Jones, Josephine Baker, Cheryl Dunye, Isaac Julien, Beyoncé, and Rihanna. This course will introduce students to a range of historical and contemporary debates that inform the theory and practice of Black Visual Culture.

Location

Hylan Building Room 307 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

What does the life history of Esteban the Moor tell us about contact and conflict among Africans and Indigenous peoples during the “conquest” of the Americas? How do the Garifuna and the Miskito peoples of Central America differ in their emphasis on their Blackness and their indigeneity? What does it mean to be Black and/or indigenous in the Latin America? How are the two marginalized groups constructed in relation to each other? We will explore these questions and more in Zambaje: Afro-Indigenous Relations in Latin America

This course takes a broad approach to relationships between indigenous and Afro-descendant populations in Latin America. It begins in the colonial moment, exploring the tensions and solidarities between the two groups of people. It explores Afro-Indigenous populations and their position in the colonial and nationalist moments. It then examines questions of identity, recognition, sovereignty, conflict, and erasure into the present. Some key concepts we will unpack include: mixture and separation; competitions and solidarities; slavery and freedom; ethnicity and race; and collective rights.

Location

Lattimore Room 413 (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

Spurrier Gymnasium Room 103 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

While peoples of African descent have existed in Latin America since Europeans arrived in this hemisphere, their recognition has been uneven, contingent, and contested across the region. Now that the United Nations Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024) has ended, it is worthwhile to reflect on the symbolic and material differences Afro-Latin Americans have experienced based on this concerted effort to recognize them. How does the state see them? What does it mean to be seen?

In this course, we will contextualize and analyze contemporary efforts to see and be seen as Afro-Latin Americans. In the process we will grapple with questions like: Is “Black” in Latin America a race or an ethnicity? What’s the difference? How do you create, maintain, and demand collective identity and rights? In a region where racial mixture has occurred for centuries and is part of its nation-building, who counts as Afro-descendant? In this course, we will grapple with these questions and more as we contextualize and analyze contemporary efforts toward the political recognition of Afro-Latin Americans. 

Location

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

Africa’s engagement with China has to be read as a two-sided story: China has found in Africa a reliable supplier of natural resources while Africans look to China for aid and investments in agriculture, industry, infrastructure, and education. And, in a significant departure from the colonial model of economic interactions, Chinese companies do not only ship finished products to Africa; they also manufacture in Africa goods for internal use and for export. The impact of these multifaceted relations will not be decided in Beijing alone, as many assume in the West; the outcome will also depend on the decisions taken in African capitals.

Location

Hylan Building Room 203 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

What does the form of music theatre teach us about the conditions of Black life? Engaging this inquiry, this course is a comprehensive survey of Black music theatre from the nineteenth century to the present. Borrowing approaches from performance theory, sound studies, Black cultural studies (from Black feminist, queer, and trans perspectives), and music/musicology, we will read and listen to various scripts and scores across genres in music theatre including traditional musicals, operas, dance, film, and performance art. Additionally, this course decenters Broadway as music theatre’s centerpiece, instead looking to the ways Black music theatre emerged in Black communities through nightclubs, the vaudeville circuit, churches, and other community centers. We look at hugely popular works such as Shuffle Along, Porgy and Bess, Dreamgirls, The Wiz, and A Strange Loop to more lesser-known musicals by under-studied artists such as Micki Grant, Vinnette Carroll, Jeff Augustin, Stew, and more. The course will also include artistic development in songwriting and musical storytelling, with guest lectures from working artists in professional music theatre. Taken together, we consider the politics, forms, and aesthetics of Black music theatre as both critiques of anti-Black structures and rehearsals for Black futurity.

Location

Hylan Building Room 307 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

Political and moral ideals from the ancient Mediterranean World played an important role in shaping the character of political and social institutions in the colonial and post-colonial United States. Slaveholders justified the practice of slavery in America based in part on their own interpretation of ancient Roman and Greek models and ideologies of slavery. Both as a reaction to this pro-slavery use of ancient allusions and also because of the 19th century cultural value of Classical education and the authority of ancient examples, many American abolitionist thinkers, politicians, and activists also incorporated ancient examples and ideals into their own anti-slavery arguments. This course will explore the influence of the ancient Mediterranean world on the expression and evolution of abolitionist activities and political thought, with a particular focus on the rich local anti-slavery history of Western New York and the city of Rochester, in particular, as an important site of abolitionist political activity. We will examine primary sources from the ancient world and the 18th and 19th centuries and consider the role of ideas about the ancient world as it relates to modern slavery and the movement to abolish it in the United States.     

Location

Dewey Room 2110D (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Taught by a long-time member of Les Ballets Africains, the national ballet of Guinea, instructor Fana Bangoura will introduce students in this course to dynamic dance traditions of West Africa and will join with them the power of percussion. Students will also become familiar with the origins and cultural significance of each dance, and the songs that accompany them. By breaking down the drum parts alongside the traditional dance movements, students experience dancing and drumming in perfect unison. This opportunity is geared for both drummers and dancers and is highly recommended for all skill levels.

Location

Spurrier Gymnasium Room 104 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Monsters in popular culture represent and reinforce the changing thoughts and emotions toward what it means to be human and fit for society. When it comes to race, gender, and sexuality, popular culture has often used monsters to destroy or discipline individuals who live outside societal norms. This is called the making of black monstrosity. This course takes this historical trend seriously, diving into the ways monsters have been used to harm Black people, but also how notions of the black monster has been deployed as tool of revolt against unjust society. Turning to case studies, primarily within the twenty-first century--from visual black monstrosity in cinema, animation, digital art, and comics—we will explore how a certain monster-imaginary contributes to the discourse and perception of race and racialized bodies in America.

Location

Meliora Room 224 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Sansifanyi is an ensemble that combines academic study and performance for beginner, intermediate, and advanced students of African drumming and dance. 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, including developing their own solo material. They will also focus on rhythmic timing, and on developing advanced skills such as how to combine movement with drumming. In addition to the time students spend in class, dancers will have weekly assignments. Dancers must also be available for performances both on and off campus throughout the semester. 

Location

Spurrier Gymnasium Room 104 (TR 6:45PM - 8:45PM)

Borrowing from Patricia-Hill Collins perspective in Black Sexual Politics, this seminar examines the historic and popular understandings of black sexuality and how they maintain the color line, as well as threaten to spread what Hill-Collins refers to as a “new brand of racism.”  Particularly, this course engages questions about sexuality that have only begun to be discussed with Black Studies and the larger public sphere.  Taking the intersections of identities very seriously, this course interrogates the ways in which these constructions have affected black men and black women, while also being attentive to how “others” are implicated within discourses of black sexuality. Together, we will use various critical texts and media to better understand the impact and the importance of visual and material images in the interplay of race, sex, and politics in our contemporary world.

Location

Hylan Building Room 102 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

How do Black women make sense of their lives? How do Black women organize, survive, and thrive? How do Black women resist? How do Black women nourish their knowledge and create community? Black feminist criticism and theory-making has been how some have addressed these questions. This course is an introduction to the study, practice, and politics of Black feminist theory. In this class, we will explore historical, popular, and artistic expressions of this school of thought from the nineteenth century to the present. To achieve this, we will engage a wide variety of critical, cultural, and creative texts including but not limited to journal articles and essays, speeches, literature, performance, music, film, and so on. Some of the thinkers, activists, and artists we will discuss include but are not limited to bell hooks, Angela Y. Davis, Janet Mock, Tourmaline, Carrie Mae Weems, and more. We will additionally incorporate a variety of intersectional perspectives on Black feminist theory with regards to race, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, class, nation, etc. In so doing, the class aims to examine the relationship between theory and praxis in the development and ongoing evolution of the history, politics, activism, and art of Black feminisms.

Location

Bausch & Lomb Room 270 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

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. 

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)