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African, African American, and Diaspora Studies

Battle Hall, CB# 3395
(919) 966-5496

First Session, 2025

AAAD 101-001 Introduction to Africa (3)

REMOTE MOSTLY ASYNCHRONOUS.This course introduces students to the continent of Africa. It surveys historical and contemporary political, economic, and social processes in the continent. Students will explore the African continent’s changes over the years due to significant developments from within and without. Readings in this course are drawn from several fields, including geography, history, anthropology, literature, economics, language, and education. Course flyer.

AAAD 101-002 Introduction to Africa (3)

REMOTE ASYNCHRONOUS. This course introduces students to the continent of Africa. It surveys historical and contemporary political, economic, and social processes in the continent. Students will explore the African continent’s changes over the years due to significant developments from within and without. Readings in this course are drawn from several fields, including geography, history, anthropology, literature, economics, language, and education. Course flyer.

AAAD 102 Introduction to Media in Africa (3)

REMOTE MOSTLY ASYNCHRONOUS. This course explores the precolonial, colonial and contemporary media in Africa. It focuses on the different types of media, its impact on socioeconomic and political development, and the growth and development of the Internet in the region. It introduces students to the inventors, copyright regulations, African governments’ media regulation statutes, and careers in the media industry in the continent. Further, the course explores how the media reflect and inspire cultural, political, and ethical norms with emphasis on various storytelling techniques based on audience and method of delivery.

AAAD 130 Introduction to African American and Diaspora Studies (3)

REMOTE SYNCHRONOUS. The course tracks the contours of history, life, societies, and cultures of the Atlantic African diaspora from their origins through Emancipation in the United States, the Caribbean, and South America. The course provides a specific focus on the development, organization and dissolution of slavery across a range of geographies in the diaspora. Course flyer.

AAAD 201 Introduction to African Literature (3)

REMOTE MOSTLY ASYNCHRONOUS. The diversity of African languages, ethnicities, nationalities, and colonial histories presents myriad of challenges to a unified analysis of African literature. This course seeks to engage students in understanding how African people have expressed themselves through literature. The course explores different genres and styles of African literary works and presents students with a variety of written, oral, and performative works written by Africans in Africa and the diaspora. African literatures as presented in indigenous languages, French in Francophone countries, and English in Anglophone countries, are analyzed as a unit rather than fragments of literatures from different nationalities, ethnicities, and colonial histories. Course readings and literary works will be studied via a multidisciplinary approach and include experiential learning. Students are encouraged to apply their knowledge to relevant fields of study in the interpretation and analysis of African literature. Course flyer.

AAAD 231 African American History Since 1865 (3)

REMOTE SYNCHRONOUS. This course focuses on African American history in the US, with an emphasis on post-emancipation developments. The Reconstruction era will be foregrounded to assess the gains and losses African Americans experienced in this period. Additionally, the legal, social, and political developments that impacted African Americans in the post-emancipation era will be explored to assess how African Americans attempted to reconstitute themselves in slavery’s aftermath. Course flyer.

AAAD 288 Global Black Popular Cultures (3)

REMOTE ASYNCHRONOUS. This course explores the intertwined histories, genealogies, and social contexts of Black cultural practices as produced in the Black Atlantic world. Through an interdisciplinary study of Black culture and through a close study of foundational concepts, we tackle central questions around Black identity, identification, and belonging. First, we examine how scholars have defined the concepts of blackness, Diaspora, transnationalism, globalization, and postcolonialism in relation to culture. Then, we explore how these notions and phenomena have characterized Black performance in general, music culture, and visual art in the US, Africa, and parts of Western Europe. This course meets the Visual and Performing Arts (VP) requirement. Course flyer.

AAAD 395 Through the Archives: Gullah Geechee History, Traditions, and Culture (3)

MAYMESTER. IN PERSON, ON CAMPUS LEARNERS. This course will engage with the history, culture, and traditions of the Gullah Geechee people, through the archives. A thorough examination of “primary sources” in Chapel hill and beyond will be the drumbeat of this class. We will be looking at archival materials, folktales, visual art, films, novels, and other secondary materials to explore these themes. This class includes a MANDATORY and fully funded 4 day (May 18-21, 2025) educational experience in the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands. We have limited spots in this class, students need permission from instructor to add and drop the course. For more information: https://aaad.unc.edu  Course flyer.

SWAH 112 Intensive Kiswahili 1-2 (3)

REMOTE SYNCHRONOUS. Swahili is a Bantu (Niger-Congo) language spoken as a mother tongue or a second language in East and Central African countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia. Currently, Swahili is the most widely spoken African language with over 100 million first- and second-language speakers throughout the world. Swahili introduces you to the richness and complexities of the traditions of indigenous African peoples. Students can take SWAH 112 to fulfill the language requirement as well as fulfill credit obligations for African Studies and Global Studies majors and minors. The 112 course covers the material in the SWAH 401 and 402 sequence in ONE SUMMER SESSION. Students taking SWAH 112 during Summer I, 2024 may take SWAH 403 during the Fall of 2025. Course flyer.

Second Session, 2025

AAAD 250 African Americans in Motion Pictures (3)

REMOTE SYNCHRONOUS. This course will analyze representations of African Americans in cinema from the early 1900s to the present, explore how race is constructed onscreen, and examine how entertainers subverted these distorted representations. The course introduces film theory, exploits studies on stars and stardom, explores both silent and sound pictures, and illuminates the contributions of significant African American filmmakers. Films screened in this class will attempt to determine how racial representation has evolved over time and assess how these representations intersect with more contemporary representations. This course meets the Visual and Performing Arts (VP) requirement. Course Flyer.