African 100: Introduction to African Cultural Expression

What is African cultural studies? This course introduces undergraduates to the study of African and African-diaspora cultural expression as it is practiced in the Department of African Cultural Studies. The course will feature lectures by ACS faculty and advanced graduate students, who will present introductory portraits of their respective research areas and the subdisciplines to which they are attached. Topics will range from literary analysis to the study of African languages and discourse; contemporary media (e.g., film, cartoons, journalism, web-based forms) to performance genres (music, sports, theater). Through an introduction to these many areas of inquiry, students will gain a new understanding of Africa and the African diaspora as cultural fields, together with an appreciation of the many theories and theoretical concepts—cultural circulation, colonialism, neoliberalism, religion, aesthetics, race, indigeneity—employed to analyze them.