ALANA U.S. ETHNIC STUDIES PROGRAM

(African American/Latino/Asian American/Native American)
http://www.uvm.edu/~alana/

 

Brian Gilley, Director of ALANA U.S. Ethnic Studies
A502 Old Mill Annex, University of Vermont

 

These courses can be taken for credit towards the ALANA U.S. Ethnic Studies minor.
Every course here is taught from a multicultural perspective
and devotes at least two-thirds of its content to the study of U.S. peoples of color.

FALL 2009 COURSES

ALAN 051A  D1: Intro to ALANA US Ethnic Studies  90564

Brian Gilley

09:35  10:25  M W F

Introduction to Ethnic Studies will critically examine conventional wisdom about race, ethnicity, gender, nationalism, and identity. The goal of the course is to engage the ways difference is constructed in contemporary society and how differences produce social, political and economic experiences for various groups of people.    

 

ANTH 160A  D1: North American Indians      93693 

Brian Gilley

01:55  02:45  M W F

North America Indians examines Native American society in cultural and historical perspective. The course will address the social, political and cultural aspects of the Native American experience, including "prehistory," European contact and contemporary Native society.  The goal of the course is to critically examine the Native experience, question stereotypes, and evaluate the socio-political realities of being Indigenous in North America.

 

ANTH 160 Z1 D1: North American Indians    93694

Brian Gilley

 01:55  02:45  M W F

See ANTH 160A for description

ENGS 005 H    TAP: Canon of Toni Morrison  94302

Sarah Turner

02:30  03:45 T R
Toni Morrison’s canon thus far spans close to 40 years and contains nine novels, six children’s books, a short story, three works of non-fiction plus numerous pieces of scholarly and social criticism. This TAP course will consider a selection of her works and will explore her impact upon the American literary canon through a variety of written responses both traditional and not.

 

ENGS 057A   D1: Race and Ethnicity in Literary Studies: Intro   90546

Sheila Boland Chira

09:35  10:25  M W F 

 The American ideal of the individual as free and equal has historically been compromised by culturally constructed categories of race, ethnicity, class, and gender. In this course, we will explore the effect of these categories on self-representation by focusing on the literary genre of autobiography. American autobiography has made significant contributions to social history and political thought, for it historically has offered individuals otherwise excluded from spheres of political representation and publication the opportunity to address the public in their own voices and to challenge deep-rooted assumptions.  More recently, autobiographical non-fiction has helped Americans engage in the difficult conversations about race and ethnicity that perhaps can help us move closer to our ideals.  We will approach autobiographical writing academically while also making a habit of reflecting on how we are viewed and view others through these culturally constructed lenses.  Authors will include Frederick Douglass, Zitkala Ša, Malcolm X, Bliss Broyard, Richard Rodriguez, Barack Obama, and Kenji Yoshino.  Students should expect to take periodic quizzes, write frequent short reading responses and two longer essays, give a group presentation, and actively participate in class discussion.

ENGS 057B   D1: Race and Ethnicity in Literary Studies: Intro    90548

Sheila Boland Chira

10:40  11:30  M W F
See ENGS 057A for description. 

 

ENGS 057C   D1: Race and Ethnicity in Literary Studies: Intro    90550

Isabella Jeso

11:45  12:35  M W F 

 This course is a study of U.S. minority voices in literature. It introduces students to the ways in which various American ethnic groups have employed story-telling, dramatic representation, poetry and the essay form to explore issues relating to their place as minorities in the national social fabric. We will examine how authors exploit literary conventions in each genre studied. At the same time, we will consider how these writers explode and / or go beyond those expectations, creating unconventional stylistic devices for literary self-representation; as these new methods of speaking emerge from their individual and collective minority experiences. We will thus have two primary foci. One will be to examine technical devices employed by each author as an individual and also as a voice of the particular minority group under which society categorizes him or her. The second will be to study thematic schemes prevalent in each of these works. The course is divided into four units, with each unit consisting of works by selected authors “representative” of one American ethnic group. I list them here in alphabetical order: African-American; Asian-American; Latino/na-American and Native-American. Selected material for each unit includes one or more of the following literary genres: novels, short fiction, plays, poetry and essays. There will be an exam at the conclusion of each course unit. Additionally, students will be required to write an eight-page essay theorizing their own perception (based on a close reading of two authors from two ethnic groups) of being categorized as a minority in American society.

ENGS 057D   D1:Race and Ethnicity in Literary Studies: Intro    93609

Isabella Jeso

12:50  01:40  M W F
See ENGS 057C for description.

 

ENGS 057E   D1:Race and Ethnicity in Literary Studies: Intro    93926

Jamie Williamson

10:40  11:30  M W F
We will be reading work by American Indian writers, and coming at the issue of race relations and ethnic identity from a variety of perspectives. The work will include fiction, both short stories and novels, biography and autobiography, and traditional narratives drawn from the repertoires of oral storytellers. Much of the work will focus on the recent and contemporary period; some will focus on the earlier period of European contact, giving a chronological/historical context necessary to evaluate the later material; we will also read some material reflecting oral narrative traditions pre-dating contact (“myths” and “legends”) to provide a sense of continuity between the period of political and social autonomy and the period of subjugation by European powers. Writers may include Sherman Alexie, Eden Robinson, Joseph Marshall, James Welch, and others. We will also view several films, including Skins and Incident at Oglala. 

 

ENGS 057F   D1:Race and Ethnicity in Literary Studies: Intro    93928

Jamie Williamson

11:45  12:35  M W F
See ENGS 057E for description. 

 

ENGS 057G   D1:Race and Ethnicity in Literary Studies: Intro    93929

Jamie Williamson

12:50  01:40  M W F

See ENGS 057E for description.

ENGS 057H   D1:Race and Ethnicity in Literary Studies: Intro   94303

Sarah Turner 

In an interview several years ago, Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison stated that racism is a scholarly affair and one that is useful for whites. In the 1998 movie American History X, Ed Norton's character claims that all problems in this country are race-related. Poet and activist Maya Angelou envisions a time when “ideally, race should be [only] as important as the color coordination of one’s costume.” What do these statements mean? And what relevance do they have for us, in 2009, as this country welcomes its first biracial president? This course considers a variety of contemporary texts -- novels, short stories, movies -- written by and about non-hegemonic groups living in the United States today that explore the intersections of race, class, socioeconomics, racism and institutionalized racism. Because the course expects students to engage in polemical and engaging dialogue, students are asked to “agree to disagree’ in a respectful environment.

 

ENGS 111A  Multiethnic Literature and Film     93612

Jinny Huh  

02:30  03:45   T R   and 04:00  06:45   T
How do we narrate and visualize race? How do narrative and visual depictions alter across different racial groups? This course will examine how twentieth century American literature and popular culture construct certain “racial knowledges” in the formation of American identity. Through a comparative race approach (Whiteness Studies, African American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Afro-Asian Studies), we will focus on a wide range of literary texts (novels, short stories, plays, and personal essays as well as interdisciplinary theoretical essays) and visual “texts” (feature films, music videos, and television). Furthermore, we will also examine how various genres (including the passing narrative, the gothic, and comedy/satire) offer unique approaches to the narrative and visual constructions of race and difference. Some themes and theoretical concerns we will explore include: history and memory, whiteness and multicultural angst, racial hauntings, identity passing, and ethnic humor and satire.

ENGS 160A  D1:African American Literature and Culture Before 1900     93902 

Mary Lou Kete

02:30  03:45   T R 

"Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were,
how can they call her if they don’t know her name?" 
Toni Morrison, Beloved

This course attempts to answer the question of how to call---to remember and to account for---the tradition of African American literature.  Beginning under the conditions of slavery and colonization, this tradition continues to develop through the periods of Emancipation and Reconstruction to explode with the works of the 20th-century's Harlem Renaissance.  Our goal is to survey the key works of this tradition while considering the relationship between literature and history.  This course is reading and writing intensive.

 

ENGS 163B   Jazz and the Cultural Imagination    93976
John Gennari

10:40  11:30 M W F
This course will consider how jazz as an experience of certain sounds, movements, and states of feeling has always been mediated and complicated by peculiarly American cultural patterns, especially those of race and sexuality. Our interdisciplinary focus will be on representations of jazz musicians and the jazz world in writing (novels, poems, memoirs, criticism, journalism) and visual art (film, painting, photography). We'll study writers, filmmakers, and artists who've turned to jazz as a source of new and old stories, heroes and myths, and as an aesthetic model for new modes of writing and representation. In short, we'll consider a variety of texts that appropriate, remember, dismember, love, and abuse jazz. Prerequisites: knowledge of jazz history, and prior completion of the D1 "diversity" requirement.
 

ENGS 176A  D1:20th Century African American Fiction  93427

Emily Bernard

04:00  05:15   T R
This course is a survey of modern African American fiction.  We will begin with The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, the first modern African American novel, and cover most of the significant episodes in 20th century African-American literary production.  This is a reading-intensive course in which we will investigate the evolution of the African-American literary tradition, as well as the debates and challenges surrounding this evolution.  Our textual analyses will rely upon close readings as well as pertinent biographical and historical material.  By the end of the term, you will have a firm understanding of the basic themes and concerns of modern African-American fiction.  Even more important, you will come to appreciate the particular ways in which African-American writers have used the written word to explore the unique and precarious relationship between African-American identities and the larger social and political contexts from which they emerge. 

                                         

ENGS 176Z1  D1: 20th Century African American Fiction   94042

Emily  Bernard

04:00  05:15   T R 
See ENGS 176A for description.

 

ENGS 177A  Harlem Renaissance and Negritude  93908

Lokangaka Losambe

11:30  12:45   T R 
The Harlem Renaissance Movement is believed to have played a great role in the emergence of the African and West Indian Negritude Movement in Paris in the early 1930s. This course explores points of connection and disconnection between these two most prominent 20th-century Black cultural movements and their relevance to contemporary pan-African literary production. Authors include Claude Mckay, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Alain Locke, Jean Toomer, Sterling Brown, Gwendolyn Bennett, Helene Johnson, Arna Bontemps, Aime Cesaire, Leopold Senghor, Leon Damas, David Diop, Rene Maran, and Hamidou Kane

                                         

ENGS 177B  Harlem Renaissance and Negritude  93909

Lokangaka Losambe

01:00  02:15   T R
See ENGS 177A for description.

ENGS 195A  African American Women Writers      93871

Emily Bernard

02:30  03:45   T R
Literature has always been the primary terrain upon which African-Americans have cultivated their individual identities and defended their collective humanity.  Within the larger phenomenon of the African-American literary tradition, African-American women’s writing has had to contend with the “politics of respectability” in a way that has not defined African-American writing by men as directly.  In this course, we will examine African-American women’s fiction, not only for its literary achievements, but also for the way it has addressed, accommodated, and eluded implicit demands that it represent black male and female lives in specific ways.  Throughout this course, we will engage in larger discussions about the category of African-American women’s writing itself.  Who is served by the segregation of black women’s writing into its own groups?  Who, in fact, is authorized to author a black text?  Can a white author write “black” fiction, and vice-versa?  This is a reading intensive course.  Work for this class will include: multiple reading quizzes, essays, and a final exam.

         

ENGS 195Z1  African American Women's Fiction      94043

Emily  Bernard

02:30  03:45   T R
See ENGS 195A for description.

 

ENGS 251A  Post-Coloniality in African American Literature  93911

Lokangaka Losambe

04:00  06:45 
This seminar examines the origin and politics of the postcolonial discourse in African literature and society. We will particularly consider African writers’ responses to the European, colonial ordering of the African otherness. Authors will include Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary, Olaudah Equiano, Frantz Fanon, Leopold Senghor, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Mariama Ba, Tsitsi Dangarembga and Zakes Mda. Fulfills A& S Non-European Culture requirement; Eligible for African Studies Credit.
Prerequisite: ENGS 86.  Instructor permission required.

 

GEOG 060A  D1:Geography of Race and Ethnicity in the US  90012

Pablo Bose

04:05  05:20  M W
Examination of the ways in which spatial and locational processes shape and are shaped by ethnic and racial identities, struggles, and relationships.   

 

HST  187A  D1:African American History:1619-Civil War  91121

Amani Whitfield

10:40  11:30  M W F

This course will examine African American history from the earliest settlements in Virginia and other areas to the fight for freedom during the 1860s. We will study the different circumstances faced by slaves and free blacks in various regions throughout the United States.  We will examine how the development of slavery influenced black life, but also its impact on American culture more generally.  Students will engage primary source material through the reading of slave narratives and other primary documents.  The goal of the course is to provide students with a firm grounding in the history of African Americans through the Civil War.
Prerequisite: 3 hours history.
  

HST  240A  D2: Comparative Slavery: Historical Perspective   90729

Sean Stilwell

04:05  07:05    W

This seminar explores the history of slavery over a variety of time periods and geographies.   We will first explore the meanings, forms and definitions of slavery as an institution, followed by an examination of the practice of slavery in the Ancient World, Africa, and the Americas.   Other themes to be discussed include The Trans-Atlantic slave trade; slave religion and culture; African culture in the Diaspora; harems, eunuchs and slavery in Islam; and, slave rebellions and revolts.   Major historiographical and methodological issues involved in the study of slavery will also be examined. One goal of the course will be to develop an historical understanding of the owner/slave hierarchy/relationship.
Prerequisites: Junior, senior or graduate standing; 12 hours of history. 

HST  295 B   Debating American Slavery   93496

Amani Whitfield
04:00-6:45 R
Few issues in  American history have been as vigorously debated as the so-called "Peculiar Institution."  this class is not an examination of the various systems of slavery in the United States.  Instead, it is about how historians have interpreted the most controversial and definitive element of our history.  We will examine various debates including the origin of American slavery, the nature of master/slave relations, slave culture, and the slave family.  As an upper-level seminar, students will write a short essay and a 20-page historiography paper about a particular debate in American slavery.
Prerequisite: Junior, senior or graduate standing; 12 hours of history.

 

MU   005A  D2: Intro to Jazz History       90923

Ray Vega

11:30 12:20    R 

Survey of Jazz from its roots in ragtime and blues of the late nineteenth century to contemporary styles.
Prerequisites: Ability to read music, or permission of instructor.   Not open to music majors for credit.

POLS 229A  Race and American Political Development   93450

Alec Ewald

03:00  04:15  M W 

This course analyzes connections between race and political institutions in the United States. We will try to confront and connect two fascinating and difficult aspects of American politics: first, race, and second, change and resistance to change in American political history. We will begin with the construction and shifting content of racial identity itself in American law and society, then assess the impact of race on institutional change in several areas, including electoral structures, criminal justice, the party system, the labor market, the press, and education. American political development is an interdisciplinary subfield, and readings will come from history, law, and sociology as well as political science. Students will be expected to engage actively in discussion and write frequently.
Prerequisite: POLS 21, three hours at 100 level, Junior/Senior standing; open to POLS majors/minors only until April 16.

 

PSYC 095B  TAP: Race, Gender, Sexuality and Violence        93265

Dharam Yadav

10:00  11:15   T R 

Through a series of topical discussions, case studies and visual presentations, students will be introduced to theory and research concerning the Psychology of media images of race, racial stereotypes, gender, sex roles, sexuality and violence, and how these images shape human consciousness.  The goal of the course is to give the students a basic understanding of the nature of these pervasive images and the Psychological, social and developmental impacts these images have on society and in the lives of children and adults in such areas as social prejudice, gender roles, human aggression, health, and consumer behavior.

TAP A&S 1st Year only

 

SOC  019A  D1: Race Relations in the US    91047

Nikki Khanna

08:30  09:45   T R
The course analyzes racial prejudice, discrimination and other dominant group practices directed toward Native-, Asian-, and African-Americans.  It also explores the social movements of these groups for integration, accommodation, and separatism 

 

SOC  019Z1  D1: Race Relations in the US  92924

Moustapha Diouf

05:30  08:15  M  
See SOC 19A for description 

 

SOC  119A  D1: Race and Ethnicity  93500

Katrinell  Davis

10:40  11:30  M W F
Description and analysis of ethnic, racial, and religious groups in the U.S. Examination of social/cultural patterns in the larger society and in these groups themselves.

SOC  219A  D1: Race Relations  91297

Nikki Khanna

11:30  12:45   T R 

Examination of American racial subordination in social and historical perspective. Analysis of interracial contacts, racial subcultures and social structures, and responses to racial prejudice and discrimination. 

Prereqs: Six hours of  Sociology including 1 and 100, or 1 and 101, or instructor permission.

 

SOC  295B   International Migration and American Society    93510

Thomas Macias

11:45  12:35  M W F

Based on a survey of the contemporary sociological literature on immigration, comparisons will be made across categories, social groups and historical periods, including: post-1965 "new immigration" from Asia and Latin America and early 20th century "old immigration" from eastern and southern Europe.  Key theoretical issues addressed include the "push-pull" basis of migration and immigration; the role of social networks in maintaining patterns of migration; cultural versus socioeconomic explanations of relative racial and ethnic group outcomes; and "ethnic options" versus "racial labels" beyond the first generation of immigrants.

 

SOC  295D   Race, Gender & Work   93512

Katrinell  Davis

12:50  01:40  M W F This is a sociological assessment of intersections between race and ethnic relations, the politics of gender, and employment opportunity in the 21st century American workplace.  Through a combination of lectures, readings, films, and discussions, we will explore the origins and the consequences of race, gender and workplace hierarchies that shape the employment experiences of social groups in the US. 

SWSS 140A  D1: Social Work with Indigenous Communities: The Abenaki  in VT   91897

Gary Widrick

04:05  07:05  M

An introduction to social work practice and cultural competency with theAbenaki tribe in Northwestern Vermont. An understanding of tribal history and traditions prepares students to work effectively and respectfully from a cross-cultural perspective.

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing and Social Work major.