• AAS 3853

    From Redlined to Subprime: Race and Real Estate in the US
     Rating

    2.50

     Difficulty

    3.50

     GPA

    3.68

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This course examines the history of housing and real estate and explores its role in shaping the meaning and lived experience of race in modern America. We will learn how and why real estate ownership, investment, and development came to play a critical role in the formation and endurance of racial segregation, modern capitalism, and the built environment.

  • AAS 3559

    New Course in African and African American Studies
     Rating

    2.89

     Difficulty

    3.33

     GPA

    3.40

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    New course in the subject of African and African American Studies.

  • AAS 2500

    Topics Course in Africana Studies
     Rating

    3.73

     Difficulty

    2.40

     GPA

    3.53

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Lower-level topics course: reading, class discussion, and written assignments on a special topic in African-American and African Studies Topics change from term to term, and vary with the instructor.

  • AAS 3500

    Intermediate Seminar in African-American & African Studies
     Rating

    3.87

     Difficulty

    2.70

     GPA

    3.54

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Reading, class discussion, and written assignments on a special topic in African-American and African Studies. Topics change from term to term, and vary with the instructor.

  • AAS 2224

    Black Femininities and Masculinities in the US Media
     Rating

    4.31

     Difficulty

    2.75

     GPA

    3.42

    Last Taught

    Summer 2024

    This course, taught as a lower-level seminar, will address the role the media has played in creating images and understandings of 'Blackness' in the United States, particularly where it converges with popular ideologies about gender.

  • AAS 4570

    Advanced Research Seminar in African-American & African Studies
     Rating

    4.33

     Difficulty

    2.00

     GPA

    3.18

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Reading, class discussion, and research on a special topic in African-American and African Studies culminating in the composition of a research paper. Topics change from term to term, and vary with the instructor. Primarily for fourth-year students but open to others.

  • AAS 1010

    Introduction to African-American and African Studies I
     Rating

    4.38

     Difficulty

    2.13

     GPA

    3.46

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This introductory course surveys the histories of people of African descent in Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean from approximately the Middle Ages to the 1880s. Emphases include the Atlantic slave trade and its complex relationship to Africa; the economic systems, cultures, and communities of Africans and African-Americans in the New World, in slavery and in freedom; the rise of anti-slavery movements; and the socio-economic systems that replaced slavery in the late 19th century.

  • AAS 2559

    New Course in African and African American Studies
     Rating

    4.43

     Difficulty

    2.29

     GPA

    3.32

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    New course in the subject of African and African American Studies

  • AAS 1020

    Introduction to African-American and African Studies II
     Rating

    4.46

     Difficulty

    2.37

     GPA

    3.66

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This introductory course builds upon the histories of people of African descent in Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean surveyed in AAS 1010. Drawing on disciplines such as Anthropology, History, Religious Studies, Political Science and Sociology, the course focuses on the period from the late 19th century to the present and is comparative in perspective. It examines the links and disjunctions between communities of African descent in the United States and in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. The course begins with an overview of AAS, its history, assumptions, boundaries, and topics of inquiry, and then proceeds to focus on a number of inter-related themes: patterns of cultural experience; community formation; comparative racial classification; language and society; family and kinship; religion; social and political movements; arts and aesthetics; and archaeology of the African Diaspora.

  • SWAH 1010

    Introductory Swahili I
     Rating

    4.78

     Difficulty

    2.67

     GPA

    3.78

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    Prerequisite: limited or no previous knowledge of Swahili.

  • AAS 3157

    Caribbean Perspectives
     Rating

    4.78

     Difficulty

    3.67

     GPA

    3.90

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Breaking with popular constructions of the region as a timeless tropical paradise, this course will re-define the Caribbean as the birthplace of modern forms of capitalism, globalization, and trans-nationalism. We will survey the founding moments of Caribbean history, including the imposition of slavery, the rise of plantation economies, and the development of global networks of goods and peoples.

  • AAS 1559

    New Course in African and African American Studies
     Rating

    5.00

     Difficulty

    1.00

     GPA

    3.40

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    New course in the subject of African American Studies.

  • AAS 3810

    Race, Culture and Inequality
     Rating

    5.00

     Difficulty

    2.00

     GPA

    3.46

    Last Taught

    Spring 2024

    This course will examine how culture matters for understanding race and social inequality. It will survey social science research about cultural forms such as everyday discourse, styles of dress, music, literature, visual arts, and media as they relate to race and inequality.

  • SWAH 1020

    Introductory Swahili II
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.33

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Prerequisite: SWAH 1010.

  • SWAH 2010

    Intermediate Swahili I
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.34

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    Develops skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing, and awareness of the cultural diversity of the Swahili-speaking areas of East Africa. Readings drawn from a range of literary and journalistic materials. Prerequisite: SWAH 1020

  • SWAH 2020

    Intermediate Swahili II
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.57

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Further develops skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing, and awareness of the cultural diversity of the Swahili-speaking areas of East Africa. Readings drawn from a range of literary and journalistic materials.

  • AAS 2657

    Routes, Writing, Reggae
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.73

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    In this course, we will trace the history of reggae music and explore its influence on the development of Jamaican literature. With readings on Jamaican history, we will consider why so many reggae songs speak about Jah and quote from the Bible. Then, we will explore how Marcus Garvey's teachings led to the rise of Rastafarianism, which in turn seeded ideas of black pride and black humanity into what would become reggae music.

  • AAS 3300

    Social Science Perspectives on African American and African Studies
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.00

    Last Taught

    Spring 2024

    This course will focus on major debates, theories, and methodological approaches in the social sciences that contribute to African American Studies. The course helps students to consider how a multidisciplinary approach enriches efforts to analyze such issues as health disparities, education, and incarceration as they relate to the African Diaspora.

  • AAS 3830

    Being Human: Race, Technology, and the Arts
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course is an introduction to Afrofuturism, exploring race and alienness, race and technology, and race and modernity through global futuristic representations of blackness in TV, film, music, art, and literature.

  • AAS 4005

    Morven's Enslaved and Descendant Communities
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Summer 2024

    This course invites students to explore the complex, multilayered history and evolving interpretation of UVA's Morven Farm, with a focus on the site's 19th century enslaved and descendant communities. The course combines lectures, research, and seminar-style discussions with field trips to area archives and historic sites. Does not count toward 4000-level seminar requirement.

  • AAS 4070

    Distinguished Major Thesis I
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    Students in the Distinguished Majors Program should enroll in this course for their first semester of thesis research.

  • AAS 4080

    Distinguished Major Thesis II
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Second-semester DMP students should enroll in this course to complete their theses.

  • AAS 4501

    Advanced Research Seminar in History & AAS
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.56

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Reading, class discussion, and research on a special topic in African-American and African Studies culminating in the composition of a research paper. Topics change from term to term, and vary with the instructor. Primarily for fourth-year AAS and History students--double majors and others. Crosslisted with the History major seminar.

  • AAS 4993

    Independent Study
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    4.00

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Allows students to work on an individual research project. Students must propose a topic to an appropriate faculty member, submit a written proposal for approval, prepare an extensive annotated bibliography on relevant readings comparable to the reading list of a regular upper-level course, and complete a research paper of at least 20 pages.

  • AAS 5559

    New Course in African and African American Studies
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.78

    Last Taught

    Spring 2024

    New course in the subject of African and African American Studies.

  • AAS 7000

    Introduction to Africana Studies
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.91

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This is an introductory course that will survey selected recent and classic texts in the interdisciplinary fields of African American, African, and Caribbean Studies. By the end of the course, students will be prepared to identify and understand major themes that have shaped the development of the discipline of Africana Studies.

  • AAS 9710

    Woodson Institute Fellows Pre- and Post-Doctoral Research
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This is a supervised research course without formal classroom instruction.