This course explores themes and issues in the lives of women in Africa. These include women in early African history, culture, and the role of gender in Africa, encounter with Islam and the West, womens search for autonomy, etc. Emphasis is placed, as much as is possible, on the perspectives of women, how they view their history and their ongoing struggle for self-determination.

How do movies, viral videos, and memes impact the material lives of Black girls? This course offers an introduction to the emergent and growing field of Black Girlhood Studies, especially in relation to media representation and engagement. The course will cover foundational texts about Black girlhood alongside a range of media to explore the ways in which Black girlhood has been constructed and portrayed through these platforms.

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.

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

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

This is a supervised research course without formal classroom instruction.