AFST 187 A-Z - (CC) Special Topics

Semester Hours: 3

Periodically
These courses deal with innovative or advanced topics and may include field projects. Students prepare individual projects on a research theme.

Current Special Topics

AFST 187D - Spoken Word, Slam Poetry, and Performance

This class is devoted to the exploration of performance art, a genre-crossing form of aesthetic expression. We will identify and examine in detail contemporary performance practices. We will also cover the historical antecedents of performance art, including significant events and controversies. In addition to building our skills as performers and critical thinkers, we will gain a greater understanding of the impact these practices have on issues of identity, community, and culture.

AFST 187L - Resistance, Race, and Religion

This course is an examination of race and its intersection with theology and philosophy of religion, as well as contemporary and historic social justice movements in America, particularly as it informs the creation of the innovative and contemporary expression of Christian theology known as Black Theology. As a formal theology, Black theology emerged in America during the Civil Rights Movement as a response to traditional Protestant and Catholic Christianity’s inability to address the problem of racial oppression and injustice in America. It has since spawned and informed other forms of liberation theology and resistance movements around the world, like Womanism, Minjung, South African Black Consciousness, Muslim Womanism, and Native American Liberation theology.

AFST 187N - Culture and Communication

This course examines the ethnographic study of communication, which explores the connections among language, culture, and society from an anthropological perspective. The emphasis is on the complex relationship between language and culture and on exploring linguistic relativity, metaphors, personhood, and constructions of cultural identities.

AFST 187D - Racial Justice, the Environment, and Religion

This course introduces the history, ideas, and practices of modern environmentalism by examining references to and invocations of religion in debates about the environment from the late 18th century to the present. The course focuses especially on the emergence of environmentalism as a broad-based philosophical, political, and cultural movement and thus gives special attention to careful analysis of the place of religion in foundational environmentalist works of the second half of the 20th century.

Prerequisite(s)/Course Notes:
May be repeated for credit when topics vary. Specific titles and course descriptions for special topics courses are available in the online class schedule.