AFST 187 A-Z - (CC) Special Topics

Semester Hours: 1-4

Special Topics courses deal with innovative or advanced topics and may include field projects. Students may 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.

Cross-listing: RHET 126  

AFST 187N - (BH) 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.

Cross-listing: ANTH 134  

AFST 187Q - Major Authors: Toni Morrison

This writing intensive (WI) seminar examines the life and work of one of America’s most important writers. Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, becoming the eighth woman, the first African American, and the first Black woman to win the prestigious literary prize. In this seminar, we will critically engage with Toni Morrison’s fiction. In addition to reading Morrison’s fiction, we will read Morrison’s own criticism, as well as critical essays by scholars which will assist with our understanding of her literary and cultural impact. Morrison’s success as a senior editor, critic, and novelist presented her with opportunities to express her views on a host of subjects including education, censorship, gender, leadership, friendship, ethics, morality, and spirituality. Her imaginative and cultural work has chronicled the African American experience from slavery to the twenty-first century. This course will explore the ways Morrison constructs discourses that expand and complicate historical narratives and ideologies about Black life.

Prerequisites: WSC 001  or WSC 002 .

Cross-listings: ENGL 151B , WST 151R  

AFST 187R - (CC,LT) Constructing Global Anglophone Literature

This course introduces students to selected literature in English from the 19th through the 21st century, originating primarily from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Canada, and Australia, paying close attention to the ways in which these writings converse and argue with one another as well as with texts from the traditional literary canon. We will explore the ways in which genre, theme, and form shape and distinguish these texts, and reflect on the ways in which new reading practices are shaping the construction of a global literary history. Readings might include Soyinka, N’gugi, Walcott, Achebe, Roy, Mistry, Garimara, Emecheta, Rushdie, Kincaid, and Ondaatje.

Prerequisites: WSC 001  or WSC 002 .

Cross-listings: ENGL 080  

AFST 187S - Race and Body Aesthetics

Contemporary issues are seen in relation to their historical contexts and origins. Themes will vary, depending on faculty member and relevant global events, and have included presidential politics, the war on terror, popular culture in Latin America, the welfare state and social inequality, Islam and the West, migration, genocide, and natural disasters. The Fall 2026 topic will be: Why History Matters: Race and Body Aesthetics.

Cross-listing: HIST 020  

AFST 187T - (BH,CC) Geography of Africa

Study of Africa’s diverse human and physical landscapes, focusing on the interaction between the two. Analysis of the cultural, environmental, economic, social, political and population geography of the continent. Both North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, the continent’s two major regions, are featured prominently and examples are drawn from many of Africa’s more than 50 individual nation-states.

Cross-listing: GEOG 145  

 

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.

View Course Offering(s):

Fall 2026

January 2027

Spring 2027