Courses
The courses listed below are provided by Student Information Services (SIS). This listing provides a snapshot of immediately available courses within this department and may not be complete. Course registration information can be found at https://sis.jhu.edu/classes/
Please consult the online course catalog for cross-listed courses and full course information.
- AS.100.211 - Freshman Seminar: American Slavery
This seminar explores the history of American slavery, tracing developments over time and across space, probing the impact of this iniquitous and dynamic institution on societies and individuals, and examining a variety of sources that historians use to construct their narratives. Freshman only
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Morgan, Philip
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Status: Open - AS.100.430 - Gender and Sexuality in African History
An upper-level history reading seminar with a focus on histories of gender and sexuality in colonial and postcolonial Africa.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Larson, Pier M
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: T 4:00PM - 6:30PM
Status: Open - AS.100.108 - Making America: Black Freedom Struggles to 1896
From slave revolts on the West African coast to national conventions and civil war, people of African descent have defined freedom and struggle in terms of kinship, diasporic connection, and fighting antiblack violence. This course explores the arc of that history and its role in the making of America.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Johnson, Jessica Marie
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: MW 12:00PM - 12:50PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
Status: Open - AS.060.327 - "All Art is Propaganda"
This course will explore black literature written as protest. We will examine how, in the face of threats to black life, Frances E.W. Harper, Richard Wright, Amiri Baraka, and others have realized versions of W.E.B. Du Bois’s objective: “all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists.”
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Status: Open - AS.100.205 - Freshman Seminar: Health, Healing, and Medicine in Africa
A freshman seminar introducing students to the history of health, healing, and forms of medical practice in Africa over the last two centuries.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Larson, Pier M
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Status: Open - AS.100.394 - Brazilian Paradoxes: Slavery, Race, and Inequality in Brazil (from a Portuguese Colony to the World’s 8th Largest Economy)
Place of contrasts, Brazil has a multi-ethnic cultural heritage challenged by social and racial inequalities. Its political life remains chaotic. We will examine these problems through Brazilian history and culture.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Hebrard, Jean Michel Louis
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
Status: Open - AS.060.129 - Writing Africa Now
This course surveys post-2000 literary and cultural production from sub-Saharan Africa. Topics will include debates over genre and fiction’s relevance to African experience, legacies of canonical writing about independence, urban Africa as violent or “tragic” landscape, and problems of scale and geographical context. Readings by authors such as Adichie, Wainaina, Duiker, and Vladislavic, and students will be introduced to the main print and online arteries of African intellectual discussion. This class is for non-majors and does not count towards the English major or minor.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Jackson, Jeanne-Marie
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Status: Open - AS.140.328 - Science and Technology in Slave Regimes
What does science and technology look like in slave regimes? This seminar explores this question from a trans-national perspective by comparing cases in the Antebellum US, Cuba, Brazil and other countries.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Kargon, Robert H, Portuondo, Maria M
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: W 1:30PM - 3:50PM
Status: Open - AS.100.108 - Making America: Black Freedom Struggles to 1896
From slave revolts on the West African coast to national conventions and civil war, people of African descent have defined freedom and struggle in terms of kinship, diasporic connection, and fighting antiblack violence. This course explores the arc of that history and its role in the making of America.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Johnson, Jessica Marie
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: MW 12:00PM - 12:50PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
Status: Canceled - AS.100.486 - Jim Crow in America
This course explores the history, politics, and culture of legalized racial segregation in the United State between the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries – a regime commonly known as “Jim Crow.”
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Connolly, Nathan D
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: T 3:00PM - 5:30PM
Status: Open - AS.150.404 - The Idea of Power
The Idea of Power surveys seminal texts in the history of political thought on the nature, promise, and dangers of political and social power; it also critically engages contemporary texts on race and gender power relations
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Lebron, Christopher Joseph
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Status: Waitlist Only - AS.190.284 - Classics of Political Theory: Political Freedom
This course investigates core questions of what constitutes political freedom, what limits on freedom (if any) should be imposed by authority, and the relationship between freedom, responsibility and political judgment. Spanning texts ancient, modern and contemporary, we shall investigate how power inhabits and invigorates practices of freedom and consent. Among the questions we will consider: Can we always tell the difference between consent and coercion? Are morality and freedom incompatible? Is freedom from the past possible? By wrestling with slavery (freedom’s opposite) we will confront the terrifying possibility that slavery can be both embodied and psychic. If our minds can be held captive by power, can we ever be certain that we are truly free? The political stakes of these problems will be brought to light through a consideration of issues of religion, gender, sexuality, civil liberties, class and race.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Brendese, Philip Joseph, III.
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: MW 3:00PM - 3:50PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
Status: Open - AS.190.380 - The American Welfare State
This course analyzes the distinctive US welfare state in historical and comparative perspective. We begin with a survey of the policy context, an historical overview from the poorhouses through the Great Society, and a tour of welfare states across the rich democracies. We then survey developments – and explain the actual workings of policy – across jobs, education, welfare, pensions, and health care. We explore the institutional and political factors behind their divergent trajectories through conservative revival and the age of Obama. Students will write a seminar paper exploring policy development over time in a program or area of their choosing. Enrollment restricted to Social Policy minors only.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Schlozman, Daniel
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Status: Open - AS.362.111 - Introduction to African American Studies
This is the gateway class to the study of African American life, culture, politics and history in the United States and the Caribbean. African American Studies is a multi-disciplinary field of study that includes history, social sciences, literature and the arts. This academic discipline is often taught under parallel terms emphasizing related geographies and identifying concepts: Black Studies, Afro-American Studies, Africana Studies, Pan-African Studies and African Diaspora Studies. Unlike every other modern academic discipline in the college, African American Studies was founded because of a social and political revolution. The class has two purposes, operating in tandem: (1) provide students with a generous historical, political and cultural overview of the lives of African descendants in the western hemisphere, but principally in North America; (2) explicitly address the problem of regularized systemic inequality in American society as a response to and an attempt to dominate a core nugget of identity difference that is the operative mechanism in black protest, resistance and revolt. This is a difference that includes, but is not limited by or reducible to morphology, culture, history, and ontology. We accept as an operating principle that an inquiry into an enslaved group of nonwestern human beings marked by difference cannot rely solely on the western episteme for its excavation. Thus, we will examine a body of diverse evidence during the semester, works of literature, history, sociology, political science, music and film. The course requirements include essays, examinations, and presentations.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Jackson, Lawrence P
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Status: Open - AS.190.284 - Classics of Political Theory: Political Freedom
This course investigates core questions of what constitutes political freedom, what limits on freedom (if any) should be imposed by authority, and the relationship between freedom, responsibility and political judgment. Spanning texts ancient, modern and contemporary, we shall investigate how power inhabits and invigorates practices of freedom and consent. Among the questions we will consider: Can we always tell the difference between consent and coercion? Are morality and freedom incompatible? Is freedom from the past possible? By wrestling with slavery (freedom’s opposite) we will confront the terrifying possibility that slavery can be both embodied and psychic. If our minds can be held captive by power, can we ever be certain that we are truly free? The political stakes of these problems will be brought to light through a consideration of issues of religion, gender, sexuality, civil liberties, class and race.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Brendese, Philip Joseph, III.
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: MW 3:00PM - 3:50PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
Status: Open - AS.362.113 - Police and Prisons in Comparative Perspective
Course description: (modified slightly) This introductory course will examine policing and prisons in the United States and beyond, with a focus on racial inequality. It will consist of three parts. First, we will define key concepts in police and prison studies. Then, we will explore the contemporary state of prisons and policing in the United States and look at debates around the rise of “mass incarceration” and aggressive forms of policing in the final third of the 20th century. Third, we will explore policing and prison in other parts of the globe in the contemporary moment, highlighting similarities and differences from the U.S. case. What can studying the instruments of social control in other societies reveal about our own? Students will develop an understanding of major trends, keywords, and debates in the literature on policing and prisons, with particular reference to race and racism.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Schrader, Stuart Laurence
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
Status: Waitlist Only - AS.389.378 - Collections Remix
The course invites students to mine the archival, literary and cultural collections of the university for materials that reflect African-American experiences and stage campus interventions based on their findings. Participates in the Housing Our Story: Archival Justice for Black Baltimore project. M&S Practicum..
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Kingsley, Jennifer P
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: F 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Status: Canceled - AS.362.216 - The politics of contemporary black film
Over the past few years films such as Black Panther, Get Out, and Black KKKlansman have been both critical and economic successes, significantly changing how we think of “black films” as a genre. What do these films tell us about what it means to be black at this specific moment in time? How is what these films tell us shaped by how they are produced? How do the circulation of concepts like “Wakanda Forever!” shape political imaginations? When we watch these films how are our own ideas change? As a particularly powerful form of popular culture, film not only entertains, but it educates, and in some instances propagandizes. This is no less true of black films than it is of non-black ones. In this class we will examine a range of recent popular black films with an eye to examining the politics of their production, circulation, and consumption.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Spence, Lester
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: M 1:30PM - 3:50PM
Status: Open - AS.280.120 - Lectures on Public Health and Wellbeing in Baltimore
An introduction to Urban Health with Baltimore as a case study: wellbeing, nutrition, education, violence and city-wide geographic variation. Lectures by JH Faculty, local government/service providers and advocates.
Credits: 1.00
Instructor: Leaf, Philip
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: T 4:30PM - 5:45PM
Status: Open - AS.362.590 - Independent Study for Africana Studies
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings:
Status: Closed - AS.362.123 - Introduction to African American Literature (Part 1)
This course will survey African American Literature from the 19th century to the late 20th century. We will turn to prose, poetry, and drama to explore the various ways black writes have engaged U.S. culture, history, and politics.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Mott, Shani
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: MW 1:30PM - 2:45PM
Status: Open - AS.230.265 - Research Tools for Global Sociology and Development
This course will introduce students to a range of software programs that are critical for conducting social scientific research in the 21st century. Students will develop competency in the use of computer programs for statistical analysis, database management, the creation of maps and timelines, and the presentation of research reports. The course uses examples from ongoing social science faculty research projects at Johns Hopkins on global inequality and international development. Required for GSCD track students. Course previously titled "Research Tools and Technologies for the Social Sciences"
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Kang, Minhyoung
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: MW 1:30PM - 2:45PM
Status: Open - AS.190.419 - Race and Segregated Time
This course explores how time, and not just space, is segregated along racial lines. We shall examine how racial injustices are experienced as impositions on human time, how resistance to racial inequality has often been figured in temporal terms, and what it means to think in untimely ways that challenge how the extended lifespans of racially dominant groups is contingent upon the foreshortened lifetimes of racial others. Readings will bring political theory into contact with contemporary experiences of race, such as: criminal (in)justice, environmental racism and the proliferation of human disposability. Recommended Course Background: One Political Theory course.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Brendese, Philip Joseph, III.
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Status: Open - AS.280.120 - Lectures on Public Health and Wellbeing in Baltimore
An introduction to Urban Health with Baltimore as a case study: wellbeing, nutrition, education, violence and city-wide geographic variation. Lectures by JH Faculty, local government/service providers and advocates.
Credits: 1.00
Instructor: Leaf, Philip
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: T 4:30PM - 5:45PM
Status: Open - AS.230.357 - Baltimore and Beyond
This course uses the city of Baltimore as a lens through which to explore issues of urban inequality. We will focus on Baltimore's history of racial segregation and concentrated poverty, and its effect on the social and economic well-being of the city and its residents, with attention to education, employment, health and crime. Students will learn how to employ Census data, GIS approaches, and sociological research to inform questions about population change, inequality and the distribution of resources across the city and metropolitan region. Students will also work on one or more policy relevant studies based in Baltimore, including: a project on abandoned and vacant housing, a desegregation intervention, and a longitudinal study of inner city youth. Finally, students will become familiar with Baltimore City's programs and policy approaches to addressing the city's most pressing problems, and will design innovative and effective and innovative solutions as part of their course assignments. Enrollment restricted to Social Policy minors only.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Deluca, Stefanie
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: T 4:00PM - 6:30PM
Status: Open - AS.362.311 - Black Utopias
In this course, we will read literary and historical texts that present visions of black utopia. Authors include “Ethiop” (William J. Wilson), Marcus Garvey, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, and others.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
Status: Open - AS.194.210 - Race, Gender, Citizenship: Being Muslim in America
This course explores how American Muslims navigate and contest complex notions of belonging in the context of national conversations on race, gender, citizenship, and national security. With a focus on specific case studies that range from Black Muslim movements of the early twentieth century to the ongoing War on Terror, the course will add complexity to the public conversation on what it means to be Muslim - and what it means to be American. The course will draw on history, ethnography, first-person narratives, films, blogs, documentaries and fiction.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Ziad, Homayra
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Status: Open - AS.230.316 - African American Family
This course is an examination of sociological theories and studies of African-American families and an overview of the major issues confronting African-American family life. The contemporary conditions of black families are explored, as well as the historical events that have influenced the family patterns we currently observe. Special attention will be given to social policies that have evolved as a result of the prominence of any one perspective at a given point in time.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: McDonald, Katrina Bell
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
Status: Open - AS.362.590 - Independent Study for Africana Studies
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: McDonald, Katrina Bell
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings:
Status: Closed - AS.389.420 - Curatorial Seminar
In collaboration with a local museum, conceptualize and develop an exhibition, potentially including but not limited to: checklists, exhibition texts, interpretive strategies, and programming. Exhibition theme varies year to year. Concepts, ethics and practicalities of curation are key concerns. Research visits to regional museums and private collections as relevant.
Credits: 4.00
Instructor: Kingsley, Jennifer P
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: Th 4:15PM - 6:45PM
Status: Closed - AS.190.410 - Rastafari: Race and Resistance on a Global Scale
The study of race has in recent years taken a global turn, such that nationally-inscribed struggles over racism have been increasingly re-narrated as part of struggles over global order. In this class we will use the Rastafari faith to examine the challenges that this global turn presents to the study of race. Gestated in the 1930s Caribbean, drawing upon a long tradition of North American Ethiopianism, and rising to global prominence by the 1980s, the Rastafrai faith connects all corners of the Black world and far beyond. As such, an examination of Rastafari can tell us much about the prospects of - and difficulties in – overturning racism as a global ordering principle. Open to Seniors Only.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Shilliam, Robert
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: Th 3:00PM - 5:30PM
Status: Open - AS.362.301 - Black Women Writers
This course will introduce students to a variety of works written by black women of the Diaspora with a focus on the U.S. We will consider how women have theorized power, engaged history, and creatively imagined both the past and the present.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Mott, Shani
Term: Spring 2019
Meetings: M 9:00AM - 11:30AM
Status: Open