AAST 205. Introduction to African American Studies.

Required for a minor in African American studies.
This course is an interdisciplinary survey designed to introduce students to the major concepts and theories in African American Studies. It will provide a foundation for understanding the complexity of social, political, cultural, and historical experiences of people of African descent. The interpretive frameworks include, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, slavery in the age of Revolution, black religion, the Harlem Renaissance, black cultural pride, and contemporary issues of race and gender. The class will be an introductory approach to understanding the experiences of African Americans.

HIST 310. African American History to 1865

This course is an historical examination of the African American experience from 1619 to 1865. The curriculum will move through the experiences of African Americans in the British American colonies and the newly formed United States, discuss the institution of slavery and definitions of race, the antebellum South, Abolitionism, and trace the meaning of Emancipation and how the Civil War affected the future of the black community.

HIST 311. African American History since 1865

This course will study the history of African Americans from 1865 to the present. It will begin with emancipation and reconstruction and highlight the social, political, and economic transformation of the black community in the late nineteenth century. Major themes of the course will include, the Great Migration, World War I, the Depression, World War II, the Cold War, black leadership, and contemporary issues such as, Afrocentricity and the emergence and influence of Hip Hop culture in American society.

HIST 409. The Modern Civil Rights Movement.

This seminar introduces students to current research on the history of the modern civil rights movement, 1941-1975. The aim of this course is to explore the evolution of the modern civil rights era from its beginnings during World War II and the integrationist perspective of the 1950s to the militant black power and separatist viewpoint of the early 1970s. It will also discuss how the black power movement grew out of the civil rights movement and how independent black politics, black cultural pride, and armed resistance to terrorism operated in tandem with legal efforts and nonviolent protest in the struggle for African American social equality.

ENGL 349. African American Literature

The goal for this course is to situate the African American literary tradition in a developing cultural context, and talk about the ways in which it relates to the encompassing category of American Literature. The course will review some of the influential texts in the body of African American literary criticism and think about their impact on the reception of the works within the genre. Using two novels, along with several novel excerpts, short stories, poems, letters, autobiographical pieces, essays, selected critical commentary, and two plays, this course is designed to provide as much of an introduction and overview of the range of literature written by Americans of African descent as can be compressed into fourteen weeks.

ANTH 202. Cultural Anthropology

A comparative study of culture; habitat, technology, and economy; kinship and political organization; life cycles in primitive societies.

ENGL 340. Southern Literature to 1900

A survey of the literary achievement of Southern writers from 1710 to 1900.

ENGL 348. Twentieth Century Southern Literature

A study of the most important Southern authors of the twentieth century, with emphasis on significant regional topics such as the Fugitive and Agrarian Movement, the development of the Southern Tradition, and the Southern Gothic School.

HIST 402. South Carolina history

A survey of the political, economic, social, and intellectual development of South Carolina from its discovery to the present, with emphasis on the relation of the state to the South and to the nation.

HIST 406. Old South

A survey of major issues and institutions in the history of the American South from the colonial period through the Civil War. Particular attention is given to the plantation, slavery, states rights, fundamentalist religion, the ethic of honor, and the origins and consequences of the Civil War. Among the questions addressed are what caused a Southern regional mentality to develop and how different was the South from the rest of the nation?

HIST 407. New South

A survey of major issues and institutions in the history of the American South since the end of the Civil War. Particular attention is given to the Cult of the Lost Cause, the New South Movement, racial segregation, progressivism, religion, music, literature, the second reconstruction, and the emergence of the sunbelt South. Among the major questions addressed are why, and how much, did the South change after the Civil War and does a distinctive South still exist?

PSCI 307. Southern Politics

A study of politics in the South in both regional and national contexts. Attention given to the politics of individual states and to an analysis of regional developments in such areas as race relations, political behavior, and party competition.

PSCI 341. African Affairs

An analysis of the politics and modernization of Africa with emphasis on the newly independent states of the continent with their political, cultural, demographic, and historical characteristics and on tribal factors influencing the process of modernization.

PSCI 462. Constitutional Law: Civil Rights and Liberties

A study of the underlying and basic principles of the Constitution as reflected in the leading decisions of the United States Supreme Court with special attention directed to the Bill of Rights and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.

PSYC 305. Social Psychology

A study of the individual in relation to his social environment with special attention to group behavior, communication, conformity, leadership, aggression, and interpersonal attraction.

SOCI 304. Minority Group Relations

An examination of the substantive issues in the study of majority-minority group relations and social processes, and the cultural orientations which are associated with these issues.

II. Special Topics Courses:

HIST. African American Civil-Military History
HIST. Race in the Americas
HIST. African Slavery
HIST. The History of Jazz
HIST. African American Leadership
PSCI. Black Nationalism
PSCI. Third World Terrorism
PSCI. Race Relations
ENGL. African American writers of the Twentieth Century
ENGL. The Harlem Renaissance