Courses

Africana Studies is an interdisciplinary and multi-method curriculum anchored by Black epistemologies. The range of subject areas covered include slavery, colonization, local Richmond history, gender and sexuality, and a variety of research methods. This approach provides students with the theoretical and methodological facility at the heart of Africana Studies and courses from the African descendent perspective in a variety of academic and cultural areas. 

Fall 2025 Africana Studies Courses

AFST 101: Introduction to Africana Studies
TR 10:30-11:45am | Dr. Deborwah Faulk

Introduction to Africana Studies introduces students to the breadth of motivations, dimensions, and consequences of African diasporic life and thought. Students will study the various interdisciplinary and thematic approaches to the field, including the history of africana studies as a discipline and its core research methodologies. The course theme is “race, culture, and inequality in an anti-black world.” This version of the course draws heavily on sociology and other social sciences to understand the social construction of race and its relationship to black identity, cultural expression, and the lived experiences of people of African descent. The course is divided into 4 primary sections: Black pedagogies: origins, histories, and the formation of the African diaspora and discipline; Black to the bone: Black identities, cultures, and experiences; Blackness embodied and dispersed: Black places, spaces, and organizations; and Black representation, expression, and joy.

AFST 301: Sociology of Higher Education
T 1:30-4pm | Dr. Deborwah Faulk

Higher education and the college degree are often thought of as the great equalizer in our society, providing opportunity to achieve and maintain upward mobility. But what if I told you, higher education as an institution is by very design unequal? What if you learned that the inequalities that exist within and because of the structure of higher education are as vast and complex as the disparities of society at large. In this course, we engage the historical and contemporary to understand the hierarchy of, between, and within colleges in the United States. We will discuss how inequality shapes not only the success, reputation, and status of individuals but of colleges themselves. Through close-reading of critical interdisciplinary text, engagement with media and policy, and experiential learning, we will also explore how race, class, and gender inequality manifests in college access, experiences, and outcomes. Moreover, as history is presently being written, we explore ongoing threats to higher education as we know it. Through the lens of history and inequality, we explore the past, present, and future of highered in the Sociology of Higher Education course.

AFST 400: Research Seminar Furious Spaces: African Architecture Across Diasporic Geographies, Memory, and Futurity
W 3-5:40pm | Dr. Kymberly Newberry
Prerequisites: AFST declared major or minor status, or permission of instructor.

 

 

Africana Studies

Expand All
  • AFST 101 Introduction to Africana Studies

    Units: 1

    Fulfills General Education Requirement(s): IF-Power/Equity/Identity/Cult (IFPE)

    Description
    An interdisciplinary and thematic approach to the African diaspora throughout the Americas, including its motivations, dimensions, consequences, and the importance of its study. Beginning with the encounters between Africans and the Portuguese in the 15th century, this class will open up diverse paths of inquiry to understand the presence and implications of Africans in the New World.
  • AFST 201 The Rumors of War Seminar

    Units: 1

    Fulfills General Education Requirement(s): IF-Power/Equity/Identity/Cult (IFPE), AI-Historical Inquiry (AIHS)

    Description
    The history of slavery and colonization with attention to the world before and after 1492. The course uses this approach to closely examine the history of the land of UR within a broader context of the 1492 moment, from the earliest days of the land being claimed by European settlers, to its purchase by free Black families, to its current owners - the University of Richmond.
  • AFST 301 Seminar in Africana Studies

    Units: 1

    Description
    Surveys multidisciplinary approaches to Africana Studies, with specific emphasis on the wide range of theories and methods employed by scholars in the field.

     

    Prerequisites

    AFST 101 or AFST 201

  • AFST 400 The W.E.B. Du Bois Senior Seminar

    Units: 1

    Description
    In depth study of the work and life of one major scholar in the field (such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Angela Davis, Walter Rodney, Sylvia Wynter, C.L.R. James, Kwame Nkrumah, etc.). Serves as the main research capstone of the major, providing a foundational, historical analysis of the development of Black Studies, along with key theories of the field.

     

    Prerequisites

    Declared major or minor status in Africana Studies, or permission of instructor.