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How should we understand transformations in black American identity, community and politics since the 1960s? This course examines the changing contours of black America in the post civil rights era, and how academics, journalists and artists have analyzed those changes through ethnographies, films, music and memoirs. How have black Americans experienced the deepening class-divides in the post civil rights era? How have notions of black masculinity been transformed as industrial working class jobs have disappeared and increasing numbers of black men find themselves in the criminal justice system? How are generational divides affecting black communities? How have black politics changed since the civil rights movement. We will pay close attention to the ways ethnographies have tried to influence, and been influenced by, public policy debates about the problems facing black America. What has been the role of ethnographies in making and unmaking notions of a black underclass or culture of poverty? How have ethnographers and documentary makers tried to project the voices of women on welfare or young men hustling in the informal economy into contemporary political and policy debates? What stories have been ignored as ethnographers mapped the problems facing black America?
COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion
Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS AFAM Grading Mode: Graded
Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.
Last Updated on MAR-30-2006
Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459