HUM 1051 - Introduction to African American Culture

Credits: 3
Hours/Week: Lecture 3 Lab 0
Internship hours per week 0
Course Description: This course offers an introduction to important historical, political, artistic, and cultural issues concerning African American people in the United States from slavery to present day. One aim is to show how the contributions and evolutions of African American culture in the United States impacted other people and cultures in such areas as literature, science, politics, history, religion, music, theater, language, art, television, and film. Another aim is to show how white supremacy sharply influences African American cultural identities and experiences.
MnTC Goals
Goal 6 Goal 7B

Prerequisite(s): None
Corequisite(s): None
Recommendation: None

Major Content
1. Who are black people? Culture vs. Race

2. Trans Atlantic Slave Trade

3. Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and African Diaspora/ African American Religion

4. Black agency and revolution among free and enslaved blacks in an age of chattel slavery

5. The Civil War and Reconstruction

6. Black agency in a post-Civil War age of White Supremacy

7. Life home and abroad for African Americans during WWII

8. The Civil Rights Era

9. The post-Civil Rights Era

10. Black leaders: Black power and Social Justice

11. WEB Debois double consciousness (psychological) and Black Trauma-PSS (psychological) 

12. The Black Church, M.L. King beloved community, and Slavery and the Problem of Suffering (religious)

13. West: Liberal structuralist vs. Conservative behaviorist (political) AND Emerson and Smith: the 3 tools of evangelicalism (religious/social)

14. Silva Post Jim Crow racism (social, political) and Robin Diangelo: White Fragility and white privilege

15. Colorism, featurism, reverse racism AND White women’s tears: instances of White supremacy 

16. Booker T. Washington and his grass roots self-help economic theory AND Rap & Hip Hop

 
Learning Outcomes
At the end of this course students will be able to:

1. 1. define essential terminology of African American culture within the humanities.
   2. explain perspectives, ideas, events, experiences, themes, theories, and other trends in the humanities that helped to shape African American culture.
   3. describe how African American people and culture developed innovations, styles, movements, and trends in creative, social, and political works of the humanities.
   4. identify the historical and current political, social, and economic ways African American people and cultures have impacted other people and cultures, both nationally and internationally.
   5. articulate an informed and critical reaction to artists and creative works in the humanities created by African American people and culture.
   6. analyze relationships between political power and human expression throughout African American culture 
   7. assess the role that the humanities play in struggles of justice, protest, and revolution in African American communities
   8. describe historical and contemporary systemic structures of racism that sustain social, political, economic, and/or environmental inequities for African American communities.
   9. describe how racial inequality is maintained in America by redefining race and other social identities and structures.

06. 02. Understand those works as expressions of individual and human values within an historical and social context.

06. 03. Respond critically to works in the arts and humanities.

06. 05. Articulate an informed personal reaction to works in the arts and humanities.
Theme Goals (MnTC Goals 7-10)
07B. 01.Understand historical and contemporary systemic structures of racism that sustain social, political, economic, and/or environmental inequities, particularly for Black, Indigenous lands and people, and other communities of color.

07B. 02. Describe individual and institutional dynamics of unequal power relations among racial groups in the United States and how inequality is maintained by redefining race and other social identities and structures.

07B.03, Examine significant challenges of and contributions by people in the United States who have experienced racism and other forms of oppression such as sexism, classism, ableism, heterosexism, transphobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia.

Practicum hours per week: 0

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