Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies
Bachelor of Arts in African American and African Diaspora Studies and Religious Studies
Students on Summer 2023, Fall 2023, or Spring 2024 requirements AAADRELBA
Requirements
The major requires at least 42 credit hours, including the requirements listed below.
- African American and African Diaspora Studies Courses.
- Introductory course. One (1) course:
- AAAD-A 150 Survey of the Culture of Black Americans
AAAD-A 150 Survey of the Culture of Black Americans
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Notes
- Required for the major
- Description
- Explores the culture of Blacks in America viewed from a broad interdisciplinary approach, employing resources from history, literature, folklore, religion, sociology, and political science.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- African American History. One (1) course:
- AAAD-A 355 African American History I
- AAAD-A 356 African American History II
AAAD-A 355 African American History I
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- History of blacks in the United States. Slavery, abolitionism, Reconstruction, and post-Reconstruction to 1900.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 355 or HIST-A 355.
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 356 African American History II
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Notes
- R: AAAD-A 355
- Description
- 1900 to the present. Migration north, NAACP, Harlem Renaissance, postwar freedom movement.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 356 or HIST-A 356.
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- African American Literature. One (1) course:
- AAAD-A 379 Early Black American Writing
- AAAD-A 380 Contemporary Black American Writing
AAAD-A 379 Early Black American Writing
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- African American writing before World War II, with emphasis on critical reactions and analyses. Includes slave narratives, autobiographies, rhetoric, fiction, and poetry.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
AAAD-A 380 Contemporary Black American Writing
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Notes
- R: AAAD-A 379
- Description
- The black experience in America as it has been reflected since World War II in the works of outstanding African American writers: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Focal area. Nine (9) credit hours:
- Arts
- AAAD-A 100 African American Dance Company: Foundations and Practices
- AAAD-A 104 Groups Theatre Workshop
- AAAD-A 110 African American Choral Ensemble: Foundations and Practices
- AAAD-A 112 Black Music of Two Worlds
- AAAD-A 120 Soul Revue: Foundations and Practices
- AAAD-A 221 Dance in the African Diaspora
- AAAD-A 222 Black Women Artists
- AAAD-A 243 Race and Representation in American Art
- AAAD-A 251 Photography of and by the African Diaspora
- AAAD-A 277 Images of Blacks in Films: 1903-1950s
- AAAD-A 278 Contemporary Black Film
- AAAD-A 283 Blacks in American Drama and Theatre, 1767-1945
- AAAD-A 290 Sociocultural Perspective of African American Music
- AAAD-A 295 Survey of Hip Hop
- AAAD-A 297 Popular Music of Black America
- AAAD-A 320 Black Dance History
- AAAD-A 330 African American Cinematic Experience
- AAAD-A 331 Visual Arts of the Harlem Renaissance
- AAAD-A 332 Art of the Civil Rights Movement
- AAAD-A 337 Soul Revue: Advanced Studies and Practices
- AAAD-A 338 African American Dance Company: Advanced Studies and Practices
- AAAD-A 339 African American Choral Ensemble: Advanced Studies and Practices
- AAAD-A 345 Hip Hop Music and Culture
- AAAD-A 352 African American Art II: African American Artists
- AAAD-A 359 Ethnic/Racial Stereotypes in American Film
- AAAD-A 384 Blacks in American Drama and Theatre, 1945-Present
- AAAD-A 385 Seminar in Black Theatre
- AAAD-A 388 Motown
- AAAD-A 393 History of Jazz
- AAAD-A 394 Survey of African American Music
- AAAD-A 395 Contemporary Jazz and Soul Music
- AAAD-A 396 Art Music of Black Composers
- AAAD-A 430 The Cinema of Africana Women
- AAAD-A 496 Black Religious Music
- Literature
- AAAD-A 131 Early African American and African Diaspora Literature
- AAAD-A 132 Recent African American and African Diaspora Literature
- AAAD-A 169 Introduction to African American Literature
- AAAD-A 249 African American Autobiography
- AAAD-A 479 Contemporary Black Poetry
- AAAD-A 480 The Black Novel
- History, Culture, and Social Issues
- AAAD-A 113 Atkins Living-Learning Center Foundational Course
- AAAD-A 154 History of Race in the Americas
- AAAD-A 156 Black Liberation Struggles against Jim Crow and Apartheid
- AAAD-A 203 Studying Blacks of the New World: African Americans and Africans in the African Diaspora
- AAAD-A 205 Black Electoral Politics
- AAAD-A 210 Black Women in the Diaspora
- AAAD-A 238 Communication in Black America
- AAAD-A 250 U.S. Contemporary Minorities
- AAAD-A 255 The Black Church in America
- AAAD-A 263 Contemporary Social Issues in the African American Community
- AAAD-A 264 History of Sports and the African American Experience
- AAAD-A 265 Modern Sports and the African American Experience
- AAAD-A 292 African American Folklore
- AAAD-A 304 Black Paris
- AAAD-A 350 Black Atlantic
- AAAD-A 354 Transnational Americas
- AAAD-A 360 Slavery: Worldwide Perspective
- AAAD-A 363 Research on Contemporary African American Problems I
- AAAD-A 382 Black Community, Law, and Social Change
- AAAD-A 386 Black Feminist Perspectives
- AAAD-A 387 Black Migration
- AAAD-A 391 Black Nationalism
- AAAD-A 398 Advanced Topics in Social and Historical Studies for African American and African Diaspora Studies
- AAAD-A 399 Advanced Topics in Arts and Humanities for African American and African Diaspora Studies
- AAAD-A 405 Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, 1954-1974
- AAAD-A 407 African American and African Protest Strategies
- AAAD-A 408 Race, Gender, and Class in Cross-Cultural Perspective
- AAAD-A 420 Transforming Divided Communities and Societies
- AAAD-A 425 The Black Family in Twentieth-Century Rural America, 1900-1970
- AAAD-A 427 Cross-Cultural Communication
- AAAD-A 447 Race, Crime, and Media
- AAAD-A 452 Historical Issues in Black Education
- AAAD-A 481 Racism and the Law
- Credits
- 2
- Prerequisites
- Consent of instructor by audition
- Notes
- R: Previous dance training desirable but not essential
- Description
- Emphasis on ethnic and jazz traditions, although other genres are regularly performed. Repertoire varies from semester to semester. Participation in on- and off-campus concerts, workshops, and lecture demonstrations required.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated individually or in combination with AAAD-A 110 or AAAD-A 120 for a maximum of 12 credit hours.
- Credits
- 2
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Open to summer Groups Program students only. Through a musical/theatrical piece chosen for study and performance, students are encouraged to explore and develop their abilities and to experience growth and motivation that comes from participating in a unified and motivating group experience.
- Credits
- 2
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- The ensemble performs music composed by, for and about blacks, including spirituals, gospel, art songs, and excerpts from operas and musicals. Repertoire varies from semester to semester. Participation in on- and off-campus concerts, workshops, and lecture demonstrations required. No audition required. Students meet the first day of class prepared to sing. Vocal evaluations and part assignments will be done during class. Ability to read music is desirable but not essential.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated individually or in combination with AAAD-A 100 or AAAD-A 120 for a maximum of 12 credit hours.
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- An exploration of the relationships among musics of West and Central African people and their descendants in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Emphasis placed on the conceptual and aesthetic continuities between musical expression in Old and New World contexts--a uniformity which exists because of shared African cultural ancestry.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 112, FOLK-E 112, or FOLK-F 112.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 2
- Prerequisites
- Consent of instructor by audition
- Description
- Introduces the richness and depth of black popular tradition through authentic performance practices. Repertoire varies from semester to semester. Participation in on- and off-campus concerts, workshops, and lecture demonstrations required. Ability to read music desirable but not essential.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated individually or in combination with AAAD-A 100 or AAAD-A 110 for a maximum of 12 credit hours.
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Introduction to the history, culture, music, and body movements of dances in the African American and African Diaspora tradition with a focus on African-derived dances, primarily from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and America. Instruction through classroom lectures, discussions, videos, readings, and movement sessions.
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines black female creativity in the United States from colonial times through the present. Studies art and creativity under slavery, nineteenth-century pioneering artists, racial and gender stereotypes in visual culture, the Harlem Renaissance, WPA art, civil rights and Black Power movements, feminist art, abstraction, conceptual and performance art, vernacular art, postmodernism, and black feminist futurism.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines representations of racial identity in American visual culture from the colonial period through the present. Focuses on evolving conceptions of European American, Native American, African American, Asian American, and Mexican American identities. Considers the political and social climate in which art was made, its consumption, and its place within existing histories.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Investigates the complex relationship between photography and the African Diaspora from the invention of photography in 1839 through the present. Focuses on a range of photographic genres. Provides historical and theoretical reflections on photography of and by black people by considering the political and social climate in which these images were made, their consumption, and their place within existing histories. Emphasizes image making in the United States with occasional reference to African and European photography.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Images of blacks in films, mainly American, from before "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) to the 1950s. Course will include segments as well as complete feature films (also "race films" when available), shorts, cartoons, and documentaries viewed in historical perspective.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Problems raised by proliferation of films acted, authored, directed, and/or produced by blacks. Exploration of legitimacy of "black film aesthetic" and its reception by various segments of the black community.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Images of blacks as reflected in American drama from 1767 to 1945. Selected dramas of both white and black playwrights, such as Isaac Bickerstaffe, William Wells Brown, Eugene O\'Neill, and Richard Wright, who depicted blacks on the stage.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 283 or AAAD-A 383.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Survey of cultural, social, and political attitudes that influenced blacks in the development of and participation in blues, jazz, urban black popular music, and "classical" music.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines rap music and hip hop culture as artistic and sociocultural phenomena with emphasis on historical, cultural, economic, and political contexts. Topics include the coexistence of various hip hop styles, their appropriation by the music industry, and controversies resulting from the exploitation of hip hop as a commodity for national and global consumption.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 295, FOLK-E 295, or FOLK-F 295.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A chronological survey of Black popular music from 1945-2000: rhythm and blues, soul, funk, disco, hip hop, and their derivative forms. Emphasis placed on the context for evolution and the contributions of African Americans to the development of a multi-billion dollar music industry.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 297, AAAD-A 397, FOLK-E 297, FOLK-F 397, or MUS-M 397.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Acquaints students with dancers and choreographers from the African American and African Diaspora who choose to communicate historical, political, recreational, and social themes through the modern, jazz, ballet, tap, and traditional (African and Caribbean) forms of dance and the expressive nature of movement from the black perspective and experience.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines the historical and contemporary portrayals of African Americans in Hollywood and in independent narrative film focusing on the social and political functions of film, its legitimization of race, and its oppositional formations, interventions, and practices. Considers how film mediates and interrogates race and social relations in American society.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Considers visual artistic production (painting, sculpture, photography, and film) during the Harlem or "New Negro" Renaissance, a period in which African American artists sought radical reconceptualizations of self and community through visual and literary expression.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Considers visual artistic production (painting, sculpture, photography, and film) during the American Civil Rights and Black Power Movements.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 2
- Prerequisites
- AAAD-A 120
- Description
- Focuses on music industry concerns related to the ensemble's live presentations of Black popular music. Explores how Black popular music is manifested within the broader context of the music industry. Readings explore music industry structures and practices (copyright law, publishing, creative production, etc.) that directly impact African American artists' creative output and livelihood.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated for a maximum of 8 credit hours individually or in combination with AAAD-A 338 and AAAD-A 339.
- Credits
- 2
- Prerequisites
- AAAD-A 100
- Description
- Students learn dance technique and experience performance from the perspective of the African American and African diaspora. Students perform in choreographic works created by the director and in works produced from student collaborative projects.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated for a maximum of 8 credit hours individually or in combination with AAAD-A 337 and AAAD-A 339.
- Credits
- 2
- Prerequisites
- AAAD-A 110
- Description
- Through meetings with the instructor, students may complete a research project, and develop advanced-level choral leadership skills in vocal techniques, advanced sight reading, and intermediate piano skills. Students will organize and perform in small ensembles to demonstrate their abilities to perform Black choral music.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated for a maximum of 8 credit hours individually or in combination with AAAD-A 337 and AAAD-A 338.
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- Junior or senior standing
- Description
- Examines rap music as artistic and sociological phenomena with emphasis on its historical and political contexts.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 345, AAAD-A 489, FOLK-F 345, or FOLK-F 389.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A survey of the artistic traditions of the African in the New World, from the period of slavery in North and South America through contemporary African American and expatriate black American artists.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A study in cross-cultural stereotyping as evidenced in the film medium. Analysis of Native American, Asian, black, Hispanic, and Jewish groups. Features, shorts, and animations screened to illustrate the "classic" stereotypes of each group and to demonstrate their impact on American society.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Images of blacks as reflected in American drama from 1945 to the present. Emphasis on the contributions of black playwrights such as Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes, Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Ted Shine, and Ed Bullins.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- AAAD-A 283, AAAD-A 379, AAAD-A 380, AAAD-A 383, or AAAD-A 384; or consent of instructor
- Description
- Contributions of blacks to the theatre in America. Reading and discussion of selected dramas and critiques with opportunities for involvement in the oral interpretation of one or more of the plays.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- This course surveys the development of Motown Record Corporation, Detroit Era (1959-1972). Through lecture, discussion, guided listening, and visual experiences, the course studies the musical works, creative processes, business practices, historical events, media, technology, and sociocultural factors that contributed to Motown's identity as a unique artistic and cultural phenomenon.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 388, AAAD-A 389, or FOLK-E 388.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- None
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 393 or MUS-M 393.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A chronological survey of sacred and secular African American musical traditions in North America from the African past to the present. Emphasis placed on context for evolution, musical processes and aesthetics, interrelationships among genres and musical change, issues of gender, and music as resistance.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 394, FOLK-E 394, or MUS-M 394.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A survey of contemporary jazz and soul (rhythm and blues) music and musicians in the United States.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 395 or MUS-M 395.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A study of black music and musicians in the United States with emphasis on the black composer in contemporary music.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 396 or MUS-M 396.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Historical and critical overview of films produced by African American women from the 1940s to the present. The course emphasizes how black women filmmakers combine their creative abilities with a desire to capture dominant issues that affect black women's lives in America.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- An in-depth investigation of Negro spirituals and gospel music, with some treatment of the traditions of lining-out and shape note singing. Examination of genres will address and integrate both the musical and the sociocultural perspectives.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 496 or FOLK-E 496.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines historical texts and introduces them and tropes emphasized by writers to articulate issues of freedom, identity, and salvation as perceived by blacks in diaspora communities. Teaches students how to relate literary works to historical and cultural contexts and how to think critically about ideas, images, and master narratives as presented by African American writers and writers of the black diaspora.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines recent literary texts and introduces students to transnational themes and tropes emphasized by black writers to articulate issues of freedom, identity, and salvation; utilizes interdisciplinary methods to teach students how to appreciate literary artistry; relate literary works to historical and cultural contexts; and think critically about ideas, images, and master narratives as presented by African American writers and writers of the black diaspora.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Representative African American writings including poetry, short story, sermons, novels, and drama.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A survey of autobiographies written by black Americans in the last two centuries. The course emphasizes how the autobiographers combine the grace of art and the power of argument to urge the creation of genuine freedom in America.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- An examination of black poetry from Dunbar to the present, emphasizing the emergence, growth, and development of black consciousness as a positive ethnic identification.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Notes
- R: AAAD-A 379 or AAAD-A 380
- Description
- Analysis of the African American novel from the Harlem Renaissance to the present: genesis, development, and current trends. Emphasis on traditions arising out of the black experience and on critical perspectives developed by black critics and scholars.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 1
- Prerequisites
- Must be an Atkins Living-Learning Center student.
- Description
- Examines the impact of African American history and culture on the nation as a whole and on the international community.
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Exploration of the development of racism and racial ideologies in the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, and South America from colonial times to the present. Emphasizes the interaction among cultural, political, and economic factors in shaping patterns of conflict and collaboration, domination and resistance.
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A comparative perspective on American race relations, specifically the similarities and differences of the struggles against Jim Crow in America and against apartheid in South Africa. In both places, the late twentieth century witnessed a revolt against the legal and philosophical framework of white supremacy.
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A comparative study of the cultural, historical, and socioeconomic life patterns of African Americans and Diaspora-based Africans in the United States.
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- The course will explore black participation in the formal structures of American government and in the processes by which these structures are accessed. Black participation in local, state, and federal government arenas will be focused upon, and the political benefits to the black community of these involvements will be assessed.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Interdisciplinary examination of salient aspects of black women's history, identity, and experience, including policies, cultural assumptions, and knowledge systems that affect black women's lives. While the primary focus is North America, the lives of black women in other cultural settings within the African Diaspora are also examined.
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Communicative experiences of black Americans, including black dialect, language and ethnicity, interracial communication, recurring themes, spokespersons in black dialogue, and sociohistorical aspects of black language and communication.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 238 or CMCL-C 238.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- An interdisciplinary study of how members of four minority groups--Native Americans, Asian Americans, blacks, and Hispanics--combine their struggle for social justice with their desire to maintain their own concepts of identity.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- The church's role as a black social institution from slavery to the present, its religious attitudes as expressed in songs and sermons, and its political activities as exemplified in the minister-politician.
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A seminar, primarily designed for sophomores and juniors, directed toward critical analysis of selected topics germane to the future socioeconomic and political position of African Americans.
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examination of the historical participation and contributions of African Americans in sport. Students study African American sports pioneers and the social conditions affecting their participation. Period studied includes pre-slavery to the civil rights era (1500 to 1960s).
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- The impact of African American sports heroes, famous teams, and annual sporting events on the shaping of African American culture and the combating of American racism.
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- African American culture in the United States viewed in terms of history (antebellum to present) and social change (rural to urban). Use of oral traditions and life histories to explore aspects of black culture and history.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 292, AAAD-A 392, or FOLK-F 354.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Notes
- R: 3 credit hours of literature
- Description
- The common and divergent experiences of African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and African travelers to the "City of Light," from eighteenth-century New Orleans Creoles to twenty-first-century youth of African descent, as seen through literature, performance, film, and other arts. Issues of colonization, expatriation, immigration, exile, the Harlem Renaissance and "negritude," race and diaspora, transnationalism.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 304 or CMLT-C 363.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- This course is an interdisciplinary and comparative study of historical, cultural, and political issues related to Africa and the African Diaspora (the Americas and Europe). Emphasis will also be on team teaching using IUB faculty. Course will be of interest to students in all university departments and schools.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Comparative colloquium that explores the recent literature on racial connections between "the local" and "the global" in contemporary American experience. Through immersion in the new "transnational" critiques of the United States, students analyze texts that describe African, Asian, European, indigenous, and Latino sensibilities about culture, homelands, belonging, and exclusion.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines several aspects of the classical, indigenous, and modern political/social bondage.
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A research seminar, primarily designed for juniors and seniors, directed toward critical analysis of selected topics germane to the future socioeconomic and political position of African Americans. Reading and discussion of relevant texts, studies, and articles. Includes theory construction, research design, and data collection.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Legal evolution of civil rights and analysis of specific relevant legal decisions that stimulated social change (the role of slavery, racial segregation, inequality of educational opportunity, and voting laws).
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examination of the history, development, and manifestation of feminist consciousness among African American women. The course is particularly concerned with how black women's lived experience defines that consciousness, and the differing impact it has among various groups of black women, and in their larger social, political, and cultural communities.
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Explores the process, patterns, and paradoxes of the incorporation of individuals and groups identified and/or perceived as "immigrants" from a comparative-interdisciplinary perspective. Focuses on persons from "sending" countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia to the United States. Also examines developments in other labor-importing, postindustrial countries such as France and England in relation to the people who settle there.
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Consequences of the black diaspora in North America; shifting views of blacks toward their native continent; analysis of current geographic, economic, and political relationships.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Advanced study and analysis of selected issues and problems within the African American and African Diaspora experience utilizing interdisciplinary interpretation through analytical reasoning and philosophical discussions. Varied topics primarily in the areas of history, politics, sociology, anthropology, and economics.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Advanced study and analysis of selected issues and problems within the African American and African Diaspora experience utilizing interdisciplinary interpretations through analytical reasoning and philosophical discussions. Varied topics primarily in the areas of dance, music, film, theatre and drama, and literature.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines the fight for civil rights by protest organizations such as Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and Congress of Racial Equality; the emergence of black leaders such as King, Farmer, and Malcolm X; the challenge posed by Black Power advocates in the Black Panthers and Black Muslims; and the changes in American society made by the black revolution.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- An examination of the historical roles, structures, the impact of black protest strategies, and the origins of black movements to assess their impact on communities in Africa and in the diaspora.
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examination of the influence of race, gender, and class from a perspective of power and culture. Use of interdisciplinary sources, including essays, fiction, art, and social science research to examine how different social groups vie for representation, self-definition, and power in different social and cultural settings.
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Histories, theories, policies, and citizen, state, corporate, nonprofit sector models of transforming past and present societies divided by race, ethnicity, gender, class, caste, tribe, and religion through restorative and distributive justice movements and policies such as civil rights, affirmative action, reparations, and reconciliation tribunals.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines the economic, social, cultural and political development of black families residing primarily in rural areas of southern US prior to 1970. Primary attention given to institutional development, race relations, population, and migration.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A survey study of national, cultural, and cross-cultural persuasion in theory and practice.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 427 or CMCL-C 427.
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Focuses on crime reporting in America, addressing the question of whether or not the media distort the picture of crime. In particular, this course explores the mass media treatment of African Americans in the coverage of crime.
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Education of black Americans and its relationship to the African American experience. Trends and patterns in the education of black Americans as they relate to the notions of education "for whom and for what."
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Contemporary racial problems in American society with regard to law and constitutional principles of basic freedoms and associated conflicts. Effects of societal norms and impact of racism.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- 300–499 Level African American and African Diaspora Studies. 12 credit hours:
- AAAD-A 304 Black Paris
- AAAD-A 320 Black Dance History
- AAAD-A 330 African American Cinematic Experience
- AAAD-A 331 Visual Arts of the Harlem Renaissance
- AAAD-A 332 Art of the Civil Rights Movement
- AAAD-A 337 Soul Revue: Advanced Studies and Practices
- AAAD-A 338 African American Dance Company: Advanced Studies and Practices
- AAAD-A 339 African American Choral Ensemble: Advanced Studies and Practices
- AAAD-A 345 Hip Hop Music and Culture
- AAAD-A 350 Black Atlantic
- AAAD-A 352 African American Art II: African American Artists
- AAAD-A 354 Transnational Americas
- AAAD-A 355 African American History I
- AAAD-A 356 African American History II
- AAAD-A 359 Ethnic/Racial Stereotypes in American Film
- AAAD-A 360 Slavery: Worldwide Perspective
- AAAD-A 363 Research on Contemporary African American Problems I
- AAAD-A 379 Early Black American Writing
- AAAD-A 380 Contemporary Black American Writing
- AAAD-A 382 Black Community, Law, and Social Change
- AAAD-A 384 Blacks in American Drama and Theatre, 1945-Present
- AAAD-A 385 Seminar in Black Theatre
- AAAD-A 386 Black Feminist Perspectives
- AAAD-A 387 Black Migration
- AAAD-A 388 Motown
- AAAD-A 391 Black Nationalism
- AAAD-A 393 History of Jazz
- AAAD-A 394 Survey of African American Music
- AAAD-A 395 Contemporary Jazz and Soul Music
- AAAD-A 396 Art Music of Black Composers
- AAAD-A 398 Advanced Topics in Social and Historical Studies for African American and African Diaspora Studies
- AAAD-A 399 Advanced Topics in Arts and Humanities for African American and African Diaspora Studies
- AAAD-A 405 Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, 1954-1974
- AAAD-A 407 African American and African Protest Strategies
- AAAD-A 408 Race, Gender, and Class in Cross-Cultural Perspective
- AAAD-A 420 Transforming Divided Communities and Societies
- AAAD-A 425 The Black Family in Twentieth-Century Rural America, 1900-1970
- AAAD-A 427 Cross-Cultural Communication
- AAAD-A 430 The Cinema of Africana Women
- AAAD-A 447 Race, Crime, and Media
- AAAD-A 452 Historical Issues in Black Education
- AAAD-A 479 Contemporary Black Poetry
- AAAD-A 480 The Black Novel
- AAAD-A 481 Racism and the Law
- AAAD-A 496 Black Religious Music
AAAD-A 304 Black Paris
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Notes
- R: 3 credit hours of literature
- Description
- The common and divergent experiences of African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and African travelers to the "City of Light," from eighteenth-century New Orleans Creoles to twenty-first-century youth of African descent, as seen through literature, performance, film, and other arts. Issues of colonization, expatriation, immigration, exile, the Harlem Renaissance and "negritude," race and diaspora, transnationalism.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 304 or CMLT-C 363.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
AAAD-A 320 Black Dance History
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Acquaints students with dancers and choreographers from the African American and African Diaspora who choose to communicate historical, political, recreational, and social themes through the modern, jazz, ballet, tap, and traditional (African and Caribbean) forms of dance and the expressive nature of movement from the black perspective and experience.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 330 African American Cinematic Experience
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines the historical and contemporary portrayals of African Americans in Hollywood and in independent narrative film focusing on the social and political functions of film, its legitimization of race, and its oppositional formations, interventions, and practices. Considers how film mediates and interrogates race and social relations in American society.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 331 Visual Arts of the Harlem Renaissance
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Considers visual artistic production (painting, sculpture, photography, and film) during the Harlem or "New Negro" Renaissance, a period in which African American artists sought radical reconceptualizations of self and community through visual and literary expression.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
AAAD-A 332 Art of the Civil Rights Movement
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Considers visual artistic production (painting, sculpture, photography, and film) during the American Civil Rights and Black Power Movements.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
AAAD-A 337 Soul Revue: Advanced Studies and Practices
- Credits
- 2
- Prerequisites
- AAAD-A 120
- Description
- Focuses on music industry concerns related to the ensemble's live presentations of Black popular music. Explores how Black popular music is manifested within the broader context of the music industry. Readings explore music industry structures and practices (copyright law, publishing, creative production, etc.) that directly impact African American artists' creative output and livelihood.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated for a maximum of 8 credit hours individually or in combination with AAAD-A 338 and AAAD-A 339.
AAAD-A 338 African American Dance Company: Advanced Studies and Practices
- Credits
- 2
- Prerequisites
- AAAD-A 100
- Description
- Students learn dance technique and experience performance from the perspective of the African American and African diaspora. Students perform in choreographic works created by the director and in works produced from student collaborative projects.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated for a maximum of 8 credit hours individually or in combination with AAAD-A 337 and AAAD-A 339.
AAAD-A 339 African American Choral Ensemble: Advanced Studies and Practices
- Credits
- 2
- Prerequisites
- AAAD-A 110
- Description
- Through meetings with the instructor, students may complete a research project, and develop advanced-level choral leadership skills in vocal techniques, advanced sight reading, and intermediate piano skills. Students will organize and perform in small ensembles to demonstrate their abilities to perform Black choral music.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated for a maximum of 8 credit hours individually or in combination with AAAD-A 337 and AAAD-A 338.
AAAD-A 345 Hip Hop Music and Culture
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- Junior or senior standing
- Description
- Examines rap music as artistic and sociological phenomena with emphasis on its historical and political contexts.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 345, AAAD-A 489, FOLK-F 345, or FOLK-F 389.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
AAAD-A 350 Black Atlantic
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- This course is an interdisciplinary and comparative study of historical, cultural, and political issues related to Africa and the African Diaspora (the Americas and Europe). Emphasis will also be on team teaching using IUB faculty. Course will be of interest to students in all university departments and schools.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 352 African American Art II: African American Artists
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A survey of the artistic traditions of the African in the New World, from the period of slavery in North and South America through contemporary African American and expatriate black American artists.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
AAAD-A 354 Transnational Americas
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Comparative colloquium that explores the recent literature on racial connections between "the local" and "the global" in contemporary American experience. Through immersion in the new "transnational" critiques of the United States, students analyze texts that describe African, Asian, European, indigenous, and Latino sensibilities about culture, homelands, belonging, and exclusion.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 355 African American History I
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- History of blacks in the United States. Slavery, abolitionism, Reconstruction, and post-Reconstruction to 1900.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 355 or HIST-A 355.
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 356 African American History II
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Notes
- R: AAAD-A 355
- Description
- 1900 to the present. Migration north, NAACP, Harlem Renaissance, postwar freedom movement.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 356 or HIST-A 356.
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 359 Ethnic/Racial Stereotypes in American Film
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A study in cross-cultural stereotyping as evidenced in the film medium. Analysis of Native American, Asian, black, Hispanic, and Jewish groups. Features, shorts, and animations screened to illustrate the "classic" stereotypes of each group and to demonstrate their impact on American society.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
AAAD-A 360 Slavery: Worldwide Perspective
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines several aspects of the classical, indigenous, and modern political/social bondage.
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 363 Research on Contemporary African American Problems I
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A research seminar, primarily designed for juniors and seniors, directed toward critical analysis of selected topics germane to the future socioeconomic and political position of African Americans. Reading and discussion of relevant texts, studies, and articles. Includes theory construction, research design, and data collection.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 379 Early Black American Writing
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- African American writing before World War II, with emphasis on critical reactions and analyses. Includes slave narratives, autobiographies, rhetoric, fiction, and poetry.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
AAAD-A 380 Contemporary Black American Writing
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Notes
- R: AAAD-A 379
- Description
- The black experience in America as it has been reflected since World War II in the works of outstanding African American writers: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
AAAD-A 382 Black Community, Law, and Social Change
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Legal evolution of civil rights and analysis of specific relevant legal decisions that stimulated social change (the role of slavery, racial segregation, inequality of educational opportunity, and voting laws).
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 384 Blacks in American Drama and Theatre, 1945-Present
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Images of blacks as reflected in American drama from 1945 to the present. Emphasis on the contributions of black playwrights such as Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes, Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Ted Shine, and Ed Bullins.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 385 Seminar in Black Theatre
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- AAAD-A 283, AAAD-A 379, AAAD-A 380, AAAD-A 383, or AAAD-A 384; or consent of instructor
- Description
- Contributions of blacks to the theatre in America. Reading and discussion of selected dramas and critiques with opportunities for involvement in the oral interpretation of one or more of the plays.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 386 Black Feminist Perspectives
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examination of the history, development, and manifestation of feminist consciousness among African American women. The course is particularly concerned with how black women's lived experience defines that consciousness, and the differing impact it has among various groups of black women, and in their larger social, political, and cultural communities.
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 387 Black Migration
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Explores the process, patterns, and paradoxes of the incorporation of individuals and groups identified and/or perceived as "immigrants" from a comparative-interdisciplinary perspective. Focuses on persons from "sending" countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia to the United States. Also examines developments in other labor-importing, postindustrial countries such as France and England in relation to the people who settle there.
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 388 Motown
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- This course surveys the development of Motown Record Corporation, Detroit Era (1959-1972). Through lecture, discussion, guided listening, and visual experiences, the course studies the musical works, creative processes, business practices, historical events, media, technology, and sociocultural factors that contributed to Motown's identity as a unique artistic and cultural phenomenon.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 388, AAAD-A 389, or FOLK-E 388.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 391 Black Nationalism
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Consequences of the black diaspora in North America; shifting views of blacks toward their native continent; analysis of current geographic, economic, and political relationships.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 393 History of Jazz
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- None
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 393 or MUS-M 393.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
AAAD-A 394 Survey of African American Music
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A chronological survey of sacred and secular African American musical traditions in North America from the African past to the present. Emphasis placed on context for evolution, musical processes and aesthetics, interrelationships among genres and musical change, issues of gender, and music as resistance.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 394, FOLK-E 394, or MUS-M 394.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 395 Contemporary Jazz and Soul Music
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A survey of contemporary jazz and soul (rhythm and blues) music and musicians in the United States.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 395 or MUS-M 395.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
AAAD-A 396 Art Music of Black Composers
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A study of black music and musicians in the United States with emphasis on the black composer in contemporary music.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 396 or MUS-M 396.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 398 Advanced Topics in Social and Historical Studies for African American and African Diaspora Studies
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Advanced study and analysis of selected issues and problems within the African American and African Diaspora experience utilizing interdisciplinary interpretation through analytical reasoning and philosophical discussions. Varied topics primarily in the areas of history, politics, sociology, anthropology, and economics.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 399 Advanced Topics in Arts and Humanities for African American and African Diaspora Studies
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Advanced study and analysis of selected issues and problems within the African American and African Diaspora experience utilizing interdisciplinary interpretations through analytical reasoning and philosophical discussions. Varied topics primarily in the areas of dance, music, film, theatre and drama, and literature.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 405 Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, 1954-1974
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines the fight for civil rights by protest organizations such as Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and Congress of Racial Equality; the emergence of black leaders such as King, Farmer, and Malcolm X; the challenge posed by Black Power advocates in the Black Panthers and Black Muslims; and the changes in American society made by the black revolution.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 407 African American and African Protest Strategies
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- An examination of the historical roles, structures, the impact of black protest strategies, and the origins of black movements to assess their impact on communities in Africa and in the diaspora.
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 408 Race, Gender, and Class in Cross-Cultural Perspective
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examination of the influence of race, gender, and class from a perspective of power and culture. Use of interdisciplinary sources, including essays, fiction, art, and social science research to examine how different social groups vie for representation, self-definition, and power in different social and cultural settings.
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 420 Transforming Divided Communities and Societies
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Histories, theories, policies, and citizen, state, corporate, nonprofit sector models of transforming past and present societies divided by race, ethnicity, gender, class, caste, tribe, and religion through restorative and distributive justice movements and policies such as civil rights, affirmative action, reparations, and reconciliation tribunals.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 425 The Black Family in Twentieth-Century Rural America, 1900-1970
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines the economic, social, cultural and political development of black families residing primarily in rural areas of southern US prior to 1970. Primary attention given to institutional development, race relations, population, and migration.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 427 Cross-Cultural Communication
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A survey study of national, cultural, and cross-cultural persuasion in theory and practice.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 427 or CMCL-C 427.
AAAD-A 430 The Cinema of Africana Women
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Historical and critical overview of films produced by African American women from the 1940s to the present. The course emphasizes how black women filmmakers combine their creative abilities with a desire to capture dominant issues that affect black women's lives in America.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 447 Race, Crime, and Media
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Focuses on crime reporting in America, addressing the question of whether or not the media distort the picture of crime. In particular, this course explores the mass media treatment of African Americans in the coverage of crime.
AAAD-A 452 Historical Issues in Black Education
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Education of black Americans and its relationship to the African American experience. Trends and patterns in the education of black Americans as they relate to the notions of education "for whom and for what."
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 479 Contemporary Black Poetry
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- An examination of black poetry from Dunbar to the present, emphasizing the emergence, growth, and development of black consciousness as a positive ethnic identification.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 480 The Black Novel
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Notes
- R: AAAD-A 379 or AAAD-A 380
- Description
- Analysis of the African American novel from the Harlem Renaissance to the present: genesis, development, and current trends. Emphasis on traditions arising out of the black experience and on critical perspectives developed by black critics and scholars.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE DUScourseSpring 2025CASE DUScourseFall 2024CASE DUScourse
AAAD-A 481 Racism and the Law
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Contemporary racial problems in American society with regard to law and constitutional principles of basic freedoms and associated conflicts. Effects of societal norms and impact of racism.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
AAAD-A 496 Black Religious Music
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- An in-depth investigation of Negro spirituals and gospel music, with some treatment of the traditions of lining-out and shape note singing. Examination of genres will address and integrate both the musical and the sociocultural perspectives.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of AAAD-A 496 or FOLK-E 496.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- AAADS Electives. Additional African American and African Diaspora Studies courses, as needed, to reach 21 credit hours.
AAAD-A 100 African American Dance Company: Foundations and Practices
AAAD-A 104 Groups Theatre Workshop
AAAD-A 110 African American Choral Ensemble: Foundations and Practices
AAAD-A 112 Black Music of Two Worlds
AAAD-A 120 Soul Revue: Foundations and Practices
AAAD-A 221 Dance in the African Diaspora
AAAD-A 222 Black Women Artists
AAAD-A 243 Race and Representation in American Art
AAAD-A 251 Photography of and by the African Diaspora
AAAD-A 277 Images of Blacks in Films: 1903-1950s
AAAD-A 278 Contemporary Black Film
AAAD-A 283 Blacks in American Drama and Theatre, 1767-1945
AAAD-A 290 Sociocultural Perspective of African American Music
AAAD-A 295 Survey of Hip Hop
AAAD-A 297 Popular Music of Black America
AAAD-A 320 Black Dance History
AAAD-A 330 African American Cinematic Experience
AAAD-A 331 Visual Arts of the Harlem Renaissance
AAAD-A 332 Art of the Civil Rights Movement
AAAD-A 337 Soul Revue: Advanced Studies and Practices
AAAD-A 338 African American Dance Company: Advanced Studies and Practices
AAAD-A 339 African American Choral Ensemble: Advanced Studies and Practices
AAAD-A 345 Hip Hop Music and Culture
AAAD-A 352 African American Art II: African American Artists
AAAD-A 359 Ethnic/Racial Stereotypes in American Film
AAAD-A 384 Blacks in American Drama and Theatre, 1945-Present
AAAD-A 385 Seminar in Black Theatre
AAAD-A 388 Motown
AAAD-A 393 History of Jazz
AAAD-A 394 Survey of African American Music
AAAD-A 395 Contemporary Jazz and Soul Music
AAAD-A 396 Art Music of Black Composers
AAAD-A 430 The Cinema of Africana Women
AAAD-A 496 Black Religious Music
AAAD-A 131 Early African American and African Diaspora Literature
AAAD-A 132 Recent African American and African Diaspora Literature
AAAD-A 169 Introduction to African American Literature
AAAD-A 249 African American Autobiography
AAAD-A 479 Contemporary Black Poetry
AAAD-A 480 The Black Novel
AAAD-A 113 Atkins Living-Learning Center Foundational Course
AAAD-A 154 History of Race in the Americas
AAAD-A 156 Black Liberation Struggles against Jim Crow and Apartheid
AAAD-A 203 Studying Blacks of the New World: African Americans and Africans in the African Diaspora
AAAD-A 205 Black Electoral Politics
AAAD-A 210 Black Women in the Diaspora
AAAD-A 238 Communication in Black America
AAAD-A 250 U.S. Contemporary Minorities
AAAD-A 255 The Black Church in America
AAAD-A 263 Contemporary Social Issues in the African American Community
AAAD-A 264 History of Sports and the African American Experience
AAAD-A 265 Modern Sports and the African American Experience
AAAD-A 292 African American Folklore
AAAD-A 304 Black Paris
AAAD-A 350 Black Atlantic
AAAD-A 354 Transnational Americas
AAAD-A 360 Slavery: Worldwide Perspective
AAAD-A 363 Research on Contemporary African American Problems I
AAAD-A 382 Black Community, Law, and Social Change
AAAD-A 386 Black Feminist Perspectives
AAAD-A 387 Black Migration
AAAD-A 391 Black Nationalism
AAAD-A 398 Advanced Topics in Social and Historical Studies for African American and African Diaspora Studies
AAAD-A 399 Advanced Topics in Arts and Humanities for African American and African Diaspora Studies
AAAD-A 405 Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, 1954-1974
AAAD-A 407 African American and African Protest Strategies
AAAD-A 408 Race, Gender, and Class in Cross-Cultural Perspective
AAAD-A 420 Transforming Divided Communities and Societies
AAAD-A 425 The Black Family in Twentieth-Century Rural America, 1900-1970
AAAD-A 427 Cross-Cultural Communication
AAAD-A 447 Race, Crime, and Media
AAAD-A 452 Historical Issues in Black Education
AAAD-A 481 Racism and the Law
- Introductory course. One (1) course:
- Religious Studies Courses.
- Area C. One (1) course:
- Any REL-C 100–499
- Area A, Area B, Area D. One (1) course chosen from two different areas (2 courses total):
- Area A--Africa, Europe, and West Asia
- REL-A 202 Issues in African, European, and West Asian Religions
- REL-A 210 Introduction to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible
- REL-A 220 Introduction to the New Testament
- REL-A 230 Introduction to Judaism
- REL-A 235 Sacred Books of the Jews
- REL-A 250 Introduction to Christianity
- REL-A 270 Introduction to Islam
- REL-A 275 Sex and Gender in Islam
- REL-A 300 Studies in African, European, and West Asian Religions
- REL-A 305 Ancient Mediterranean Religions
- REL-A 315 Prophecy in Ancient Israel
- REL-A 316 Jews, Christians, and Others in Late Antiquity
- REL-A 317 Judaism in the Making
- REL-A 318 Rabbinic Judaism: Literature and Beliefs
- REL-A 320 Jesus
- REL-A 321 Paul and His Influence in Early Christianity
- REL-A 325 Christianity: Christ to Constantine
- REL-A 326 Early Christian Monasticism
- REL-A 335 Introduction to Jewish Mysticism
- REL-A 350 Christianity, 400--1500
- REL-A 351 Christianity and Modernity
- REL-A 355 The Right Belief: History of Orthodox Christianity
- REL-A 375 Women in the Bible
- REL-A 380 Knowing the Will of God in Islam I: Law
- REL-A 415 Topics in Ancient Israelite Religion
- REL-A 426 Gnostic Religion and Literature
- REL-A 430 Topics in the History of Judaism
- REL-A 435 Catholic Controversies
- REL-A 440 Judaism and Gender: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives
- REL-A 450 Topics in the History of Christianity
- REL-A 470 Topics in Islamic Studies
- REL-A 480 Knowing the Will of God in Islam II: Theology
- REL-A 485 The Life and Legacy of Muhammad
- Area B--South and East Asia
- REL-B 202 Issues in South and East Asian Religions
- REL-B 210 Introduction to Buddhism
- REL-B 220 Introduction to Hinduism
- REL-B 230 Introduction to Chinese Religion
- REL-B 300 Studies in South and East Asian Religions
- REL-B 310 East Asian Buddhism
- REL-B 315 Tantric Buddhism
- REL-B 320 Hindu Goddesses
- REL-B 330 Women in South Asian Religious Traditions
- REL-B 333 Seeing the Buddha: Buddhist Art of India and Tibet
- REL-B 335 Bollywood and Beyond: Religion in South Asian Film
- REL-B 360 Religions in Japan
- REL-B 374 Classical Chinese Thought
- REL-B 410 Topics in the Buddhist Tradition
- REL-B 412 Buddhism and Popular Culture
- REL-B 414 Buddhist Philosophy in India
- REL-B 420 Topics in Hindu Religious Traditions
- REL-B 433 Embodying Nirvana
- REL-B 440 Topics in Daoism and Chinese Religion
- REL-B 460 Topics in East Asian Religions
- Area D--Theory, Ethics, and Comparison
- REL-D 201 Shamans, Spirit Mediums and Prophets
- REL-D 202 Issues in Theory, Ethics, and Comparison
- REL-D 250 Religion, Ecology, and the Self
- REL-D 300 Studies in Theory, Ethics, and Comparison
- REL-D 301 Religion and Its Critics
- REL-D 310 Contemporary Religious Thought
- REL-D 315 Religion and Personality
- REL-D 330 From Christian Ethics to Social Criticism I
- REL-D 331 From Christian Ethics to Social Criticism II
- REL-D 339 Pilgrimage and Sacred Landscapes
- REL-D 340 Religion and Bioethics
- REL-D 350 Religion, Ethics, and the Environment
- REL-D 362 Religious Issues in Contemporary Judaism
- REL-D 365 Friendship, Benevolence, and Love
- REL-D 369 Religion and the Arts
- REL-D 370 Topics in Gender and Western Religions
- REL-D 375 Religion and Literature
- REL-D 380 Comparative Study of Religious Phenomena
- REL-D 385 Messianism and Messiahs in Comparative Perspective
- REL-D 399 Gender, Sex, Bodies, and Religion
- REL-D 410 Topics in Religious Thought
- REL-D 430 Problems in Social Ethics
- REL-D 485 Religion and Media
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Selected issues and movements in African, European, and West Asian religions.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Development of the beliefs, practices, and institutions of ancient Israel from the patriarchs to the Maccabean period. Introduction to the biblical literature and other ancient Near East documents.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 210 or REL-R 210.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- What is the "New Testament"? This introductory course considers both literary and historical approaches to the literature of the New Testament, with particular emphasis on the Gospels and Pauline literature. Topics include the concept of "canon," the history of reception and interpretation, gender and sexuality in early Christian literatures, the Apocryphal Gospels, and relationships between early Judaism and early Christianity.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 220 or REL-R 220.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- The development of post-biblical Judaism; major themes, movements, practices, and values.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of JSTU-J 230, REL-A 230, or REL-R 245.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Explores the sacred texts of Judaism after the Bible. Considers how tradition works; how people created new religious knowledge after the Bible was canonized; why some texts are considered sacred, while others are not. Includes a variety of sacred texts, including Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash, and Kabbalah.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of JSTU-J 220 or REL-A 235.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Introduces an array of Christian ideas, practices, and texts ranging from the first century to the present day in order to foster an appreciation of Christianity\'s important but complicated role in shaping culture, society, and politics.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 250 or REL-R 247.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Introduction to the religious world of Islam: the Arabian milieu before Muhammad's prophetic call, the career of the Prophet. Qur'an and hadith, ritual and the pillars of Muslim praxis, legal, and theological traditions; mysticism and devotional piety, reform and revivalist movements.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 270 or REL-R 257.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- No prior knowledge of Islam required. Explores the role of sex and gender in shaping the lives of Muslims. Focuses on the experiences of Muslim women, men, as well as people who inhabit non-normative genders and sexualities. Investigates the ways in which Muslims negotiate and respond to the sexual politics of the times in which they live.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Selected topics and movements in African, European, and West Asian religions.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A survey of the various religions in the ancient Near East (Egypt, Babylon, Persia) and the Greco-Roman worlds. Attention will be paid to ritual, philosophy, and community formation.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 305 or REL-R 318.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- The prophetic movement and its relationship to religious, social, and political traditions and institutions in the ancient Near East. The thought of major prophetic figures in Israel, such as Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 315 or REL-R 310.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Explores the interactions and so-called parting of the ways between Jews, Christians, and other religious groups in Roman Palestine and Sasanian Persia from the first through seventh centuries C.E. Pays special attention to the portrayals of Christians in Jewish literature such as the Mishnah and Talmud.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of JSTU-J 316 or REL-A 316.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- The development of Jewish traditions from circa 400 BCE to 200 CE in their linguistic, geographical, and cultural diversity. Discusses emergence of scripture, apocalyptic traditions, place in Hellenistic and Roman cultures, relationship with early Christianity, and emergence of Judaism as a religion.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of JSTU-J 317 or REL-A 317.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- The rabbis of late antiquity were masters of the Bible who produced a corpus of writings in which they interpret holy scriptures. These writings, known as rabbinic literature, remain to this day the foundation of normative Jewish behavior and traditions. This course explores what these rabbis believed and how they interpreted the Bible.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of JSTU-J 320 or REL-A 318.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Comparative and analytical study of traditions about Jesus: their development and function in various historical periods, social contexts, and intellectual traditions.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Life and thought of Paul in the context of first-century Christian and non-Christian movements. Development of radical Paulinism and anti-Paulinism in the second century; their influence on the formation of Christianity.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 321 or REL-R 325.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- History and literature of Christianity from Paul and Jesus to the rise of Constantine. Topics include Christianity and the state, gender and sexuality, asceticism, persecution and martyrdom, heresy.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 325 or REL-R 327.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- The origins and development of varieties of the monastic life in ancient and early medieval Christianity; social forms of monastic groups, ascetic practices, types of spirituality.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 326 or REL-R 323.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- The development of Jewish mystical practice and thought from the Middle Ages to the present, thirteenth-century Spanish Kabbalah, sixteenth-century Safed, Sabbatianism, Hasidism, contemporary manifestations of mysticism.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 335 or REL-R 341.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- The history and literature of western Christianity during the Middle Ages.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 350 or REL-R 330.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- The history and literature of western Christianity from the Reformation to the present.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 351 or REL-R 331.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Introduction to the doctrines, spirituality, and practice of Orthodox Christianity as expressed in various cultural and national contexts. Particular attention is paid to Orthodox asceticism, monasticism, parish life, theology, and religious rivalry within the confession.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Considers representations of women and the feminine in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and literature of early Judaism and Christianity. Explores how these texts have been interpreted in the history of Western culture, and how they continue to shape attitudes about women, gender, and sexuality in the contemporary world.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of JSTU-J 375 or REL-A 375.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Students gain understanding of how Muslims have traditionally interpreted the texts of revelation (Qur\'an and Hadith) through the development of practical \"hands-on\" methods. Designed to resemble classes in theology, jurisprudence, and law in a medieval Islamic college.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 380 or REL-R 378.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Selected problems in ancient Israelite religion, such as pre-Yahwistic religion, Israel\'s cultic life, royal theology and messianism, the wisdom movement, sectarian apocalyptic.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- The myth, ritual, and beliefs of the ancient Gnostics and related Christian and non-Christian movements of the late Roman empire: classic Gnostic scripture, Valentinus and his followers, the School of St. Thomas, Basilides, the Corpus Hermeticum, and the possibility of Gnosticism in the New Testament.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 426 or REL-R 425.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Special topics such as problems in Jewish mystical tradition, the nature of religious community, charismatic leadership, religious biography.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in REL-A 430 and REL-R 445.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Controversial issues in the history of Catholicism from Martin Luther's critique of the church's corruption to recent court cases indicting the church's response to sex abuse cases. Examines the place of Catholicism in the modern imagination as well as key historical figures and events.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Studies the concepts of sex and gender in modern Judaism through categories including law, ritual, and theology. Uses gender theory to explore historical and contemporary struggles over interpretations of traditional Jewish texts. Discusses Jewish ideas about masculinity, femininity, human bodies, and their places in religious life.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 440 or REL-R 421.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Significant figures, issues, and movements in the history of Christianity examined in their social and religious contexts, with attention to their continuing religious and cultural impact.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in REL-A 450 and REL-R 430.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Selected topics on Islamic law, philosophy, theology, and mysticism.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in REL-A 470 and REL-R 456.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Develops students\' understanding of the central theological issues in Muslim thought as they were developed by various groups and individuals over the last 1,300 years.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 480 or REL-R 468.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Explores the ways in which sacred biography is used in various contexts to develop theories of authority and history. Applies theories and methods of textual interpretation to the earliest known biography of the Prophet Muhammad (d. 632 C.E.).
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-A 485 or REL-R 467.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Selected issues and movements in South and East Asian religions.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Introduction to the basic beliefs and practices of Buddhism from its beginnings to the present. Special attention to the life and teachings of the founder, significant developments in India, and the diffusion of the tradition to East Asia, Central Asia, and the West.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-B 210 or REL-R 250.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Beliefs, rites, and institutions of Hinduism from the Vedic (c. 1200 B.C.) to modern times: religion of the Vedas and the Upanishads, epics and the rise of devotional religion, philosophical systems (Yoga and Vedanta), sectarian theism, monasticism, socioreligious institutions, popular religion (temples and pilgrimages), modern Hindu syncretism.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-B 220 or REL-R 255.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Introduction to religion in premodern and contemporary China. Examines the concept of religion, the notion of religious identity, and various debates that have shaped religious traditions (Confucians, Daoists, Mohists, Chinese Buddhists, Confucian-Muslims) in China.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Selected topics and movements in South and East Asian religions.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Adaptation and assimilation of Buddhism in East Asia, early philosophical and ritual schools, social issues, Tiantai synthesis of Mahayana Buddhism, devotional Buddhism, Ch\'an/Zen school of meditation, impact of Buddhism on East Asian cultures and arts.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-B 310 or REL-R 350.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- This class explores the rise and circulation of tantric practices, ideas, and texts among Indian and Tibetan Buddhists. The class also considers the advantages and limitations of various approaches that modern scholars have taken in their attempts to make sense of these practices, ideas, and texts.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Introduction to the goddesses in Hindu traditions, including Lakshmi, Saraswati, Sita, Radha, Parvati, Durga, Kali, Ganga, and Sitala. Focus on the mythology, iconography, cultic practices, embodied forms, and theology associated with these goddesses.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-B 320 or REL-R 348.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Historical view of the officially sanctioned roles for women in several religious traditions in South Asia, and women\'s efforts to become agents and participants in the religious expressions of their own lives.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of INST-I 380, REL-B 330, or REL-R 382.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- An exploration of Buddhist art and its multiple social and ritual contexts, with particular attention given to works produced in India and Tibet. Designed to provoke reflection on the roles played by images in the religious life of Buddhist communities and in other religions over time.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- A consideration of the nature and meaning of religion in South Asia using film as the lens to explore the South Asian continuum running from the sacred to the secular.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-B 335 or REL-R 388.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Religious movements in Japan, with emphasis on the development of Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and the rise of the \"new religions.\"
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-B 360 or REL-R 357.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- An introduction to the early development of Chinese thought, from ancient divination to the religious, ethical, and political theories of classical Confucianism, Mohism, and Daoism. Focuses on debates over human nature and self-cultivation, the nature of the cosmos, and the proper ordering of society. Readings are in English translation.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of EALC-E 374, REL-B 374, REL-R 368, or PHIL-P 374.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Selected topics such as Mahayana Sutra literature, Buddhist cult practice, Indian Buddhist inscriptions, Prajñåpåramitå thought, or Zen in Korea and Japan.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in REL-B 410 and REL-R 450.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Seminar examines several major questions on Buddhism in a global context. How do popular media such as manga, film, and fiction, shape and change our understandings of Buddhism? What does it mean for a human being, a given practice, or a particular object to be "Buddhist"? What do Buddhist doctrine and practice have to say about how we perceive and participate in popular culture?
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines ideas, methods, and practices of seminal importance for Buddhist philosophical traditions in and beyond the Indian subcontinent. Explores how certain Buddhist thinkers have asked and attempted to answer questions regarding the self, reality, knowledge, conduct, and liberation.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Selected topics such as Upanishadic thought, the Bhagavad Gita, Advaita Vedanta, Hindu ethics, monastic traditions, Hindu soteriology.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in REL-B 420 and REL-R 458.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Addresses the divergent ways in which Buddhists have understood the figure of the Buddha and the nature of Buddhahood. Draws from a number of primary texts in translation, concentrating principally (although not exclusively) on Indian Buddhist materials.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Selected topics within the Chinese religious traditions.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in REL-B 440 and REL-R 469.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examination of a selected theme, movement, or period in the religious history of China, Japan, or Korea. Topics might include interactions of traditions, new religions in Japan, or religious change in Sung China.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in REL-B 460 and REL-R 452.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Study of spirits and their interaction with human beings in the material world. Exploration of shamanism, spirit mediumship and prophecy--not simply as oddities on the margins of what is properly religious, but as central to how religion and modernity are defined.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Selected issues and movements in theory, ethics, and comparison.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Deep ecology seeks fundamental transformations in views of world and self. It claims that there is no ontological divide in the forms of life and aims for an environmentally sustainable and spiritually rich way of life. This course is an introductory examination of Deep Ecology from a religious studies perspective.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-D 250 or REL-R 236.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Selected topics and movements in theory, ethics, and comparison.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines major critics of religion, including Spinoza, Hume, Marx, and Freud.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-D 301 or REL-R 333.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Summer 2025CASE GCCcourseSpring 2025CASE GCCcourseFall 2024CASE GCCcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Interpretation of the human condition and destiny in contemporary religious and antireligious thought. Topics can include study of a major figure (e.g., Kierkegaard) or movement (e.g., peace studies).
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in REL-D 310 and REL-R 340.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Different ways of relating psychological concepts and data from personality theory to the study of religion and theology. Topics include psychoanalytic interpretation, existential psychology, and psychohistorical study of religious leaders.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in REL-D 315 and REL-R 365.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Christian ethics from the New Testament through the early modern period. Readings include first- and second-century authors, patristic fathers, Augustine, Bernard, Abelard, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Anabaptists, Vitoria, Locke, among others. First of a two-semester sequence.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-D 330 or REL-R 374.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Christian ethics from the New Testament through the early modern period. Readings include first- and second-century authors, patristic fathers, Augustine, Bernard, Abelard, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Anabaptists, Vitoria, Locke, among others. Second of a two-semester sequence.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-D 331 or REL-R 375.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Studies sacred spaces, landscapes, heritage, and tourism in an attempt to answer such questions as: What is a sacred place? What is the difference between pilgrimage and tourism? How are sacred places made, unmade, and transformed? Resources include pilgrimage diaries, travel literature, music, and film. Incorporates visits to local sacred sites.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines questions about human nature, finitude, the meaning of suffering, and appropriate uses of medical technology in the face of natural limitations, such as disease and death, that humans encounter. Issues include prenatal/genetic testing, transhumanism, enhancement technologies, cloning, euthanasia, and organ transplantation. Judeo-Christian and cross-cultural perspectives on illness are considered.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Exploration of relationships between religious worldviews and environmental ethics. Considers environmental critiques and defenses of monotheistic traditions, selected non-Western traditions, the impact of secular \"mythologies,\" philosophical questions, and lifestyle issues.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-D 350 or REL-R 371.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Religious problems confronting Jews and Judaism in our own time: women and Judaism, the impact of the Holocaust on Judaism, contemporary views of Zionism, religious trends in American Judaism.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with different topics for a maximum of 12 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- By closely reading relevant classic works from Western and East Asian cultures, students examine ideas of friendship, benevolence, and love. Questions include: What are the varieties of love and friendship? Is romantic love uniquely Western? Is compassion for others natural to human beings? Could true benevolence require actions that appear cruel?
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-D 365 or REL-R 377.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Explores how religious traditions interact with literary and visual artifacts. Focuses on one or more regions and artistic forms. Examines such issues as representation, presence, visibility, gender, genre, syncretism, etc. in religious and artistic contexts.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credits in CMLT-C 345 and REL-D 369.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Specific topics regarding gender in Western religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; studies of specific historical periods; or feminist critiques in theology and ethics.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines how literature furthers and also critiques religious agendas. Studies specific genres (e.g., poetry, fiction, epic, diaries) with an eye to the interplay between religious realities and literary expressions in specific cultural contexts (e.g., medieval Hindu devotion or twentieth-century North American counter-culture).
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Eastern and Western religions on a selected subject such as time and the sacred, sacrifice, initiation.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in REL-D 380 and REL-R 360.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines the messianic phenomenon as central to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Focuses on Jewish messianism. Christianity and Islam will be employed to compare and contrast how this idea developed in two competing religions. Studies the history of the idea, its relationship to orthodoxy and heresy, and its political implications.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-D 385 or REL-R 307.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Description
- Considers discourses on the body, sexuality, and the construction of gender in a number of religious/intellectual traditions. The precise religions/traditions considered will vary and may include Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and various philosophical traditions. Studies the import of these discourses and our analyses of them for contemporary thinking about the body, gender, and sexuality.
- Additional information
- Credit hour, prerequisite, and other information cannot be displayed for this course. If this is a course outside of the College of Arts and Sciences, please see the appropriate school's bulletin for additional information.
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Selected focus on major movements and issues in religious thought.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in REL-D 410 and REL-R 462.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Intensive study of a selected problem in religion and society such as religion and American politics, war and conscience, medical ethics.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Summer 2025CASE AHcourseSpring 2025CASE AHcourseFall 2024CASE AHcourse
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- An introduction to recent debates on the nexus between religious experience and communities, and various forms and technologies of mediation. Combines perspectives on religion and ritual with scholarship on media, media consumption, and critical theory. Readings also include an array of ethnographic studies of religiously-inspired movements in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-D 485 or REL-R 411.
- Summer 2025CASE SHcourseSpring 2025CASE SHcourseFall 2024CASE SHcourse
- Seminar. One (1) course:
- REL-R 389 Majors Seminar in Religion
REL-R 389 Majors Seminar in Religion
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Notes
- Limited to majors
- Description
- Investigation of a theme or topic in the study of religion, with close attention to method, theory, and history of the discipline.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- 300–499 Level Religious Studies. 12 credit hours:
- Any REL-A 300–399
- Any REL-A 400–499
- Any REL-B 300–399
- Any REL-B 400–499
- Any REL-C 300–399
- Any REL-C 400–499
- Any REL-D 300–399
- Any REL-D 400–499
- Any REL-R 300–399
- Any REL-R 400–499 except REL-R 499
- 400–499 Level Religious Studies. Three (3) credit hours:
- Any REL-A 400–499
- Any REL-B 400–499
- Any REL-C 400–499
- Any REL-D 400–499
- Any REL-R 400–499 except REL-R 499
- Religious Studies Electives. Additional Religious Studies courses, as needed, to reach 21 credit hours:
- Additional courses from the Area A, Area B, Area D list.
- Additional courses from the Area C list.
- Any REL-R 200–299
- Any REL-R 300–399
- Any REL-R 400–499
- One of:
- Any REL-A 100–199
- Any REL-B 100–199
- Any REL-C 100–199
- Any REL-D 100–199
- Any REL-R 100–199
REL-A 202 Issues in African, European, and West Asian Religions
REL-A 210 Introduction to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible
REL-A 220 Introduction to the New Testament
REL-A 230 Introduction to Judaism
REL-A 235 Sacred Books of the Jews
REL-A 250 Introduction to Christianity
REL-A 270 Introduction to Islam
REL-A 275 Sex and Gender in Islam
REL-A 300 Studies in African, European, and West Asian Religions
REL-A 305 Ancient Mediterranean Religions
REL-A 315 Prophecy in Ancient Israel
REL-A 316 Jews, Christians, and Others in Late Antiquity
REL-A 317 Judaism in the Making
REL-A 318 Rabbinic Judaism: Literature and Beliefs
REL-A 320 Jesus
REL-A 321 Paul and His Influence in Early Christianity
REL-A 325 Christianity: Christ to Constantine
REL-A 326 Early Christian Monasticism
REL-A 335 Introduction to Jewish Mysticism
REL-A 350 Christianity, 400--1500
REL-A 351 Christianity and Modernity
REL-A 355 The Right Belief: History of Orthodox Christianity
REL-A 375 Women in the Bible
REL-A 380 Knowing the Will of God in Islam I: Law
REL-A 415 Topics in Ancient Israelite Religion
REL-A 426 Gnostic Religion and Literature
REL-A 430 Topics in the History of Judaism
REL-A 435 Catholic Controversies
REL-A 440 Judaism and Gender: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives
REL-A 450 Topics in the History of Christianity
REL-A 470 Topics in Islamic Studies
REL-A 480 Knowing the Will of God in Islam II: Theology
REL-A 485 The Life and Legacy of Muhammad
REL-B 202 Issues in South and East Asian Religions
REL-B 210 Introduction to Buddhism
REL-B 220 Introduction to Hinduism
REL-B 230 Introduction to Chinese Religion
REL-B 300 Studies in South and East Asian Religions
REL-B 310 East Asian Buddhism
REL-B 315 Tantric Buddhism
REL-B 320 Hindu Goddesses
REL-B 330 Women in South Asian Religious Traditions
REL-B 333 Seeing the Buddha: Buddhist Art of India and Tibet
REL-B 335 Bollywood and Beyond: Religion in South Asian Film
REL-B 360 Religions in Japan
REL-B 374 Classical Chinese Thought
REL-B 410 Topics in the Buddhist Tradition
REL-B 412 Buddhism and Popular Culture
REL-B 414 Buddhist Philosophy in India
REL-B 420 Topics in Hindu Religious Traditions
REL-B 433 Embodying Nirvana
REL-B 440 Topics in Daoism and Chinese Religion
REL-B 460 Topics in East Asian Religions
REL-D 201 Shamans, Spirit Mediums and Prophets
REL-D 202 Issues in Theory, Ethics, and Comparison
REL-D 250 Religion, Ecology, and the Self
REL-D 300 Studies in Theory, Ethics, and Comparison
REL-D 301 Religion and Its Critics
REL-D 310 Contemporary Religious Thought
REL-D 315 Religion and Personality
REL-D 330 From Christian Ethics to Social Criticism I
REL-D 331 From Christian Ethics to Social Criticism II
REL-D 339 Pilgrimage and Sacred Landscapes
REL-D 340 Religion and Bioethics
REL-D 350 Religion, Ethics, and the Environment
REL-D 362 Religious Issues in Contemporary Judaism
REL-D 365 Friendship, Benevolence, and Love
REL-D 369 Religion and the Arts
REL-D 370 Topics in Gender and Western Religions
REL-D 375 Religion and Literature
REL-D 380 Comparative Study of Religious Phenomena
REL-D 385 Messianism and Messiahs in Comparative Perspective
REL-D 399 Gender, Sex, Bodies, and Religion
REL-D 410 Topics in Religious Thought
REL-D 430 Problems in Social Ethics
REL-D 485 Religion and Media
- Area C. One (1) course:
- Major GPA, Hours, and Minimum Grade Requirements.
- Major GPA. A GPA of at least 2.000 for all courses taken in the major—including those where a grade lower than C- is earned—is required.
- Major Minimum Grade. Except for the GPA requirement, a grade of C- or higher is required for a course to count toward a requirement in the major.
- Major Upper Division Credit Hours. At least 18 credit hours in the major must be completed at the 300–499 level.
- Major Residency. At least 18 credit hours in the major must be completed in courses taken through the Indiana University Bloomington campus or an IU-administered or IU co-sponsored Overseas Study program.
- College Breadth. At least 38 credit hours must be completed in courses from College of Arts and Sciences disciplines outside of the major area.
Major Area Courses
-
Unless otherwise noted below, the following courses are considered in the academic program and will count toward academic program requirements as appropriate:
- Any course at the 100–499 level with the
AAAD or REL
subject area prefix—as well as any other subject areas that are deemed functionally equivalent - Any course contained on the course lists for the academic program requirements at the time the course is taken—as well as any other courses that are deemed functionally equivalent—except for those listed only under Addenda Requirements
- Any course directed to a non-Addenda requirement through an approved exception
- Any course at the 100–499 level with the
Exclusions
The following courses cannot be applied toward major requirements or the College Breadth requirement:
- AAAD-A 142
- REL-R 499 Senior Honors Essay
- REL-X 370 Service Learning in Religious Studies
- REL-X 371 Teaching Internship
- REL-X 498 Individual Research in Religious Studies
REL-R 499 Senior Honors Essay
- Credits
- 1–6 credit hours
- Prerequisites
- Consent of departmental honors advisor
- Description
- Guided research culminating in essay(s).
- Repeatability
- May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
REL-X 370 Service Learning in Religious Studies
- Credits
- 1–3 credit hours
- Prerequisites
- Consent of director of undergraduate studies
- Notes
- To obtain consent, student must submit an application and obtain a faculty sponsor
- Description
- Affords a student the opportunity to receive academic credit for work experience in a communal or public setting.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-R 496 or REL-X 370.
REL-X 371 Teaching Internship
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- Consent of supervising Religious Studies faculty member
- Description
- Supervised work as teaching apprentice in Religious Studies either in the university or another appropriate educational setting.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of REL-R 494 or REL-X 371.
REL-X 498 Individual Research in Religious Studies
- Credits
- 1–3 credit hours
- Prerequisites
- Consent of instructor and director of undergraduate studies
- Description
- None
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with different topics for a maximum of 6 credit hours in REL-R 495 and REL-X 498.
This program of study cannot be combined with the following:
- Bachelor of Arts in African American and African Diaspora Studies (AAADBA)
- Bachelor of Arts in African American and African Diaspora Studies and English (AAADENGBA)
- Bachelor of Arts in African American and African Diaspora Studies and History (AAADHISTBA)
- Bachelor of Arts in African American and African Diaspora Studies and Sociology (AAADSOCBA)
- Bachelor of Arts in English and African American and African Diaspora Studies (ENGAAADBA)
- Bachelor of Arts in History and African American and African Diaspora Studies (HISTAAADBA)
- Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Religious Studies (PHILRELBA)
- Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies (RELBA)
- Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies and African American and African Diaspora Studies (RELAAADBA)
- Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies and Philosophy (RELPHILBA)
- Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and African American and African Diaspora Studies (SOCAAADBA)
- Minor in African American and African Diaspora Studies (AAADSMIN)
- Minor in Religious Studies (RELMIN)
Exceptions to and substitutions for major requirements may be made with the approval of the unit's Director of Undergraduate Studies, subject to final approval by the College of Arts and Sciences.
The Bachelor of Arts degree requires at least 120 credit hours, to include the following:
- College of Arts and Sciences Credit Hours. At least 100 credit hours must come from College of Arts and Sciences disciplines.
- Upper Division Courses. At least 42 credit hours (of the 120) must be at the 300–499 level.
- College Residency. Following completion of the 60th credit hour toward degree, at least 36 credit hours of College of Arts and Sciences coursework must be completed through the Indiana University Bloomington campus or an IU-administered or IU co-sponsored Overseas Study program.
- College GPA. A College grade point average (GPA) of at least 2.000 is required.
- CASE Requirements. The following College of Arts and Sciences Education (CASE) requirements must be completed:
- CASE Foundations
- CASE Breadth of Inquiry
- CASE Culture Studies
- CASE Critical Approaches: 1 course
- CASE Foreign Language: Proficiency in a single foreign language through the second semester of the second year of college-level coursework
- CASE Intensive Writing: 1 course
- CASE Public Oral Communication: 1 course
- Major. Completion of the major as outlined in the Major Requirements section above.
Most students must also successfully complete the Indiana University Bloomington General Education program.
Subject areas
- Any AAAD course that carries degree credit
- Any AAST course that carries degree credit
- Any ABEH course that carries degree credit
- Any AFRI course that carries degree credit
- Any AMST course that carries degree credit
- Any ANTH course that carries degree credit
- Any ARTH course that carries degree credit
- Any ASCS course that carries degree credit
- Any AST course that carries degree credit
- Any BIOC course that carries degree credit
- Any BIOL course that carries degree credit
- Any BIOT course that carries degree credit
- Any CEUS course that carries degree credit
- Any CHEM course that carries degree credit
- Any CJUS course that carries degree credit
- Any CLAS course that carries degree credit
- Any CLLC course that carries degree credit
- Any CMLT course that carries degree credit
- Any COGS course that carries degree credit
- Any COLL course that carries degree credit
- Any EALC course that carries degree credit
- Any EAS course that carries degree credit
- Any ECON course that carries degree credit
- Any ENG course that carries degree credit
- Any EURO course that carries degree credit
- Any FOLK course that carries degree credit
- Any FRIT course that carries degree credit
- Any GEOG course that carries degree credit
- Any GER course that carries degree credit
- Any GLLC course that carries degree credit
- Any GNDR course that carries degree credit
- Any HHC course that carries degree credit
- Any HISP course that carries degree credit
- Any HIST course that carries degree credit
- Any HON course that carries degree credit
- Any HPSC course that carries degree credit
- Any HUBI course that carries degree credit
- Any IMP course that carries degree credit
- Any INST course that carries degree credit
- Any INTL course that carries degree credit
- Any JSTU course that carries degree credit
- Any LAMP course that carries degree credit
- Any LATS course that carries degree credit
- Any LING course that carries degree credit
- Any LTAM course that carries degree credit
- Any MATH course that carries degree credit
- Any MELC course that carries degree credit
- Any MEST course that carries degree credit
- Any MLS course that carries degree credit
- Any MSCH course that carries degree credit
- Any NEUS course that carries degree credit
- Any OVST course that carries degree credit
- Any PACE course that carries degree credit
- Any PHIL course that carries degree credit
- Any PHYS course that carries degree credit
- Any POLS course that carries degree credit
- Any PSY course that carries degree credit
- Any REEI course that carries degree credit
- Any REL course that carries degree credit
- Any RMI course that carries degree credit
- Any SEAS course that carries degree credit
- Any SGIS course that carries degree credit
- Any SLAV course that carries degree credit
- Any SLHS course that carries degree credit
- Any SLST course that carries degree credit
- Any SOAD course that carries degree credit
- Any SOC course that carries degree credit
- Any STAT course that carries degree credit
- Any THTR course that carries degree credit