Af Am History since 1865

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Following the end of the Civil War, freedpeople and their descendants remade and contended with new meanings of and contestations over “freedom.” This course examines these ongoing struggles, exploring how African-descended peoples in the United States lived, resisted, negotiated, and created in the face of disenfranchisement, segregation, and other forms of antiblack violence. This course continues to ask: what is progress and freedom for Black people in the United States? Is the state of “freedom” just no longer being enslaved, being a citizen, having political rights or something else? Through primary and secondary sources, students will cover topics including but not limited to emancipation, lynching and sexual violence, gendered politics, arts and culture, migration, labor organizing, and ecological violence. This course will also introduce students to the field of African American History as a discipline and its relationship to Black Studies.