From the issue dated May 19, 2000

Black Studies 101: a Sampling of Approaches MANNING MARABLE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Mr. Marable, the director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, puts his historical training to good use in his introductory course. Over the course of a semester, he paints a chronological overview of black social, political, and cultural history -- one that starts with slavery and ends with a ALSO SEE: A sampling of syllabi from introductory black-studies courses Taking Black Studies Back to the Streets Black Studies 101: Introductory Courses Reflect a Field Still Defining Itself Africana Studies 4900, 'Cyberspace and the Black Experience,' at U. of Toledo meditation on the future of black America. In addition to two of Mr. Marable's own books, the reading list includes writings by W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Paula Giddings, Vincent Harding, and Juan Williams. "We don't have to do everything in the intro. It's part of a framework," Mr. Marable says. "The course is just the first of several steps to introduce students to the lived experience of black people." WAHNEEMA LUBIANO DUKE UNIVERSITY Ms. Lubiano, an associate professor of literature, offers a hybrid course -- a mixture of cultural studies and black intellectual history, with a touch of the diaspora. Whether she's discussing class and gender in Invisible Man, the notion of people as property in an article by the law professor Patricia Williams, or Aime Cesaire's Discourse on Colonialism, Ms. Lubiano never stops talking for long about the creation of knowledge. This year, Ms. Lubiano took some time to discuss the killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African shot to death by New York City police officers. How do present-day stereotypes about African-Americans, Ms. Lubiano asks her class, connect to older ones about black male rapists? "I want to disrupt common sense" and common stereotypes, Ms. Lubiano says. AKINYELE O. UMOJA GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY Mr. Umoja, an assistant professor of African-American studies, spends the first three weeks of his course answering a complicated question: What is African-American studies? He explores the field's goals, its history, its philosophical foundations. Only then does he move on to other topics: African connections, the black family, white supremacy and its impact on the black mind, and black labor, to name a few. "I want students to understand there's an experience that we're studying and to realize it's complex," Mr. Umoja says. "I don't want them to see it as just race." Mr. Umoja uses two books to get that point across -- Maulana Karenga's Introduction to Black Studies and A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African-American Studies, by Floyd Hayes. CORNEL WEST HARVARD UNIVERSITY Mr. West, a professor of Afro-American studies, moves through his course in typical interdisciplinary fashion, from religion to slavery, from black creativity to the problems of African-Americans in the postmodern era. There are some surprises on Mr. West's reading list -- in particular, the number of books students read in their entirety. Unlike most survey courses, which usually take an excerpt approach to the field, Mr. West lays the groundwork for his course by making students read The Souls of Black Folk from cover to cover. Nine other books are read from beginning to end, among them Toni Morrison's Beloved, Eric Foner's A Short History of Reconstruction, Albert Murray's Stomping the Blues, and E. Franklin Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie. One other book is read from start to finish: Race Matters, by Cornel West. MARTHA L. WHARTON OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY Ms. Wharton, an assistant professor of African-American, African, and women's studies, takes students on a chronological journey through black studies, starting with the diaspora and ending with Jesse Jackson's 1984 address to the Democratic National Convention. Along the way, using Deirdre Mullane's Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African-American Writing as her guide, Ms. Wharton weaves in hymns and photographs, poems and slave narratives, Supreme Court decisions and documents like the Kerner Commission report. She also injects a whiff of microhistory into the course, spending a week looking at Philadelphia's black community in the mid-1800's. "I'm not trying to do the top 10 black achievements or the top 10 black movements," Ms. Wharton explains. "The best I can do is give sketches of different periods." NATHANIEL NORMENT JR. TEMPLE UNIVERSITY Unlike many black-studies departments, which tend to have a mixture of theoretical orientations, Temple's has a unified viewpoint -- Afrocentrism. Maulana Karenga's text lays the groundwork for the course taught by Mr. Norment, the graduate director of African-American studies. But there are two history books on the reading list as well: Paula Giddings's When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America and Lerone Bennett Jr.'s Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America, which traces African-American roots back to ancient Africa. Although history is the foundation, this is an interdisciplinary introduction to the field. "I do black sociology, black religion, black politics, " Mr. Norment says, "and show how each are disciplines themselves. We're not merely applying the word 'black' to them." ERNEST ALLEN UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AT AMHERST In Massachusetts's introductory course, chronology gets turned on its head. Mr. Allen, associate chairman of Afro-American studies, spends the first month of the class talking about a present-day issue: the criminal-justice system. Only after finishing Elihu Rosenblatt's Criminal Injustice: Confronting the Prison Crisis -- which draws parallels between crime and punishment in America today and the period of slavery -- does Mr. Allen step back into history. The readings for that portion of the class come from Deirdre Mullane's anthology. "This kind of broad sweep always drives me crazy," Mr. Allen says. "There's so much that has to be left out." But some topics can't be ignored, like affirmative action. Mr. Allen wraps up the last four weeks of the semester with a close reading of George E. Curry's collection The Affirmative Action Debate. ANTHONY MONTEIRO UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA The Souls of Black Folk dominates the introductory course of Mr. Monteiro, a visiting professor of Afro-American studies. Almost half the semester is dedicated to a close reading of it. And everything else that follows is filtered through a Du Boisian lens, whether it's Race Men, by Yale's Hazel Carby; The Afrocentric Idea, by Temple's Molefi Kete Asante; or a selection of letters by two African-American women living in the antebellum North. When asked why he spends so much time on Du Bois, Mr. Monteiro has a ready response: "I structure the course around Du Bois's Souls of Black Folk because I firmly believe that in the 20th century, the intellectual life of the United States and certainly of African-Americans is either a conversation with, a commentary upon, or a footnote to Du Bois." http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Page: A21 Easy-to-print version E-mail this article