# Courses - Fall 2026 ### Undergraduate Courses (0-99) expand\_more ## AFRAMER 10: Introduction to African American Studies Instructor: Jesse McCarthy Mondays & Wednesdays 10:30am – 11:45am **Class Number:** 17105 **Course ID:** 122910 **Description**: This course aims to provide an interdisciplinary examination of the complex array of African-American cultural and political practices from slavery to the present. The course will involve close readings of a variety of primary sources and classic texts that present key issues in African American thought and practice. The course will place special emphasis on debates concerning African American people with the goal of introducing students to the process and the methodology of interdisciplinarity. We will look at the way the debates function across disciplines to delve deeper into not only the complexity of African American life and thought but also the breadth of African American Studies itself. **Course Notes:** Required of concentrators in the African American Studies track. Students who transfer into the concentration after their sophomore year may substitute another African and African American Studies course already taken if the course addresses the materials covered in African and African American Studies 10, and the petition is approved by the Director of Undergraduate Studies. · Course Component: Lecture · Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences ## AFRAMER 12: Introduction to Afro-Latin American and Caribbean Studies Instructor: Amber Henry Monday & Wednesday 1:30-2:45pm **Class Number:**17109 **Course ID:**233038 **Description:** This course explores the African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean. Home to the largest Afro-descendant population outside the African continent, the region offers a powerful lens for understanding global history, politics, and culture. Because Latin America and the Caribbean were deeply connected to major European imperial powers (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and British), the course approaches the region's past, present and future as central to the making of the modern world. - **Course Component:** Lecture - **Divisional Distribution:** Social Sciences ## AFRAMER 91R: Supervised Reading and Research Instructor: Contact the ADUS (Carla Martin ) TBA **Class Number:** 10515 **Course ID:** 110605 Description: Students wishing to enroll must petition the Director of Undergraduate Studies for approval, stating the proposed project, and must have permission of the proposed instructor. Ordinarily, students are required to have taken some coursework as background for their project. · Course Component: Tutorial · Divisional Distribution: Social Science ## AFRAMER 98: Junior Tutorial-African American Studies Instructor: Contact the ADUS (Carla Martin ) TBA **Class Number:** 11862 **Course ID:** 118023 Description: Students wishing to enroll must petition the Director of Undergraduate Studies for approval, stating the proposed project, and must have the permission of the proposed instructor. Ordinarily, students are required to have taken some coursework as background for their project. Recommended Prep: Completion of African and African American Studies 10, or a substitute course approved by the Director of Undergraduate Studies. · Course Component: Tutorial · Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences ## AFRAMER 98A: Junior Tutorial-African American Studies Instructor: Contact the ADUS (Carla Martin ) TBA **Class Number:** 11079 **Course ID:** 119818 **Description:** Students wishing to enroll must petition the Director of Undergraduate Studies for approval, stating the proposed project, and must have the permission of the proposed instructor. Ordinarily, students are required to have taken some coursework as background for their project. **Recommended Prep:** Completion of African and African American Studies 10, or a substitute course approved by the Director of Undergraduate Studies. · Course Component: Tutorial · Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences ## AFRAMER 99A: Senior Thesis Workshop Instructor: Contact the ADUS (Carla Martin ) -TBA **Course ID:** 11390 **Course ID:** 124132 **Description:** Thesis supervision under the direction of a member of the Department. Part one of a two-part series. **Course Notes:** Enrollment is limited to honors candidates. · Course Component: Tutorial · Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences ### Undergraduate & Graduate Courses (100-199) expand\_more ## AFRAMER 112X: Transition(s) Instructor: Tinashe Mushakavanhu Tuesdays 9:45am – 11:45am **Class Number:**15281 **Course ID:**226573 **Description:** In this introductory course, we examine and question the sameness often ascribed to African literature as a sociological and anthropological archive. We will explore stories of mobility, movement, and exchange, drawing from the archives of Transition, a magazine founded in 1961 in Kampala, Uganda, and now housed at Harvard. Transition fostered some of the most engaging intellectual debates of its time, introducing a critical idiom that shaped a generation's postcolonial and postnational critiques. Many of its contributors were young, ambitious thinkers who used the magazine to express and refine their ideas (e.g., Bessie Head, Ngugi waThiong'o, Wole Soyinka). Through Transition, and with the understanding that 'the archive is a very important place to go' (Simon Gikandi), students will learn to engage with primary sources, critically analyze historical and literary materials, and examine the evolution of African literature. The course emphasizes close reading, archival research, and contextual analysis, equipping students with the tools to understand how African literature has been formed and how it continues to evolve. By exploring the transitions, transformations, and translocations in African literature, we will experience genre formation and establish key foundations: Where did African literature come from? How, when, and why did the idea of literature in the modern sense emerge in Africa? What is the utility of a term like 'African literature' and the idea of a field of African literary studies. - **Course Component:** Seminar - **Divisional Distribution:** Social Sciences ## AFRAMER 127X: Novel Nations in Africa and Latin America Instructor: Doris Sommer & Tinashe Mushakavanhu Monday 9:00am - 11:45am **Class Number:** 17375 **Course ID:** 233073 **Description:** Both a literary form and a site of political imagination, the novel has participated in creating, contesting, and undoing political communities across Africa and Latin America. Rather than treating fiction as a mere reflection of national life, we will approach the novel as foundational for republics. Bringing African and Latin American texts into a South–South dialogue, will explore shared histories of colonialism, revolutionary struggle, and conflict in the aftermath of independence. How do novels invent ‘the people’? What forms of citizenship, belonging, race, gender, and futurity do they make visible or foreclose? The course features literary experimentation and political engagement. - **Course Component:** Lecture - **Divisional Distribution:** Social Sciences ## AFRAMER 130X: Richard Wright: Literature, Philosophy, and Politics Instructor: Tommie Shelby & Glenda Carpio Mondays 12:45pm - 2:45pm **Class Number:** 17104 **Course ID:** 156260 **Description:** This course examines the major fiction and nonfiction works of Richard Wright from a literary, philosophical, and political perspective. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to this wide-ranging and canonical American author, contextualizing him within the broader tradition of black letters. Readings include but are not limited to Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, Black Boy, American Hunger, 12 Million Black Voices, The Outsider, Black Power, The Color Curtain, White Man Listen!, and Eight Men. The course also explores major influences in Wright's development including the work of Marx, Sartre, and Freud. - **Course Component:** Lecture - **Divisional Distribution:** Arts and Humanities ## AFRAMER 134Y: The Philosophy and Politics of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Instructor: Brandon Terry Wednesday 12:00pm - 2:45pm **Class Number:**19172 **Course ID:** 226521 **Description:** This seminar for graduate students and undergraduates with backgrounds in political theory, philosophy, or African American Studies undertakes a rigorous examination of the political lives and philosophical thought of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Through their speeches, writings, debates, and unpublished texts, we will engage critically with their evolving visions of justice, democracy, and social transformation. We will read both figures in dialogue with their intellectual influences and critics to evaluate their views of liberalism, nationalism, civil disobedience, political violence, self-defense, internationalism, political theology, democracy, war, and economic justice among other themes. By studying these towering figures side by side, this course will illuminate fundamental questions about political ethics, racial justice, and the possibilities and limits of radical social change in the past and present. - **Course Component:** Seminar - **Divisional Distribution:** Social Sciences ## AFRAMER 135Y: Black Feminist Theory Instructor: Imani Perry Wednesdays 12:00pm - 2:45pm **Class Number:** 19153 **Course ID:** 222230 **Description:** This course traces the development of Black feminist theory and thought, from 19th century thinkers such as Anna Julia Cooper, Maria Stewart, Ida B. Wells through 20th century movements including identity politics, standpoint theory, matrices of domination, intersectionality, as well as Marxian and liberation feminism. Students will be expected to develop critical fluency with the movements and concepts covered and apply them to social, cultural, and political issues. - **Course Component:** Seminar - **Divisional Distribution:** Social Sciences ## AFRAMER 154Y: African American Fraternal Associations in U.S. Society and Politics Instructor: Theda Skocpol Wednesdays 3:00pm - 5:45pm **Class Number:** 18829 **Course ID:** 225711 **Description:** Cross-class fraternal associations were long central to African American civil society. Using unique primary sources as well as secondary works, this research seminar explores the development of a range of fraternal orders that flourished from the mid-1800s through the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras. Case studies include the largest U.S.-centered transnational associations; fraternal groups founded and led by Black women; and the small number of groups that tried to include both Blacks and whites. Special attention paid to relations of Black fraternal orders to churches, businesses, unions, the NAACP, and other civil rights endeavors. **Jointly Offered with:** Faculty of Arts & Sciences as [SOCIOL 1388](void(0);) Faculty of Arts & Sciences as [GOV 1388](void(0);) - **Course Component:** Seminar - **Divisional Distribution:** Social Sciences ### Graduate Courses (200-399) expand\_more ## AFRAMER 204: African American Intellectual Tradition Instructor: Imani Perry Tuesdays 3:00pm - 5:45pm **Class Number:** 18762 **Course ID:** 224439 **Description:** This seminar introduces graduate students to African American intellectual traditions across multiple disciplines, genres, and time periods. Students will engage theories and histories of slavery and empire, social movements, identity, culture and art. Particular attention will be paid to Black intellectual activity as a dynamic site of both critique and knowledge production. - **Course Component:** Seminar - **Divisional Distribution:** Arts & Humanities, Social Science ## AFRAMER 249A: Charles Warren Center Seminar: Commemorative Acts Instructor: Tiya Miles & Robin Bernstein Thursdays 12:45pm - 2:45pm **Class Number:**17325 **Course ID:**233044 **Description:** This Charles Warren Center Seminar combines a year-long graduate course with a cohort of visiting Faculty Fellows. In sustained conversation with the Faculty Fellows, graduate students will produce original research (ideally, a dissertation chapter or publishable article) relating to the theme of "commemorative acts." We define commemorations as events, rituals, processes, material objects, and built environments through which a group endeavors to remember, and often honor, people, happenings, or values of the past. Commemorations will abound in 2026 as the United States recognizes the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the beginning of the American Revolution. This timing provides a rich occasion and context for examining commemoration as a national endeavor. Who is remembering what, and how? What is being erased, and why? What are the stakes of commemoration in the present? To receive credit for this course students must enroll in part A and part B in the same academic year - **Course Component:** Seminar ## AFRAMER 290: Explorations in Afro-Latin American Art Instructor: Alejandro de la Fuente & Cecile Fromont Wednesdays 12:00pm – 2:45pm **Class Number:** 17147 **Course ID:** 218685 **Description:** This seminar explores how visual artists and the visual arts have contributed to debates on race, citizenship, and nation in Latin America, from the colonial period to the present. We approach the history of art in Latin America primarily through the production of images of afro-descendants and works by artists of African descent. We will offer a critical and historical analysis of the racialized biases of the existing canon, as well as the need for new research strategies, new methods, and new sources. We also study the contributions of artists and intellectuals who claim connections to Afro-Diasporic cultural practices or participate in broader debates about race and inclusion in Latin American societies. By combining approaches centered on authorship and on thematic influences and representations, the seminar explores different conceptualizations of Afro-Latin American Art and highlights the possibilities of this field within the art history of Latin America. We cover different geographic areas, different socio-cultural groups as well as different political conditions. We will address various media, including painting, sculpture, architecture, printmaking, photography, video, and installation and study how this artistic production has evolved over time. The course follows a rough chronological order that becomes more media specific as we enter the end of the 19th-century and finishing in the 21st. For this seminar, a social historian of slavery and race and an art historian of colonial Latin America join forces to explore the contours of this field from multidisciplinary perspectives. Undergraduate students are welcome to join the seminar, previous consultation with the instructors. **Jointly Offered with:** Faculty of Arts & Sciences as [HAA 290K](void(0);) - **Course Component:** Seminar - **Divisional Distribution:** Arts and Humanities ## AFRAMER 310: Individual Reading Tutorial Instructor: Contact the Course Coordinator ([Keirsten\_Melbourne@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:Keirsten_Melbourne@fas.harvard.edu)) TBA **Class Number:** 13623 **Course ID:** 115731 **Description:** Allows students to work with an individual member of the faculty in a weekly tutorial. **Course Notes:** Students may not register for this course until their adviser and the faculty member with whom they plan to work have approved a program of study. - **Course Component:** Reading Course - **Divisional Distribution:** None ## AFRAMER 390: Individual Research **Class Number:**13624 **Course ID:**115732 **Description:** Requires students to identify and carry out a research project under the guidance of a member of the faculty. Graduate students may use this course to begin work on the research paper required for admission to candidacy. - **Course Component:** Reading and Research Course ## AFRAMER 391: Directed Writing Instructor: Contact the Course Coordinator ([Keirsten\_Melbourne@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:Keirsten_Melbourne@fas.harvard.edu)) TBA **Class Number:** 13625 **Course ID:** 119827 **Description:** Requires students to identify a major essay and carry it out under the guidance of a member of the faculty. Graduate students may use this course to begin to work on the research paper that is a requirement of admission to candidacy. - **Course Component:** Reading and Research Course ## AFRAMER 392: Teaching, Writing, and Research **Description:** Allows students to meet necessary credit threshold while completing fellowship work and the like. - **Class Number:** 13622 **Course ID:** 210981 - **Course Component:** Reading and Research - **Divisional Distribution:** None ## AFRAMER 398: Reading and Research TBA **Class Number:**14514 **Course ID:** 122706 **Course Notes:** Permission of the instructor and the Director of Graduate Studies is required for enrollment. - **Course Component:** Reading and Research - **Divisional Distribution:** None ## AFRAMER 399: Direction of Doctoral Dissertations TBA - **Class Number:**13626 **Course ID:**115733 - **Course Component:** Reading and Research - **Divisional Distribution:** None [AAAS Cross-List 2026](https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:32ba6038-aa78-4b79-b46e-b114cf29bfd3) AAAS’s cross-list houses all courses that have been crossed with our department in any given semester. If you have questions on if your intended course selection fulfills a AAAS requirement, please reach out to our ADUS Carla Martin