Courses - Spring 2026

AFRAMER 10: Introduction to African American Studies

Instructor: Jesse McCarthy

Mondays & Wednesdays 10:30am – 11:45am

· Class Number:17607 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 11: Introduction to African Studies

Instructor: Daniel Agbiboa

Thursdays 9:45am - 11:45am

· Class Number:17596 Course ID:123591

Description:

This course introduces students to the rich diversity and complexity of Africa, including its historical dynamics, economic developments, social and political practices, and popular cultures. Throughout, we assume that Africa is not a unique isolate but a continent bubbling with internal diversity, historical change, entrepreneurial spirit, and cultural links beyond its shores. Our goal is to train students to think rigorously about Africa from interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives. We also aim to equip students with the analytical tools necessary for recognizing and deconstructing reductionist and stereotyped narratives of Africa. The course is open to all students who are interested in exploring various dimensions of African life, politics, peoples and cultures from the past to the postcolony.

Course Notes:

Required of concentrators in African Studies track.

· Course Component: Lecture

· Divisional Distribution: Social Science

AFRAMER 66: History of Sport in Africa

Instructor: David Glovsky

Monday & Wednesday 1:30pm-2:45pm

· Class Number:15689 Course ID:226220

Description:

This course studies African histories of politics, culture, economics, colonialism, decolonization, and more through the histories of sports. Sports and games of various kinds have played a key role in African societies for many centuries, and this course will begin with those earlier histories before looking at the role of Africa and Africans in modern sports history, a period that began in the late 19th century around the development of the Olympic games and professional leagues globally. European empires in Africa sought to impose their ideas of "civilization" and "modernity" on Africans through organized athletics, and yet Africans themselves - both during and after the period of European rule - used athletics for their own purposes. Notable athletes played a key role in both combating and supporting colonialism, and in establishing national identities following independence. In recent decades, Africans have starred globally at the Olympic Games, the World Cup, and many other global athletic competitions. And increasingly, individuals from more recent African diasporas have starred for countries around the globe, raising important questions about belonging, diaspora, and nationalism. This course will provide an introduction to these questions and more, through understanding the social, political, cultural, and economic history of sports in Africa.

· Course Component: Lecture

· Divisional Distribution: Social Science

AFRAMER 91R: Supervised Reading and Research

Instructor: Contact the Course Coordinator

TBA

· 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 97: Sophomore Tutorial: Understanding Race and Racism

Instructor: Carla Martin

Thursdays 12:45pm - 2:45pm

· Class Number:11462 Course ID:123590

Description:

This course will examine the history of race and racism – key analytical constructs that express fundamental issues not only of power and inequality, but also of justice, democracy, equity, and emancipation. The study of race in the social sciences and humanities is an established, dynamic, multidisciplinary, and international field. To understand race and racism with a global perspective, it is necessary to have a transdisciplinary, cross-cultural view to read critically the phenomena that intersect with this variable. Course readings are drawn from the fields of African and African American Studies, sociology, history, cultural studies, political science, anthropology, philosophy, journalism, and public health. The vast literature produced by scholars in diverse fields provides evidence of how race is based on narratives created to enslave, subordinate, exploit, and exclude millions of human beings across the globe. Assignments will address pressing real-world questions related to race and racism, as well as pedagogically significant areas of undergraduate intellectual and academic development.

Course Notes:

Required for concentrators in African and African American Studies. Open to all undergraduates.

Related Sections:

· Course Component: Tutorial

· Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences

AFRAMER 98: Junior Tutorial-African American Studies

Instructor: Contact the Course Coordinator

-TBA

· 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 Course Coordinator

-Wednesdays 12:45pm – 2:45pm

· 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:99B Senior Thesis Workshop

Instructor: Contact the Course Coordinator

-TBA

· Course ID:159794

Description:

Thesis supervision under the direction of a member of the Department. Part two of a two-part series.

Course Notes:

Enrollment is limited to honors candidates.

· Course Component: Tutorial

· Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences

AFRAMER 108: Black Religion and Sexuality

HDS 3263

Instructor: Ahmad Greene-Hayes

Tuesdays 3:00pm - 4:59pm

· Class Number:19570 Course ID:223002

Description:

This course examines the co-constructed histories of religion, sexuality, and race in the Americas from the vantage of the African diaspora. Drawing upon foundational and newer works in the field, we will explore how the construction of these categories, largely rooted in biological essentialism, has had immense consequences for the enslaved and their descendants, indigenous peoples, other people of color, and women, queer, transgender, and gender-nonconforming individuals. This course also homes in on how those marginalized by these categories have challenged and subverted them using a hermeneutics of suspicion, political organizing, and other methods of resistance and feminist and queer theologizing. Jointly offered in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as Religion 1087 and African and African American Studies 108.

Based on HDS policy, HDS students will have priority for enrollment. Additional openings will be filled based on student readiness for this level and then the date when the petition was submitted.

Jointly Offered with: Harvard Divinity School as HDS 3263

· Course Component: Seminar

· Divisional Distribution: Arts and Humanities

AFRAMER 111Y: Introduction to African literature and film

Instructor: Tinashe Mushakavanhu

Tuesdays 12:00pm - 2:45pm

· Class Number:20435 Course ID:227667

Description:

From traditional folktales reimagined on Netflix to groundbreaking novels and bold Nollywood productions, we’ll discover how African writers and filmmakers have shaped and reshaped the continent’s image from the 1950s to today. Together, we’ll read powerful works by authors like Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Dambudzo Marechera, Ama Ata Aidoo, Binyavanga Wainaina, Namwali Serpell among others, and engage with cinematic works by directors such as Ousmane Sembene and Tsitsi Dangarembga. We’ll explore how these creators respond to colonial histories, challenge stereotypes, celebrate culture, and imagine new futures. Students will gain tools to think critically about representation, identity, language, and power and to appreciate Africa not as a single story, but as a continent of vast creative voices and visions. No prior knowledge is expected - just curiosity, openness, and a willingness to see the world differently.

· Course Component: Lecture

· Divisional Distribution: Arts and Humanities

AFRAMER 118X The Black American Experience Through Film

Instructor: Myisha Eatmon

Date & Time: TBD

Class Number:20829 Course ID:227732

Description:

Black Americans have helped shape most areas of life in the United States, and Black stories and Black History have been a part of American cinematography for ages. From Black Panther to If Beale Street Could Talk, Black Americans’ history and lived experiences have been shown on the big screen around the world. This course extends beyond traditional social justice or Black Freedom Struggle frameworks. Students will engage with films as both historical visualization tools and cultural artifacts, developing critical skills to analyze how popular culture shapes historical understanding. We could consider these major motion pictures as forms of “public history,” examining how they influence collective memory and historical consciousness.

· Course Component: Lecture

· Divisional Distribution: Arts and Humanities

AFRAMER 119X: Chocolate, Culture, and the Politics of Food

Instructor: Carla Martin

Thursday 12:45pm - 2:45pm

· Class Number:12974 Course ID:108879

Description:

This course will examine the sociohistorical legacy of chocolate, with a delicious emphasis on the eating and appreciation of the so-called “food of the gods.” Interdisciplinary course readings will introduce the history of cacao cultivation, the present day state of the global chocolate industry, the diverse cultural constructions surrounding chocolate, and the implications for chocolate’s future of scientific study, international politics, alternative trade models, and the food movement. Assignments will address pressing real world questions related to chocolate consumption, social justice, responsible development, honesty and the politics of representation in production and marketing, hierarchies of quality, and myths of purity.

· Course Component: Lecture

· Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences

AFRAMER 123Z: American Democracy

Instructors: John Stauffer & Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Friday 1:30pm - 3:30pm

· Class Number:13670 Course ID:111438

Description:

Democracy, inequality, and nationalism in America. The white working class and American politics. Class and race. Identities and interests. Conditions for socially inclusive economic growth and for the deepening and dissemination of the knowledge economy. Alternative directions of institutional change, viewed in light of American history. Democratizing the market and deepening democracy. Self-reliance and solidarity. We explore and discuss the past, present, and especially the future of the American experiment among ourselves and with invited guests: thinkers, politicians, social activists, and entrepreneurs. Readings drawn from classic and contemporary writings about the United States. Extended take-home examination.

Jointly Offered with: Harvard Law School as HLS 2955

· Course Component: Lecture

· Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences

AFRAMER 143Y: African Landscape Architecture: Alternative Futures for the Field

Instructor: Gareth Doherty

Tuesdays 9:00am - 11:45am

· Class Number:13913 Course ID:224017

Description:

A central aim of this seminar is to reveal the plurality of ways landscapes are shaped across the African continent and how they help mitigate the impacts of changing climates and social injustice now and in the future. Africa is a continent rich in landscape projects and practices but only eight out of fifty-four African nations have professional associations of landscape architects. The course is framed around three central questions: 1.) How is landscape architecture currently practiced in African countries? (2.) What lessons can we learn from landscape practices in various African societies that can help mitigate the impacts of climate change and social inequities? (3.) As landscape architecture unfolds across the continent in the next 50–200 years, how can it continue assert its agency in the fight against changing climates and social inequity and claim a central space in the shaping of African cities of the future? Each week we will focus on a different country including South Africa, Botswana, Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria. In collaboration with several landscape architecture university programs across Africa and including practitioners and academics from across the continent, this seminar will explore what it means to practice and teach landscape architecture in societies in which the profession is nascent or non-existent and speculate on the future of the shaping of landscapes in the Global South.

Jointly Offered with: Graduate School of Design as DES 3514

· Course Component: Seminar

· Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences

AFRAMER 163X: Foundational Fiction and Film

Instructor: Doris Sommer

Tuesdays 9:45am - 11:45am

· Class Number:30135 Course ID:227626

Description:

Through novels that helped to consolidate nation-states in Latin America, explores modernity as personal and public lessons in laissez-faire. Sequels in film, telenovelas, performances show tenacity of genre. Links between creativity and citizenship. Theorists include Anderson, Foucault, Arendt, Lukacs, Flaubert.

Jointly Offered with: Faculty of Arts & Sciences as SPANSH 163

· Course Component: Seminar

· Divisional Distribution: Arts and Humanities

AFRAMER 166X: African Language Archives in disciplines and professions

Instructor: John Mugane

Tuesdays & Thursdays 10:30am - 11:45am

· Class Number:19365 Course ID:224461

Description:

Language is a fundamental for thought and communication, playing a vital role in human achievements and societal progress. This course explores African languages as rich sources of knowledge that require collection and cataloguing using current AI technologies. By examining archives of African thought and life, students will delve into how archival information can be shared across languages. The course emphasizes the significance of African languages as instruments of thought, expressed through signs and sounds, in various domains such as constitution writing, food production, governance, religion, and environmental use/protection. Students will critically engage with the organic sociality of vernacular spaces, including church rooms, courtrooms, classrooms, hospital rooms, and entrepreneurial spaces, where African languages are linguistically accessible. Course Objectives: - Understand the role of language as an instrument of thought and communication in African societies. - Explore African languages as archives of knowledge and their importance in preserving cultural heritage. - Gain knowledge of AI technologies and their application in collecting and cataloguing African language archives. - Examine the significance of archival information sharing across different African languages. - Analyze the critical engagements that take place in vernacular spaces and their impact on African communities. - Understand the linguistic accessibility of African languages in various social contexts.

· Course Component: Lecture

· Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences

AFRAMER 179X: Abolition, Then and Now

Instructors: Walter Johnson & Andrew Crespo

Mondays 3:45pm - 5:45pm

· Class Number:20127 Course ID:226604

Description:

The modern American prison abolition movement consciously evokes the nineteenth century movement to abolish slavery. The institutions each movement sought to end—chattel slavery and the contemporary carceral state—are also directly linked, by intersecting lineages and genealogies, and by the text of the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery “except as a punishment for crime” and thus preserved the legality of American slavery to this day, within prisons. This course examines these linkages between institutions of

coercive state power and between the movements that oppose them and seek to build different social systems, norms, and structures in their wake.

· Course Component: Seminar

· Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences

AFRAMER 185Y: Made to Feel: Race & Affect in the Americas

Instructor: Amber Henry

Wednesdays 9:45am - 11:45am

· Class Number:20800 Course ID:227691

Description:

How is race felt? This course examines how affect—the subjective experience of feelings and intensities—shapes processes of racial formation. Bridging texts across history, anthropology, and psychology, it takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding how ideas about affect inform the making of racial categories. Drawing on the history of science, psychological anthropology, and studies of embodiment, we consider how affective intensities such as joy, anger, love, grief, suspicion, and privilege inscribe categories of the human. By focusing on cases from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States, the course explores how affects are produced locally and circulated globally.

· Course Component: Seminar

· Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences

AFRAMER 186: Religion, Culture, and Society in Africa

Instructor: Jacob Olupona

Thursdays 3:00pm - 5:45pm

· Class Number:14860 Course ID:222688

Description:

Exploring the meaning of religion and its impact of on African culture and society broadly, this course will highlight both religious traditions and innovations. Instead of treating each of the religions of Africa, the triple heritage in the words of Ali Mazrui of indigenous African religions, Islam, and Christianity, as distinct and bounded entities, we will explore the hybridity, interaction, and integration between categories throughout Africa. Using case studies, a unique perspective on religious diversity on the African continent and diaspora will emerge.

· Course Component: Seminar

· Divisional Distribution: Arts and Humanities

AFRAMER 202: Theory and Race in the Americas

Instructor: Brandon Terry

Thursdays 9:45am – 11:45am

· Class Number:20128 Course ID:218312

Description:

This course surveys myths, theories, discourses, and debates surrounding the meaning of race and its role in the historical formation of the “New World” in the Americas. Beginning with the origins of racial theory in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe, we will follow their evolution and expansion into scientific and culturalist discourses in the nineteenth century, and through the dramatic transformations of the twentieth century leading up to the present. Readings will range from canonical scholars, orators, social scientists, and philosophers up to the most contemporary thinkers. Along the way, we will read work by Ottobah Cugoano, W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Hortense Spillers, Paul Gilroy, Sylvia Wynter, Walter Rodney, Frantz Fanon, Denise Ferreira da Silva, James Baldwin, Cedric Robinson, Angela Davis, Imani Perry, Khalil Muhammad, Saidiya Hartman, Charles Mills, Jackie Wang, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Audre Lorde and Cornel West among others. The course places an emphasis on building foundations in the historiography and intellectual genealogy of racial discourses as they have been constructed, reproduced, contested, reimagined, and ultimately disseminated throughout the American hemisphere and beyond.

· Course Component: Lecture

· Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences

AFRAMER 219B: Race and Ethnicity in Latin America

Instructor: Alejandro de la Fuente & Paulina Alberto

Thursdays 12:45pm - 2:45pm

· Class Number: 15691 Course ID:215791

Description:

This yearlong seminar introduces students to current questions and debates in the study of race and ethnicity in Latin America, from the colonial period to the present. Our seminar answers the call, issued by anthropologist Peter Wade (1997), to produce scholarship integrating the study of Africans and their descendants, along with indigenous peoples, as participants in shared processes of racial formation, nation making, and state building. Through the systematic comparison of several cases, the course discusses how ideas of race have shaped processes of nation and state formation in Latin America, shaping opportunities for mobilization and public policies; how racial identities have been formed and invoked for different cultural and political purposes; and how ideas of race and ethnicity have contributed to the stratification of Latin American societies, which are among the most unequal in the world.

· Course Component: Seminar

· Divisional Distribution: Social Science

AFRAMER 223: Storied Lives: Methods in Oral History

Instructor: Amber Henry

Tuesdays 3:00pm - 5:45pm

· Class Number:14966 Course ID:225837

Description:

How can we understand the lives of people who are excluded from the historical record? How might attention to the time and space in which words are spoken allow us to treat oral history as text, and text as oral history? This course explores storytelling as a foundational element of the human experience. It analyzes the myriad ways in which orality has been used to consolidate origin stories, document events, communicate embodied experience, and transfer ancestral knowledge. By centering methodology, students will learn to prepare, collect, analyze, and share oral histories in a variety of written, digital, and artistic forms. Topics of discussion include how to build relationships, conduct interviews around difficult topics, and use citational practices that honor nonhuman and other-than-human actors. Required readings pair classic and new oral histories with texts on the theory, practice, and ethics of storytelling. By centering works by Black, Indigenous, gender minorities, and writers of color, the course examines how storytelling is used to establish and redistribute power. At the end of the semester, students will become familiar with audio-visual recording technology, learn to navigate transcription and coding software, and be able to conduct, transcribe and analyze an oral history.

· Course Component: Seminar

· Divisional Distribution: Social Sciences

AFRAMER 233: Theories and Methods in the Study of Black Religions

Instructor: Ahmad Greene-Hayes

Tuesdays 12:00pm – 1:59pm

· Class Number:19571 Course ID:226905

Description:

This graduate seminar course will expose students to foundational theoretical and methodological debates in the academic study of Black religions across the African diaspora in the afterlives of slavery and colonization. We will read canonical works and study the interventions and contributions of pivotal thinkers in the field (Du Bois, Hurston, Herskovits, Frazier, Cone, Long, Williams, etc.) while also examining their legacies and continued influence upon both Religious Studies and Black Studies, respectively. In addition to familiarizing students with a variety of approaches to studying the varied manifestations and articulations of Black religions (as phenomena, traditions, cultural practices, and aesthetics), the course examines the construction of the category of "Black religions," ethical and political issues involved in the study of Black religions, and discourses and topics (slavery, African retentions, gender, sexuality, colonialism, etc.) profoundly affecting our changing understanding of Black religions in the contemporary period and reshaping our understandings of the field's intellectual history.

Class Notes:

Course is by application to the instructor. Please provide a short paragraph answering the following: What is your year and course of study? Why do you want to take this course? What are your research experiences with regard to the study of Black religions?

Jointly Offered with: Harvard Divinity School as HDS 3134

· Course Component: Seminar

· Divisional Distribution: Social Science

AFRAMER 242: Topics in the History of Atlantic Slavery: Seminar

Instructor: Vincent Brown

Wednesdays 9:00am – 11:45am

· Class Number:20438 Course ID:227668

Will introduce graduate students to major synthetic works on the history of Atlantic slavery, surveying the period between the mid-15th century and the late 19th, and provide them an opportunity to develop original research projects.

Jointly Offered with: Faculty of Arts & Sciences as HIST 2412

· Course Component: Seminar

· Divisional Distribution: Social Science

AFRAMER 274: Art, Race, and Politics

Instructor: Sarah Lewis

Mondays 12:00pm - 2:45pm

· Class Number:20432 Course ID:216085

Description:

How do images—photographs, films, and videos—create narratives that shape our definition of national belonging? Social media has changed how we ingest images. Protests, social injustice, and collective moments of triumph are all played out in photos and videos in real time unlike anything we thought possible just a few decades ago. What skills of visual literacy and critical consciousness are required to understand of the opportunities and challenges that technology is presenting to civic life? This seminar—primarily for graduates and open to undergraduates as well—will explore the connection between images and justice in America. What constitutes a figurative emblem of protest? What does effective resistance look like in art and in the digital realm? By the end of the course, students should be able to consider how images have had persuasive efficacy in the context of social and racial justice movements, critically engage with and contextualize the narratives surrounding images posted online, and understand how democratic rights are connected to visual representation in the United States.

Jointly Offered with: Faculty of Arts & Sciences as HAA 274G

· Course Component: Seminar

· Divisional Distribution: Arts and Humanities

AFRAMER 310: Individual Reading Tutorial

Instructor: Contact the Course Coordinator

-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

-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