Black Studies Minor

Housed in the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) Department, the Black Studies minor offers students grounding in the intellectual histories, political movements, cultural expressions, and critical theories of the black diaspora, all while engaging a range of methodologies from across disciplines. Attention to the significance of social justice is a hallmark of the minor. Supported by faculty expertise in Africa, the Caribbean, the Americas, Europe, and the Pacific, students can explore the globally multi-sited nature of black freedom struggles, both past and present, and examine blackness through a comparative lens.

Through careful advising, students can pursue a set of electives, tailored to their interests, enabling broad or deep exploration of specific histories, geographic regions, and thematic concerns. 

Course Requirements

To graduate with a minor in Black studies, a student is required to complete six courses. With a foundation in CRES 68, Approaches to Black Studies (substitutable with CRES 10, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies: An Introduction), students will undertake an additional 25 credits—or five upper-division elective courses—drawn from the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences divisions. Students can select these five electives from a list of pre-approved courses, with no more than three from any one program or department. Courses not appearing on the approved list can be petitioned for credit.

Lower-Division Courses

One lower-division core course:

CRES 68Approaches to Black Studies

5

Students may substitute CRES 10, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies: An Introduction, for the lower-division core course requirement.

Upper-Division Courses

Five upper-division courses, with no more than three from any one program or department:

Division of Humanities

CRES 118Abolitionist Futures

5

CRES 131Black Freedom Movements

5

CRES 181The Lynch Doctrine: From Rough Justice to Stand Your Ground

5

CRES 188BTopics in Black Studies

5

FMST 102Feminist Critical Race Studies

5

FMST 115Gender, Sexuality, and Transnational Migration Across the Americas

5

FMST 117Post Zora Interventions: Art, Activism and Anthropology

5

FMST 124Technology, Science, and Race Across the Americas

5

FMST 125Race, Sex, and Technology

5

FMST 139African American Women's History

5

FMST 145Racial and Gender Formations in the U.S

5

HIS 109ARace, Gender, and Power in the Antebellum South

5

HIS 110AColonial America, 1500-1750

5

HIS 110DThe Civil War Era

5

HIS 110HGreater Reconstruction: Race, Empire, and Citizenship in the Post-Civil War United States

5

HIS 111Popular Conceptions of Race in U.S. History, 1600-Present

5

HIS 116Slavery Across the Americas

5

HIS 116AUnchained Memory: Slavery and the Politics of the Past

5

HIS 120W.E.B. Du Bois

5

HIS 121AAfrican American History to 1877

5

HIS 121BAfrican American History: 1877 to the Present

5

HIS 122AJazz and United States Cultural History, 1900-1945

5

HIS 122BJazz and United States Cultural History, 1945 to the Present

5

HIS 137AAfrica to 1800

5

HIS 137BAfrica from 1800 to the Present

5

HIS 158C
/ANTH 179
Slavery in the Atlantic World: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives

5

HIS 177ASlaves, Soldiers, and Scientists: History of the Tropics

5

LIT 121NRAGE: Race and Performance

5

LIT 135ATopics in African Literature

5

LIT 146DNineteenth-Century American Fiction

5

LIT 147ATwain, Slavery, and the Literary Imagination

5

LIT 154CHip Hop Hi Art

5

LIT 161AAfrican American Literature

5

LIT 161BAfrican American Women Writers

5

LIT 190OStudies in Slavery, Race, and Nation in the Americas

5

Division of Social Sciences

ANTH 110Q
/CRES 110Q/FMST 110Q
Queer Sexuality in Black Popular Culture

5

ANTH 130AAnthropology of Africa.

5

ANTH 130F
/CRES 130
Blackness In Motion: Anthology of the African Diasporas

5

ANTH 130LEthnographies of Latin America

5

ANTH 159Race and Anthropology

5

ANTH 194LArchaeology of the African Diaspora

5

ANTH 196JImagining America

5

EDUC 160Issues in Educational Reform

5

EDUC 164Urban Education

5

EDUC 181Race, Class, and Culture in Education

5

LALS 150Afro-Latinos/as: Social, Cultural, and Political Dimensions

5

LALS 171Brazil in Black and White

5

SOCY 128I
/LGST 128I
Race and Law

5

SOCY 133Currents in African American Cultural Politics

5

SOCY 180Social Movements of the 1960s

5

Division of Arts

ARTG 142
/CRES 142
Black Aesthetics: Interventions in Digital Media

5

FILM 165BRace on Screen

5

HAVC 110Visual Cultures of West Africa

5

HAVC 111Visual Cultures of Central Africa

5

HAVC 115Gender in African Visual Culture

5

HAVC 116African Architecture

5

HAVC 117Contemporary Art of Africa

5

HAVC 118Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora

5

HAVC 140CRace and American Visual Arts

5

MUSC 180BStudies in World Musics: Africa and the Americas

5

THEA 100BBlack Theater USA

5

THEA 100WBlack/African Diasporic World Theater

5

THEA 151AStudies in Performance: African American Theater Arts Troupe

5

THEA 167Africanist Aesthetics: Live Dialogues in the Americas and Africa

5