Courses Archive

Three hours of seminar per week. Examination of theoretical issues in urban anthropology and sociology pertaining to the United States as a multicultural society. Comparative analysis of the ecology and social structure of African American, Native American, Asian American, Mexican American and Afro-Caribbean urban communities with special emphasis on social class, ethnicity, and culture.

Four hours of seminar per week, plus community workshop teaching. Prerequisites: 156AC plus consent of instructor. The focus of this course is on the writing of poetry, and students undertake an intensive study of both the techniques of poetry and the social and cultural context of specific poetic traditions. Students must "imitate" the poems they study, write critical papers comparing poetic traditions, and complete an original manuscript of new poems. In addition, they must produce an on-campus poetry reading and are required to teach for five to seven weeks at one of the assigned Poetry for the People venues. This course satisfies the Arts and Literature breadth requirement. This course satisfies the American cultures requirement.

Three hours of seminar per week. The course will examine the development of an intellectual group in African American life from the 18th century to the present. Implicit in the examination is consideration of the social and cultural roles, writers, scholars, artists, and other thinkers have played in American and African American culture.

Four hours of recitation and one hour of laboratory per week. This course reviews and expands students' knowledge of fundamental structures from Elementary Wolof and appropriate cultural contexts of these structures in oral and written communication. More grammar and vocabulary in a culturally and socially appropriate context is developed. Speaking ability is expanded through oral exercises, individual reports, class discussions, and recordings available at the Berkeley Language Center. Writing and reading are expanded through compositions, written exercises, and independent reading projects with texts available through Berkeley's African Library Collection and supplemented by instructor's materials.

Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies. One hour of seminar per week. Sections 1-2 to be graded on a letter-grade basis. Sections 3-4 to be graded on a passed/not passed basis. The Berkeley Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small-seminar setting. Berkeley Seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester.

Three hours of lecture per week. Prerequisites: Equivalent of Linguistics 5 (Language and Linguistics) or consent of instructor. The objective of this course is to examine the major syntactic structures of Bantu languages with comments on the contributions made by African linguistics to general linguistics. Chichewa, also known as Chinyanja, a language spoken in east, central, and southern Africa, as well as Swahili, the major language of East Africa, and Ndebele or Zulu, languages of southern Africa, will constitute the main case studies. Data from those and other languages will be brought in to illustrate relevant aspects of Bantu linguistic structure.

Four hours of lecture per week. Prerequisites: 5B. Examines the concept of black nationalism and its historical and intellectual development. Special attention will be given to the role of African American religion and the attempt to develop "black socialism."

Four hours of seminar, plus peer teaching and performance. Prerequisites: 158A. A teaching practicum, with the regular and active supervision of the instructor, for students who completed 156AC during the previous year and 158A in the previous fall. They serve as student teacher poets for 156AC. The focus of 158B is on the teaching of poetry. Each student poet is responsible for a group of seven to ten students, and, under the direct supervision of the instructor, helps the students in his/her group learn to read, criticize, and produce poetry. This course satisfies the American cultures requirement.

Three hours of seminar per week. This seminar uses an epistemological and hermeneutic approach to locate and study the ethnic question in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. It examines the social construction of ethnicity and deconstructs it in relation to the gender and class positions of the subject. Modernist and postmodernist theories dealing with state formation and inter-ethnic relations will be scrutinized. National, transnational, and global aspects of ethnicity will be discussed. The technology of the infrapolitics of minority groups in both colonial and postcolonial settings will be assessed.

Four hours of recitation and one hour of laboratory per week. Prerequisites: 8A. This course reviews and expands students' knowledge of fundamental structures from Elementary Wolof, and appropriate cultural contexts of these structures in oral and written communication. More grammar and vocabulary in a culturally and socially appropriate context is developed. Speaking ability is expanded through oral exercises, individual reports, class discussions, and recordings available at the Berkeley Language Center. Writing and reading are expanded through compositions, written exercises, and independent reading projects with texts available through Berkeley's African Library Collection and supplemented by the instructor's materials.