What You Will Learn as an African & African American Studies Minor
The mission of the African and African American Studies (AAAS) program at Rollins College is to foster an awareness of the contributions and impact of people of African descent on the western hemisphere and a greater understanding of the complexity linked to the global African Diaspora.
Global Citizenship
The program supports the College’s goals of high-quality liberal arts education and experiential learning for a global society through interdisciplinary coursework that emphasizes understanding cultural, economic, historical, and political processes linked to the African Diaspora, including the enduring effects of slavery, colonialism, and racism. In class you will engage critically with African and African-American issues, preparing to become global citizens and responsible leaders capable of contributing to vital discussions about social, political, and economic concerns linked to the African Diaspora.
The African and African American Studies Program’s curriculum focuses upon global citizenship through an engagement with Africa and African-American themed courses drawn from across the college curriculum. To ensure broader engagement with African themes you will take geographically diverse minor core courses and elective courses.
Responsible Leadership
Responsible leadership involves gaining a deep appreciation of the diverse cultures and societies that have contributed to the world today, as well as understanding the processes by which some cultures and societies have been privileged or obscured in such discussions. By focusing on both the contributions of Africa and African-Americans, and the historical and cultural devaluing of these groups, you will learn that responsible leadership includes not only cultural appreciation but also recognizing and challenging racism in its different manifestations.
Productive Careers
Cultural competency and an awareness of intersectionality are central facets of a pragmatic liberal-arts education that will contribute to your preparedness for a productive career and meaningful life. The minor stresses that the cultural awareness fostered by the curriculum is valuable to government, non-profits, and corporations that rely on employees capable of communicating across boundaries and working with persons from diverse backgrounds. Since 2011 we have also championed the use of community engagement in the capstone course to provide you with opportunities to explore how culture shapes the world outside the classroom. Through these experiences you are prompted to see how a greater understanding of culture can help you achieve productive careers and understand your own potential to impact the world around you.
Meaningful Lives
The minor in Africa and African-American Studies prepares you to go into your careers and lives with important tools to promote inclusivity and global understanding.
AAAS Course Offerings
- AAAS 101 - Introduction to African & African/American Studies: An interdisciplinary introduction to the history, politics, and culture of Africa and the African diaspora, with particular attention to the struggles and achievements of African-Americans.
- ARH 145 - Introduction to African Art: Introduces archaeological, historical, modern, and contemporary works of African art in their aesthetic, cultural, and historical contexts.
- ARH 243 - Fashion in Africa: Explores how African dress reveals information about culture, history, political systems, religious worship, gendered relations, and social organization.
- ARH 341 - African Art and Colonialism: Studies late 19th and early 20th century African art within the context of European colonialism. Pays particular attention to the influence of European colonialism on pre-existing African artistic traditions, social structures, power dynamics, gender relations, and religions.
- ASJ 105 / CMC 105 - Mindful Activism: In this experiential course, we will examine current social movements, elements of movement action planning, and how to develop and implement effective activist campaigns to address pressing social justice issues.
- CMC 325 - Incarceration and Inequality: This course examines ways privilege and inequality manifest in, for example, the War on Drugs; the militarization of policing; prison privatization; solitary confinement; the death penalty; and extrajudicial imprisonment, torture, and killing.
- EDU 271 - School and Society: Chronicles social, political, economic, and historical background of contemporary American school system. Demonstrates how social forces have shaped curriculum, organization, and purposes of formal education.
- EDU 280 - Diversity in American Education: Examines cultural pluralism in the classroom: multicultural education, diversity and teaching, bilingual education, racism, tracking, and teacher preparation.
- ENG 190 - Texts and Contexts: Theme-based course introducing students to the practice of literary analysis and writing. Focusing on skills in close reading using literary and critical terminology on multiple genres.
- GBH 350 - Health Equity: Advances students’ knowledge of the core principle of health equity. Students will learn how historicall-situated social, political, environmental, and economic circumstances directly shape health inequity. The course provides suggestions for how to advance health equity for all populations.
- HIS 120 - Decade of Decision: U.S. in the 1960s: Introduces the study of history through an examination of the political, economic, social, intellectual, and cultural events during the 1960s.
- SOC 111 - Social Problems: Follows traditional areas of social problem analysis (poverty, sexism, racism, and crime) as they evolve and transform society as a whole.
- SOC 331 - The Civil Rights Movement and Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: Surveys the African-American freedom struggle from the era of slavery to the present, with special emphasis on the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. See additional course offerings and minor requirements.
Study Abroad
The Rwanda Field Study, offers students an opportunity to live and work side by side with children, families, teachers and villagers in rural Rwanda for two weeks on selected projects to include: community gardening, health, and nutrition initiatives, co-teaching in community schools, English teaching, community literacy projects, and others.