The Department of African American Studies invites all undergraduates to register for AASP Summer Courses this Summer 2022. Listed below are the courses available for Summer 2022 under Summer Session I which meets on May 31, 2022 to July 8, 2022. All courses listed are online unless noted otherwise. Please see testudo.umd.edu for registration and further course description and details. Please contact Mr. Marshal Washington, Academic Advisor, for specific AASD program (major, certificate, and minor) requirements.
Significant aspects of the history of African Americans with particular emphasis on the evolution and development of black communities from slavery to the present. Interdisciplinary introduction to social, political, legal and economic roots of contemporary problems faced by blacks in the United States with applications to the lives of other racial and ethnic minorities in the Americas and in other societies.
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Instructor: Jason Nichols
ONLINE
Dr. Jason Nichols is an award winning full-time senior lecturer in the African American Studies Department at the University of Maryland College Park and was the longtime editor-in-chief of Words Beats & Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture, the first peer-reviewed journal of Hip-hop Studies. He co-edited La Verdad: An International Dialogue on Hip-Hop Latinidades (Ohio State University Press). Jason Nichols has been recognized by the University of Maryland community for his tireless effort to help students develop. In 2018, the Office of Multicultural Student Education gave Dr. Nichols the Academic Excellence Award for Outstanding Faculty and the Student Success Leadership Council awarded him the M. Lucia James Impact Award. In 2015, Dr. Nichols was given the Faculty Advisor of the Year Award by the UMCP NAACP.
Dr. Nichols is also a progressive political and social analyst whose work has been featured in publications such as The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Foxnews.com, NBCNews.com, The Hill, MIC.com, Independent Journal Review, The Baltimore Afro American, Bustle, The Daily Caller, The Baltimore Sun, The New York Daily News, and more. He makes regular appearances on Fox News Channel, Al Jazeera English, Newsmax, MSNBC, Sky News, Sky News Arabia, CheddarTV, i24News and TRT World News along with many other TV and radio outlets. Dr. Nichols currently cohosts the "Vince and Jason Save the Nation" podcast.
The impact of public policies on the black community and the role of the policy process in affecting the social, economic and political well-being of minorities. Particular attention given to the post-1960 to present era.
Instructor: Alana Hackshaw
ONLINE
Alana Hackshaw, PhD, is an associate clinical professor and serves as the School's Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer. Her courses focus on governance, social identity and the creation of public policy and leadership. Hackshaw’s professional experiences include work as a researcher and a consultant in the nonprofit community. Her work concentrated on analyzing policies that foster economic security, asset-building and entrepreneurship within the Black diaspora in the US.
Hackshaw holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Michigan and a BA in political science and history from the University of Rochester. Her research interests include the impact of racial equity plans on city governance, patterns of political incorporation among first and second-generation Black immigrants in the US and the impact of US immigration policy on immigrants of color in the US.
The course examines important aspects of African American life and thought which are reflected in African American literature, drama, music and art. Beginning with the cultural heritage of slavery, the course surveys the changing modes of black creative expression from the 19th-century to the present.
Instructor: Robert Choflet
ONLINE
Bob Choflet is a faculty lecturer in African American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. He studies the radical intellectual and political traditions that emerge from spaces of racialized poverty, particularly as they intersect with processes of capitalism, social reproduction, and urbanization. His book project, “Unfit for Family Life”: How Regimes of Accumulation, Sexuality, And Antiblackness Built (and Rebuilt) West Baltimore, derived from in-depth oral histories conducted over a number of years with West Baltimore residents who have lived in (or currently live in) public housing. The archive of resident voices, fashioned through oral history work, counter-narrates this moment, demonstrating how black women theorized their own conditions, imagined and developed material demands independent of policy makers, and worked to put these demands into practice. The project serves as a model for thinking about how competing claims to public institutions offer competing visions for how to reproduce public life. He is the co-chair of the AASP Faculty Curriculum Committee and serves on the Pedagogy Committee for the College of Behavioral and Social Science’s Anti-Black Racism Initiative.
Prevailing thought suggests that we live in an era that is post-racial, particularly after the election of Barack Obama. Media often serves to drive our assessment of where our nation stands on issues like race, gender and sexuality. This course uses the film Get Out to delve into the production, evolution and significance of race in present day America. The course will engage multiple forms of media to investigate life in "Post-Racial" America, including but not limited to the role of stereotypes, interracial relationships, police-community relations, etc.
Instructor: Shane Walsh
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Shane Bolles Walsh, PhD is a lecturer in the department. He received his PhD in American Studies from the University of Maryland College Park and holds a Masters in African American studies from Morgan State University. Dr. Bolles Walsh is a 2x’s recipient of an MVP ("Most Valuable Professor") award from the UMD Women's Basketball and the UMD Men’s Baseball teams. Dr. Bolles Walsh also serves on the student conduct committee for the University senate as well as the 1856 project.
This course examines the creators, historical innovators, and evolution of the music known as Jazz from the standpoint of past and present historical, social, political, and economic conditions in the U.S. national policy as it impacts the economics of popular American music, European classical music and the music known as Jazz and the artists who play it.
Instructor: Dr. Ronald Zeigler
ONLINE
As a Director at the University of Maryland for twenty years, he is responsible for the management and fiscal oversight of his department, the (Nim-boo-roo) Nyumburu Cultural Center. As Director, his specific duties include the following: Supervision, University Teaching, Research, Student Mentoring, Assessment, Evaluation, Professional Writing, Grant & Proposal Writing, Public Speaking, Campus and Community Engagement, and Administration. At the University of Maryland, he also served as a Research Administrator and Adjunct Instructor within the Division of Academic Affairs for nearly twenty years. His duties focused primarily on program development, grant-writing, student research projects, retention studies, teaching diversity, history and Family-Studies courses.
A critical exploration of Hip Hop and how it transcends race, socioeconomic background, culture, and gender.
Instructor: Solomon Comissiong
ONLINE
At Maryland, Comissiong has taught African American studies classes, including one contrasting and comparing the history of blues and hip-hop. He now teaches an African American studies class that uses hip-hop to explore social issues affecting primarily people of the African Diaspora. Some topics he covers in his lectures are: Hip Hop History & Social Issues, Media Literacy & Hip Hop, The Connection between the American Civil Rights Movement and the African Liberation Struggle Against Colonialism, Academic Enthusiasm, Manufacturing & Cultivating a Culture of Peace and Conflict Resolution Via Aspects of Hip Hop Culture, Diversity Education, Media Literacy & Critical Thinking, History via Hip Hop History, Civic Engagement and Teacher Professional Development in Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.
“He’s made tremendous contributions to the Nyumburu Center,” Zeigler said. “He’s an activist. He brings a unique perspective to the campus—somebody who’s going to make social change within students, within organizations. He gets people to question themselves.”
The course explores major themes of African American life within African American social justice movements in the United States from the 1970s until the contemporary moment. We will accomplish this through an analysis of cultural expressions such as music, viral social media hashtags, literature, films, essays, music, and visual art.
Instructor: Renina Jarmon
ONLINE
Renina Jarmon is a doctoral student at the University of Maryland, College Park where her research interests are digital feminisms, Black popular culture, and racial identities on the internet. Renina holds a BA degree in Psychology from Eugene Lang College, The New School for Social Research.
Currently she is interested in Black women’s knowledge production and how Black women utilize social media platforms to circumnavigate mainstream media structures. Her fields are black studies, black women’s studies and digital black humanities.
Renina teaches Women, Art and Culture, Black Culture in the US and Black Women in Popular Culture: From the Blues to Beyoncé at the University of Maryland College Park.
See Summer Session II here: https://aasd.umd.edu/undergraduate/summer-session-ii
Learn More About Undergraduate Studies at UMD AFAM: https://go.umd.edu/AFAM_Undergrad
See flyer about all Summer 2022 AASD Courses: https://aasd.umd.edu/feature/register-aasp-summer-2022-courses-umd
