ES 122 - The Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in Black America

Units: 3 ; Breadth Area: GE-F-ES; Social Justice
Course will engage with eight major themes involving African descended figures, traditions, and representation across the Americas. These themes are music, sports, activism and social justice, gender and sexuality, Black business and commerce, politics, education, and labor.

Possible Instructional Methods: Entirely On-ground, or Entirely Online, or Hybrid.
Grading: A-F or CR/NC (student choice).
Breadth Area(s) Satisfied: GE-F - Ethnic Studies, Overlay - Social Justice
Course Typically Offered: Variable Intermittently

Student Learning Outcomes - Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:

Examine and deconstruct popular culture events by identifying causes and/or motives;
Identify major tropes of presentation and mis-representation that repeatedly surface around Black expressive cultures;
Apply basic cultural theory concepts and vocabulary to discuss and evaluate cultural and political events; and
Connect discourse surrounding national events to local and/or regional politics and culture.

F. Ethnic Studies Learning Outcomes
Courses must meet 3 of the following 5 outcomes to be certified for Area F. The 3 outcomes that are met in the course will be published in the course syllabus. Upon the completion of the Area F requirement, students will be able to:

Using a comparative or focused approach, explain and analyze core concepts such as racialization, racism, white supremacy, racial capitalism, critical race theory, intersectionality, women of color feminisms, queer of color theory, (counter)hegemony, eurocentrism, self-determination, food justice in communities of color, environmental justice, liberation, decolonization, genocide, sovereignty, indigeneity, imperialism, settler colonialism, antiBlackness, or anti-racism as analyzed in Native American/American Indian/Indigenous Studies, Chicana/o/x or Latina/o/x Studies, African American/Black/Africana/African Descended/Descendent of Enslaved African Studies, Asian/Pacific Islander/Middle Eastern/South Asian (APIMESA) American Studies.
Apply theory and knowledge such as Critical Race Studies and Women of Color feminisms produced by American Indians/Native Americans/Indigenous people, African Americans/Black people/African diasporic/African Descended/Descendant of Enslaved Africans, Asian/Pacific Islanders/Middle Eastern/South Asian (APIMESA) Americans and/or Latinas/os/xs or Chicanos/as/xs to describe the critical events, histories, cultures, intellectual traditions, contributions, lived experiences, and social struggles of those groups with a particular emphasis on group affirmation, agency, and praxis.
Critically analyze the Black feminist concept of intersectionality and the intersection of race, class, and gender with other axes of oppression including sexuality, sexual violence, religion/spirituality, national origin, immigration and citizenship status, ability, Indigenous sovereignty, language, and/or age as they apply to African American/Black/African diasporic/African Descended/Descendant of Enslaved African, Chicana/o/x or Latina/o/x, Asian/Pacific Islander/Middle Eastern/South Asian (APIMESA) American, and/or Native American/American Indian/Indigenous communities.
Critically review how struggle, resistance, rematriation, social justice activism, solidarity, abolition, and liberation, as experienced, enacted, and studied by American Indians/Native Americans/Indigenous people, African Americans/Black people/African diasporic/African Descended/Descendant of Enslaved Africans, Asian/Pacific Islanders/Middle Eastern/South Asian (APIMESA) Americans and/or Latinas/os/xs or Chicanos/as/xs are relevant to current and structural issues such as communal, national, international, and transnational politics as for example, in health disparities, educational inequities, immigration policies, reparations, settler-colonialism, language policies, media depictions of ethnic/racial groups, racial and sexual violence, prison industrial complex, community development, gentrification, and/or other ethnic politics.
Describe and actively engage with American Indian/Native American/Indigenous, African American/Black/African diasporic/African Descended/Descendant of Enslaved African, Asian/Pacific Islander/Middle Eastern/South Asian (APIMESA) American and/or Latina/o/x or Chicano/a/x communities to apply anti-racist, anti-colonial, humanizing, and women of color feminist frameworks to radically reimagine their communities as sites of justice and love.

Social Justice Overlay Learning Outcomes

use a disciplinary perspective to analyze issues of social justice and equity;
describe the challenges to achieving social justice; and
identify ways in which individuals and/or groups can contribute to social justice within local communities, nations, or the world.