HS 358 - African American History through the Civil War

(3.00 cr.)

Prerequisite: One HS 100-level course. Surveys the history of African Americans from the African Atlantic Diaspora to the end of the Civil War. Critical topics discussed include place, identity, memory, and the myriad ways in which African Americans created a sense of community. The course canvases the national landscape to see African Americans in states of freedom and enslavement, in the North and in the South, in cities and on plantations, in the "big house" and "in the field," and as skilled artisans and unskilled laborers. At all times students are poised to consider the degree to which African Americans possessed "agency" and how they used it to construct strategies of survival. IAF/IU