AFAS 302: 101/201 Africana Studies Research Approaches Spring 2020

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Course Description This course is designed to provide students with skills in conducting research in Africana Studies. The course will consist of discussions of the role of knowledge, the various me... thods by which knowledge is acquired, and the manner that interpretations of knowledge occur. Emphasis will be placed on the practical dimensions of research in the humanities and the social sciences. Special focus will be placed on the cultivation of approaches and methods that ensure reliable data collection, rigorous analysis, and correlative verifiable conclusions, with particular reference to the African American, African, and Caribbean experiences. This course meets a core requirement for the Africana Studies major. Course Objectives: • Furnish students with research skills in Africana Studies. • Enable students comprehend the complexity of research approaches in academic study. • Assist students in appreciating the vast fields within Africana Studies that requires ongoing research and study, in areas of sociology, history, political economy, and anthropology. • Empower students to move from the subjectivity of individual experience to the arena of accurate knowledge about African and Diaspora African experiences, so that students avoid making broad generalizations about the subject matter while understanding key concepts and certain general principles in the sphere of Africana Studies research methods. • Encourage students to conduct further investigative research into historical and sociological literature on the Africana community, particularly dealing with controversial viewpoints, so that they are able to develop grounded and informed views on experiences of these communities and explore prospective resolutions to problems. • Facilitate the development of skills among students so that they are able to critically assess the consistency of arguments, form independent judgments of ideas informed by learned criteria within the area of Africana Studies research, and thus exercise the highest level of critical thinking. • To enable students become skilled and outstanding writers so that they are able to articulate the essence and complexity of Africana experience authentically and cogently. (The Writing Skills Center on campus is one resource area for developing writing skills should you desire such assistance.) • To demonstrate how Africana Studies as an academic discipline can become more relevant to the broader community and be instrumental in both personal and community empowerment and transformation and how students can apply their knowledge in the discipline to concrete situations and specific problems. • To foster a spirit of inquiry among students so that they will be challenged to raise and discuss provocative questions in the area of Africana Studies and consider graduate studies in the discipline. Course Learning Outcomes After taking this course: • Students will demonstrate passionate research interest on an aspect of the Africana experience. • Students will demonstrate familiarity with the latest scholarship on their research topics. • Students will categorize, synthesize, and analyze information from several sources on an issue or topic of significance to the Africana experience. • Gain valuable experience in the peer review process as an integral part of research and publishing in academics. • Students will demonstrate their understanding of the research proposal writing process. REQUIRED READINGS (available at the University of Arizona Bookstores): • Modern Language Association of America. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. New York: MLA, 2009 • Stanfeld II, John and Rutledge Dennis (editors), Race and Ethnicity in Research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1997. Note that readings from the required books above are not available on D2L. Only selections from the recommended readings below are posted on D2L. ADDITIONAL READINGS FROM: • Back, Les, and John Solomos. Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. • Bernard, H. Russell. Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press, 1995. • Gossett, Thomas F. Race: The History of an Idea in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. • Lema, Antoine. Africa Divided: The Creation of "Ethnic Groups." Lund: Lund University Press, 1993. • Stangor, Charles. Research Methods for Behavioral Sciences. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004 • Vaz, Kim Marie (ed.). Oral Narrative Research With Black Women. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1997. [Show More]

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