The New ALST

Welcome to a new ALST. The complete overhaul of the ALST curriculum that has taken place during the last few years was finally executed this semester. For the first time, students with interests in African studies, African American studies, Latin American studies, and Caribbean studies all participated in the same introductory course.

Under the new model, ALST is not about regional divides, but thematic connections. ALST 199: Entangled Intimacies: Introduction to Africana and Latin American Studies, focuses on ideas of colonization, diaspora, race, and identity around the world. In the new curriculum, students with differing regional interests can take classes together and individually engage in projects that connect their regional interests with the primary themes of a course.

The new curriculum focuses on the connections between the regional concentrations of ALST. In pursuing an ALST major, students will take six elective courses across three topics: (1) Arts, Cultures, and Representations, (2) Human and Non-Human Ecologies, and (3) Societies, Mobilities, and Diasporas.

In the spring semester, another primary feature of the new ALST curriculum will be piloted under Prof. Paul Lopes. Along with students’ exploration of arts and culture, ecologies, and societies within their elective classes, ALST students will engage with larger writing projects and deeper academic inquiries in a 300-level topics course. These topical courses may range from the sciences to the arts, but will all engage with theories and intellectual traditions of peoples and societies across the world.

For the first iteration, Prof. Lopes will be teaching ALST 381: The Power of Black Music.

“The class begins in the late 18th century with the first articulations of a Black nationalist tradition that continues up to the present,” Prof. Lopes says. “This tradition has viewed Black music as a vehicle for (1) authentic Black expression (2) reflecting the Black experience, and (3) supporting the liberation of African Americans. This class also emphasizes how Black music is a product of a collective intellectual tradition shared by the African American community, given expression in individual and group music making from Black churches to block/rent parties to jook joints to jazz clubs to concert halls to large stadiums to recorded and broadcast music to music videos.”

To convey the power of Black music, this course moves beyond simply listening and analyzing recorded or live performances. “First, it situates Black music in the everyday experience of African Americans that is found in a variety of spaces. Second, it places Black music in the context of the public story of Black music. Black music is given shape and meaning through an extensive discourse, from everyday conversations to the written word to sound and image.”

In the future, topical classes will be taught by professors with varied interests and focuses. However, all of these classes will provide students with the opportunity to think more deeply about the intellectual traditions of the communities that they care about. Instead of focusing on regional divides, the new ALST curriculum centers the connections and patterns that bind regions and communities together.