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African Cultural retentions in the Americas is presented this semester as a reading and writing-intensive course focused on the continuities, transformations, adaptations and re¬inventions of African culture found within the African diaspora in the Americas since the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Some of the research and writing conducted by historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, and musicologists pertinent to our subject matter will be studied. Lectures, readings, classroom discussions and writings will explore cultural developments in the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the United States. In addition to our readings, a number of documentary films will be shown and reviewed. In the Americas, Africans encountered Native Americans and Europeans; therefore, a major focus of this course is to explore and to understand the new cultural contexts which emerged, and Africa’s contributions to those contexts.

African Cultural retentions in the Americas is presented this semester as a reading and writing-intensive course focused on the continuities, transformations, adaptations and re¬inventions of African culture found within the African diaspora in the Americas since the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Some of the research and writing conducted by historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, and musicologists pertinent to our subject matter will be studied. Lectures, readings, classroom discussions and writings will explore cultural developments in the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the United States. In addition to our readings, a number of documentary films will be shown and reviewed. In the Americas, Africans encountered Native Americans and Europeans; therefore, a major focus of this course is to explore and to understand the new cultural contexts which emerged, and Africa’s contributions to those contexts.

In this course we will focus on the basic grammatical structures of English and composing skills necessary for effective written communication in an academic context using tasks of low-intermediate difficulty. We will also focus on grammatical mechanisms and lexical choices, basic rhetorical strategies, editing, and other writing conventions. It is important that students are able to clearly develop an idea using fairly simple sentences. Students will learn the fundamentals of crafting sentences, paragraphs, and simple texts.

In this course we will focus on the basic grammatical structures of English and composing skills necessary for effective written communication in an academic context using tasks of low-intermediate difficulty. We will also focus on grammatical mechanisms and lexical choices, basic rhetorical strategies, editing, and other writing conventions. It is important that students are able to clearly develop an idea using fairly simple sentences. Students will learn the fundamentals of crafting sentences, paragraphs, and simple texts.