Learn about Black histories and experiences with these UBC courses

Black History Month is here and you may be finding yourself woefully unknowing about Black history and Black experiences. Don’t worry, there is no time like the present to learn — and thankfully you’re at a world class university. And instead of asking a person to describe entire histories and societal structures, you can take a course to learn more.

We’ve compiled a list of some courses that discuss Blackness, race or African cultures. This is by no means an exhaustive list, think of it more as a sampling of courses across the faculty of arts you could take to educate yourself. Caveat: some of these classes are not offered every year, so plan your worklist accordingly.

English

ENGL 222 - 001 — Vancouver’s Black Canadas: Culture, Identity and Memory
ENGL 353 — Race, Ethnicity, and the British Empire in Eighteenth-Century Literature
ENGL 370 — Literatures and Cultures of Africa and/or the Middle East - The Women Who Refuse to Keep Quiet: Fiction by African Women
ENGL 490 — Black Noise: Cultures of the African Diaspora

French

FREN 328 — Selected Works of African and Caribbean Literature
FREN 418K — Studies in African and/or Caribbean Literatures of French Expression

History

HIST 237A — History of the United States
HIST 256 — History of Africa
HIST 252 —Modern Caribbean History
HIST 312 — Southern Africa
HIST 331 — The United States, 1865-1900: Labour, Race, Gender, and Empire
HIST 456 — Race in the Americas

Sociology

SOCI 102 — Inequality and Social Change
SOCI 302 — Ethnic and Racial Inequality
SOCI 361 — Social Inequality

Art History, Visual Art & Theory

ARTH309 — Arts of Africa and the African Diasporas

Geography

GEOG 457 — Social and Behavioural Geography
GEOG 496 — Geography of Africa

Philosophy

PHIL 335 — Power and Oppression

Gender, Race and Social Justice

GRSJ 224B (002) — Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice in Literature: Literary Interventions
GRSJ 306 — Globalization and Social Justice: Gender, Race, and Sexuality in International Politics
GRSJ 307 — Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Popular Culture
GRSJ 311 — African/Black Women in the Americas
GRSJ 415 (201) — Critical Racial and Anti-Colonial Feminist Approaches

African Studies

AFST 250A — Introduction to African Studies
AFST 351A — Perspectives in African Studies: Literary and Theoretical Approaches
AFST 352A — Perspectives in African Studies: A Social Science Approach
AFST 450R — African diasporic culture in Canadian society, fostering dialogue with members of African Canadian communities on cultural values, traditions, memory, adaptation and change