This course will explore Black artistic movements as tools for cultural survival, resistance, and community building across the African diaspora. Students will study ancient African aesthetic principles along with the Négritude Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, Caribbean arts, and Hilltop’s contemporary practices to understand how Black artists confront histories of displacement, erasure, oppression, and changing ecosystems.
Through readings, discussion, and analysis of poetry, visual art, music, and multimedia, students will trace aesthetic lineages from Africa to the Americas and examine how Black aesthetics make meaning, hold memory, and imagine freer futures. Attention will be given to concepts such as piecing, reclamation, communal ritual, and relational philosophies like “I am because we are,” as they appear in both global and Hilltop-based cultural work.
The course will culminate in a community engagement project in which students will extend prior social issue research by creating a poster, presentation, and multimedia piece that will communicate the urgency of a chosen issue using Black aesthetic strategies. Designed to serve a real audience in the Hilltop community, these projects will aim to engage, inspire, and move community members toward reflection and action.