AFS 400 Capstone Seminar in Africana Studies

The purpose of this course is to enhance and broaden students' ability to carry out research on a selected African topic. Students are expected to draw on their previous AFS classes to develop a paper to be submitted at the end of the course, and the Capstone Course also provides an important learning experience for those who intend to submit for the Honors Thesis. This is a required course for all AFS majors and minors, and restricted to those students. Students will refine their skills in writing and research, and are required to organize information in support of an argument in a coherent and logical manner, using past courses to build on their chosen theme. The emphasis will be on applying concepts and terms from Africana Studies, and understanding the importance of compiling bibliographic sources that reflect various sides of debates in the subjects and topics that students are writing about. The class is focused on process, from the diverse ways of building a bibliography to organizing the paper. The goal of the course is for each student to write a final paper which reflects acquired skills and demonstrates understanding of themes in the history and cultural evolution of communities of African descent in the diaspora or on the continent. Students are asked to consider intersections of the global and local relative to their chosen subject. [W]