This course surveys African American contributions to the design arts and professions from 1619 to now, from media of print and textiles to ceramics and architecture, from the scale of community crafts and protest to corporate business enterprise and mass social movements, from the diaspora to outer space. African American history not only offers a critical perspective on design history but also challenges us to reconsider what design is and what it can do as a medium of cultural expression, social transformation, and political change. While learning this history via lectures, readings, and hands-on archival research, students will develop their own artifact-based public history project. No prerequisite.
Course Attributes: FA VC
