# Summer 2026 Courses

**Source**: https://africam.berkeley.edu/news/summer-2026-courses-registration-open
**Parent**: https://africam.berkeley.edu/

March 3, 2026

[Register Now!](https://summer.berkeley.edu/) 

**AFRICAM 119**: Media, Digital Platforms, and Language Politics in Africa, Instructor: Dr. David Kyeu, Session D, TWTh 10-1230, in person, CN: 15902

This course explores the intersections of media, digital platforms, and language politics in Africa, with a focus on how language shapes access, representation, and power in the public sphere. Students will analyze both traditional and digital media to examine how these spaces reinforce or challenge linguistic hierarchies. Through case studies, multimedia content, and critical readings, participants will investigate the roles of African languages in governance, democracy, activism, and digital culture.

**AFRICAM 125AC**: History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement, Instructor: Dr. Ula Taylor, Session D, online asynchronous, CN: 12930

The objective of this course is to examine the modern Civil Rights Movement. As traditionally understood, this period began with the May 17, 1954, "Brown vs. Board of Education” Supreme Court decision and ended with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This course will expand this time frame and seek to place this movement in the context of global developments and the broad sweep of United States History. Assigned readings consist of historical and autobiographical texts. Lectures will contextualize the readings by placing the material and its significance within the overall history and culture of Americans. Visual media will augment the lectures.

**AFRICAM 136L**: Race, Policing and Surveillance in the U.S., Instructor: Dr. Nikki Jones, Session A, online asynchronous, CN: 12168

What is the relationship between the criminal justice system and surveillance in America? What role does power play in this relationship? How does this complicated relationship inform, reproduce, and engender understandings about race, class and sexuality? How has this relationship changed over time? How has technological change impacted this relationship? In this course, we will examine the relationship between the criminal justice system and the surveillance of vulnerable communities. We will examine social and historical trends, but our main focus will be on the evolution of this relationship since the mid-20th century, especially how this relationship developed in distressed urban neighborhoods in the post-Civil Rights era.

**AFRICAM 139L**: The Black Panther Party and American Popular Culture, Instructor: Dr. Rickey Vincent, Session D, TWTh 2-430, in person, CN: 12931

This course will explore the rise and fall of the Oakland, California based Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP), and the role of the organization in rearticulating the urban narrative of resistance to power in America in the 1960s and 1970s. Consideration will be given to the unique relationship the BPP has had with government and law enforcement officials. The course will also explore the public presence of the BPP, and the role of media and popular culture in disseminating images of the BPP. Through this process, students will gain an understanding of the significance of symbols and ideas in the representations of African Americans, in the context of movements for social change in the US.

**AFRICAM 142AC**: Race and American Film, Instructor: Dr. Michael Cohen, Session D, online asynchronous, CN: 16065

This course uses film to investigate the central role of race in American culture and history from the late 19th to the early 21st century. While this class concentrates on the history of African Americans in film from Birth of a Nation to Do the Right Thing, we also watch movies that explore American racial formations including whiteness and ethnicity; Native Americans and Asian Americans under US empire; frontiers, borderlands and diasporas on screen; and contemporary controversies over multiculturalism, colorblindness and globalization. Themes covered include race and representation; white supremacy in early film; the classical Hollywood studio system versus independent cinema; genre, gender and sexuality; migration and disaster.

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