African American Studies 101 is a multidisciplinary course that embodies the empirical study of history, politics, culture, religion and other areas within the social sciences. The essential focus is on the life experiences of peoples of African descent in the United States and globally. The course integrates the works of scholars of ancient African civilization, New World enslavement of African Americans, economics, literature, arts, race, women studies, government and sport studies. Furthermore, through the interdisciplinary lifeline of African American Studies, this course will give special attention to black athleticism.

This course aims to familiarize students with major concepts and theories related to the study of the African Diaspora primarily, though not exclusively, in the Americas (North, South, and Central). This course links, compares, and contextualizes the historical experiences of African descendants in the U.S., the Caribbean, South America, and Africa within global processes of enslavement, colonialism, and systematic oppression. The course treats the African Diaspora as 1) historical phenomenon 2) a current condition of social, economic, and political life and 3) a way of imagining the future. We will explore theories of slavery, race, and capitalism; black resistance; post-emancipation economies and current-day neoliberalism; theories of gender; environmental justice in the African Diaspora; and theories of the black digital sphere.

This course explores the collective historical and contemporary experiences of the African Diaspora. It examines the social, cultural and political relationships between Black communities, knowledge, and movements across the Diaspora. It examines the interwoven concepts of memory, culture and resistance, and span themes such as consciousness of Africa; the Haitian Revolution and resistance to slavery; African cultural transformation in the Americas; maroonage; Garvey and the UNIA; pan-African movements and global liberation struggles; women and resistance; Black Power, and issues of identity and race. 

This website features many of the OER conversion projects completed at John Jay College over the past few years. Class conversions using the Blackboard platform are not represented because of the BB firewall. These are not the actual LibGuides, but content from the LibGuides, using the LibGuide platform for access. The entire website is public.

The left navigation panel displays the academic departments with the overview and objective of the department. Also, navigation to the specific departmental classes, with corresponding OER content, are found at the bottom of the academic department pages. You can also directly navigate to the specific converted class, by clicking on the course title under the department tab. When clicking on a specific class (e.g. Science 110), the link takes you to the course description, learning outcomes of the course and a link to the OER content for the specific course. The OER content features creative commons OER Textbooks, vetted open Internet sites, academic journal articles and library owned streaming video, requiring a login to the John Jay Library. Each academic department features a link to "Discussion and Comments". In addition all pages have navigation arrows to previous pages and next pages. On many of the OER content pages, the class calendar by week is featured with links to the reading assignments. In addition to the specific OER content by class, there is a link at the top of the main page to access generic OER by subject and/or topic.