AFROAM 170–The Grassroots Experience in American Life and Culture I
A civic engagement/community-based service learning class you co-create
(#42677) / Meeting Dates: Wedn 2:30 – 5PM, New Africa House room 302
Prof. Demetria Shabazz

For details on the class go to
http://websites.umass.edu/dshabazz/register-fall-2017-170-seminar/

AFROAM 591C
Digital Video Production and Research in the Black Community
(#42695) Meeting Dates: Tues 2:30 – 5PM, New Africa House room TBA
Prof. Demetria Shabazz

This course aims to increase the utility and impact of research produced at UMass by creating, adapting, implementing, supporting, and sustaining innovative digital tools and publishing platforms for content delivery, discovery, analysis, data curation, and preservation. It will also engage students in extensive outreach, education, and advocacy to ensure that scholarly work in the Du Bois Department has a global reach and accelerates the pace of research across disciplines.

The course will teach visual methodological research methods and digital camera usage to explore social networks, the inclusion of community partners in research, and black neighborhood and community spaces. We draw on the substantive and methodological experiences of visual researchers using photography, film, and video and the evident challenges of representing such a diversely situated experience as that of African Americans. We will discuss and learn camera use and operation, data collection and analysis, ethical concerns, community partnerships, refinement of research questions, and theoretical use and development of imagery in research regarding the African American community.

I welcome working with graduate students, and undergraduates, Emerging Scholars, and Commonwealth Honors College students. The course can focus on your own research project and/or connect with a new video production of the Du Bois Department we will begin that will air on Amherst Media. Contact Prof. Dee Shabazz at dshabazz@umass.edu for more details on the course.