Introduction to African American Studies: Who Tells Your Story?
A rigorous, university-level course exploring the history, culture, politics, and intellectual traditions of African Americans — examining who controls narratives, whose voices are centered, and why it matters.
Perfect for: High school graduates, college students, educators, lifelong learners, and members of the African diaspora who want a rigorous, interdisciplinary introduction to African American history, culture, and intellectual thought. No prior background in history or social sciences is required.
Who Controls the Story Controls the Legacy.
From the first enslaved Africans brought to American shores to the global influence of Black art, music, literature, and activism today, African American history is one of the most consequential — and most contested — stories in human civilization. Yet for too long, that story has been filtered through incomplete textbooks, selective curricula, and narratives written by those outside the community. This course changes that.
Introduction to African American Studies: Who Tells Your Story? is a comprehensive, university-level course built for curious learners, educators, students, and anyone who believes that understanding Black history is essential to understanding America itself. Drawing on the interdisciplinary tradition of African American Studies — blending history, sociology, literature, political science, and cultural theory — this course gives you the intellectual tools to engage deeply, critically, and honestly with one of the world's richest intellectual traditions.
Over six carefully structured modules, you will move from the African roots of Black identity through the Middle Passage, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and into the contemporary era of Black Lives Matter, Afrofuturism, and global Pan-Africanism. You won't just learn dates and names — you will learn how to read history: who is writing it, what is left out, and how to seek primary sources and community voices that restore the full picture.
Whether you are a high school graduate stepping into college-level thinking for the first time, a professional seeking a deeper civic education, a teacher building a more inclusive classroom, or a member of the diaspora reclaiming your own story — this course was built for you. Come ready to read, think, debate, and be challenged. The story belongs to all of us.
What you'll be able to do
- Trace the historical arc of African American life from pre-colonial West Africa through the 21st century, identifying key turning points and their lasting effects.
- Apply core concepts from African American Studies — including double consciousness, intersectionality, systemic racism, and cultural resistance — to historical and contemporary events.
- Critically analyze primary and secondary sources, identifying whose perspectives are centered and whose are marginalized.
- Examine the relationship between political power, narrative control, and the construction of Black identity in American society.
- Engage with landmark works of Black literature, philosophy, art, and music as intellectual and political documents.
- Evaluate the strategies, successes, and tensions of major civil rights and Black liberation movements from Reconstruction to Black Lives Matter.
- Articulate the global dimensions of Black identity through the lens of Pan-Africanism, the African diaspora, and Afrofuturism.
- Construct evidence-based arguments about race, justice, and representation using the interdisciplinary tools of African American Studies.
Curriculum
7 modules · 19 lessons
Your teacher
Kirby Spivey
I've spent years sitting at the intersection of history, literature, and lived experience — asking the same question this course is named after: *Who tells your story?* African American Studies gave me a framework not just for understanding the past, but for interrogating the present. It taught me that history is never neutral, that culture is always political, and that the act of naming, writing, and teaching a story is itself an act of power. In this course, I want to give you what I wish I had been given earlier: a structured, honest, intellectually serious introduction to one of the most important fields of study in the academy. We will read W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells. We will listen to the blues and study its politics. We will sit with the terror of the Middle Passage and the brilliance of the Harlem Renaissance. We will trace the long road from Reconstruction's betrayal to the courtrooms of the Civil Rights Movement to the streets of today. I don't expect you to agree with everything you encounter here. I expect you to engage — carefully, honestly, and with the full weight of your critical mind. That's what this discipline demands, and it's what the story deserves.
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