duPont Library: Open Educational Resources and Affordable Textbook Alternatives: African and African American Studies

Specialized Resources for African and African American Studies Instruction

In addition to the general collections listed on the main Finding OER page, which can be searched by subject, these are additional resources specific to African and African American Studies instruction. The purpose of these discipline-specific pages is to showcase content that might be of interest to faculty who are considering adopting open educational resources for use in their classes. This list of content is by no means exhaustive, and more resources will be continually added.

The nature of open educational resources is very collaborative and it is in that spirit that we encourage any comments about the content featured on this page or recommendations of content that are not already listed here. If you find a resource not represented that you think would be of interest to Sewanee faculty, please email Patricia Dover.

Open Textbooks

Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience by Joshua Farrington, Norman W. Powell, Gwendolyn Graham, Lisa Day & Ogechi E. Anyanwu.
Gives instructors, students, and general readers a comprehensive and up-to-date account of African Americans’ cultural and political history, economic development, artistic expressiveness, and religious and philosophical worldviews in a critical framework. It offers sound interdisciplinary analysis of selected historical and contemporary issues surrounding the origins and manifestations of White supremacy in the United States. By placing race at the center of the work, the book offers significant lessons for understanding the institutional marginalization of Blacks in contemporary America and their historical resistance and perseverance.

Open Courses

African American History and Culture (Lumen Learning)
This course follows African American origins, beginning with an overview of West African culture and history dating back to 1300. The material focuses on the era of enslavement through the Civil War and Reconstruction.
African American Studies: From Emancipation to the Present (Open Yale)
The purpose of this course is to examine the African American experience in the United States from 1863 to the present. Prominent themes include the end of the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction; African Americans’ urbanization experiences; the development of the modern civil rights movement and its aftermath; and the thought and leadership of Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X.
Black Matters: Introduction to Black Studies (MIT OpenCourseWare)
Interdisciplinary survey of people of African descent that draws on the overlapping approaches of history, literature, anthropology, legal studies, media studies, performance, linguistics, and creative writing. This course connects the experiences of African-Americans and of other American minorities, focusing on social, political, and cultural histories, and on linguistic patterns.

Other Resources

African American History OERs by Sylvea Hollis, Ph.D.
Here is a running list of open educational resources I use to develop my courses. I'm sharing this in solidarity with others who are working through syllabi/lesson plans.

Jessie Ball duPont Library

Open Educational Resources and Affordable Textbook Alternatives

Specialized Resources for African and African American Studies Instruction

Open Textbooks

Open Courses

Other Resources