Important AAS 166 Spring ’21 Semester Start Info

Welcome to the Spring 2021 Semester!

If you’re registered for section A81 of AAS 166: Intro to Africana Studies with Prof. Williams, then you’re in the right place!

This post will be mostly informational: the specific info for next week’s assignment will be in a separate follow-up, which you’ll see above this post when it’s published. Every week will have one of these posts with specific instructions and a discussion board–more on that below.

Note that this website is the official home for the course this semester! Info and updates will be here, not on Blackboard!

First class Zoom meeting:

First: check the announcement on Blackboard for the link to register for the weekly Zoom lecture on Wednesdays at 6 PM EST. Please use your real name (or an obvious nickname) when registering so I know exactly who’s in the “room.”

email me if you can’t find it or didn’t get the announcement. Please email me before 6 PM on Wednesday: it’s difficult enough just running Zoom. Responding to messages while on Zoom usually doesn’t work well.

Zoom runs more smoothly for me with their app for your computer, phone, or tablet which you can download here or in the iOS or Google Play store. You should also be able to join by phone (audio) only, though I’ll be sharing some slides, so video will be better but you can follow up later.

Class text message service

I’ve also set up a text message service for the semester hosted by Remind. Please sign up for that right now: it will allow me to quickly send notes to everyone. (You can get the messages by email if you don’t have a cell phone that allows text messages.)

Course book

Please see the course books page, which has info on our required textbook: Dr. Maulana Karenga’s  Introduction to Black Studies, 4th edition. It’s often listed online at inflated prices. Try the college bookstore first or go directly to the publisher for it.

You should order the book immediately because books often take a long time to ship!

First class agenda

The agenda for our first meet on Wednesday February 3, 2021 will be course logistics (including a tour of the website), a short icebreaker or two, and an intro to next week’s assignment.

See you then!

Comments on posts

One key method we’ll use throughout the semester is a discussion board on each weekly post. You should see a “Leave a Comment” button all the way at the bottom of this post. Click on that and fill in your name and email (both required since I moderate comments, but your email’s not publicly visible) and then add your comment. As a test, you can start by saying hello on this post.

Finally, if you’re in NYC, then here’s our weather forecast this week:

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