AF AMER M25Perceptions of Blackness in the Ancient World
African American Studies · 5 units · Undergraduate lower division (0-99)
(Same as Ancient Near East M25.) Exploration of depictions of people of African descent in antiquity beginning with the ancient Greeks and Romans who referred to African peoples as Aithiops. Extensive connections through trade, politics, warfare, and religious practices made the people of northeast Africa a source of fascination in Greco-Roman histories and geographies, as they represented the exotic, distant other. When Greeks and later Romans adopted and modified Egyptian temple rites for Isis and Serapis, they chose to feature black people as priests and worshippers to lend a sense of authenticity to their rites. Depictions of African peoples were both positive and negative. Blackness came to have symbolic resonance in Christianity adopted partially from earlier writings about African people in the Hebrew Bible and from the larger Greco-Roman cultural sphere. Elsewhere in the ancient world Persians, Indians, Japanese, and Chinese people created their own portrayals of blacks.
P/NP or letter grading.
When it runs
Not on the schedule for any of Fall 2025 through Spring 2027. UCLA publishes only that window, so this does not mean the course is gone — check the official listing.
Requisites
UCLA lists no requisites for this course.
Requires
Everything that has to come before this course, not just the courses named in the requisite above.
Nothing — this is an entry point.
Unlocks
What this course is a requisite for, and what those courses lead to in turn.
No course in the catalog lists this as a requisite.