African Diaspora Cultural History - Rutgers University



African Diaspora Cultural History

Department of Africana Studies (01:014:XXX)

Prof: Kim D. Butler

Date/Time: (1x/week) Location: TBA

Contact: kbutler@rci.rutgers.edu Office Hours: TBA

Overview

This course is an introductory survey covering the cultural history of peoples of African descent in North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia, with a focus on the Americas. Beginning with the global histories of slavery that displaced millions of Africans, it moves to the present through examinations of economics, society, and politics through the lens of culture. It focuses on specific cultures of the African diaspora to analyze key themes, and highlights the ways history is embedded in culture. Readings drawn from a variety of disicplines combine recent scholarship with classic texts, and are supplemented with films, music and other media enhancements. Course discussions will connect considerations of history and culture with contemporary debates.

Course goals:

understand the history of the modern African diaspora as a vital dimension of the shaping of the interconnected modern world

broaden understandings of “race” “blackness” and “Africanity” by situating them in their historical, cultural and political contexts.

see US African American history in its diasporic context, reflecting its international composition

learn about the distinct cultures that make up the global African diaspora

SAS Core Curriculum Goals

Historical Analysis (3 credits) - all courses meet one (h, i, j) Students must meet one (k or l). [HST]

k. Explain the development of some aspect of a society or culture over time, including the history of ideas or history of science.

Social Analysis (3 credits) - all courses meet one (h, i, j) Students must meet one (m or n). [SCL]

m. Understand different theories about human culture, social identity, economic entities, political systems, and other forms of social organization.

Arts and Humanities (6 credits) Students must meet two goals. [AH]

p. Analyze arts and/or literatures in themselves and in relation to specific histories, values, languages, cultures, and technologies.

Grading

2 quizzes - 20 pts ea 40 pts

Fieldwork assignments 10 pts

Final exam 40 pts

Attendance & participation 10 pts

Quizzes are given twice during the semester - each will take place during the first 30 minutes of the class session. Regular class will continue after the completion of the quiz.

This course uses a Sakai website - readings are posted under “Resources.”

Week 1: Introduction

map lesson: Mapping Africa and the African Diaspora

discussion of course requirements

Documentary: “Scattered Africa”

Openings: Story from Anancy/Exu folklore

Week 2: Africa and the Making of the Modern World

Key concepts: disperal & diaspora

Key questions:

- What role did Africa play in global discourse, politics and trade in the pre-modern world?

- How did global empires develop along with, and in relation to, Africa?

- What distinguishes diasporas from other types of migrations? How do we understand diaspora as a widely shared phenomenon in human history? How has diaspora occurred in African experience?

- How has the African diaspora continued to evolve after the slave era?

Readings:

Joseph Harris, “The African Diaspora in World History and Politics” in Sheila Walker, ed., African Roots/American Cultures, 104-117.

Edward Alpers “Recollecting Africa: Diasporic Memory in the Indian Ocean World,” African Studies Review 43:1 (April 2000), 83-99.

Kim D. Butler, “Multilayered Politics in the African Diaspora,” in Gloria Totoricaguena, ed., Opportunity Structures in Diaspora Relations (2007), 19-51.

Contemporary issues: How do people of the African world engage in the creation of diasporic culture

NYTimes article on Ghanain funerals in NYC (4/12/11)

Week 3: Slavery, Identity and Cultures of Resistance

Key concepts: hegemony, cultures of resistance, cultural mapping, marronage

Key questions:

- How did enslavers attempt to shape the roles Africans would play in their new destinations?

- How did Africans respond to those challenges, and how did they shape their own identities and cultures?

- How were cultural contacts & changes gendered?

Readings:

Michael Gomez, Exchanging our Country Marks, 170-173.

Richard Price, Maroon Societies, 1-30.

Jenny Sharpe, Ghosts of Slavery: A Literary Archaeology of Black Women’s Lives (Minneapolis: U of Minn Press, 2003), ch 1.

optional reading: Jennifer Morgan, “Some Could Suckle Over Their Shoulder: Male Travelers, Female Bodies & the Gendering of Racial Ideology, 1500-1770, William & Mary Quarterly 54:1 (Jan 1997), 167-192.

(reading from Jane Landers book)

Film clip “The Maroons of Surinam”

Week 4: Culture Circuits: Reframing African Cosmologies in the Americas

Key questions:

- What core African cosmologies and cultures constitute the foundation for African diaspora cultures, and how do they relate to non-African cultures?

- What are some of the principal expressions of African religious philosophy in the diaspora?

Readings:

Michael Gomez, Reversing Sail, 65-71.

Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit, 103-108.

maps from Miller in Heywood, Central Africa and the Making of the Modern World

Maureen Warner-Lewis, Central Africa in the Americas - excerpts

UNESCO Slave Routes - Eltis Database

Week 5: The Birth of Creole Black Cultures

Key concepts: creolization, culture change, foodways

Key questions:

- How does culture change happen?

- What are the principal characteristics of creole black cultures, and how do they reflect local contexts and demographics?

- What social, political, demographic & cultural dynamics affected Africans’ transition from distinct national cultures into collective creole black cultures?

- How can we compare creolization in the Atlantic vs. Indian Ocean African Diasporas?

Readings:

John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680 (NY: Cambridge U Press, 1992), ch. 8 “Transformations of African Culture in the Atlantic World,” 206-234.

Jessica Harris, “Same Boat, Different Stops: An African Atlantic Culinary Journey” in Sheila Walker, African Roots/American Cultures (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 169-182.

Pashington Obeng, “Religion and Empire: Belief and Identity among African Indians of Karnataka, South India,” in John Hawley, ed., Africa in India: India in Africa: Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanisms (Bloomington: Indiana U Press, 2008) - excerpts

Discussion: Soul food cross culturally; historical roots and cultural contexts of soul food

Week 5: New World New Negroes: Katherine Dunham, Zora Neale Hurston & the Birth of Ethnography: Arts, Culture and the Methodologies of Africana Research

Key concepts: The “black problem” and early anthropology; New Negro movement; Herskovits-Frazier debate; ethnography

Key questions:

- How can cultural knowledge be accessed from multiple methodologies?

- How do the cultural locations of researchers and subjects affect knowledge production?

- How do scholars address sacred, ritual, and secret knowledge?

Zora Neale Hurston, “Night Song After Death,” and “Voodoo and Voodoo Gods,” Tell My Horse, 39-56; 113-131.

Katherine Dunham, “Goombay” in Veve Clark & Sarah Johnson, eds., Kaiso!: Writings By and About Katherine Dunham, 267-271

TJ Desch Obi, Fighting for Honor, 1-3.

Yvonne Daniel, “Embodied Knowledge in African-American Dance Performance,” 352-361

Film: Dancing: New Worlds, New Forms; Divine Horsemen (clip)

Week 7: Songs of Freedom: Resistance, Reggae, Rasta

Key concepts: emancipatory freedom vs. American republicanism

Key questions:

- how did understandings of freedom differ throughout the Atlantic world?

- how did ideologies of freedom evolve in Jamaica into the religion and culture of Rastafarianism?

- when and how did abolition occur throughout the Atlantic world?

Readings:

Gomez, Reversing Sail, 109-124

Gad Heuman, “The Killing Time:” The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica, 3-42.

Ennis B. Edmonds, “Dread ‘I’ In-a-Babylon: Ideological Resistance and Cultural Revitalization,” in Nathaniel Murrell, et. al., eds., Chanting Down Babylon, 23-28.

Songs: Bob Marley, ”Babylon System;” “Chant Down Babylon”

Students may bring in other examples of resistance music

Week 8: (Criss)Crossing the Waters: Great Migrations and their Manifestations in Diaspora Cultures

Key concepts: animism

Key questions:

- How is the experience and memory of migration reflected in African diaspora cultures?

- How has the sea taken on special signifance as a symbol of crossings in African diaspora experience?

Henry John Drewal, “Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and its Diasporas” African Arts (Summer 2008), 60-83.

Bonham Richardson, “Caribbean Migrations,” in Franklin Knight and Colin Palmer, eds., The Modern Caribbean

Rhonda Frederick, “Colon Man A Come:” Mythographies of Panama Canal Migration - excerpts

Excerpts from Robert Hill, The Marcus Garvey Papers

Week 9: Pan-Africanism and Political Blackness

Key concepts: Pan-Africanism, Garveyism, Negritude, Africanity; ascription vs. assertion

Key questions:

- How is “blackness” constructed in different historical contexts?

- What are the political implications of identities?

Readings:

Darien Davis and Judith Michelle Williams, “Pan Africanism, Negritude, and the Currency of Blackness: Cuba, the Francophone Caribbean, and Brazil in Comparative Perspective, 1930-1950s” in Darien Davis, ed., Beyond Slavery: The Multilayered Legacy of Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 143-167.

Rex Nettleford, “The Aesthetics of Negritude: A Metaphor for Liberation,” in Carlos Moore, et. al., eds., African Presence in the Americas, 33-54.

Pedro Noguera, “Anything But Black: Bringing Politics Back to the Study of Race,” in Percy Hinton and Jean Muteba Rahier, Problematizing Blackness, 193-200.

Topical discussion: defining Africanity & blackness globally - different understandings and political implications; Blackness in Colombia

Week 10: The Legacies of Race: Memory, Trauma and Healing in African Diaspora Arts & Culture

Readings:

Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother, 3-9

Film: Sankofa

Week 11: Carnival, Diaspora and Globalization

Key concepts: hybridity, cosmopolitanism, globalization

Key questions:

- What is the significance of popular festivals in African diaspora cultures?

- How do popular festivals construct, circulate, and challenge socio-cultural identities?

- How can Carnival be understood in its political, economic and social contexts?

- Are there common elements in African Diaspora carnival cultures?

Survey Carnival traditions, music and dances in Trinidad, New Orleans, New York, Toronto, London, Garifuna, Brazil

Readings:

Keith Nurse, “Globalization and Trinidad Carnival: Diaspora, Hybridity and Identity in Global Culture,” Cultural Studies 13:4 (1999), 661-690

Calypso lyrics from Mighty Sparrow, Lord Kitchener

Week 12: Carnival Workshop

Video on the Samba de Enredo and Bloco Afro traditions (Brazil)

Class will create a Carnival song, percussion & dance

Week 13: Highlife and Hip-Hop: Creating Diaspora Cultures in Dialogue

Key concepts: Afro-Latin@s, decalage, black cultural traffic

Key questions:

- How do the cultures of Africa and the African diaspora circulate in the era of globalization?

- What common components of cultural expressions and their contexts have helped those expressions form blends? Which have presented obstacles?

Readings:

E. John Collins, “Ghana” in Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World (2005), 135-140.

Miriam Jimenez Roman and Juan Flores, eds., The Afro-Latin@ Reader, unit 5: Afro-Latin@s in the Hip-Hop Zone (Durham: Duke U Press, 2010), 373-410.

Film clip: Les Sapeurs

Week 14: Recapitulation, Reflection & Review

Review of major themes covered throughout the semester; review for final

FINAL EXAM: TBA

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QUIZ #1 - terminologies of cultural history, Africa in the ancient world, pre-conditions of diaspora, routes of diaspora, dynamics of hegemony & resistance

Fieldwork Assignment 1: Students locate menus & recipes from different diaspora cultures - identify aspects noted by Harris

QUIZ #2: culture circuits & concepts of culture change, creole black cultures, cultures of resistance/freedom struggles

Fieldwork assignment 2: Bring in an example of traveling black cultures showing the blending of multiple influences

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