“Global Diasporas in Caribbean History”



Global Diasporas in Caribbean History

Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies

Department of History

Rutgers University

Course Description

The transnational movements of Cubans, Dominicans, Haitians, Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans, and others to the United States and Europe are only one part of the long history of Caribbean migrations. Channels of intra-regional migrations—from Haiti to Cuba, from Jamaica to Costa Rica—have shaped Caribbean economies, politics, and social and cultural identities. This course opens up new perspectives on the region by examining the historical experiences of migrants to/from and within the Caribbean from the era of the Haitian Revolution in the late eighteenth century to the present day. We will cross political, cultural, and linguistic boundaries in our consideration of the greater Caribbean, encompassing coastal Central and South America and the U.S. South. Topics include theories of migration and diasporas; the emancipation of African slavery and the question of labor; Asian indentured workers; export economies and intra-Caribbean migrations; constructions of race, ethnicity, and gender in port cities; homeland politics; daily life and family relations; post-war Caribbean diasporas; and cultural expressions of the migration experience.

Course Objectives and Learning Goals

• Connect people, events, and ideas within a larger “story” of Caribbean diasporas.

• Compare and contrast the historical experiences of different groups of people with regard to migration, including race, ethnicity, class, gender, politics, and generation.

• Identify political entities and cities of the Caribbean region on a map and demonstrate linkages between different places.

• Develop critical thinking skills through engagement with scholarship and literature in Caribbean history.

• Analyze primary sources (documents, oral testimonies, images) within their historical and social contexts.

• Apply the historical experiences of Caribbean migrations to the world today.

Upon completion of “Global Diasporas in Caribbean History,” students will be able to:

1. Explain the development of the migrations of people to, from, and within the greater Caribbean region over time

2. Identify political entities and major cities of the Caribbean on a map and demonstrate linkages and migration flows between these places

3. Understand different theories and concepts in international migration studies, such as immigration/emigration, modes of incorporation, remigration, diaspora, and transnationalism

4. Read and critically evaluate professional journal articles, films, literature, and websites.

Course Materials

The following required books are available for purchase at the university bookstore, through online vendors, and on library reserve:

Karen Fog Olwig, Caribbean Journeys: An Ethnography of Migration and Home in

Three Family Networks (Duke University Press, 2007) [ISBN: 9780822339946]

Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones (Penguin, 1999) [ISBN: 978-0140280494]

Additional articles and primary source materials are available through Sakai.

For students who have little or no background in Caribbean history, the following book is recommended and is on library reserve:

James Ferguson, A Traveler’s History of the Caribbean, Second Edition (Interlink Books, 2008) [ISBN 1566566908]

Course Requirements

5 Reading Responses

and Class Participation: = 25% (Due Dates TBA)

Map Test = 5% Thursday, February 3

Midterm Exam: = 30% Thursday, March 10

Final Paper Thesis/Sources = 5% Due Monday, April 11

Final Paper: = 35% Due Friday, May 6

Reading Responses (5): Each week, questions for discussion and guidelines for informal written responses to the reading will be posted on Sakai. Throughout the semester, students will submit five reading responses, due by noon the day we discuss the reading in class.

Class Participation: Class participation consists of attendance, thoughtful contributions to in-class and on-line discussions, and in-class workshops. Students will serve as Discussion Initiators (DI) throughout the semester. Discussion Initiators are responsible for synthesizing readings, posing questions, and facilitating class discussion of materials.

Midterm Exam: The in-class midterm exam will require you to demonstrate knowledge of migration to and within the Caribbean region. It will consist of identifications and short answer questions, a document analysis, and a short essay.

Final Paper: In a final paper of a minimum of 8 pages you will provide an in-depth, critical analysis of a topic or issue in the history of Caribbean diasporas based on the course materials and some additional research.

\Grading Scale

A=93-100, B+=89-92, B=81-88, C+=77-80, C=70-76, D=65-69, F=64 and below

Course Policies

Attendance, participation, and written responses are essential to understanding the material and to fruitful class discussions. Students with more than three absences are subject to having their final grade lowered. Students will not receive credit for late assignments.

While due dates are set for scheduling purposes, readings and in-class class activities are subject to change during the course of the semester. Occasionally we will attend campus events as a class (if you have a conflict, you may substitute another relevant on-campus event).

Statement on Academic Integrity

Students are expected to abide by Rutgers University’s policies on academic integrity: .

Plagiarism is the representation of the words or ideas of another as one’s own in any academic work. To avoid plagiarism, every direct quotation must be identified by quotation marks, or by appropriate indentation, and must be cited properly according to the accepted format for the particular discipline. Acknowledgment is also required when material from any source is paraphrased or summarized in whole or in part in one’s own words. To acknowledge a paraphrase properly, one might state: to paraphrase Plato’s comment... and conclude with a footnote or appropriate citation to identify the exact reference. A footnote acknowledging only a directly quoted statement does not suffice to notify the reader of any preceding or succeeding paraphrased material. Information that is common knowledge, such as names of leaders of prominent nations, basic scientific laws, etc, need not be cited; however, the sources of all facts or information obtained in reading or research that are not common knowledge among students in the course must be acknowledged. In addition to materials specifically cited in the text, other materials that contribute to one's general understanding of the subject may be acknowledged in the bibliography.  

Sometimes, plagiarism can be a subtle issue. Students should be encouraged to discuss any questions about what constitutes plagiarism with the faculty member teaching the course. (Source: Interim Academic Integrity Policy)

For further discussion of the subtleties of plagiarism, visit the Rutgers Writing Program website: .

Course Schedule

PART I: THE CARIBBEAN AS A SITE OF MIGRATION

Tues. Jan. 18: Introduction

Thurs. Jan. 20: The Caribbean Region

Audio: Derek Walcott, Nobel Lecture “The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory” (1992)

Derek Walcott, “The Caribbean: Culture or Mimicry?” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 16.1 (1974): 3-13

Tues. Jan. 25: Colonialism and African Slavery

Website: The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record



Thurs. Jan. 27: Maroon Societies

Jorge L. Chinea, “A Quest for Freedom: The Immigration of Maritime Maroons into Puerto Rico, 1656-1800,” The Journal of Caribbean History 31 (1&2, 1997): 51-87

Tues. Feb. 1: Migration in the Wake of the Haitian Revolution

Rebecca J. Scott, “The Atlantic World and the Road to Plessy v. Ferguson,” Journal of American History 94 (2007): 726-733. Special Issue “Through the Eye of Katrina.”



Thurs. Feb. 3: Emancipation in the British Caribbean *In-Class Map Test

Francisco A. Scarano, “Labor and Society in the Nineteenth Century,” in Franklin W. Knight and Colin A. Palmer, eds., The Modern Caribbean (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 51-84.

Tues. Feb. 8: European Settlers and Asian “Coolies”

Film: Ancestors in the Americas, “Part 1: Coolies, Sailors and Settlers”

Walton Look Lai, “Images of the Chinese in West Indian History,” in Wanni W. Anderson and Robert G. Lee, eds., Displacements and Diasporas: Asians in the Americas (Rutgers University Press, 2005): 54-77

Thurs. Feb. 10: East Indian Migrations to the British Caribbean

Verene A. Shepherd, Maharani’s Misery: Narratives of a Passage from India to the Caribbean (University of the West Indies, 2002), Ch. 1 “Indian Women and Labour Migration,” 3-32

Tues. Feb. 15: Chinese “Coolie” Narratives

The Cuba Commission Report

Kathleen López and Rebekah E. Pite, “Appendix: Letters from Soledad in the Atkins Family Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society,” The Massachusetts Historical Review 9 (2007): 35-54

*Class Activity: LHCS “CARIBBEAN CITYSCAPES” CONFERENCE

Thursday, February 17: Reception (5-8 p.m. NJC Lounge, Douglass Campus Center)

Friday, February 18: Conference (9-5 p.m. Bloustein Special Events Forum)

PART II: EXPORT ECONOMIES AND INTRA-CARIBBEAN MIGRATIONS

Tues. Feb. 22: The Panama Railroad and Canal

Aims McGuinness, Path of Empire: Panama and the California Gold Rush (Cornell, 2007), Ch. 1 “California in Panama,” 16-53.

Michael L. Conniff, Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904-1981 (University of

Pittsburgh Press, 1985), Ch. 1 “Introduction,” 3-15 and Ch. 3 The Construction Era, 1904-1914,” 45-74.

Film: “The Panama Canal” (PBS)



Thurs. Feb. 24: Gender and Kinship in Export Economies

Lara Putnam, The Company They Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender in Caribbean Costa Rica, 1870-1960 (University of North Carolina, 2002), Ch. 5: “Facety Women: Rudeness and Respectability, 1890s-1930s,” 139-172

Tues. March 1: Black Laborers in Mestizo Nations

Dario A. Euraque, “The Threat of Blackness to the Mestizo Nation: Race and Ethnicity in the Honduran Banana Economy, 1920s and 1930s,” in Steve Striffler and Mark Moberg, eds., Banana Wars: Power, Production and History in the Americas (Duke University Press, 2003)

Frederick Douglass Opie, “Black Americans and the State in the Turn-of-the Century

Guatemala,” The Americas 64.4 (2008): 583-609

Thurs. March 3: West Indians in Cuba

Jorge L. Giovannetti, “The Elusive Organization of ‘Identity’: Race, Religion, and Empire among Caribbean Migrants in Cuba,” small axe 19 (2006): 1-27

Marc C. McLeod, “Undesirable Aliens: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism in the Comparison of Haitian and British West Indian Immigrant Workers in Cuba, 1912-1939,” Journal of Social History 31. 3 (1998): 599-623

Tues. March 8: Migrants and Communist Movements

Barry Carr, “Identity, Class, and Nation: Black Immigrant Workers, Cuban Communism, and the Sugar Insurgency, 1925-1934,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 78.1 (1998): 83-116

Jacques Roumain, Masters of the Dew (1944) (excerpt)

Thurs. March 10: IN-CLASS MIDTERM EXAM

March 15 and March 17: SPRING RECESS

Tues. March 22: Caribbean Migrants and Jim Crow

Adrian Burgos, Jr., Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (University of California, 2007), Ch. 8 “Playing in the World Jim Crow Made,” 162-176

Thurs. March 24: Afro-Cubans in Tampa

Susan D. Greenbaum, More than Black: Afro-Cubans in Tampa (University Press of Florida, 2002), Ch. 3 “José Martí and Jim Crow,” 57-95

Tues. March 29: Haitian/Dominican Border Settlements

Richard Lee Turits, “A World Destroyed, A Nation Imposed: The 1937 Haitian Massacre in the Dominican Republic,” Hispanic American Historical Review 82.3 (2002): 590-635

Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

Thurs. March 31: Haitian/Dominican Border Settlements

Allen Wells, Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa (Duke, 2009) Ch. 8 “First Impressions,” pp. 151-175

Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

PART III: POST-WAR CARIBBEAN DIASPORAS

Tues. April 5: Caribbean Migrations to Great Britain and the United States

Alejandro Portes and Ramón Grosfoguel, “Caribbean Diasporas: Migration and Ethnic

Communities,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 533, Trends in U. S.-Caribbean Relations (1994): 48-69

Thurs. April 7: Cuban and Dominicans in Puerto Rico

Jorge Duany, “Caribbean Migration to Puerto Rico: A Comparison of Cubans and Dominicans,” International Migration Review 26. 1 (1992): 46-66

Tues. April 12: Transnational Villages and Family Dynamics

Karen Fog Olwig, Caribbean Journeys: An Ethnography of Migration and Home in Three Family Networks (Duke University Press, 2007)

Thurs. April 14: Transnational Villages and Family Dynamics

Karen Fog Olwig, Caribbean Journeys: An Ethnography of Migration and Home in Three Family Networks (Duke University Press, 2007)

Tues. April 19: Syrian-Lebanese and Retail Trade

Anton Escher, “The Arab American Way: The Success Story of an American Family from a Syrian Village in Global Diaspora,” American Studies Journal 52 (2008)

Thurs. April 21: Hyphenated Identities

Caroline Bettinger-López, “‘Hebrew with a Cuban Accent’: Jewbans in the Diaspora,” and Emily Lo, “A Cuban-Chinese Familia,” in Andrea O’Reilly Herrera, ed., Cuba: Idea of a Nation Displaced (SUNY, 2007)

Tues. April 26: In-Class Paper Workshop

Thurs. April 28: In-Class Paper Workshop

*FINAL PAPER DUE VIA SAKAI FRIDAY, MAY 6

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