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 intraCaribbean 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
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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
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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:
Map Test
Midterm Exam:
Final Paper Thesis/Sources
Final Paper:
= 25%
= 5%
= 30%
= 5%
= 35%
(Due Dates TBA)
Thursday, February 3
Thursday, March 10
Due Monday, April 11
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 inclass 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.
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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:
http://academicintegrity.rutgers.edu/integrity.shtml.
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.
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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:
http://wp.rutgers.edu/courses/plagiarism.
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)
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1992/walcott-lecture.html
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
http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/index.php
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.”
http://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/projects/katrina/Scott.html
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.
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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): 3554
*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)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/panama/
Thurs. Feb. 24:
Gender and Kinship in Export Economies
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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:
Tues. March 22:
SPRING RECESS
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
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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
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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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