NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
HIST-GB 1801
LITERATURE OF THE FIELD: THE AFRICAN
DIASPORA (CLQ)
Fall 2015
Class meets on Tuesday, from 2:00 to 4:30pm in KJCC 607
Prof. Mike Gomez
Office: King Juan Carlos I Center 502
Office Hours: Thursday, 9-11am, or by appt.
Office Phone: 212-998-8624
michael.gomez@nyu.edu
BOOKS FOR PURCHASE (also on reserve in library)
Vivek Bald, Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America (Harvard, 2012)
Kim Butler, Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition São Paulo and
Salvador (Rutgers, 1998)
*Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Harvard,
2005)
Brent Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora (Harvard, 2003)
*Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 (UNC 1999)
Thavolia Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the
Plantation Household (Cambridge, 2008)
Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities
in the Colonial and Antebellum South (UNC, 1998)
Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, Many-Headed Hydra (Beacon, 2001)
Rebecca Scott and Jean M. Hébrard, Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age
of Emancipation (Harvard U. Press, 2012)
James H. Sweet, Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the
African World (UNC, 2011)
Eve Troutt Powell, Tell This in My Memory: Stories of Enslavement from Egypt, Sudan, and
the Ottoman Empire (2012)
Irma Watkins-Owens, Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community,
1900-1930 (1996)
*Dubois and Ferrer are assigned for the same week - class will divide responsibilities
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INTRODUCTION
This course is an investigation of the formation and development of the African diaspora,
uncritically understood as the dispersal of people of African descent throughout the world.
Diaspora studies are a rapidly emerging nexus of fields, and to be sure, there is plenty of
disagreement among scholars concerning diaspora, much of which will be explored in this
course.
While the African diaspora has garnered significant academic interest, the concept is by
no means novel. Its formal study has been with us for some time, going back at least to the early
scholarship and activism of individuals like Edward Blyden, Adelaide Casely Hayford, and
W.E.B. Du Bois. It is necessarily multi-disciplinary in scope, calling upon a range of erudition
and experience for its successful pursuit. While this course is heavily informed by historical
analysis, we will also draw from inquiries beyond the preserve of historians.
The objective of the present course is to provide a basis for and context within which
such further exploration is achieved, as well as to facilitate student preparation for
comprehensive field examinations.
Grade Criteria
Weekly Response Papers (2pp)
Historiographical Essay (12pp)
Classroom Participation
- 30% of final grade
- 30% of final grade
- 40% of final grade
Weekly response papers will begin Sept 17, and should critique the week’s required reading.
The response papers should include the following elements: 1) identification of the major thesis
and corollary arguments for each work; 2) the perspective (theoretical or otherwise) and
methodology of each work; 3) correspondences between required readings; and 4) the
relationship of the work to two or three works drawn from the historiography of the field. Please
note: These papers should not necessarily address matters of literary style, but of substance, and
should avoid straightforward summaries.
The weekly response papers are to be distributed to our collective email addresses/listserv and
are due by 6:00 pm each Monday evening.
Regarding the historiographical essay, students should select a research topic in the African
diaspora and critically review the ways in the subject has been discussed in the literature.
However, it may be necessary to “bridge” the literatures in order to achieve a diasporic
perspective (e.g., you may want to make a comparative examination of some aspect of slavery
between Surinam and Mexico; the specific comparison may not exist in the literature. You
would therefore need to cite examples of the comparative method, while appropriating research
pertaining to Surinam and Mexico, respectively.)
The preceding stems from my own sense of what constitutes diasporic work. It seems to me that
at least three models/methodologies for studying the African diaspora are consistent with the
program at NYU:
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i: examination of a diasporic site/specificity within a general framework or
conceptualization of the African diaspora;
ii: exploration of interactions/relations/connections, in any direction, between two or
more diasporic sites along cultural, economic, political lines, etc. (in which case connectivity
tends to be related to some aspect of Africa, implicitly or otherwise, which does not mean that
Africa-as-reference is the singular point of connection, or necessarily the most salient, but it
tends to be somewhere in the conceptual framework);
iii: inquiry into the nexus between a place/culture/idea in Africa and the diasporic site(s).
The historiographical paper is due Dec 17 at 12:00 noon. Please consult with me before
choosing a topic, and regularly confer as you develop the bibliography.
Policies
Late work, submitted after the due date, will suffer the loss of one whole grade; once Final
Exams begin on December 19th, late work will not be accepted. Except for the most dire of
circumstances, I will not issue an incomplete for this class as a matter of fairness.
Three absences will result in the loss of one whole grade from the final grade. This policy will
be strictly maintained.
SCHEDULE
Sept 3
Introduction, Organization, Preliminary Considerations
Reading:
Robin D.G. Kelley and Tiffany Patterson, “Unfinished Migrations:
Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern
World,” African Studies Review 43 (April 2000): 11-45
Additional:
Bennett, Herman L. “The Subject in the Plot: National Boundaries and
the ‘History’ of the Black Atlantic,” African Studies Review, vol. 43, no. 1, Special Issue
on the Diaspora, (Apr. 2000), pp. 101-124; Joseph E. Harris, Global Dimensions of the
African Diaspora (1979, 1993); W.E.B. Du Bois, The World and Africa (1946); Du Bois,
Dusk of Dawn (1940); Melville Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (1941);
Herskovits, The New Negro World (1966); E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Church in
America (1964); Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States (1966); Albert J.
Raboteau, Slave Religion (1978); Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black
Consciousness (1977); Mintz and Price, Birth of African-American Culture; Isidore
Okpewho, Carole Boyce Davies, Ali A. Mazrui, eds., The African Diaspora: African
Origins and New World Identities (1999); Jacqueline McLeod and Darlene Clark Hine,
eds., Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in the African Diaspora
(1999); Alusine Jalloh and Stephen E. Maizlish, The African Diaspora (1996); Sidney
Mintz, Caribbean Transformations (1974); Sidney Mintz and Richard Dunn, Sugar and
Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies (1972); Philip D. Curtin,
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Economic Change in Precolonial Africa (1975); Martin L. Kilson and Robert I. Rotberg,
The African Diaspora (1976).
Sept 10
Diasporic Imaginaries
Reading:
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness
(Harvard, 1993), chap 1
Kim Butler, “The Clio and the Griot: the African Diaspora in the
Discipline of History,” in Tejumola Olaniya and James Sweet, eds., The
African Diaspora and the Disciplines, (2010), 21-44
Earl Lewis, “To Turn on a Pivot: Writing African-Americans into a
History of Overlapping Diasporas,” American Historical Review 100
(June 1995)
Lorand Matory, Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and
Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomble (2005), excerpts
Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity, Community, and
Difference, J. Rutherford, ed., (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990),
222-37
James Clifford, “Diasporas,” in Routes: Travel and Translation in
the Late Twentieth Century (1997)
M. Gomez, ed., “Introduction,” Diasporic Africa: A Reader (2006)
Additional:
Kevin K. Gaines, American Africans in Ghana (2006); Ann Laura Stoler
and Fredrick Cooper, eds., Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World
(1997); Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial
Contest (Routledge, 1995), 1-74; Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz
Ambassadors Play the Cold War (2004); Barbara Bair, “Pan-Africanism as Process:
Adelaide Casely Hayford, Garveyism, and the Cultural Roots of Nationalism,” in Sidney
Lemelle and Robin D.G. Kelley, eds., Imagining Home: Class Culture and Nationalism in
the African Diaspora (Verso, 1994); E. Frances White, “Africa on My Mind: Gender,
Counter Discourse and African-American Nationalism” Journal of Women’s History 2,
no. 1 (Spring 1990): 73-97; Tunde Adeleke, Unafrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century
Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission (1998); Ronald Walters, Pan Africanism in
the African Diaspora (1993); Abdias do Nascimento, Africans in Brazil: A Pan-African
Perspective (1992); Kwesi Krafona, The Pan-African Movement: Ghana’s Contribution
(1986); Tetevi G. Tete-Adjalogo, Marcus Garvey (1995); P. Olisanwuche Esedebe, PanAfricanism: The Idea and Movement, 1776-1963 (1982); Wilson Jeremiah Moses, The
Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925 (1988); C.L.R. James, A History of PanAfrican Revolt (1969); George Fredrickson, Black Liberation (1995); Cheik Anta Diop,
Les fondements économiques et culturels d’un état federal d’Afrique noire (1978); Cedric
Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Radical Tradition (1983, 1999).
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Sept 17
Transatlantic Worlds
Reading:
James H. Sweet, Domingos Álvares, African Healing
Additional:
John Thornton, A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820
(Cambridge, 2012); John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic
World, 1400-1680 (1998); Roquinaldo Ferreira, Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic
World: Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade (2012); Mariana P. Candido,
An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World: Benguela and its Hinterland (2103);
Júnia Ferreira Furtado, Chica da Silva: A Brazilian Slave of the Eighteenth Century
(2008); James H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the
African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770 (2003); James Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave
Trade (1981); Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (1944); Paul Lovejoy,
Transformations in Slavery (1983); J.E. Inikori, Forced Migration: The Impact of the
Export Slave Trade on African Societies (1980); Philip D. Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade: A
Census (1969); Stanley Engerman and Eugene Genovese, Race and Slavery in the
Western Hemisphere (1975); A.J.R. Russell-Wood, A World on the Move: The Portuguese
in Africa, Asia, and America, 1415-1808 (1992); Pierre Verger, Fluxo e Refluxo do
Tráfico de Escravos entre o Golfo do Benin e a Bahia de Todos os Santos dos Séculos
XVII a XIX (1987); Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the
Angolan Slave Trade (1988); Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast
(1970); Thornton, Kingdom of Kongo (1983); Wyatt MacGaffey, Religion and Society in
Central Africa (1986); Du Bois, Black Folk Then and Now (1939); A.J.R. Russell-Wood,
“Before Columbus: Portugal’s African Prelude to the Middle Passage and Contribution to
Discourse on Race and Slavery,” in Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex Nettleford, eds., Race,
Discourse, and the Origins of America (Smithsonian,1995).
Sept 24
The Question of Africa and Ongoing Linkages
Reading:
Michael Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks
Additional:
Maureen Warner-Lewis, Central Africans in the Caribbean, Transcending
Space, Transforming Culture (2002); Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture (1987); Herman L.
Edwards, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole
Consciousness, 1570-1640 (2003); Michael A. Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience
and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (2005); Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans
in Colonial Louisiana (1992); Margaret Washington Creel, “A Peculiar People”: Slave
Religion and Community-Culture among the Gullahs (1988); Mechal Sobel, Trabelin’
On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith (1979); William D. Piersen, Black
Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth Century New
England (1988); Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina
(1974); Daniel C. Littlefield, Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial
South Carolina (1981); Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity (2003); Allan Austin, African
Muslims in Antebellum America (1984); Michael Mullin, Africa in America (1992);
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William Piersen, Black Legacy: America’s Hidden Heritage (1993); Joseph Holloway,
Africanisms in American Culture (1990); Lathan Windley, Runaway Slave Advertisements
(1983); George P. Rawick, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (1972-77);
Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows (1940); Elizabeth Donnan, Documents
Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (1930); Albert J. Raboteau, A
Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History (1995); James H.
Cone, God of the Oppressed (1997); Cain Hope Felder, Troubling Biblical Waters: Race,
Class and Family (1989); C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Church in the African American
Experience (1990); Charles H. Long, Significations (1986); Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black
Religion and Black Radicalism (1983); George E. Simpson, Black Religions in the New
World (1978); Cornel West, Prophesy Deliverance! (1982); E. Franklin Frazier, The
Negro Church in America (1964); Hans Baer, The Black Spiritual Movement (1984);
Benjamin E. Mays, The Negro’s God as Reflected in His Literature (1964); Randall K.
Burkett, Garveyism as a Religious Movement (1978); Theophus Smith, Conjuring
Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America (1994); E.C.L. Adams, Nigger to Nigger
(1928); Judith Ann Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the
Americas (Harvard, 2001); David Eltis, Philip Morgan, and David Richardson, “Agency
and Diaspora in Atlantic History: Reassessing the African Contribution to Rice
Cultivation in the Americas,” American Historical Review 112 (Dec 2007): 1329-1358.
Oct 1
Slavery in the Americas
Reading:
Thavolia Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage
Additional:
Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton
Kingdom (2013); Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Gender and Reproduction in
New World Slavery (2004); Michele Mitchell, Righteous Propagation: African
Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction (2004); Michele
Mitchell, Sandra Gunning, and Tera W. Hunter, eds., Dialogues of Dispersal: Gender,
Sexuality, and African Diasporas (2004); Rhoda Reddock, Women, Labour, and Politics
in Trinidad: A History Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race
and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (2002); Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire:
Black Americans and Anti-Colonialism, 1937-1957 (1997); Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, et al,
Women in Africa and the African Diaspora (1989); Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton,
and Barbara Bailey, Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective
(1995); Filomina Chioma Steady and Kenneth Bilby, The Black Woman Cross Culturally
(1981); Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Words of Fire (1995); Barbara Bush, Slave Women in
Caribbean Society (1990); Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class (1981); Elizabeth FoxGenovese, Within the Plantation Household (1988); Paula Giddings, When and Where I
Enter (1984); Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow (1985); Deborah Gray
White, Ar’nt I a Woman: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (1985); Gloria T. Hull,
Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men,
but Some of Us are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (1981); Tera W. Hunter, To ‘Joy My
Freedom (1997), David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine, eds., More Than Chattel:
Black Women and Slavery in the Americas (1996); Beckles, Natural Rebels: A Social
History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados (1989); Barbara Bush, Slave Women in
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Caribbean Society, 1650-1838 (1990); Hilary Mc.D Beckles, Centering Woman (1999);
Beckles, “Property Rights in Pleasure: The Marketing of Slave Women’s Sexuality in the
West Indies,” in Roderick McDonald, ed., West Indian Accounts: Essays on the History of
the British Caribbean and the Atlantic Economy in Honor of Richard Sheridan (1996);
Beckles, Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados (1989);
Kamau Brathwaite, “Caribbean Women during the Period of Slavery,” Caribbean
Contact (May-June, 1984); Brathwaite, “Submerged Mothers,” Jamaica Journal 9, nos. 2
and 3 (1975), pp. 48-49; Stella Dadzie, “Searching for the Invisible Woman: Slavery and
Resistance in Jamaica,” Race and Class (no.32, Oct-Dec1990): 21-38; Silvia W. De
Groot, “Maroon Women as Ancestors, Priests and Mediums in Surinam,” Slavery and
Abolition 7 (no. 2, Sept 1986): 160-74; Joseph C. Dorsey, “Women Without History:
Slavery and The International Politics of Partus Sequitur Ventrem in The Spanish
Caribbean,” Journal of Caribbean History [Barbados] 28 (no.2, 1994): 165-207; Richard
Dunn, “The Story of Two Jamaican Slaves: Sarah Affir and Robert McAlpine of
Mesopotamia Estate,” in Roderick McDonald, ed.,West Indian Accounts; Moira
Fergusson, ed., The Hart Sisters: Early African Caribbean Writers, Evangelicals, and
Radicals (1993); Fergusson, Colonial and Gender Relations from Mary Wollstonecraft to
Jamaica Kincaid (1993); Fergusson, ed., The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian
Slave Related by Herself (1987); Karla Gottlieb, The Mother Of Us All: A History of
Queen Nanny, Leader of the Windward Jamaica Maroons (1998); Jerome S. Handler and
Robert S. Corruccini, “Weaning among West Indian Slaves Historical and
Bioanthropological Evidence from Barbados,” William and Mary Quarterly 43 (no.1, Jan
1986): 111-17; Barry W. Higman, “African and Creole Slave Family Patterns in
Trinidad,” Journal of Family History 3 (no. 2, Summer 1978): 163-80; Higman,
“Household Structure and Fertility on Jamaican Slave Plantations: A Nineteenth-Century
Example,” Population Studies 27 (no. 3, Nov 1973): 527-50; Higman, “The Slave Family
and Household in the British West Indies, 1800-1834,” Journal of Interdisciplinary
History 6 (no. 2, Autumn 1975): 261-87; Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel,
“Conceptualizing the History of Women in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the
Caribbean, and the Middle East,” Journal of Women’s History 1 ( no.1, 1989): 31-62;
Doris Y. Kadish and Francoise Massadiere Kenney, eds., Translating Slavery: Gender
and Race in French Women’s Writing, 1738-1823 (1994); Herbert S. Klein and Stanley L.
Engerman, “Fertility Differentials between Slaves in the United States and the British
West Indies: A Note on Lactation Practices and Their Possible Implications,” William and
Mary Quarterly 35 (no.2, April 1978): 357-74; Brigitte Kossek, “Racist and Patriarchal
Aspects of Plantation Slavery in Grenada: ‘White Ladies,’ ‘Black Women Slaves,’ and
‘Rebels’,” Slavery in the Americas, W. Binder, ed. (1993); Humphrey E. Lamur, “Fertility
Differentials on Three Slave Plantations in Suriname,” Slavery and Abolition 8 (no.3,
Dec1987): 313-35; Lamur, “The Slave Family in Colonial Nineteenth Century
Suriname,” Journal of Black Studies 23 (1992): 344-57: Lucille Mathurin-Mair, The
Rebel Woman in the West Indies During Slavery (1975); Mathurin-Mair, “The Arrival of
Black Woman,” Jamaica Journal, 9 (1975): 1-10; Bernard Moitt, “Gender and Slavery:
Women and the Plantation Experience in the Caribbean Before 1848," in Wim
Hoogbergen, ed., Born Out of Resistance (1995); Marietta Morrissey, “Women’s Work,
Family Formation, and Reproduction Among Caribbean Slaves,” Review Journal of the
Braudel Center 9 (no. 3, 1986): 339-67; Morrissey, Slave Women in the New World:
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Gender Stratification in the Caribbean (1989); Diana Patton, “Decency, Dependence and
the Lash: Gender and the British Debate over Slave Emancipation, 1830-34," Slavery and
Abolition, 17(1996): 163-84: Orlando Patterson, “Slavery, Alienation, and the Female
Discovery of Personal Freedom,” in Arien Mack, ed., Home: A Place in the World
(1993); Rhoda Reddock, “Women and Slavery in the Caribbean: A Feminist Perspective,”
Latin American Perspectives 12 (no.1 (1985): 63-80; Reddock, “Women and the Slave
Plantation Economy in the Caribbean", in S. Jay Kleinberg, ed., Retrieving Women’’s
History: Changing Perceptions of the Role of Women in Politics and Society (1988);
Barbara Rush, Daughters of Injur’d Africk: Slave Women in British Caribbean
Plantation Society, 1650-1833 (1986); Lorna Simmonds, “Slave Higglering in Jamaica,
1780-1834," Jamaica Journal 20 (no.1, Feb-April 1987): 31-38; Rosalyn Terborg-Penn,
“Black Women in Resistance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective,” in Gary Y. Okihiro, ed.,
Resistance: Studies in African, Caribbean and Afro-American History (1986); TerborgPenn, “Women and Slavery in the African Diaspora: A Cross-Cultural Approach to
Historical Analysis,” Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women 3 (no. 2, Fall 1986): 1115; Alan Tuelon, “Nanny–Maroon Chieftainess,” Caribbean Quarterly 19 (no. 4, Dec
1973): 20-27; Dorothy, C. Wertz, “Women and Slavery: A Cross-Cultural Perspective,”
International Journal of Women’’s Studies 7 (no. 4, Sept-Oct1984): 372-84; Brackette F.
Williams, Women Out of Place: The Gender of Agency and the Race of Nationality
(1996); Brackette F. Williams, Stains on My Name, War in My Veins: Guyana and the
Politics of Cultural Struggle (1996); Michelle Ann Stephens, Black Empire: The
Masculine Global Imaginary of Caribbean Intellectuals in the United States, 1914-1962.
Vincent Brown, The reaper's garden: death and power in the world of Atlantic slavery
(2008); Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (1999);
George Reid Andrews, Blackness in the White Nation: A History of Afro-Uruguay (2010);
M. DeGraff, "Linguists' Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Creole Exceptionalism,"
Language in Society 34: 533-591; Maureen Warner-Lewis, Guinea’s Other Suns: The
African Dynamic in Trinidad Culture (1991); Hilary McD Beckles, White Servitude and
Black Slavery in Barbados (1989); Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to
Slavery in the British West Indies (1982); Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of
the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (1973); Eugene Genovese, From
Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World
(1979); Barry Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807-1834 (1984);
Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery (1967); Sandra T. Barnes, Africa’s Ogun:
Old and New World (1997); Joseph Murphy, Santería (1993); William Bascom, Ifa
Divination (1969); E. Bolaji Idowu, Olodumare, God in Yoruba Belief (1962); Mercedes
Cros Sandoval, La religión afrocubana (1975); George E. Simpson, Black Religions in
the New World (1978); Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit (1983); David Barry
Gaspar, Bondmen and Rebels: A Study of Master-Slave Relations in Antigua (1985);
Monica Schuler; Rebecca Scott, George Reid Andrews, Robert Levine, Seymour
Drescher, eds., The Abolition of Slavery and the Aftermath of Emancipation in Brazil
(1988); Micol Seigel, Uneven Encounters : Making Race and Nation in Brazil and the
United States (2009); Emilia Viotta da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories
(1993); João José Reis, Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia
(1993); Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society:
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Bahia, 1550-1835 (1985); Warren Dean, Rio Claro: A Brazilian Plantation System, 18201920 (1976); Colin Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico (1976); Carlos
Melendes and Quince Duncan, El Negro en Costa Rica (1972); Katia M. de Queiros
Mattoso, To Be a Slave in Brazil (New Brunswick, 1991); Sidney Chalhoub, Visões da
liberdade: uma história das últimas décadas da escrividão na corte (1990); Chalhoub,
Cidade febril: cortiços e epidemias na corte imperial (1996); Nina Rodrigues, O
Animismo Fetichista dos Negros Bahianos (1935); Flávio dos Santos Gomes, Histórias
de quilombas: mocambos e comunidades de senzalas no Rio de Janeiro, século XIX
(1995); ____, Liberdade por um fio: história dos quilombos no Brasil (1996); Mary
Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808-1850 (Princeton, 1987); Leslie Rout, Jr., The
African Experience in Spanish America: 1502 to the Present Day (1976); Laura de Mello
e Souza, The Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross: Witchcraft, Slavery, and Popular
Religion in Colonial Brazil (O diablo e a terra de Santa Cruz) (2004); Zephyr L. Frank,
Dutra’s World: Wealth and Family in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (2004); George
Reid Andrews, Blackness in the White Nation; Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the
Slaves [Casa-Grande e Senzala] (1936
Oct 8
Revolutions
Reading:
Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba
Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of
History (Beacon, 1995), excerpts
Additional:
João José Reis, Death is a Festival: Funeral Rites and Rebellion in
Nineteenth-Century Brazil (2003); Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and
Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean (2004); Julius Scott, “The Common Wind:
Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution” (Ph.D.
thesis, 1986); Carolyn Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint-Domingue Revolution from
Below (1990); Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1953); Harold
Courlander, The Drum and the Hoe: Life and Lore of the Haitian People (1985); Gabriel
Debien, Les esclaves aux Antilles Françaises (XVIIe -XVIIIe siècles (1975); Herbert
Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (1986); Horace Campbell,
Rasta and Resistance (1987); Martin Ros, Night of Fire: The Black Napoleon and the
Battle for Haiti (1994); Rayford Logan, Haiti and the Dominican Republic (1968);
Thomas Madiou, Histoire d’Haiti (1985); Michele Oriol, Images de la revolution à SaintDomingue (1992); David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and
National Independence in Haiti (1996); P. Bellegarde-Smith, Race, Class and Ideology:
Haitian Ideologies for Underdevelopment, 1806-1934 (1982); David Barry Gaspar and
David Patrick Geggus, eds., A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater
Caribbean (1997); David Patrick Geggus and Norman Fiering, eds., The World of the
Haitian Revolution (2009); David Patrick Geggus, ed., The Impact of the Haitian
Revolution in the Atlantic World (2001); C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint
L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938).
Oct 15
Fall Break - No Class
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Oct 22
A Pan-Atlantic, Cross-Cultural Vision
Reading:
Linebaugh and Rediker, Many-Headed Hydra
Additional:
Marcus Rediker, The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery
and Freedom (2012); Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (2007); Rediker,
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the AngloAmerican Maritime World, 1700-1750 (1987); Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic
Pirates in the Golden Age (2004); Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and
Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (1991); W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African
American Seamen in the Age of Sail (1997); E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English
Working Class (1963); Thompson, Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular
Culture (1992); Dorothy Thompson, ed., The Essential E.P. Thompson (2001); Olaudah
Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa,
the African. Written by Himself (1789); Vincent Carretta, Equiano, the African:
Biography of a Self-Made Man (2005).
Oct 29
Developments in the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean
Reading:
Eve Troutt Powell, Tell This in My Memory
Additional:
Chouki El Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam
(2012); Ehud R. Toledano, As If Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic
Middle East (2007); John O. Hunwick and Eve Trout Powell, eds., The African Diaspora
in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (2002); J.O. Hunwick, “African Slaves in the
Mediterranean World: A Neglected Aspect of the African Diaspora,” in Joseph Harris,
ed., Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora (Howard., 1993); Fitzroy A. Baptiste,
“The African Presence in India,” in Africa Quarterly 38 (no. 2, 1998: 92-126); Shihan De
S. Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, ed., The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean
(Africa World Press, 2003); Kenneth X. Robbins and John McLeod, eds., African Elites
in India: Habshi Amarat (2005); Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam (1971); Lewis,
Race and Slavery in the Middle East; Shaun Marmon, Slavery in the Middle East (1998);
Toledano, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (1998); Toledano, The
Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression (1990); Leslie P. Peirce, Morality Tales: Law
and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (2003); Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women
and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (1993); Alev Croutier, Harem: The World Behind
the Veil (1989); Joseph Harris, The African Presence in Asia (1971); Alexandre Popovic,
The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd/9th Century (1976, 1998); St. Clair Drake,
Black Folk Here and There: An Essay in History and Anthropology, 2 vols. (1987, 1990);
Graham W. Irwin, Africans Abroad: A Documentary History of the Black Diaspora in
Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean during the Age of Slavery (1977); Joseph
Harris, “Africans in Asian History,” in Harris, ed., Global Dimensions of the African
Diaspora (1993); Mohammed Ennaji, Serving the Master: Slavery and Society in
Nineteenth-Century Morocco, trans. Seth Graebner (1998); Janice Boddy, Wombs and
Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zār Cult in Northern Sudan (1989); Akbar
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Muhammad, “The Image of Africans in Arabic Literature: Some Unpublished
Manuscripts,” in John Ralph Willis, ed., Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, vol. 1
(Cass, 1985); Edward Alpers and Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy, eds., Sidis and Scholars:
Essays on African Indians.
Nov 5
Cultural and Political Appropriations in Brazil
Reading:
Kim Butler, Freedoms Given Freedoms Won
Additional:
Flávio dos Santos Gomes, Experiêncas atlânticas: ensaios e pesquisas
sobre a escrivadão e o pós-emancipação no Brasil (2003); Olivia Gomes da Cunha,
Intenção e gesto - política e identificação e repressão a vadiagem no Rio de Janeiro
(1926-1942) (1999); Michael George Hanchard, Orpheus and Power: The Movimento
Negro de Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, 1945-1988 (1994); Roger Bastide and
Florestan Fernandes, Brancos e Negros em São Paulo (1971); Robert Conrad, The
Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850-1888 (1972); Pierre-Michel Fontaine, Race, Class,
and Power in Brazil (1985); Thomas Holloway, Immigrants on the Land: Coffee and
Society in São Paulo, 1886-1934 (1980); Abdias do Nascímento, Brazil: Mixture or
Massacre: Essays in the Genocide of a Black People (1989); Donald Pierson, Negroes in
Brazil: A Study of Race Contact at Bahia (1944); Carl Degler, Neither Black nor White:
Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (1971); Robert Brent Toplin,
The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil (1985); A.J.R. Russell-Wood, The Black Man in
Slavery and Freedom (1982); Roger Bastide, The African Religions of Brazil (1978);
Pierre Verger, Notes sur le Culte des Orisa et Vodun à Bahia de Tous les Saints (1957);
Fernando Ortiz, Hampa Afro-Cubano (1906); Monica Schuler, Alas, Alas Kongo: A
Social History of Indentured African Immigrants into Jamaica, 1841-1865 (1980); Walter
Rodney and George Lamming, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905
(1982); Edward Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica (1971);
Kathleen Mary Butler, The Economics of Emancipation: Jamaica and Barbados (1995);
Phillip A. Howard, Changing History: Afro-Cuban Cabildos and Societies of Color in the
Nineteenth Century (1998).
Nov 12
Post-Emancipation in the Americas
Reading:
Scott and Hébrard, Freedom Papers
Additional:
Melina Pappademos, Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic
(Envisioning Cuba) (2011); Thomas Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and
Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832- 1938 (1992); Matt D. Childs, The 1812 Aponte
Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery (2006), Rebecca Scott,
Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery, 1862-1914 (2005); Scott, Slave
Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860-1898 (1985); Laird Bergard,
Cuban Rural Society in the Nineteenth Century (1990); Manuel Moreno Fraginals, El
ingenio: complejo económico social cubano del azúcar, 3 vols. (1964, 1978); María
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Elena Díaz, The Virgin, The King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating
Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670-1780 (2000); Peter Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin
America (1997); Winthrop Wright, Café con leche: Race, Class and National Identity in
Venezuela; Louis A. Pérez, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture
(1999); Pérez, The War of 1898: Cuba and the United States in History and
Historiography (1998); Marifeli Pérez Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course,
and Legacy (1993); Verena Stolcke, Coffee Planters, Workers, and Wives (1988); Richard
Graham, ed., The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940 (1940); Daniel James and
John French, eds., The Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers: From
Household and Factory to Union Hall and Ballot Box; Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation
for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (2001); Aline Helg, Our
Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912 (1995); Mimi Sheller,
Democracy after Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica
(2000); Tomás Fernández Robaina, El negro en Cuba, 1902-1958 : apuntes para la
historia de la lucha contra la discriminación racial (La Habana, 1990).
Nov 19
Europe and the Variability of Diaspora
Reading:
Brent Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora
Additional:
Stuart Hall, “On Postmodernism and Articulation,” in David Morley and
Chen Kuan-Hsing, eds., Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (1996);
Jacqueline Nassy Brown, Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail: Geographies of Race in Black
Liverpool (2005) Tahar Ben Jelloun, French Hospitality, trans. Barbara Bray (1999);
Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir (1996); A.C. de C.M. Saunders, A Social History of Black
Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal (19872); Folarin Shyllon, Black People in Britain
(1977); James Walvin, Black and White: The Negro and English Society (1973); Bernard
Magubane, The Ties that Bind: African American Consciousness in the African Diaspora
2nd ed; Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of
Race and Nation (1987); V.Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa (1988); Edouard
Glissant, Caribbean Discourse (1989); Allison Blakely, Blacks in the Dutch World: The
Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern World (1993); Blakely, Russia and the Negro
(1986); Peter Fryer, Black People in the British Empire (1988); Winston James and Clive
Harris, eds., Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain (1993); S. Naïr,
Etcherelli, Lanzmann, eds., L'Immigration Maghrébine en France: dossier de la revue
Les Temps modernes (1985); Abdoulaye Gueye, Les intellectuels africains en France
(2001); Hans Debrunner, Presence and Prestige: Africans in Europe, and History of
Africans in Europe before 1918 (1979); Sadek Sellam, L'Islam et les musulmans en
France (1987); Jacques Barou, Travailleurs Africains en France: rôle des cultures
d’origine (1978); Malcolm Cross and Han Entzinger, eds., Lost Illusions: Caribbean
Minorities in Britain and the Netherlands (1988); Michel Fabre, From Harlem to Paris:
Black American Writers in France, 1840-1980 (1991); Marcel André, La France et ses
nègres (1983); Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early
Modern England (1995); Maria Hoehn, GI's and Fräuleins (2002); Heide Fehrenbach,
Race after Hitler (2005); Tina Campt, Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of
Race, Gender, and Memory in the Third Reich (2005); Charles Tshimanga, Didier
12
Gondola, and Peter J. Bloom, eds., Frenchness and the African Diaspora (2009); Manthia
Diawara, In Search of Africa (1998); Trica Danielle Keaton, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting,
Tyler Stovall, eds., Black France/France Noire: The History and Politics of Blackness
(2012); Dominic Thomas, Black France: Colonialism, Immigration, and
Tramsnationalism (2006); Gregory Mann, Native Sons: West African Veterans and
France in the Twentieth Century (2006); M. Diawara, We Won’t Budge: an African Exile
in the World (New York, 2003); Claude McKay, Banjo (1929); Emile Derlin Zinsou and
Luc Zouménou, Kojo Tovalou Houénou: Précurseur, 1887-1936: Pannégrisme et
Modernité (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2004); Christopher L. Miller, Nationalists and
Nomads: Essays on Francophone African Literature and Culture (1998); J. Ayodele
Langley, "Pan-Africanism in Paris, 1924-36," Journal of Modern African Studies 7, no. 1
(1969): 69-94; Philippe Dewitte, Les Mouvements Nègres En France, 1919-1939 (Paris:
L'Harmattan, 1985); Patrick Manning and J. S. Spiegler, "Kojo Tovalou-Houénou : PanAfrican Patriot at Home and Abroad" (paper presented at the African Studies Faculty
Seminar African Social History Workshop, Stanford University, 1991).
Nov 26
Thanksgiving Break
Dec 3
Connecting in New York City
Reading:
Vivek Bald, Bengali Harlem
Irma Watkins-Owens, Blood Relations
Additional:
Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean
Radicalism in Early Twentieth Century America (Verso, 1998); Ula Taylor, The Veiled
Garvey: The Life and Times of Amy Jacques Garvey (2002); John Henrik Clark, Marcus
Garvey and the Vision of Africa (1974); James De Jongh, Vicious Modernism: Black
Harlem and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, 1990); Philip Foner, American
Socialism and Black Americans from the Age of Jackson to World War II (1977); Brenda
Clegg Grey, Black Female Domestics during the Depression in New York City (1993);
Nathan Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (1971); David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was
in Vogue (1981); Carole Marks, Farewell - We’re Good and Gone: The Great Black
Migration (1989); Stanley Lieberson, A Piece of the Pie: Blacks and White Immigrants
Since 1880 (1980); Joe Trotter, The Great Migration in Historical Perspective (1988);
Colin Palmer and Franklin W. Knight, eds., The Modern Caribbean (1989); Brian Meeks,
Radical Caribbean (1996); Robert Carr, Black nationalism in the new world : reading the
African-American and West Indian Experience (2002).
Dec 10
Consequent, Convergent/Divergent Diasporas
Reading:
Emmanuel Akyeampong, “Africans in the Diaspora: The Diaspora
13
and Africa” African Affairs 99 (April 2000)
Isidore Okpewho, “Introduction: Can We ‘Go Home Again’,” in The New
African Diaspora, ed. Isidore Okpewho and Nkiru Nzegwu (2009), 3-30.
Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, “Diaspora Dialogues: Engagements
Between Africa and Its Diasporas,” in The New African Diaspora, 31-58.
For Another Day
Material Culture
Reading:
Judith Carney, In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the
Atlantic World (U. of Cal, 2011)
Additional:
Sharla M. Fett, Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern
Slave Plantations (2002); Theresa Singleton, “I, Too, Am America”: Archaeological
Studies of African-American Life (1999); Zora Neale Hurston, “Hoodoo in America,”
Journal of American Folklore 44 (1931); Theresa Singleton, ed., The Archaeology of
Slavery and Plantation Life, 1985; T. Singleton and Mark D. Bograd, The Archaeology of
the African Diaspora in the Americas (1995); Genevieve Fabre and Robert O’Meally,
History and Memory in African American Culture (1994); Joseph Roach, Cities of the
Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (1996); John W. Nunley and Judith Beetleheim,
Caribbean Festival Arts: Each and Every Bit of Difference (1988); Ruth M. Little, Sticks
and Stones: Three Centuries of North Carolina Gravemarkers (1998); Victor Turner, The
Anthropology of Performance (1986); Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (1989);
J.S. Wilson, “The Peculiarities and Diseases of Negroes,” American Cotton Planter and
Soil of the South (1860); Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: African and AfroAmerican Art and Philosophy (1983); ___, “Round Houses: Mande-Related Architecture
in the Americas,” in R.L. Anderson and K.L. Field, eds., Small-Scale Societies:
Contemporary Readings (1993); ___, Face of the Gods (1993); Robert Farris Thompson
and Joseph Cornet, The four moments of the sun: Kongo art in two worlds (1981); John
Michael Vlach, The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts (1978, 1990); Robert
Schuyler, ed., Archaeological Perspectives on Ethnicity in America: Afro-American and
Asian American Culture History (1980); Patricia Samford, “The Archaeology of AfricanAmerican Slavery and Material Culture,” William and Mary Quarterly 53 (1996): 87114; J.E. Holloway, ed., Africanisms in American Culture (1990); Merrick Posnansky,
“Towards an Archaeology of the Black Diaspora,” Journal of Black Studies 15 (1984):
195-205; Charles Orser, “The Archaeology of African-American Slave Religion in the
Antebellum South,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 4 (1994): 33-44; E.M. Scott, ed.,
Those of Little Note: Gender, Race, and Class in Historical Archaeology (1994); Sidney
W. Mintz and Richard Price, An Anthropological Approach to the Afro–American Past: A
Caribbean Perspective (1976); Sidney W. Mintz, The Birth of African-American Culture:
An Anthropological Perspective (1992); Michael L. Blakey and Cheryl La Roche,
“Seizing Intellectual Power: The Dialogue at the New York Burial Ground,” Historical
Archaeology 31 (1997): 84-106; Cheryl La Roche, “Beads from the African Burial
Ground, New York City: A Preliminary Assessment,” Beads: Journal of the Society of
14
Bead Researchers 6 (1994): 3-20; Kenneth L. Kiple and Virginia Himmelsteib King,
Another Dimension to the Black Diaspora: Diet, Disease, and Racism (1981); Kofi
Agorsah, ed., Maroon Heritage: Archaeological, Ethnographic, and Historical
Perspectives (1994); Douglas V. Armstrong, “The Afro-Jamaican House-yard: An
Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspective,” Florida Journal of Anthropology
(1991): 51-63; Edward Ayensu, Medicinal Plants of West Africa (1978); ___, Medicinal
Plants of the West Indies (1981); David Babson, “The Archaeology of Racism and
Ethnicity on Southern Plantations,” Historical Archaeology 24 (1981): 20-28; E.L.
Cerroni-Long, “Benign Neglect? Anthropology and the Study of Blacks in the United
States,” Journal of Black Studies 17 (1987): 438-59; Douglas B. Chambers, “AfroVirginian Root Cellars and African Roots? A Comment on the Need for a Moderate
Afrocentric Approach,” African American Archaeology 6 (1992): 7-10; Christopher R.
DeCorse, “West African Archaeology and the Atlantic Slave Trade,” Slavery and
Abolition 12 (1991): 92-96; St. Clair Drake, “Anthropology and the Black Experience,”
Black Scholar Sept.-Oct. (1980): 2-31; Matthew C. Emerson, “African Inspirations in a
New World Art and Artifact,” in P.A. Shackel and B.J. Little, eds., The Historic
Chesapeake: Archaeological Contributions (1994); John Rankine Goody, Death,
Property, and the Ancestors: A Study of the Mortuary Customs of the LoDagaa of West
Africa (1962); Candice Goucher, “African Metallurgy in the Atlantic World,” African
Archaeological Review 11 (1993): 197-215; William E. Grimé, Ethno-Botany of the
Black Americans (1979); Jerome S. Handler, “An African Pipe from a Slave Cemetery in
Barbados, West Indies,” in P. Davey, ed., The Archaeology of the Clay Tobacco Pipe:
America (1983); J.S. Handler and R.S. Corrucini, “Plantation Slave Life in Barbados: A
Physical Anthropological Analysis,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 14 (1983): 6590; Leland Ferguson, Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African America,
1650-1800.
Dec 13
Last Day of Classes
Dec 14 and 15
Reading Days
Dec 16 thru 20
Fall Semester Exams
Dec 17
Historiographical Papers Due
15