African Diaspora Cultural History
Department of Africana Studies (01:014:XXX)
Prof: Kim D. Butler
Date/Time: (1x/week)
Contact: kbutler@rci.rutgers.edu
Location: TBA
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
Fieldwork assignments
40 pts
10 pts
Final exam
Attendance & participation
40 pts
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”
QUIZ #1 - terminologies of cultural history, Africa in the ancient world, preconditions of diaspora, routes of diaspora, dynamics of hegemony &
resistance
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
Fieldwork Assignment 1: Students locate menus & recipes from different
diaspora cultures - identify aspects noted by Harris
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?
QUIZ #2: culture circuits & concepts of culture change, creole black cultures, cultures of
resistance/freedom struggles
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 HipHop Zone (Durham: Duke U Press, 2010), 373-410.
Film clip: Les Sapeurs
Fieldwork assignment 2: Bring in an example of traveling black cultures showing the
blending of multiple influences
Week 14: Recapitulation, Reflection & Review
Review of major themes covered throughout the semester; review for final
FINAL EXAM: TBA