Spring 2009

HIS 386K • Expressv Culs in Afr Diaspora

Course Description

This team-taught graduate readings course seeks to expose students to the different conceptual frameworks and methodologies scholars have used to examine expressive cultures in the African Diaspora from the post-emancipation period until the present. The course will examine various forms of "expressive culture" including adornment practices, beauty culture, performance, music, dance, sport, and photography. In addition, the course will highlight the crucial intersections among these expressive cultures and major social and political movements in post-emancipation era Afro-diasporic communities. While the course is designed for historians, it explicitly incorporates scholarship in other disciplines to encourage students to develop interdisciplinary approaches to the study of Afro-diasporic expressive culture. In this manner, students will be encouraged to tackle the following semester-long challenge: How can historians productively employ interdisciplinary approaches to the histories of Afro-diasporic cultural production? Drawing from the expertise of the course instructors, Drs. Tiffany Gill and Frank Guridy, the seminar will focus on Afro-descended communities in the United States and Latin America and the Caribbean. Thus, the class invites students to familiarize themselves with the distinct, yet interconnected scholarship on Afro-diasporic cultural production in a manner that highlights the movement of cultural practices across the Americas.

Texts

Selected Readings: Daphne Brooks, Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 Davarian Baldwin, Chicago's New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, & Black Urban Life Ginetta Candelario, Black Behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops

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