ASRC 6511

The African Diaspora: Theories and Texts

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2015-2016.

The Middle Passage is perhaps the most evocative and simultaneously the most painful of transitions any people have made. Whereas for many the passage to the Americas was loaded with expectation of freedom, for Africans the passage across the Atlantic was loaded with pain, loss, and separation. The Middle Passage (referred to as the Maafa) then becomes a journey of separation, dismemberment, and dislocation. But it was also on the Middle Passage, for those who survived, that the transformation into African Diaspora peoples began. This course examines a range of middle passage texts such as novels, poetry, film, drama, slave narratives, and historical texts in order to explore comparatively how artists from across the African Diaspora have approached this historically and emotionally loaded event.

When Offered Fall.

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