Topics in African-American Studies (380-0-20)

Topic

Africans and African Americans: Cultural Entanglem

Instructors

Oladotun Babatope Ayobade

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-410: Tues, Thurs 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class

The push for African independence in the mid-twentieth century overlapped with the Civil Rights Movement to underscore the galvanizing power of Pan-African solidarity; the social and economic transformations in the U.S. and the African continent since the 1960s have produced a less coherent political project. In this course, students will explore how the afterlives of colonialism and slavery has shaped the contemporary relationships between Africans and African Americans. A host of cultural forms and expressions offer a lens for reading the political zeitgeist, alliances, contact zones, exchanges, tensions, dissonances, and, importantly, modes of solidarity between Africans and African Americans. Students will explore how writers, musicians, performers, and scholars excavate the ongoing intimacies between the continent and the African diaspora, in a post-Civil Rights U.S. and postcolonial Africa. How do migration patterns, racialized economics, global geopolitics, community activism, and technologies of culture redefine these diasporic encounters? What role does the arts play in achieving social change for our communities?

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: PRE-REG: Reserved for African American Studies majors & minors.