ARTH 4525 - Rastafari, Race, and Resistance

(crosslisted)
(also ASRC 4526, VISST 4625) @ (CA-AS)

Winter. 4 credits.

This course is designed as a distance course allowing students to interact directly with the professor using email, virtual classroom meetings and podcast lectures. An important feature of this online seminar is its class wiki that enables students to work collaboratively, researching, sharing and discussing course material.

P. Archer-Straw.

With their red, green and gold garb, dreadlocks and reggae music, Jamaica’s Rastafari cultivate an aesthetic that is distinctive and increasingly popular with youths the world over. This online seminar explores the historical origins and art forms of this spiritual movement that is shrouded in ancient world symbolism. It examines how Rastafari’s cultural expression born out of a clash of European and African civilization, challenged western values and posited new ways of talking about race and spirituality. We look at how racial oppression spawned the development of millenarian movements promoted Jamaica’s African roots and contributed to the Black nationalist movements of a later era. The current global popularity of Rastafari will also be explored, with a view to understanding how European avant-gardism pre-disposed today’s youths to Rastas’ outsider status.