ASRC 6511 - The African Diaspora: Theories and Texts

(crosslisted) ENGL 6511

Fall. 4 credits.

C. Boyce Davies.

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.