ASRC 1500 - An Introduction to Africana Studies: Blackness in Global and Transnational Perspective

(CA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

R. Richardson.

At the inception of this department at Cornell University in 1969, the ASRC became the birthplace of Africana studies and is now an institution increasingly defining the “new Africana studies.” Africana studies is a discipline that has been increasingly universalized in academia and that emphasizes comparative and interdisciplinary studies of Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean and other diasporas. In this course, we will look at the diverse contours of the discipline and draw on resources from the humanities and social sciences. We will explore contexts ranging from modernity and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and plantation complex in the New World to processes of decolonization and globalization. Within this framework, we will also consider the concept of race and notions of racial formation and newer concepts such as “post-blackness.” We will consider how blackness as a concept shapes cultural flows and exchanges in the global context and saliently impacts popular culture. Topics that we will explore include history, literature, music, art, education, politics, religion, economics, health and the prison industrial complex.