Contents
- Section 1: Defining the Black Identities
- Week 1: Welcome, Introductions, and Syllabus Review
- Week 2: Contextualizing Transnational Blackness in the African Diaspora
- Week 3: Problematizing the Black Atlantic and Black Identities
- Week 4: Slavery and the Creation of the Black Identity
- Week 5: Forging New Black Identities
- Week 6: Resistance, Rebellion, and Abolition in the Black Atlantic
- Week 7: Afterlives of Slavery
- Section 2: Black Identities in Contact
- Section 3: Returns and Reconnections
Section 1: Defining the Black Identities
Week 1: Welcome, Introductions, and Syllabus Review
Submit Syllabus Response Agreement on Brightspace
TH: Gilroy, Paul. “The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity | Chapter 1.” In The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Harvard University Press, 1993. Password Protected PDF
Notation 1 Due
Week 2: Contextualizing Transnational Blackness in the African Diaspora
T: Hayes-Edwards, “Prologue”- Chapter 1. In Edwards, Brent Hayes. The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Harvard University Press, 2003. Available online via Brooklyn College Library.
TH:
Patterson, Tiffany Ruby, and Robin D. G. Kelley. “Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World.” African Studies Review 43, no. 1 (2000): 11–45. 511159621, pp. 11–45. Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson).
Dubois, Laurent. The Banjo: America’s African Instrument. Harvard University Press, 2016. Available online via Brooklyn College Library.
Notation 2 Due
Week 3: Problematizing the Black Atlantic and Black Identities
T: Chrisman, Laura. “Whose Black World Is This Anyway? Black Atlantic and Transnational Studies after The Black Atlantic.” Draft manuscript; final version published in New Perspectives on the Black Atlantic: Definitions,
Readings, Practices, Dialogues, ed. Bénédicte Ledent and Pilar Cuder-Domínguez, Peter Lang (Bern,
Germany), 2012, 23-57. PDF.
TH: Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. “Rewriting the African Diaspora: Beyond the Black Atlantic.” African Affairs, vol. 104, no. 414, 2005, pp. 35–68. JSTOR. Available via Brooklyn College library.
Notation 3 Due
Week 4: Slavery and the Creation of the Black Identity
T: Gomez, Michael A. Exchanging Our Country Marks. Chapter 7: The Transformation of African Identity in the Colonial and Antebellum South, University of North Carolina Press, 1997. ProQuest Ebook Central, available Online via Brooklyn College Library
TH: Berlin, Ira. “From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African- American Society in Mainland North America.” The William and Mary Quarterly, 53(2), 1996, 251–288. Available via JSTOR from Brooklyn College Library.
Notation 4 Due
Week 5: Forging New Black Identities
T: Begin: Du Bois, W. E. B., Vann R. Newkirk II, and Steve Prince. The Souls of Black Folk. Restless Books, 2017. Available via Proquest from Brooklyn College Library.
Recommended reading: Sidbury, James. “Chapter 5.” In Becoming African in America : Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic, with Internet Archive. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007. Available as hard copy from BC Library, or online via Brightspace.
TH: In Class Essay Exam September 26th
Week 6: Resistance, Rebellion, and Abolition in the Black Atlantic
T: Ferrer, Ada. “Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic.” American Historical Review 117, no. 1 (2012): 40–66. 71793859.
TH: Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2005.
Notation 5 Due
Week 7: Afterlives of Slavery
T: Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Sherman, French and Company, 1912. Reprint, Project Gutenberg, 2004.
TH: Holt, Thomas C., “A War of the Races,” Holt, Thomas C., Chapter 8, In: The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938. Johns Hopkins University Press, c1992. Available online via Brooklyn College Library.
Notation 6 Due
Section 2: Black Identities in Contact
Week 8: Gender, Sexuality, and Black Identities
T/TH: Mitchell, Michele. “The Strongest, Most Intimate Hope of Our Race | Chapter 3.” and “The Righteous Propagation of the Nation | Chapter 4.” In Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction. The University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Available online via Brooklyn College Library
Notation 7 Due
Week 9: Black Identities in Conflict
T: Hellwig, David J. “Black Meets Black: Afro-American Reactions to West Indian Immigrants in the 1920’s.” South Atlantic Quarterly 77, no. 2 (1978): 206–24.
TH: Finish: Du Bois, W. E. B., Vann R. Newkirk II, and Steve Prince. The Souls of Black Folk. Restless Books, 2017.
Recommended: Watkins-Owens, I. Chapter 1 & Chapter 10 In: Blood relations : Caribbean immigrants and the Harlem community, 1900-1930. 1996, Indiana University Press. Available as hard copy in BC Library, or on Brightspace.
Notation 8 Due
Week 10: Migrations and Overlapping Diasporas in the Black Atlantic
T: Putnam, Lara. “Alien Everywhere | Chapter 3.” In Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age. University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
TH: No Class: Spring Break: 4/1-4/9/2026
At home: Start Abrahams, Peter. Mine Boy. Heinemann, 1963.
Week 11: No Class: Spring Break: 4/1-4/9/2026
Week 12: Diasporic Arts and Culture in the Black Atlantic
T: Guridy, Frank Andre. Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow | Chapter 3. University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
Continue: Mine Boy.
TH: In Class Essay Exam 2
Section 3: Returns and Reconnections
Week 13: Colonialism and its Aftermaths
T: Corbould, Clare. Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919-1939. | Chapter 4. Harvard University Press, 2009.
TH: Finish Mine Boy
Notation 9 Due
T: Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. With Robin D. G. Kelley. Monthly Review Press, 2000.
TH: Continue Discourse on Colonialism.
Notation 10 Due
Recommended Reading:
Aidoo, Ama Ata. The Dilemma of a Ghost. With Internet Archive. Accra : Longman, 1965. http://archive.org/details/dilemmaofghost0000aido. Also available as hard copy from BC Library.
Week 14: Homecomings and Returns
Read: McKay, Claude, and Wayne F. Cooper. Home To Harlem. Northeastern University Press, 2012. Available through BC Library.
Addei, Cecilia, and Felicia Annin. “Diasporic Citizenship: Slavery, Identity And Kinship In Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing.” Celtic : A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics 11, no. 2 (2024): 523–35. Available through BC Library.
Week 15:
T: Finish Home To Harlem
TH: Final Presentations Begin
Notation 11 Due
