Africa and Afro-Descendants

From African empires to the settlement of their diasporas in Latin America and the Caribbean. This course will examine the African experience and its diasporic extension in transoceanic and comparative historical frameworks. It will encourage students to challenge preconceived notions attached to African and Afro-descendant societies. Understanding the diversity of African cultures requires us to decolonize history, reconsidering Eurocentric assumptions about the nature of society, politics and identity inherited from European models and the Atlantic slave trade. Due to the complexity and size of the African continent, as well as the diversity of its diaspora, the course does not aim to cover all of African history. Instead, we will examine race, gender, and religion as central issues in precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial contexts for both the continent and its diasporic peripheries in Latin America. The course aims to study the connections between African cultures and their repercussion in Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba, Brazil and the United States. We will also examine historical events, including the impact of missionaries, the transatlantic slave trade, and large-scale slavery, which led to the creation of a forced diaspora and the collapse of traditional African thought on the continent, and its repercussion in the diaspora.