Afro-Asian Studies

Course Description

Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1995) explores the global Black experience and Black identity formations through a transatlantic frame. Gilroy's thesis argues that contemporary black identity constructions are a result of ongoing processes of travel and exchange between Africa, Europe, and the 'New World' during earlier periods of capital accumulation (transatlantic slavery and colonialism). This course disrupts Gilroy's thesis, repositioning the focus, temporally and spatially, eastward. Students will examine often underexplored relations and routes of passage and exchange between the African continent and the peoples of Japan, China, India, the Pacific Islands, the Middle East, among other nations. The course may alternately consider any of the following propositions: (a) historical and contemporary Africa-Asia (Africa-China) relations, (b) the reasons for dispersal and processes of creating new Afro-Asian identity formations, or (c) issues of cultural continuity, nostalgia, solidarities, and belonging between Africana and Asian communities.

Code

UH 355

Credits

3

Subject

UH