History

HIST5606The African Diaspora and the Atlantic World, 1492-present (O)3 ch (3S) (W)
What is the African Diaspora? What is the Atlantic World? How do these approaches to the histories of colonialism, slavery, and trade complement and/or differ from each other? Is the Black Atlantic synonymous with the African Diaspora? This Honours seminar will engage with critiques of the concepts of the ‘Atlantic World’ and ‘Black Atlantic’ and question whether such terms are useful in conceptualizing blackness in transnational and global terms. The course will introduce students to thinking about the relationship between historiography on the one hand, and the context for the production of that historiography: 20th- and 21st-century political struggles and the race, class, and gender transformations of academia.