Diaspora Theory

AFAM 403 Winter 2014

Thursdays 2-5pm

Diasporic Theory and Diaspora Tropes

The recent appeal and success of ‘diaspora’ as a critical concept in the social sciences and humanities lies in its reframing of rigid national precincts. Instead of focusing on the bounded historical continuity of the nation-state, diaspora offers pathways that retrace layerings of difference in the aftermath of colonialism and slavery, while also highlighting the effects of other forms of migration and displacement. Thus, Diaspora enables the desedimentation of the nation from the interior, by taking into account groups that fail to comply with the reigning definition of the people as a cohesive political subject due to sharing one culture, one race, one language, one religion, etc., and from the exterior by drawing attention to the movements that cannot be contained by the nation’s borders.

This graduate level course introduces students to critical debates concerned with understanding the meaning and applications of diaspora and discusses a range of approaches to diasporic formations, imaginaries and mobilizations. We will begin by surveying the etymology and the genealogy of diaspora as an idea involved in accounts of human dispersals, migrations and displacements, including Jewish, Armenian, and Asian diasporas. Then, we will explore the fraught relationship between diaspora, blackness, nation, and modernity, at the same time as we take into account how race, gender, sexuality, and class impact these categories. Finally, the course will explore the how black cultural production has been affected by and articulated through diasporic channels, especially music.

Requirements

*Weekly blog posts

*In-class presentation

*Active in-class participation

*Final essay

*Creating/editing three Wikipedia entries related to the course topic

Blog Posts & Presentations

The class blog provides a forum for discussion before and after our class sessions:

http://lore.com/Diasporic-Theory-and-Diaspora-Tropes.1

Each week one or more students will be responsible for providing a substantive blog post (600-800 words), which should be posted on the course blog 24 hours before the class session. Your post should introduce the materials assigned for the session, consider the texts within the framework of selected secondary sources, relate them to the larger themes of the course, and offer discussion questions. The substantive blog post will also serve as the basis for your fifteen-minute in-class presentation. The remaining students should post their responses (300 words) to the substantive post and/or the assigned materials 12 hours before the class session.

You are also encouraged to respond in a less formal manner to the posts and comments of your classmates, provide links and/or quotes that illustrate or challenge another post, etc.

Quarter Schedule

Jan. 9, 2014

Course Introduction

Butler, “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse,” Edwards, “The Uses of Diaspora,” Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Patterson and Kelley, “Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World,” Tölölyan, “Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the Transnational Moment” & “The Contemporary Discourse of Diaspora Studies.”

Jan. 16, 2014

Allen, “Black/Queer/Diaspora at the Current Conjuncture,” Brown, “Black Liverpool, Black America, and the Gendering of Diasporic Space,” Gilroy, The Black Atlantic (Chapter 1), Hofmeyr, “The Black Atlantic Meets the Indian Ocean: Forging New Paradigms of Transnationalism for the Global South–Literary and Cultural Perspectives,” Mitchell and Snyder. “The Eugenic Atlantic: Race, Disability, and the Making of an International Eugenic Science, 1800–1945,” Tinsley, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the Middle Passage,” Wright, “Can I Call You Black? The Limits of Authentic Heteronormativity in African Diasporic Discourse.”

Jan. 23, 2014

Balibar, “The Nation Form: History and Ideology,” Bhanji, “Trans/Scriptions. Homing Desires, (Trans) Sexual Citizenship and Racialized Bodies,” Sudbury, “From the Point of No Return to the Women’s Prison: Writing Contemporary Spaces of Confinement into Diaspora Studies,” Walcott, “Beyond ‘The Nation Thing’: Black Studies, Cultural Studies and Diaspora Discourse (Or the Post-Black Studies Moment),” Weheliye, “My Volk to Come: Peoplehood in Recent Diaspora Discourse and Afro-German Popular Music.

Jan. 30, 2014

Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora, Campbell, “Slave Trades and the Indian Ocean World,” McKittrick, “I Entered the Lists…Diaspora Catalogues: The List, The Unbearable Territory, and Tormented Chronologies—Three Narratives and a Weltanschauung,” Spillers, “The Idea of Black Culture,” Wekker, The Politics of Passion: Women’s Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora (Chapters 5 & 6).

Feb. 6, 2014 No Class

Feb. 13, 2014

El-Tayeb,“’Stranger in My Own Country’ European Identities, Migration, and Diasporic Soundscapes,” Gilroy, The Black Atlantic (Chapter 3), Nyong’o, “‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’: Queer Assemblages, Lyrical Nostalgia and the African Diaspora,” Redmond, Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora. (Introduction & Chapters 1, 4, & 6), Weheliye, “Sounding Diasporic Citizenship.”

Feb. 20, 2014

Angel-Ajani, “Displacing Diaspora: Trafficking, African Women, and Transnational Practices,” Chude-Sokei, “When Echoes Return: Roots, Diaspora and Possible Africas (a Eulogy),” Jackson and Borgelin, “How Genetics Can Provide Detail to the Transatlantic African Diaspora,” Nelson, “The Factness of Diaspora: The Social Sources of Genetic Genealogy,” Pierre, The Predicament of Blackness : Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race (Chapters 5 & 6).

Guest Lecture: Jasmine Johnson, Post-Doctoral Fellow in African American Studies

Feb. 27, 2014

Guridy, Forging Diaspora : Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow, Román and Flores, eds. The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States. (Introduction & Section 1). Three page abstract and bibliography due via Lore website at noon Friday, Feb. 28.

Mar. 6, 2014

“Opening Statement.” We Charge Genocide, Ture, “White Power: The Colonial Situation,” Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917-1939. Waligora-Davis, Sanctuary: African Americans and Empire (selections).

Mar. 13, 2014

Final Paper Presentations

Final Papers (12-15 pages) due Saturday, March 22 at noon via Lore website

Diaspora Theory and Diaspora Tropes Bibliography

Winter 2014

Allen, Jafari S. “Black/Queer/Diaspora at the Current Conjuncture.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 18.2-3 (2012): 211–248.

Angel-Ajani, Asale. “Displacing Diaspora: Trafficking, African Women, and Transnational Practices.” Diasporic Africa: A Reader. Ed. Michael Gomez. New York University Press, 2006. 290–308. Print.

Balibar, Etienne. “The Nation Form: History and Ideology.” Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. Ed. Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein and Etienne Balibar. London [England] ; New York: Verso, 1991. 86–106. Print.

Bhanji, Nael. “Trans/Scriptions. Homing Desires, (Trans) Sexual Citizenship and Racialized Bodies.” Transgender Migrations. The Bodies, Borders, and Politics of Transition. New York: Routledge, 2012. 157–175. Print.

Boyarin, Daniel, and Jonathan Boyarin. “Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity.” Critical Inquiry 19.4 (1993): 693–725. Print.

Brinkerhoff, Jennifer M. Digital Diasporas : Identity and Transnational Engagement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print. (Chapter 2)

Brown, Jacqueline Nassy. “Black Liverpool, Black America, and the Gendering of Diasporic Space.” Cultural Anthropology 13.3 (1998): 291–325. Print.

Butler, Kim D. “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 10.2 (2001): 189–219.

Campbell, Gwyn. “Slave Trades and the Indian Ocean World.” India in Africa, Africa in India: Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanisms. Ed. John C. Hawley. Indiana University Press, 2008. Print.

Carney, Judith Ann. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas. Harvard University Press, 2009. Print.

Chivallon, Christine, and Karen E. Fields. “Beyond Gilroy’s Black Atlantic: The Experience of the African Diaspora.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 11.3 (2002): 359–382.

Chude-Sokei, Louis. “When Echoes Return: Roots, Diaspora and Possible Africas (a Eulogy).” Transition 104 (2011): 76–92. Print.

Civil Rights Congress (U.S.). “Opening Statement.” We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government Against the Negro People. New York: Civil Rights Congress, 1951. Print.

Edwards, Brent Hayes. “The Uses of Diaspora.” Social Text 19.1 (2001): 45–73. Print.

El-Tayeb, Fatima. “’Stranger in My Own Country’ European Identities, Migration, and Diasporic Soundscapes” in European Others Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Print.

Guridy, Frank Andre. Forging Diaspora : Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Print.

Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990. 222–237.

Hofmeyr, Isabel. “The Black Atlantic Meets the Indian Ocean: Forging New Paradigms of Transnationalism for the Global South–Literary and Cultural Perspectives.” Social Dynamics 33.2 (2007): 3–32. Print.

Jackson, Fatimah LC, and Latifa FJ Borgelin. “How Genetics Can Provide Detail to the Transatlantic African Diaspora.” The African Diaspora and the Disciplines. Ed. Tejumola Olaniyan. Indiana University Press, 2010.

James, C. L. R. A History of Pan-African Revolt. Chicago: PM Press, 2012. Print.

Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Identifying Africans in Asia: What’s in a Name?” Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Ed. Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya and Jean-Pierre Angenot. 1st ed. Leiden: BRILL, 2008. Print.

Jones, Gayl. Corregidora. Boston: Beacon Press, 1975. Print. Black Women Writers Series.

Lemke Muniz de Faria, Yara-Colette. “‘Germany’s “Brown Babies” Must Be Helped! Will You?’: U.S. Adoption Plans for Afro-German Children, 1950-1955.” Callaloo 26.2 (2003): 342–362.

Makalani, Minkah. In the Cause of Freedom Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917-1939. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

McKittrick, Katherine. “I Entered the Lists…Diaspora Catalogues: The List, The Unbearable Territory, and Tormented Chronologies—Three Narratives and a Weltanschauung.” XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics 17 (2007): 7–29. Print.

Meghelli, Samir. “From Harlem to Algiers: Transnational Solidarities between the African American Freedom Movement and Algeria, 1962–1978.” Black Routes to Islam. Ed. Manning Marable and Hishaam D. Aidi. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Print.

Miller, Monica L. Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Print. (Introduction & Chapters 2& 5)

Mitchell, David T., and Sharon L. Snyder. “The Eugenic Atlantic: Race, Disability, and the Making of an International Eugenic Science, 1800–1945.” In Cultural Locations Of Disability.

Nelson, Alondra. “The Factness of Diaspora: The Social Sources of Genetic Genealogy.” Rites of Return: Diaspora Poetics and the Politics of Memory. Ed. Marianne Hirsch and Nancy K. Miller. Columbia University Press, 2013. Print.

Nyong’o, Tavia. “‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’: Queer Assemblages, Lyrical Nostalgia and the African Diaspora.” Performance Research 12.3 (2007): 42–54. Print.

Palmer, Colin A. “Defining and Studying the Modern African Diaspora.” The Journal of Negro History 85.1/2 (2000): 27–32. Print.

Patterson, Tiffany Ruby, and Robin DG Kelley. “Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World.” African Studies Review (2000): 11–45. Print.

Pierre, Jemima. The Predicament of Blackness : Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Print. (Chapters 5 & 6)

Redmond, Shana L. Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora. NYU Press, 2013. Print. (Introduction & Chapters 1, 4, & 6)

Román, Miriam Jiménez, and Juan Flores, eds. The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States. Duke University Press, 2009. Print. (Introduction & Section 1)

Salas, Antonio et al. “The African Diaspora: Mitochondrial DNA and the Atlantic Slave Trade.” The American Journal of Human Genetics 74.3 (2004): 454–465.

Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Harvard University Press, 2007. Print.

Spillers, Hortense J. “‘Mama’s Baby Papa’s Maybe’: An American Grammar Book. 1987.” Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. 203–229. Print.

---. “The Idea of Black Culture.” CR: The New Centennial Review 6.3 (2006): 7–28. Project MUSE.

Sudbury (Oparah), Julia. “From the Point of No Return to the Women’s Prison: Writing Contemporary Spaces of Confinement into Diaspora Studies.” Canadian Woman Studies (2004):

---. “Maroon Abolitionists: Black Gender-Oppressed Activists in the Anti-Prison Movement in the U.S. and Canada.” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 9.1 (2008): 1–29. Print.

Tettey, Wisdom. “Cell Phones and Transnationalism in Africa.” A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism. Ed. Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani. John Wiley & Sons, 2013. Print.

Tinsley, Omise’eke Natasha. “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the Middle Passage.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14.2-3 (2008): 191–215. Print.

Tölölyan, Khachig. “Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the Transnational Moment.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 5.1 (1996): 3–36.

---. “The Contemporary Discourse of Diaspora Studies.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27.3 (2007): 647–655.

Ture, Kwame. “White Power: The Colonial Situation” in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Print.

Walcott, Rinaldo. “Beyond ‘The Nation Thing’: Black Studies, Cultural Studies and Diaspora Discourse (Or the Post-Black Studies Moment).” Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies. Ed. Carole Boyce Davies et al. Africa World Press, 2003. Print.

Waligora-Davis, Nicole. Sanctuary: African Americans and Empire. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.

Weheliye, Alexander G. “My Volk to Come: Peoplehood in Recent Diaspora Discourse and Afro-German Popular Music.” Black Europe and the African Diaspora. Ed. Trica Danielle Keaton, Stephen Small, and Darlene Clark Hine. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Print.

---. “Sounding Diasporic Citizenship” in Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005. Print.

Wekker, Gloria. The Politics of Passion: Women’s Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora. Columbia University Press, 2006. Print. (Chapters 5 & 6)

Wright, Michelle M. “Can I Call You Black? The Limits of Authentic Heteronormativity in African Diasporic Discourse.” African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 0.0 (2012): 1–14.

Zimmerman, Andrew. Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. Print.. (Chapters 3, 4 & 5)