This course concentrates on the poetry, short stories and novels of the British Caribbean and essays written by authors. The course looks at how the literature negotiates representations of gender, race, class, sexual politics, marginalization, and other issues. The course also examines the ways in which Caribbean writers destabilize and disrupt the master paradigms of […]
This seminar combines creative texts—novels, music, and the visual arts—alongside slave narratives, nonfiction and theoretical works in an examination of questions of Transatlantic slavery, the imagination, and the idea of freedom. Beginning with slave narratives, students will theorize slavery and freedom, thinking through what Saidiya Hartman calls the “afterlife of slavery” and what Rinaldo Walcott […]
This course introduces students to the body of literature being produced by black women writers in the Caribbean, Canada and the US after the 1970s. While black women engage the particular concerns of their individual societies, their work also speaks across a larger body of writing. The course examines the intersecting oppressions of racism, sexism […]
The course surveys the history of African- American popular music from spirituals to hip hop, focusing on the role of black music in the quest for survival, respect, dignity and equal citizenship. Issues explored include musical roots and connections; social/ political contexts specifically Civil Rights and Black Power; and impact of the music industry, technology […]
This course explores the development of African-American gospel music with special emphasis on the 1930s onwards. It explores the musical, sociological, political and religious influences of gospel music eras and styles. Using a variety of methods including lecture/discussion, required readings, recorded music and written responses, students learn about the significant musical/non-musical contributions of Black gospel […]
This course examines and compares the responses of Africans and their descendants to the experiences of enslavement, racism, colonialism and imperialism. It begins with an examination of sub-Saharan African societies, the sources of enslaved populations transported to the Americas. Major debates around the Atlantic Slave Trade and comparative histories of enslavement in the Caribbean, Brazil, […]
This course begins in the seventeenth century with an examination of free and enslaved Africans in New France and the British colonies. It explores the experiences of Black Loyalists, enslaved and free persons of African descent in British North America and the “passengers” of the Underground Railroad and assesses the structures of African Canadian communities, […]
This course analyzes Black popular cultural forms and expressions in the Americas including music, film, television, style, contemporary visual arts, and as taken up in Black cultural theory. Understood as an analysis and response to the conditions of contemporary Black life, to decolonizing and civil rights struggles, and as a resistant and/or liberatory politics, Black […]
This course is concerned with the study of Black Canada, principally through literature, drama and film. Using the work of film makers Clement Virgo, Martine Chartrand, Dana Inkster, and others; writers Dionne Brand, Wayde Compton, Djanet Sears, and Charles Boyd, students consider how African Canadian imaginaries are rendered, how they work to construct a history […]
This course explores the form, function and content of spoken word, in terms of language, rhythm, historical developments, social-political contexts, as well as key artists of poetry, rap, dub, slam, lyricism and spoken word as live and direct purveyors of culture. Students explore the varied modes of oral/aural dissemination—including the stage, the page, audio recording, […]