ASRC 6511: African Diaspora Texts and Theroies: Overview

Bringing together the key essays that have constituted this field since its inception and that point the way toward its future, Theorizing Diaspora is a central resource for understanding diaspora as an emergent and contested theoretical space. Anthologizes the most influential and critically received essays that have shaped the trajectory of diaspora studies. Offers classic statements that have defined the field by scholars including Appadurai, Gilroy, Radhakrishnan, and Hall. Presents divergent strains of multiple diasporas, including Chinese, Black African, Jewish, South Asian, Latin American, and Caribbean. Reflects the modalities and methodologies of scholars across the humanities and social sciences. Includes a postscript on diaspora in cyberspace and an extensive bibliography.

Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora collects selected essays from the First and Second African Diaspora Institutes and other essays. This revised second edition, with broader geographical scope than the first edition, places greater emphasis on historical and sociopolitical analysis. New essays that examine the African experience and slavery in the Mediterranean, the black experience in Brazil, African religious retentions in Latin American countries, and essays by women that focus on the experience and contributions of African women of the diaspora address significant areas omitted in the first volume.

The purpose of this book is to contribute to the debate between those who believe that the African origin of blacks in western society is central to their identity and those who deny that proposition. How did Africans manage to create a viable life for themselves after they got here? How were they able to negotiate the social, political, cultural, and other space they encountered?

Decolonizing the Academy asserts that the academy is perhaps the most colonized space. At the same time the academy is a place of knowledge and transformation. As we move into the 21st century it is becoming clear that the academy is one of the primary sites for the production and reproduction of ideas that serve the interests of colonising powers. This collection of essays argues the possibility of re-engaging the decolonizing process at the level of knowledge and asserts that this is an ongoing project worthy of being undertaken in a variety of fields.

Afrocentrism. Eurocentrism. Caribbean Studies. British Studies. To the forces of cultural nationalism hunkered down in their camps, this bold hook sounds a liberating call. There is, Paul Gilroy tells us, a culture that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, or British, but all of these at once, a Black Atlantic culture whose themes and techniques transcend ethnicity and nationality to produce something new and, until now, unremarked. Challenging the practices and assumptions of cultural studies, The Black Atlantic also complicates and enriches our understanding of modernism. Debates about postmodernism have cast an unfashionable pall over questions of historical periodization. Gilroy bucks this trend by arguing that the development of Black culture in the Americas arid Europe is a historical experience which can be called modern for a number of clear and specific reasons.