Foundations of Global Black Diaspora Studies I: Diaspora, Literature, Cosmopolitanism

While centring the Black experience, this course will also take a comparative view of Diaspora Studies to establish modes of confluence and difference between the Black diaspora and other worldwide diasporas. Issues to be discussed will include questions of definition and nomenclature. What is a diaspora and what are its essential features? What are the differences between victim diasporas, labor diasporas, trade diasporas, and ethno-political diasporas? What is the relationship between place and belonging, between territory and memory? How have the experiences of migration and dislocation challenged the modern assumption that the nation-state should be the limit of identification? What effect has the emergence of new communications media had upon the coherence of cultural and political boundaries? How do these questions relate to ideas about cosmopolitanism and its relation to ethical universalism? All of these questions and many more form the subject matter of Global Black Diaspora Studies. The second part of this introductory course will continue to examine the historical and contemporary movements of peoples and the complex issues of identity and experience to which these processes give rise, as well as the creative possibilities that flow from movement and being moved.This course will meet in Building 80.