Howard University H389 Readings in African Diaspora: Slavery Spring 2016 T 5:10-7:30 Instructor: Dr
Howard University H389 Readings in African Diaspora: Slavery Spring 2016 T 5:10-7:30 Instructor: Dr. Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie
Read, Read, Read. Albert Bushnell Hart to Ph.D student W.E.B. Du Bois, 1890s.
Scope: This graduate course introduces students to some major readings in slave studies with a focus on Africans and their descendants. It is not comprehensive. Instead, it focuses on some key debates and issues concerning the origins and nature of slavery in Africa, the extent and experiences of transoceanic slave trading, enslaved Africans’ culture in the Americas, and the gendered dimensions of enslavement. You are expected familiarize yourself with the classic arguments: Herskovits-Frazier-Price/Mintz on Africanisms v. acculturation; Curtin-Inikori on slave numbers; the “Williams thesis” on British slave trade abolition, and so forth.
Requirements: (1) Weekly reading and regular participation in class discussion. There is a lot to read, usually two books weekly. Graduates are expected to navigate their way through copious amounts methodically. One course objective is to teach graduates how to organize a mass of written material in preparation for discussion and future research projects. Graduates can access the readings at campus libraries, through public libraries especially the Library of Congress, as well as electronically (Amazon, Half-Price Books, etc.) (2) Four commentary papers. Graduates are expected to write a five-page response paper for each of the four sections in the course. These should not be book reviews but thoughtful reaction papers on one of the weekly topics. What is interesting, persuasive, contradictory, strange etc., about writings on the topic? Each paper is due at the conclusion of each of the four sections. At the end of the course, students should have produced written four commentaries on the four sections. (3) Leadership of one weekly meeting. You are free to lead class anyway you would like. There are only two rules. (A) The discussion can be as narrow or as broad as you like as long as it pertains to the topic. (B) It should not be tedious! (4) A final ten-page review paper. It must be on either a topic or debate that is not on the syllabus.
Meetings:
W1. (Jan 12) Introduction
I: African Slavery
W2. (Jan. 19 ) Kinship or Commodification? Suzanne Miers & Igor Kopytoff, eds, Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, 1977); Claude Meillassoux, review of Slavery in Africa, African Economic History, No. 5 (Spring 1978), 37-41; Claude Meillassoux, The Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold (Chicago, 1991)
W3. (Jan. 26) Transformation or Business as Usual? Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (Oxford, 1970); Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge, 1983); John Thorton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (Cambridge, 1992)
W4. (Feb. 2) Christian Slaves Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, The Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500–1800 (Palgrave 2003); The Narrative of Robert Adams, A Barbary Captive (1816; Cambridge, 2005)
W5. (Feb. 9) European or African Control? Boubacar Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade (1988; Cambridge 1998); Robin Law, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving ‘Port’ 1727-1892 (Ohio, 2004); Joseph E. Inikori, “The Struggle against the Transatlantic Slave Trade: The Role of the State,” in Sylviane A. Diouf, ed., Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies (Ohio, 2003)
W6. (Feb. 16) “Now, what I want is, Facts.” Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (Emory, 2007); David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale, 2010); Gregory E. O’Malley, Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1807 (Chapel Hill, 2014)
W7. (Feb. 23) Experiences Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Harvard 2008); Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (Viking 2007)
W8. (Mar. 1) Slave Ship Revolts Eric R. Taylor, If We Must Die: Shipboard Insurrections in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Baton Rouge, 2009); Marcus Rediker, The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom (Viking 2012); David Richardson, “”Shipboard Revolts, African Authority, and the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” in Diouf, ed., Fighting the Slave Trade
III: Africanisms in Americas
W9. (Mar. 8) Black Rice? Judith A. Carney, The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Harvard, 2001); David Eltis, Philip Morgan, and David Richardson, “Agency and Diaspora in Atlantic History: Reassessing the African Contribution to Rice Cultivation in the Americas,” The American Historical Review Vol. 112, No. 5 (December 2007).
W10. (Mar. 22) Revelation or Cosmology? John Thorton, Africa and Africans; James Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770 (Chapel Hill, 2003)
W11. (Mar. 29) Ethnicities Gwendolyn Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links (Chapel Hill, 2005); Kwasi Konadu, The Akan Diaspora in the Americas (Oxford 2010)
IV: Gender Relations
W12. (Apr. 5) Reproduction Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Penn 2004); Laird W. Bergad, The Comparative Histories of Slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States (Cambridge, 2007), chap. 4; R. A. McGuire & P. R. P. Coelho, Parasites, Pathogens, and Progress: Diseases and Economic Development (MIT 2011), chap. 5 & 6.
W13. (Apr. 12) Were Slave Soldiers Patriots? C. L. Brown & P. Morgan, Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern Age (Yale 2006); J. R. Kerr-Ritchie, “Slave Soldiers,” in Freedom’s Seekers (LSUP 2014); Africa’s Sons Under Arms, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/research/projects/asua
W14. (Ap. 19) Islamic Slavery’s Expansion Robert Harris, Bernard K. Freamon, David W. Blight, eds. Indian Ocean Slavery in the Age of Abolition (Yale 2013)