African-Latin in the Caribbean

Catalog description

This course analyzes the history of the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and its formative role in the broader Atlantic in order to understand how the struggles of Afro-descendants anticipated and informed questions of autonomy, emancipation, race, identity, and modernity. With an emphasis on the major islands of Hispaniola, Jamaica, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, we will begin with indigenous encounter with colonialism, delve into the expansion of slavery and antislavery movements, explore postemancipation and postcolonial society, and, lastly, end with encroaching neocolonialism and its 20th century reverberations.