Blackness in Latin America

Catalog description

A principal idea in anthropology regarding identities is that they are created. Individuals and groups construct identities using a variety of forms of representation made available in music, media and various forms of cultural production, and in response to sociohistorical and political happenings. Experiences, both personal and collective, are also fodder for identity construction. Given these bases for understanding identity, Blackness in Latin America will interpret the factors that have undergirded the formation of Black racial identities in different sites of the African Diaspora, and also how Black racial identities are used to redress political, social, and economic exclusion. We will focus on case studies in Latin America including Colombia, Honduras, Cuba, and Costa Rica. The course will additionally give attention to the Caribbean and its diaspora, including Trinidad, Jamaica, and also West Indians and Puerto Ricans in the U.S. Students will examine the ways in which racial identities are communicated looking in part at the transnational flows of information filtered through music, media, art, and literature that provide the “raw materials” for identity construction, and political basis for their mobilization.