The Politics of Remembrance: Black Women

This course will explore the vibrant history of activism and social organizing among African diasporic women in the Americas. It will begin by introducing essential concepts in Gender and African Diaspora history. Then, the course will discuss vignettes of African-descended women’s organizing during slavery in different areas of the Americas. Thus, it explores methods ranging from cultural and intellectual production to participation in legal culture, the cultural arts and dress, religious, spiritual, military warfare, and other forms of intersectional political activism. The course will also explore critical aspects of hemispheric American slavery and racial identity from a transnational, local, and regional perspective. After quickly reviewing the transatlantic slave trade, the course will reflect on how Black women intellectuals have organized to discuss the history and memory of slavery from the period through emancipation and the interwar period up until contemporary times. The second half of the course will reflect on how slavery has been remembered in the transatlantic world.