Creole Tradition

4 credits · Undergraduate

This course explores vernacular art, music, religion, and folklore from the overlapping regions of the Gulf of Mexico and Greater Caribbean. Students will learn about syncretic traditions that were forged under colonialism and the slave trade in places including Cuba, Haiti, and Louisiana. Students will engage modes of expression ranging from décima poetry to carnical masking, from funeral rituals to blues improvisation, with an eye to understanding how creole traditions are sustained through networks of migration, exchange, and struggle.