Theories of Africana Thought: Literary and Expressive Cultures

A preoccupation of Africana Studies involves the central, highly contested role of the notion of what constitutes black culture in the modern world. To what degree can we claim aesthetic and other distinctions between black cultures in the Diaspora and other western cultural practices and expressive forms? What role did enslavement, forced migration and segregation play in shaping Africana culture in the modern west? These cultural debates play a central role in literary, musical, philosophical, aesthetic, historical and sociological analyses of the culture of people of African descent frame this graduate course.