Cultural Memory and Resistance

(4 Credits)

As the Atlantic slave trade forcibly dispersed Africans throughout Europe and the Americas over four centuries, cultural memory became a key component of survival for those who journeyed through the Middle Passage. How did languages incorporate modes of expression - creole, patois, pidgin - that connected with scarce-remembered cosmologies and ways of being to allow for resistance to systems of oppression? And how was the traditional music of African peoples reconstructed with new instruments and inflections during this process? We will examine texts ranging from Plato, the Book of Exodus, Ibn Battuta, The Tale of Sundiata, early African slave narratives; the music of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone; works by Amiri Baraka, Aimé Césaire, Edouard Glissant, Wole Soyinka, Mos Def, Common, Nubian Sisters, Saul Williams, Talib Kweli, Tupac Shakur; and films such as Sugar Cane Alley, La Haine, Illmatic, and Belle to understand better some key components of cultural memory and resistance.