230170 Introduction to Inter-American Studies: Africa in the Americas (S) (WiSe 2015/2016)

This introductory course to Inter-American studies critically engages the American Hemisphere which is also the object of study of Americanists in the fields of American, New American, Latin American, Hemispheric studies but, some may argue, not necessarily the subject matter of Americanists working in the field of American American studies! From a historical perspective, we will inevitably address rhetorical issues, or what Bell Chevigny and Gari Laguardia have called continental “rhetorical malpractice,” and attempt to disentangle/grasp the unique and/or not so unique quality of Americanness of this territory. Some of the questions leading our discussions will be: What is in the name America? Who is truly or is not truly American in the Americas? Who establishes and/or confers the right to be American to the inhabitants of the American continent/the Americas?

Along these lines, we are reminded that African and African-descent people played a central role in building Spanish, Portuguese, and British empires and their American colonies from the 1500s through the 1800s. Kathryn Joy McKnight and Leo J. Garofalo write, “They sailed ships, built infrastructure, produced crops and material goods, provided services, shaped societies, and molded cultural attitudes, beliefs, and expressions; yet their lives have been largely barred from the published record.” Similarly, despite their significant historical contributions to global history and economy, studies of the people of African descent in the Americas have largely focused on the study of cultural survival as victims of economic and social forces while often forgetting that Africans and their descendants have intellectually and actively shaped their social and material worlds. Where do Blacks fit into the imagined past of the Americas? Without obscuring the reality of slavery and its legacy, where do Blacks fit into the contemporary American Hemisphere, where the structural racism prevalent throughout the continent still erases, discounts, or deems Black history unimportant? Where is the future of these Americans in the Americas? These are some of the questions that this introductory course to Inter-American Studies seeks to explore.