Art of the African Diaspora

HART243-01

This course introduces students to the art of the African diaspora, defined here as transnational networks of forced and chosen dispersal of people of African descent. By definition, diaspora rejects the category of the nation-state and accompanying nationalisms. Instead, we take mobility, migration, and flux across borders as a starting point for understanding the creativity of African-descended peoples. We will explore how art/aesthetics stemming from primarily West and Central Africa shifted into new forms of resistance, survival, collective memory, improvisation, and reinvention under slavery, colonialism, and white supremacy. The “global” in the title emphasizes the reach of the African diaspora beyond the Atlantic World (the primary space of diasporic displacement). We look at the U.S., the Caribbean, Brazil, Europe, Japan, and the Philippines, and also explore Africa itself as part of the diaspora. Art under consideration includes craft and decorative arts (ceramics, wood carving, quiltmaking); objects of spiritual and ancestral ritual; performance; painting and sculpture inside and outside of white institutions; installation, collage, assemblage, and mixed-media work.