AFR 251
Afro-Diasporic Crossroads: Translating and (Re)Imagining Black Experiences
Last Offered Spring 2020
Division II
This course is not offered in the current catalog or this is a previous listing for a current course.

For many centuries Black subjects have forged multiple forms/processes/modes of resistance, yielded in particular by the brutal forced migration of African men and women in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Afro-Diasporic subjects utilized, evoked, and preserved their cultural and historical/intellectual legacies, healing practices/sacred traditions – and (re)crafted the African Diaspora. This course will examine the crucial roles played by the politics of language and translation in Afro-Diasporic dispersions, intersections, and (re)connections. We will explore the concept of translation as reparation and the ethics of translation, while interrogating how language may be utilized as an effective tool for political control and conversely, a powerful means for Black Liberation. Grounded on Black Feminist Theory, we will engage with the often-overlooked significance of embodied Black knowledge in translation theories within and beyond the boundaries of written texts across African Diasporic settings. Particular attention will be placed on a critical analysis of the ways through which Black popular cultures travels across African Diasporic settings. Authors we shall explore in the seminar include Angela Y. Davis, Patricia Hill Collins, Rachel Harding, Paul Bandia, Brent Edwards, Omise’eke Tinsley, Marsha J. Hamilton and Eleanor S. Block.