This Hist. 340 course focuses on the dispersal of people of African origin across the world and on the
experiences of the African Diaspora in “host” countries. Through an examination of cultural sources,
including movies, art, literary texts, plays, and social media, the class focuses on cultures and identities
that have emerged from the Diaspora, and on the contributions of the African Diaspora to the modern
world. Choose four authors and/or songs, movies, etc., from list A, B, C, D and E (one from each list),
and analyze their views of the experience of members of the African Diaspora and of the African
people. In answering, you should emphasize how authors and cultural expressions discussed in this class
increase our understanding of several sub-topics, including the emergence of new cultures and identities
in a globalized world, feminism/gender, the hopes and challenges experienced by members of the African
Diaspora and by the African people.
List A: Paul Gilroy, “The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity”; Stuart Hall,
“Cultural Identity and Diaspora”; Stuart Hall, “Ethnicity: Identity and Difference.”
List B: Robin Kelley, “Kickin’ Reality, Kickin’ Ballistics. “Gangsta Rap” and Postindustrial Los
Angeles”; Tricia Rose, “Voices from the Margins. Rap Music and Contemporary Black Cultural
Production.”
List C: Joan Gross, David McMurray & Ted Swedenburg, “Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights:
Raï, Rap and Franco-Maghrebi Identities”; Elaine Sciolino, “Ban Religious Attire in French
Schools, French Panel Says.”
List D: Caroline Bledsoe, “The Politics of AIDS, Condoms, and Heterosexual Relations in
Africa: Recent Evidence from the Local Print Media”; Charles Ambler, “Popular Films and
Colonial Audiences: The Movies in Northern Rhodesia.”
List E: Movie: “6000 a Day: An Account of a Catastrophe Foretold” (by Philip Brooks); Ice
Cube: “Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It.”