Anthropology 316 - Topic: the Modern Atlantic

'This seminar explores the formation of the 'modern' or 'black' South Atlantic through an eclectic variety of historical and ethnographic texts. We will read early European travelogues of cannibalism and savagery in the New World, as well as accounts of Muslim slave revolts in Brazil, Cuban tobacco and sugar, the Haitian Revolutions obscured place in history, and a murder mystery. While themes of forced labor, commodity production, and imperial power shape ideas of an Atlantic World, the course also examines how history itself is made and orients us toward a concept of culture not as fixed in time or place but as dynamic and always contentious.'

Prereq: 8 credits from the Anthropology department.