UMass Boston

Course Overview

Description

For anthropology and other disciplines, the concept of diaspora helps us understand the role of forced and voluntary dispersal of African people in terms of experience, interpretation, and activism. In this course, the arts are our lens onto the diverse experiences of people of African descent, including how Black people live their histories of movement and also have responded to and resisted racial oppression as they have been rooted and routed across space and time. The course examines different forms of art (primarily visual and performing arts), what they mean to artists producing them, how they are categorized in institutions and communities, and how they illuminate ways of anchoring community and identity to place. The course takes us comparatively across global, national, and local (Boston) spaces in order to illuminate how people(s) use arts to express aesthetic, moral, spiritual, and philosophical dimensions of what it means to be human. The overall approach is drawn from Anthropology - the science of the study of culture - but we also draw from analyses in history, art history, activism, and community development/empowerment. Geographic areas covered include Africa, North America, and the Caribbean.