Black Diaspora(s) Old and New

What connects Black people in Brazil and Kenya? Germany and Ghana? Australia and South Africa? In this course, we will explore the slippery concept of diaspora and the varied meanings it has taken in the Black/African context. As we travel the world, via texts by Yaa Gyasi, Ama Ata Aidoo, Yvonne Owuor, and Cecile Emeke, from the 19th-century Cape Coast to our current moment, we will examine different layers, trajectories, and forms of dispersal and return. Drawing on literary scholar Cajetan Iheka's framework of "Old" and "New" diasporas ("old" referring to the transatlantic slave trade and "new" referring to postcolonial and neocolonial migrations), we will also situate our readings in relation to major arguments in Black Diaspora Studies and their evolution since the field's inception in the late 1980s and 1990s in the work of such theorists as Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall. Throughout the course we will ask: How does one define diaspora? What makes movement diasporic? And who gets to decide? (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact farrahm@stanford.edu.)