Slavery, Africa, and the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds

(Students enroll in 446A in Autumn and 446B in winter.) This graduate seminar investigates the lived experiences of Africans as enslaved persons in the Indian and Atlantic Ocean worlds from 14th through 20th centuries, and how these lived experiences contributed to social, political, cultural, and economic transformations in these regions. Themes to be explored include comparative processes and demographics of slave trading; gender, sexuality, sexual violence, marriage and biological reproduction; slave labor and economic production; religion, belief, and slavery; and processes of freedom and abolition. Regions to be covered include: the Swahili Coast, the Horn of Africa, Great Lakes and West and West-Central Africa; the Anglophone Caribbean and Brazil; and the Ottoman Empire. Course materials will include scholarly texts, novels, and visual materials. This quarter will focus on the analysis and grasp of content from secondary source materials so that students are equipped to conduct primary source research and write a seminar paper in the winter quarter.