The African Americas
Julie McGee, Persephone Braham, Colette Gaiter,
An interdisciplinary program on the African Diaspora in the Americas.
The African Americas project seeks to convey the magnitude, diversity, and impact of the African Diaspora in the Americas. In particular, the program will explore the deep and lasting connections between Latin America, the Caribbean, and black artists, intellectuals, and institutions in the United States. The program is deeply interdisciplinary, bringing together artists, musicians, and humanities scholars in music, art, art history, literature, anthropology, and history.The program is accompanied by two semester-long undergraduate seminars, "Sugar, Salsa and Santera," taught by Persephone Braham in Foreign Languages/Latin American & Iberian Studies, and "Representations of Slavery in the Americas," taught by Pier Gabrielle Foreman. The symposium is held in conjunction with an exhibition by Jamaican-American artist Keith Morrison, "The Middle Passage" on view from September-December 2011 in Mechanical Hall, the home of the Paul R. Jones Collection of African American Art. The symposium also coincides with: Latino Heritage Month; the 40th anniversary of the Black American Studies program, newly designated a department; and the 35th anniversary of the Center for Black Culture.The African Americas Project is sponsored by the Delaware Humanities Forum, the Paul R. Jones Initiative, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center, Latin American & Iberian Studies, Area Studies, the College of Arts & Sciences, the Departments of Anthropology, Art History, Art, Black American Studies, Foreign Languages & Literatures, History, Music, and Women’s Studies, and the Institute for Global Studies.