Organizing historical ideas along continental and racial divides has a long tradition in Western thought. For five centuries, the idea of race has served as one master narrative for European encounters with it’s other. It has only been in the last two decades that the homogeneity of African, European and American cultures has been questioned and replaced by the idea of a “Black Atlantic”. These new approaches both complicated and enriched our understanding of modernism and postmodernism, of globalization and post-colonialism, of race, identity and culture.
The course will explore the history of “internationalisms” and cultural hybridity from the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade to present day Afrocentrism. It draws from a vast variety of original sources (poems, songs, novels, newspapers, pamphlets, etc.) to demonstrate the interrelatedness and entanglements of colonialism, racism, modernism, and globalization.

Course organization and evaluation
The course is open to students from all disciplines and does not require any preliminary knowledge on the topic. However, students are required to prepare at least one text per week from the reader provided in the first week of the semester.
In addition, each student has to complete the following tasks over the course of the semester: (1) write the minutes of a session (20%), (2) read and discuss an additional text from the reading list as part of a group work and give a 10-minute presentation in the classroom (20%), (3) write a 12–15-page paper on a chosen topic (60%).

Syllabus
Week 1: Introduction
Brainstorming: What is Africa? Who is an African? Philosophies of Science and History.
Discussion: Jorge Luis Borges: „On Exactitude in Science“;

Week 2: Factions and Fictions: The Ends of Historiography
Tropics of discourse; the limits of historiography; inventions of traditions
Requested reading:
Hayden White: „Interpretation and History“ (in: The Tropics of History)
Eric Hobsbawm, „Inventing Traditions“, in: Eric Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 1983, pp. 1-14.

Week 3: Columbiads across the Black Atlantic
The beginnings of the African diaspora in the Americas; the atlantic slave trade and American slavery; spirituals and narratives
Requested reading:
Werner Sollors & Maria Diedrich (eds.), The Black Columbiad, Introduction”, pp. 1-8; “Sea Change “, pp. 42-51.
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, pp. 1-40.

Week 4: Theories of Race
Mono- vs. polygenesis; biological determinism in the sciences of man; slavery and the emergence of race theories; “Noah’s curse“
Requested reading:
Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (chapter 8: The Search for Historical and Biological Origins, pp. 235-276)
Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America.
Stephen R. Haynes, Noah’s Curse (Introduction, pp. 2-19)

Week 5: Africa in Autobiographical Accounts:
Poems and narratives of Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equinao, and Louis Asa Asa; how are Africa and America represented in these accounts?
Requested reading:
Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

Week 6: Striving for Integration
Africa as a remote echo from the past; the first black newspapers in the US; African American political activism
Requested reading:
Freedom’s Journal, first editions, 1827-1828
Frederick Douglass: “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”
David Walker, David Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles

Week 7: Vanishing Point Haiti
The Haitian revolution and its reception in the US; race pride and Afro-American self esteem
Requested reading:
Holly, James Theodore, A Vindication of the Capacity of the Negro Race for Self-Government, and Civilized Progress
Thomas Reinhardt, 200 Years of Forgetting: Hushing up the Haitian Revolution, pp. 246-261.

Week 8: Emigration/Remigration?
The attempts of the American Colonization Society to establish settlements for free Blacks in West Africa; Back to Africa movements between the 1830s and 1930s; Martin R. Delany, Paul Cuffe and Marcus Garvey.
Requested reading:
Martin Robison Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States
Marcus Garvey, Philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey, or, Africa for the Africans (excerpts).

Week 9: African Antiquity
Egypt and the rest of the continent; “double consciousness“; Who were the “ancient Africans” and who is to be proud of them? E. W. Blyden, Garnet, W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X
Requested reading:
E. W. Blyden, Africa for the African (excerpts).
W.E.B. DuBois, The Negro (excerpts)

Week 10: “Back to the Roots“
Physical returns to Africa; opportunities and problems; pilgrimages to the motherland; roots vs. routes;
Requested reading:
Alex Haley, Roots. (excerpts)
James Clifford, Diasporas, pp. 244-277.

Week 11: Afrocentricity and Africa
Images and projections; what is „typically“ African? Is there more to Africa than Egypt?
Requested reading:
Molefi Kete Asante, The African American as African

Week 12: African Voices
Négritude, OAU/AU, Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Cheikh Anta Diop, Kwame Nkrumah
Concluding discussion.
Requested reading:
Aimé Césaire, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land, Bloodaxe Books Ltd 1997.

Bibliography
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Asante, Molefi Kete, The Afrocentric Idea. Philadelphia : Temple University Press 1987.
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Blyden, Edward Wilmot, „Africa for the African,”, in: The African Repository, vol. xlviii, No. 1, Ja¬nuar 1872, S. 14-20.
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Foner, Philip S. & Robert James Branham (Hg.), Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787-1900. Tuscaloosa & London : The University of Alabama Press 1998.
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Hobsbawm, Eric & Terence Ranger (Hg.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 1983.
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