Slavery / Diaspora in the Atlantic World

Studies of Slavery/Diaspora in the Atlantic World continue to be central to the field of African and African American Studies. Scholars have deepened our knowledge of the creation of an Atlantic economy based on the trade in slaves that linked Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Increasingly today, historians are focused on the effects of both domestic slavery and the Atlantic slave trade on African economies, societies, and cultures. In addition, recent studies of the institution of slavery in the Americas have been enriched by increased attention to the axes of gender and ethnicity.

Diaspora studies, furthermore, has shifted from its early attention to African retentions in the Americas to a focus on the multi-directional transnational movement of religious beliefs and practices, political movements, artistic products, as well as human beings as migrant workers, business people, and leisure tourists from the fifteenth century up to the present. In addition to demonstrating the dynamism of communities of African descent in the Americas, scholars are beginning to explore the integration of African communities in a global black cultural traffic.

Possible topics for this group to address are: African Americans in Africa, memories of slavery and the slave trade, and transnational blackness and popular culture.

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