What is “blackness” and how have understandings of this concept shaped the lives of Europeans of all shades from the Middle Ages to the present-day?

In this module we will examine the development of an African diaspora in Europe and the coincident development of European ideas about blackness and whiteness. We will explore the transnational connections binding black communities in Europe, while also paying due attention to the local specificities that created varied experiences and identities across the continent. We will survey the contexts that brought Africans and their descendants to Europe, and we will consider the diverse ways in which peoples of African descent have shaped and been shaped by societies that variously tolerated them, rejected them, or accepted them on specific terms. Within the broad and overlapping contexts of slavery and emancipation, imperialism, Americanization, globalization, and multiculturalism we will explore politics and protest, nationalism and internationalism, art and literature, jazz and hip-hop. And we will focus on such themes as race, gender, power, subjectivity, and community-building in various state contexts.

In sum, the module will complicate the idea of a single black experience while also providing an appreciation for the economic, political, social, and cultural developments that have bound black communities. In so doing, we will come to understand the production and maintenance of a “diaspora” as a continual, complex, and contested process and, at the same time, open up new perspectives on what constitutes “European” history.

Recommended reading:

In preparation for this module, please choose from these core texts: 

Aitken and Rosenhaft (eds.), Africa in Europe: Studies in Transnational Practice in the Long Twentieth Century (2013);
 Back and Solomos (eds.), Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader (2000);
 Bindman and Gates (eds.), The Image of the Black in Western Art, 5 vols. (2010-2014);
 Davies (ed.), Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, 3 vols. (2008);
 Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993);
 Manning, The African Diaspora: A History through Culture (2010);
 Martone (ed.), Encyclopedia of Blacks in European History and Culture (2009);
 Otele, African Europeans: An Untold History (2020);
 Pitts, Afropean: Notes from Black Europe (2019);
 Wright, Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora (2003);