“Festival of Our Lady of the Rosary, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, ca. 1770s,” from “The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas” [Click]

Duke University students are writing the “Black Atlantic” online courtesy of a course taught by Ian Baucom and Laurent DuBois.

From the syllabus:

“This seminar, open to advanced undergraduate students and graduate students in all disciplines, explores the history and literature of what has come to be known as “The Black Atlantic.” Our goal will be to think through the histories of slavery and emancipation in this Atlantic world and the way they have shaped our politics and culture. Our reading will range widely, including works of history and theory as well as poetry and novels. But we will also explore how visual art, music, and various types of performance condense, transmit, and examine this history. Students in the class will be invited to participate in the “Digital Black Atlantic Project,” a collaboration between Duke, Columbia, and Harvard, which will be exploring innovative ways to use Digital Media to showcase and present scholarship, literature, and artistic production around the theme of the Black Atlantic.”

Students blog reflections over the course of the semester. Posts to date include:

Alisha Hines – Jay Z’s Oceans: Cultural Production, Historical Imaginaries, and Collective Identity

Sasha Panaram – “Ship Ahoy”: The Sounds of Slavery

David Romine – Memorials, Memory, and History in the Black Atlantic

Read more on the course, explore the site, and find the syllabus here: About « The Black Atlantic.