“If you should penetrate the campus of an American Ivy League college and, challenging a Senior, ask what, in his opinion was the influence of Africa on the French Revolution, he would answer in surprise if not pity, “None.” If, after due apology, you ventured to approach his teacher of “historiography,” provided such sacrilege were possible, you would be told that between African slavery in America and the greatest revolution of Europe, there was of course some connection, since both took place on the same earth; but nothing casual, nothing of real importance, since Africans have no history.”
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro in the French Revolution, 1965
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| Three Kings Day Festival, Havana, Cuba, ca. 1850 |
The Program in African American and Diaspora Studies (PAADS) is committed to the pursuit of knowledge, research, and reform. To that end, we offer an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and comparative curriculum of study of the histories, literatures, music, visual cultures, and politics of people of African descent around the world. PAADS focuses on several geographic areas: Africa, the Americas (North & Latin America), and the Caribbean. The Program examines equally the interactions of those diverse geographic areas, whose African-descended multiracial and multicultural inhabitants makeup the African diaspora, with Europe. The program recognizes as well that there is a growing population of blacks dispersed throughout Europe, that is, Black Europeans; hence we are equally committed to exploring intellectually Black Europe and the particularities of the Black European experience.
While developing students' analytical and critical thinking skills through the exploration of the Atlantic World, African American and Diaspora Studies as a discipline contributes to broader debates about race, religion, gender, culture, class, politics, sexuality, and color. As an intellectual endeavor, the Program in African American and Diaspora Studies also advances research and scholarship within the growing field of African diaspora studies via faculty publications and Smoke, Lilies & Jade, our lecture, fora, and symposia series.
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