This course considers the Black Atlantic as a socio-cultural economic space from the first arrival of Africans in the ‘New World,’ beginning around in the 15th century, through the rise of slavery in the Americas. During this class we will trace the origins and importance of the concept of the Black Atlantic within broad political contexts, paying special attention to the changing social, cultural and economic relations that shaped community formation among people of African descent and laid the foundations for modern political and economic orders. Once we have established those foundations, we will think about the Black Atlantic as a critical site of cultural production. Using the frame of the Atlantic to ask questions about the relationship between culture and political economy. We will explore a range of genres–film, fiction, music, as well as formal scholarship–so as to explore questions of evidence in the context of the real and the imaginary. Topics to be covered include African enslavement and settlement in Africa and the Americas; the development of transatlantic racial capitalism; variations in politics and culture between empires in the Atlantic world; creolization, plantation slavery and slave society; the politics and culture of the enslaved; the Haitian Revolution; slave emancipation; and contemporary black Atlantic politics and racial capitalism.

College Core Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 13 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2024)

CORE-UA 9534-000 (4806)
09/02/2024 – 12/05/2024 Mon
11:00 AM – 2:00 PM (Morning)
at NYU Paris (Global)
Instructed by

CORE-UA 9534-000 (2315)
08/29/2024 – 12/05/2024 Tue
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM (Early afternoon)
at NYU Accra (Global)
Instructed by Baku, Kofi

CORE-UA 9534-000 (2746)
at NYU London (Global)
Instructed by

CORE-UA 9534-000 (2516)
at NYU London (Global)
Instructed by

CORE-UA 9534-000 (2618)
08/29/2024 – 12/05/2024 Mon,Wed
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Early afternoon)
at NYU Washington DC (Global)
Instructed by