HIST136 PO

This class traces how the anthropological study of African-descended people in the Americas shifted from scientific racism and notions of "savagery" to elevating "New World Africans" as exemplars of creolization, transculturation, acculturation, syncretism, and hybridity. The treatment of African-descended peoples as a historical community worthy of social scientific analysis set the stage for the development of Black Studies, African Studies, and African Diasporic Studies throughout the twentieth century. The second part of the class examines contemporary scholarship in the socio-cultural anthropology of African-descended communities, religious traditions, and musical genres