Origins of the African Diaspora

Africa before the transatlantic slave trade was a site of complex political economies, extensive trade networks, sophisticated learning traditions, and diverse cosmologies that shaped who people were before displacement. This unit argues that understanding the diaspora requires understanding what was disrupted, alongside the disruption itself. The Sudanic empires, the Kingdom of Kongo, kinship systems, and ethnolinguistic diversity are the analytical foundation that makes every subsequent argument in this course possible. Cultural continuity across the diaspora only makes sense if you first understand what culture was being carried.

20–25% of exam