This course aims to familiarize students with major concepts and theories related to the study of the African Diaspora primarily, though not exclusively, in the Americas (North, South, and Central). This course links, compares, and contextualizes the historical experiences of African descendants in the U.S., the Caribbean, South America, and Africa within global processes of enslavement, colonialism, and systematic oppression. The course treats the African Diaspora as 1) historical phenomenon 2) a current condition of social, economic, and political life and 3) a way of imagining the future. We will explore theories of slavery, race, and capitalism; black resistance; post-emancipation economies and current-day neoliberalism; theories of gender; environmental justice in the African Diaspora; and theories of the black digital sphere.

In this interview, Ambassador Leslie Alexander looks back on his lengthy Foreign Service career. He began his career in Guyana in the 1970s and went on to serve in countries ranging from Poland to Brazil to Mauritius before becoming Ambassador to Mauritius, Ecuador, and Haiti. He also extensively discusses the evolution of Haiti’s political situation beginning in the years after the ouster of the dictator Baby Doc.

Ambassador Theodore R. Britton remembers his years as the Ambassador to Barbados and Grenada in the years after they gained independence. He also served as the U.S Special Representative to a number of Caribbean states including St. Lucia and St. Vincent. He reflects on his experiences as an African-American ambassador.

Drawing upon recent historical scholarship, we have framed our lessons around encounters rather than contacts. Framing these events (i.e., the Taino encounter with Columbus, etc.) as encounters instead of first contacts reflects a more comprehensive and complete understanding of what actually happened. What follows is a rationale for why we have framed our lessons this way; please use this to shape discussions with your students about the important differences between encounters and contacts.

This interactive, designed and built by Slate’s Andrew Kahn, gives you a sense of the scale of the trans-Atlantic slave trade across time, as well as the flow of transport and eventual destinations. The dots—which represent individual slave ships—also correspond to the size of each voyage. The larger the dot, the more enslaved people on board. And if you pause the map and click on a dot, you’ll learn about the ship’s flag—was it British? Portuguese? French?—its origin point, its destination, and its history in the slave trade. The interactive animates more than 20,000 voyages cataloged in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. (We excluded voyages for which there is incomplete or vague information in the database.) The graph at the bottom accumulates statistics based on the raw data used in the interactive and, again, only represents a portion of the actual slave trade—about one-half of the number of enslaved Africans who actually were transported away from the continent.

Students will be guided in acquisition of connections of chattel property in Barbados to other forms of similar property in the US. Additionally, students will be asked to research other architectural and historical connections. 

Through this lesson, students will be able to identify how the formal elements of various documents produce representations of the Caribbean as a complex and layered space impacted by slavery, industry, agriculture, and colonial and touristic desire. They will be able to describe the differences between textual and visual representations of landscape and articulate how form impacts content. Building on an understanding of the multiplicity of ways the same space can be represented, they will also be able to critically interrogate the rhetoric of representative media.

Most historians agree that the world has never come closer to nuclear war than it did during a thirteen-day period in October 1962, after the revelation that the Soviet Union had stationed several medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. This lesson will examine how this crisis developed, how the Kennedy administration chose to respond, and how the situation was ultimately resolved.

We live in a world where the concept of responsibility has taken a back seat to finger pointing and playing the blame game. History provides us with an incredible tapestry to explore when, where and how people have skirted being accountable. This lesson, while focusing on the Transatlantic Slave Trade, will transcend the time and reinforce the fundamental importance of taking responsibility for your actions.

In this lesson, students will explore how the prevalence of British surnames within the United States and Caribbean reveal the enduring cultural legacy of the British Empire as well as inform us about similarities and difference in the patterns of migration, economic structures, and legacies of slavery in these two distinct areas of British settlement.

The purpose of this lesson is to teach the concept of national identity through symbolism that reflects the geography of a specific place.  Students will gain an understanding of the culture of Barbados through analyzing images of national symbols then compare the types of symbols to that of the United States.  They will evaluate how the nations developed their national identity and analyze changes and continuities since independence.

This lesson focuses on George Washington’s 1751-1752 voyage to Barbados. Students will work in small groups to analyze a variety of primary and secondary sources for the purpose of understanding what Washington experienced and how that may have impacted his future as a businessman, statesman, and general. 

This lesson focuses on the gullies of Barbados, because gullies offer a unique opportunity to consider environmental conservation in the face of historical activities. Though most of Barbados was clear-cut during the colonial era, gullies have remained because of their karst topography, making them too wet and too rocky for sugar cane production. Despite their small size, gullies house many of the island’s native plants and animals. The gullies of Barbados are an interesting discussion in the interdisciplinary nature of history and the environment, making this lesson accessible to both social studies and science teachers. In this lesson, the students consider the connections between history and the environment, hear about Barbados and gullies, discuss a plant that is being destroyed by human activities, and then write about the conservation of gullies through a RAFT activity.

In this assignment, students will use primary and secondary sources, including images, to study the use and framing of violence by Black Revolutionaries. The goal of this assignment is to have students to use the images and documents to consider how race and other factors shape Western views on Black Revolutionaries.

On April 11, 1898, two months after the battleship U.S.S. Maine was destroyed by an explosion in Havana harbor, President McKinley sent a message to Congress requesting authority to use the U.S. armed forces to end a brutal civil war in the Spanish colony of Cuba. This lesson plan, through the use of primary sources and a WebQuest Interactive, will focus on the causes of the war and the political debate in the United States over the advisability of intervening militarily in the affairs of countries.

In the state of Virginia, students are often taught that slavery is a fairly cut and dry story. Slavery was a major economic force in the South, while it played little role in the North. The impression is often given that those in the North held the moral high ground in regards to slavery, and that the majority of people in the South were slave owners. The truth is far murkier and as a result, far more interesting. By the time students are in middle and/or high school they should be encouraged to ask hard questions of their teachers. More importantly, students should be taught the skills to find the answers to their hard questions by interrogating the historical record.This activity will leave students with more questions than answers, but it will also give them the skills they need to find the answers to those questions.

When we think of slavery in the Americas, most of us generally think of people from Africa and their descendants who were enslaved and transported across the Atlantic to provide labor for the plantation economies of the New World. But recently, historians have begun to reassess the significance of other forms of slavery in the Americas—specifically the enslavement of millions of indigenous people in the Caribbean and beyond. Fellow Rebecca Goetz, associate professor of history at New York University, is working to recover the history of indigenous slavery as it was practiced by competing colonial powers in the Caribbean and exploring the relationship between the enslavement of native peoples and the development of chattel slavery across the Western Hemisphere.
In this podcast, Goetz problematizes predominant narratives about slavery in the Caribbean, especially those that emphasize the complete disappearance of native peoples. Looking at both larger and smaller islands in the region, her work shows us that many sites (such as Cubaqua or Antigua) were in fact not at all peripheral to this history between the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Goetz discusses the challenges of her historical research—notably, a dearth of archival resources—as well as its importance in challenging monolithic conceptions of the history of enslavement and European settler colonialism.

To examine how fish have influenced the culture and economy of Barbados, students will first research how fish are represented in Barbadian culture and present their findings in a Google presentation.  Second, students will utilize charts and interactive graphs to discuss in groups how patters of food consumption and production have changed over time. Finally, students will select an article to read about how Sargassum seaweed outbreaks threaten fishing and related industries in Barbados.  They will create a web of their findings.

In this lesson, students will explore the 1816 slave revolt in Barbados by analyzing primary source documents, mapping the slave revolt, and creating an updated account of the revolt.  The lesson will focus on the intertwining concepts of labor, mercantilism, and colonialism and ask students to identify the differing perspectives of white and black Barbadians during the colonial era.

In this lesson, students will explore how the prevalence of British surnames within the United States and Caribbean reveal the enduring cultural legacy of the British Empire as well as inform us about similarities and difference in the patterns of migration, economic structures, and legacies of slavery in these two distinct areas of British settlement.