INQ-271 | American Souths

Full Title: American Souths

Topic Description:

In the U.S. we tend to think of “the South” in terms of the former Confederacy, the “slave states” whose secession set off the Civil War. So we recognize the forced labor plantation system and African diasporic presences as a common, if not defining part of its heritage. But mainstream narratives of the South seldom see beyond our national coastlines to recognize the common histories, shared stories, buried influences across the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico to those other Americas. Why are we so little educated about these commonalities? How have they dropped out of “American” consciousness? This course seeks out those forgotten and erased connections that link African diasporic, indigenous, and “white” Southerners through five centuries of cultural crossing.

Counts as Global? No

Topic Approved: November 2016