This course will introduce students to the political histories of African and Afro-Descendant communities from the period after World War II until the present. Common to these communities has been their assimilation into nation-states and the nation-state system, struggles for citizenship and soveriegnty, and internal debates and fissures about their communities' composition and authneticity, and the respective roles. Students will become familiar with the histories of Pan-Africanism, the concept of the African disapora, and forms of transnational black politics. In addition to gaining familiarity with the empirics of African and Afro-descendant communities engaged in local, national, and transnational forms of politics, students will also be introduced to scholarship in the social sciences and history on concepts of politics and the political, social movements, nationalism, and citizenship.
Michael Hanchard
Professor of Africana Studies
Michael Hanchard is a Professor of Africana Studies. A scholar of comparative politics specializing in nationalism, social movements, racial hierarachy, and citizenship. Hanchard taught previously ay Northwestern University, where he was a professor of political science and African American studies as well as director of the school's institute for Diasporic Studies. His books include Orpheus and Power: Afro-Brazilian Social Movements in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, 1945-1988 (1994) and Party/Politics: Horizons in Black Political Thought (2006). Hanchard has done fieldwork in Brazil, the United Kingdom, Cuba, Colombia, Ghana, Italy, and Jamaica, and has been the recipient of grants from the Ford, MacArthur, and Mellon foundations as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Hanchard holds a BA in International Relations from Tufts University, an MA from the New School for Social Research, and a political science Ph.D. from Princeton University.