Social Science Research Council

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL
DISSERTATION PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT FELLOWSHIP

BLACK ATLANTIC STUDIES
SPRING 2007 WORKSHOP AGENDA

Research Director: Andrew Apter
Research Director: Percy C. Hintzen

Radisson Hotel Denver Stapleton Plaza
Thursday, May 17 – Sunday, May 20, 2007

This is the first of two workshops designed to help students prepare cogent and fundable dissertation proposals in their chosen field.  The two goals of the first workshop are 1) to map the research field with respect to contributing disciplines, methods, sources, and area knowledge; and 2) to help prepare fellows for their pre-dissertation summer research.  (The goal of the second workshop will be to focus on the mechanics and methods of writing a dissertation proposal).  The two goals stand in close relation to each other: through a sustained and structured discussion of student proposals and their component parts, we hope to contribute to the mapping of the research field itself. 

The Field of Black Atlantic Studies

As an interdisciplinary research field, Black Atlantic Studies combines analytic and interpretive methods ranging from demographic approaches to new slave trade databases to performance-centered phenomenological approaches to gender, race and memory.  Ideologies of blackness and Africanity can be pursued in literary texts and historical archives, musical genres and modes of cultural production, and in a variety of political and nationalist projects.  Multimedia documents that combine audiovisual clips and spatial dynamics are approached as critical research tools, methods of collecting and organizing data, and as innovative forms of scholarly presentation.  Some projects will involve intensive fieldwork on festival complexes and performance genres in bounded sites, others will track the circulation of expressive cultural forms between coasts and hinterlands, within Atlantic regions, and across socially differentiated regimes of value.  The challenges of linking the localities of “place” to the translocal dimensions of Black Atlantic history and culture will establish a unifying methodological theme of our workshop sessions. 

Workshop Readings and Resources:
Research Field resources have been placed on the secure DPDF web portal. 

Workshop Assignments

May 11^th Due on the DPDF Web Portal:  A 6 page revised proposal/research statement based on what was submitted with the DPDF application. Fellows should be prepared to present, comment upon and evaluate the proposal they submit during one of the workshop sessions. Emphasis will be on revising and fine-tuning sustainable research strategies for summer research.  The revised proposal should specify the conceptual, theoretical, and analytical focus of the project, deal with issues of methodology and epistemological concerns, and discuss scholarly literature with which it is engaged.

It should also contain a bibliography.  You may want to include questions about your research that you would like addressed, doubts, hesitations, and requests for advice. A comprehensive bibliography should be attached. 

May 11^th:  You will be assigned one of the revised proposals/research statements prepared by another member of the group for presentation and critical discussion during the workshop. The assignment will be sent by email.  The entire list of assigned presentations will be posted on the secure DPDF web portal.

May 16^th  Due on the Secure DPDF Web Portal: Submission of one page presentation and critical discussion of the one or two scholarly texts that have particularly influenced your research.

May 16^th Due on the Secure DPDF Web Portal: In view of the description of the field provided above, prepare and submit a one-page exegesis on the relationship of your work to Black Atlantic Studies (one paragraph) and the methodological/epistemological issues that need to be engaged.

-   Complete reading each of the 6 page revised proposals submitted by all of the Fellows as a basis for critical discussion during the workshop.
-   Complete the reading assignments.
-   Complete preparation for presentation and critical discussion of the proposal/research statement assigned to you.
 

BLACK ATLANTIC STUDIES: WORKSHOP SCHEDULE 

Session 1: Introduction and Purpose of Workshops
(Thursday, 9 AM – 12:30 PM)

Plenary Session: Presentations by Program Director Peter Sahlins and the Research Directors

Session 2:  Mapping Fields, Asking Questions
(Thursday, 1:30 PM – 5 PM) 

All the required reading must be completed before arrival.  They are in PDF format on the secure DPDF web portal.  While we have identified the targeted reading for each of the sessions, we expect a familiarity with each of the texts for critical engagement with issues of the field in this session.  We have also placed additional recommended reading on the web portal.

Introduction of Research Directors and Fellows.

Mapping the Field:  In this session we will begin to map the field of Black Atlantic Studies through a discussion of the issues with which it has been engaged over the period of its development and in current scholarship.  We will pay particular attention to the fundamental questions that are at the heart of the field.  We will relate the key positions and debates of the 1940s (and their enduring relevance today) to the innovative directions of contemporary research.  Our intention here is to begin thinking about the conceptual and theoretical issues that are at the core of the field’s concerns and the methodological and epistemological problems that they raise. 

After a general discussion, the following Research Statements will be presented by their assigned discussants as a basis for further examination of the issues raised:

- Akissi Britton, “From Brooklyn to Brazil: Race, Place, and Religion in the Mapping of Diasporic Blackness”
- Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, “Of Youth and Revolution: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation in Contemporary Cuba.”
- Jamie Davidson, “Embodied Knowledge in the Tambor de Mina of Maranhao”

Targeted Reading:
M. Jacqui Alexander, Pedagogies of Crossing, Chapter one. "Erotic Autonomy as a Politics of decolonization: feminism, tourism and the state in the Bahamas".  Duke, 2005.
Gilroy, P. Against Race, Chapter 2. "Modernity and Infrahumanity".
Stuart Hall, "Negotiating Caribbean Identities" in Brian Meeks and Folke Lindahl, New Caribbean Thought: A Reader.  pp 24-39.
Kelly R. D. G. and Patterson, T. R. (2000) "Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World" African Studies Review, 43 (1). pp 11-45.
E. Franklin Frazier's "The Negro Family in Bahia, Brazil" (American Sociological Review, 1942),
Herskovits's response "The Negro in Bahia, Brazil: a problem in Method" (AMS, 1943) together with Frazier's rejoinder.
Keving Yelvington's introduction to Afro-Atlantic Dialogues: Anthropology in the Diaspora" (2006)
Brown, J.N. (1998) "Black Liverpool, Black America, and the Gendering of Diasporic Space,"  Cultural Anthropology, 13 (3), pp 291-325.

Session 3: Questions of Method and Epistemology
(Friday, 9 AM – 12:30 PM)

We will discuss here issues of epistemology and methodology that are raised in Black Atlantic Studies.  What is “African” in the African Diaspora?  How do we construct the spatio-temporal coordinates of Black Atlantic historical dynamics?  How do we reconcile the objectivism of demographic trends with phenomenologies of performance and repressed historical memory?  How do we structure the “subjects” and “objects” of our research?  How do we identify relevant temporalities and historical trajectories, from the micro-arenas of performance contexts to the macro-perspectives of the “longue durée”?  How do we recover the actions and voices of African agency?

After a general discussion, the following Research Statements will be presented by their assigned discussants as a basis for further examination of the issues raised:

- Nandini Dhar, “Problematizing the Archive, re-writing Agency: “Neo-Slave” Aesthetics in Museums and Historical Novels of the African Diaspora.
- Jamila Moore, “Digitally Mapping the Black Atlantic: Spatial Imagination and the Politics of Re-Appropriatin Between Africa and the Americas.
- Sharon Kivenko, “Dancing Through “Performance Scapes”: Reflections on Transnationalism, Embodiment, and West African Performance”.

Targeted Reading:
Shalini Puri, The Caribbean Postcolonial.  Chapter 1 “Theorizing Hybridity: The Post National Moment.”
Ann Laura Stoler: Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial rule”.  Chapter 7: “Memory Work in Java”.
Dreyfus, H. and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structural Analytics.  Chapter 5: Interpretive Analytics. 

Session 4: Historical Roots and Contemporary Issues
(Friday, 1:30 PM – 5 PM)

Here we will return to the fundamental methods and sources that informed the field during the early period of its conceptualization.  The focus was, decidedly, on the issue of the “roots” of Black subjectivity and consciousness.  We will then examine the contemporary issues that inform the field particularly as these pertain to the cultural politics stemming from the circulation of black bodies.  

After a general discussion the following Research Statements will be presented by their assigned discussants as a basis for further examination of the issues raised:

- Jessica Krug, “Fugitive Nations: Maroon Societies in Kisama, Angola, Sao Tome, and Brazil 1500-1700.
- Petra Rivera, “What is Afro-Boricua?: The Impact of Migration and Popular Culture on Understandings of Blackness in Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican Diaspora.”
- Carmen Thompson, “Black Womanhood and Slavery: Survival Strategies in the New World and in West Africa, 1665-1863.

Targeted Reading:
Kobena Mercer, Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies.  Introduction: “Black Britain and the Cultural Politics of Diaspora.”

Session 5:  Ethnographies, Strategies, and Sources
(Saturday, 9 AM – 12:30 PM)

We will develop a distinction between analytic and operational methods that helps relate the collection of data to the research hypotheses and questions.  Can ritual be approached as a living historical archive?  How are archival methods i006Ecorporated into ethnographic research?  How do we relate official texts to unofficial contexts?  We will focus here on the specifics of using different types of sources by examining and discussing the three remaining research proposals.  We will then follow this with an examination of each of the twelve one-page discussions of the prepared scholarly texts.    Here, we would rely on the previously assigned readings.

After a general discussion the following Research Statements will be presented by their assigned discussants as a basis for further examination of the issues raised:

- Chelsey Kivland, “Masking Change: Performing Order: The Ritual Histories and Political Arts of Haitian Carnival”
- Xelaju Korda,  “Sex Tourism in the Brazilian Northeast: Gender Performances Within a Sexualized World Market.”
- Matthew Norton, “Ashanti to Gold Coast to Ghana: A Geneaology of the Experience of Documentary Rule.”

Session 6: From the Field to the Proposal
(Saturday, 12:30 PM – 5 PM)

A variety of proposal writing strategies will be discussed, from framing hypotheses to securing institutional affiliations with overseas universities and research organizations.  Each of the fellows will reflect on the critical discussions of her/his proposal/research statement in view of her/his one-page prepared statement on its relationship to the field and to issues of methodology and tactics.

Session 7:  Looking Forward
(Sunday, 9 AM – 12:30 PM)

Here we will have a general session on the overall issues raised by the workshop.  Fellows will be given the opportunity to clarify field-related questions.  This would be followed by a planning session for summer assignments, communication strategies and for the summer workshops.  We will hand out summer reading assignments.  Finally, we will have a general brainstorming session as to what worked and what is needed to better serve the needs of the fellows.