HONR 218X Islam in the African-American Experience
Thursday, 3:30-6:00 p.m.
Dr. Hisham Aidi, Fellow, David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the African
Diaspora
This undergraduate seminar maps the presence of Islam and Muslims in the New
World from the Atlantic Slave Trade to contemporary communities, looking at
the cross-influences between the Islamic and African Diaspora. The course focuses
on Islam in the African-American experience, but also seeks to understand the
particular challenges faced by Muslim communities in America and Western Europe,
and the diverse ways Muslims negotiate identity in various places such as homes,
mosques, and schools, and through various modes of expression such as art, architecture,
and music.
Assignments: Two 7-page papers OR, one 15-page research paper
Tentative Reading List:
Sylviane Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas
Edward E. Curtis IV, Islam in Black America: Identity, Liberation and Difference
in African-American Islamic Thought; Sherman A. Jackson, Black Orientalism:
Its Genesis, Aims and Significance
A.D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America
Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience
Robert Dannin, Black Pilgrimage to Islam; Steven Barboza, American Jihad: Islam
After Malcolm X
Mattias Gardell, The Sun of Islam Will Rise in the West: Minister Farrakhan
and the Nation of Islam in the Latter Days; Ted Swedenburg et al., Arab Noise
and Ramadan Nights: Rai, Rap and Ramadan Nights
Michael Eric Dyson, Prophetic Black Islamic Ethics: Malcolm X, Spiritual Warfare,
and Angry Black Love
Hanif Kureishi, My Son the Fanatic–short story or film
Kai Hafez, Islam and the West in the Mass Media
CORE: Social or Political History [SH] and Diversity [D]
