During a period of more than three centuries, Brazil was the most important destination of enslaved Africans. Slavery as an institution left a deep imprint on configurations of inequality, cultural expressions and linguistic development. This interdisciplinary summer university course offers an exploration of slavery’s lingering effects on popular culture, collective memory, and language. We will approach these themes through different genres of texts and other media using comparative and transnational perspectives. The course introduces participants to key authors and foundational concepts within the study of slavery and post-emancipation societies and gives students space to reflect on their own research interests.    

Course material draws from theoretical perspectives and methodological practices of Global History, Socio-Cultural Anthropology, and Socio-Linguistics. Throughout the course program, participants will engage with concepts like global commodity flows, subaltern agency, memory, creolization, reparative justice, intellectual agency, and maroon cultural formations.