<p>Lecture, three hours. In current conjuncture of economic and social life, plantation is often used as metaphor for explaining racialized capitalist relations. Study transcends plantation metaphor and integrates analysis of race to consider enduring materiality of plantation, especially its historical and contemporary significance in the Americas. Exemplified by prisons, state-sanctioned violence, racial injustice, premature death, economic oppression, environmental inequality, and continuing subjugation of racialized others in New World, plantation represents ongoing postcolonial construct in Caribbean and U.S. Reading and discussion of recent and archival works to engage with history, economics, literature, sociology, and geographical analysis about its manifestations over time. Examination of how plantation has shaped intellectual and cultural production, resistance, attempts at political decolonization, and ecological remediation. Study uses audiovisual content, music, speeches, novels, etc. P/NP or letter grading.</p>

African American Studies

College of Letters and Science

AF AMER 133 -  Plantation Economy: Social Thought, Poetics, and Politics in New World

 Plantation Economy: Social Thought, Poetics, and Politics in New World

Explain how the plantation ‘lives’ today through current issues of neoliberal globalization, racial
(in)justice, police/state-sanctioned violence, economic and/or ecological crises. 

Describe the role of the plantation in social, political, and economic life of the Caribbean and how
Caribbean peoples have resisted the oppressive structures and tendencies of the plantation over
time.

Analyze literary and economic texts to draw out critical comparative themes/ideas and insights
about the origins, constitution, structure, and evolutions of the plantation in time. 

General Catalog

Plantation Economy: Social Thought, Poetics, and Politics in New World

AF AMER 133

4 units