3 research outputs found
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS: TWENTIETH CENTURY BLACK AMERICAN TRAVEL NARRATIVES ABOUT AFRICA
This dissertation argues that black American travel narratives about Africa reflect the authors' perception of their identity at particular moments in history. It suggests that these perceptions are informed by historical, political, economic, and social circumstances. Specifically, it demonstrates how associations with Africa--real and imagined--have evolved over time due to black Americans' shifting social and political status in the United States.
Black American travel narratives about Africa written during the second half of the twentieth century are the focus of this study. This period is marked by drastic political and social changes taking place both in Africa and the United States including decolonization, independence, and the aftermath of apartheid and the Cold War in Africa as well as the Civil Rights movement, desegregation, and integration in the United States. Although Africa and the politics therein are the narratives' purported theme, I argue that their primary focus is black American identity.
My dissertation demonstrates how black American travel writers have used their narratives about Africa to define black American identity and to clarify the relationship between black Americans and Africa. At the heart of this dissertation is an interest in these relationships and a concern about the "baggage" that black Americans bring to perceptions of their identity and relationship with Africa, particularly their historical experiences as Americans, their knowledge and understanding of Africa and its history and how that "baggage" colors their perceptions of their relationship to the continent and its people. This "baggage" includes many factors including class, gender, personal history, as well as notions of race and nationalism. Texts in this study include Richard Wright's Black Power (1954), Era Bell Thompson's Africa, Land of My Fathers (1954), Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman (1981) and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Marita Golden's Migrations of the Heart (1983), Eddy L. Harris's Native Stranger (1992), Keith Richburg's Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa (1997) and Lynne Duke's Mandela, Mobutu, and Me (2003)
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Looking Backward, Looking Forward: MLA Members Speak
In 1997 I was asked to organize humanities outreach activities at the University of California, Irvine. The result was the formation of Humanities Out There (HOT). In our workshops, faculty members and graduate students supervise teams of undergraduates in order to take the methods and materials of the university into the larger community.I believe that programs like these will become increasingly important in the next century, as economic, cultural, and educational divisions deepen in the wake of the demise of affirmative action and as the humanities fight to define their missions in a world driven by technology and its discontents. In this brave new world, what I call the new outreach may have a role to play in responding to social crises as they are visited on the life of the university. The new outreach will be driven by intellectual content, not public relations.It will take its orientation from the faculty rather than administrators. It will engage all the research disciplines rather than remain the purview of education departments. It will be integrated into the professional lives of its participants rather than rely on the spirit of volunteerism alone
Recommended from our members
Looking Backward, Looking Forward: MLA Members Speak
In 1997 I was asked to organize humanities outreach activities at the University of California, Irvine. The result was the formation of Humanities Out There (HOT). In our workshops, faculty members and graduate students supervise teams of undergraduates in order to take the methods and materials of the university into the larger community.I believe that programs like these will become increasingly important in the next century, as economic, cultural, and educational divisions deepen in the wake of the demise of affirmative action and as the humanities fight to define their missions in a world driven by technology and its discontents. In this brave new world, what I call the new outreach may have a role to play in responding to social crises as they are visited on the life of the university. The new outreach will be driven by intellectual content, not public relations.It will take its orientation from the faculty rather than administrators. It will engage all the research disciplines rather than remain the purview of education departments. It will be integrated into the professional lives of its participants rather than rely on the spirit of volunteerism alone