Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description
African Arts from the Old World to the New
Instructor(s): Lisa Aronson, Art History
What do art, language, and music have to do with the slave trade? In this seminar,
we examine continuities and changes in the visual verbal and musical arts transmitted
from Africa to the New World through the trans-Atlantic slave trade. We begin by analyzing
arts in their traditional African setting, and with an eye to their interconnectedness,
the role they play in building a sense of community and their likelihood for survival
in the New World. We then turn to the arts of Black cultures of Brazil, Haiti, the
Caribbean, and the United States. Analyzing these arts within their proper historical
and cultural framework, and from a variety of disciplines (art history, anthropology,
history, folklore, comparative literature, and ethnomusicology), we consider their
relationship to the arts of Africa, and, as well, how cultures use them in constructing
their New World identities.
Course Offered