This course explores the complex relationship between nationalism and transnationalism. Theoretical, cultural and historical in approach, the course focuses on black political cultures of the early 20^th century. It concentrates on the relationship between black America and black South Africa. Attention to the crucial if variable interactions between these two communities, their activists, intellectuals and writers, will expand scholarly understanding of the meanings of race, nationalism, colonialism and transnationalism.


Drawing upon the resources of African, black Atlantic, and postcolonial studies, this interdisciplinary course fuses literary criticism, cultural studies, critical theory, political thought and intellectual history. Several Africanists have examined the circulation of black diaspora ideas and practices among black South Africans. Their studies are important in moving beyond the colonizer/colonized axis that has dominated ‘postcolonial’ accounts of modern African political cultures. But they assume a unidirectional flow of influence from the ‘new world’ diaspora. This course instead begins with the premise that these two racially-subordinated, resistant populations were involved in a mutually transformative relationship, and seeks to explore elements of this complex dynamic. Among other things we will consider how black South Africans both affirm and criticize black American thought, intimating alternative conceptions of political and cultural leadership for themselves and for the US diaspora. While dominant postcolonial and transnational theories presuppose that nationalism and transnationalism are antagonistic impulses, and that nationalism and feminism are equally antagonistic impulses, this course interrogates such presuppositions by rigorous examination of original source materials.