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

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.