Crossing Boundaries

The essays assembled in Crossing Boundaries reflect the international dimensions, commonalities, and discontinuities in the histories of diasporan communities of color. People of African descent in the the New World (the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean) share a common set of experiences: domination and resistance, slavery and emancipation, the pursuit of freedom, and straggle against racism. Knowledge of individual societies is illuminated by the study and comparison of other cultural histories; black diasporan experience cannot be captured in a single interpretation. Crossing Boundaries elucidates the complexities inherent in teaching a history which is at once disparate and coherent. This volume, growing out of the Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora Symposium held at Michigan State University, elaborates the profound relationship between curriculum and pedagogy.