The Institute of African Studies present a book discussion of
Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the
Americas, 1585-1660 with co-authors Linda Heywood and John Thornton

Date: March 25th, 2009
Time: 3-5pm
Location: Philosophy Lounge

This book establishes Central Africa as the origin of most Africans
brought to English and Dutch American colonies in North America, the
Caribbean, and South America in their formative period before 1660. It
reveals that Central Africans were frequently possessors of an
Atlantic Creole culture that included adaptation of Christianity and
elements of European language, especially names and material culture.
It places the movement of slaves and creation of the colonies within
an Atlantic historical framework, including showing interactions among
Africa, Europe, and all of the Americas.

It explores the development of attitudes toward race, slavery, and freedom as
they developed in the colonies of England and the Netherlands, and it
revises earlier discussions on these issues. The book suggests ways in which
this generation of Africans helped lay the foundations for subsequent
development of African-American culture in all the colonies of these
countries.

Linda Heywood is a professor of African History and the History of the
African Diaspora at Boston University.  She is the author of Contested
Power in Angola, editor of and contributor to Central Africans
Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora, and co-author with
John Thornton of Central African, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation
of America (Cambridge University Press, July, 2007), winner of the
Herskovits Prize.  Her articles on Angola and the African Diaspora
have appeared in The Journal of African History, Journal of Modern
African Studies, Slavery and Abolition, and the Journal of Southern
African Studies.

She has served as a consultant for numerous museum exhibitions,
including African Voices at the Smithsonian Institution, Against Human
Dignity sponsored by the Maritime Museum, and the new exhibit at
Jamestown. She was also one of the history consultants and appeared in
the PBS series African American Lives (2006) and Finding Oprah?s Roots
(2007).  She is writing a biography of Queen Njinga.

John K. Thornton is Professor of African American Studies and History
at Boston University.  He received his BA from the University of
Michigan (1971) and MA and PhD from UCLA (1972, 1979).

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Posted by enewto on March 23rd, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
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