Considering the videos below, discuss your understanding of the concepts of cultural politics, cultural domination, accommodation and resistance as it relates to syncretism and the emergence of the culture of the enslaved (the precursor to African American culture) in the US.

This prompt is designed to test your understanding of the processes through which the culture of enslaved Africans was created. We expect you to cover:

1.) Conditions under which slave culture emerged.

     – Slave environment within which culture emerges

     – Why was it that the enslaved needed to create new cultures

2.) The sources of cultural materials for this new culture and it was that these new cultures were combined.

3.) Accommodation, resistance, and the cultural politics of cultural relations.

4.) The strengths of capitalist investments in slave regimes and the effect on slave cultures.

5.) The strengths of Africanisms and its relationship to cultural politics of resistence.

Adequate essays include a discussion of the elements in 1-3 with particular attention to the interaction of resistance and accomodation.

Good essays will include some elements from 1 with a strong sense of 2, 3, and 5 and will use examples from the evidence ie the articles provided.

Excellent essays have a very good command of 1-5 and will make use of the both the readings and the evidence to illustrate key points.

In general, overall fluency with the conceptual categories and demonstration of a critical approach in utilizing conceptual categories presented in class in a relationship to the everyday evidence provided in a well written essay is what we are looking for.

Roots: A History Revealed – Forms of Rebellion | History (Links to an external site.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nthxeoyukgw (Links to an external site.)