Today@Dal

The marginalized study of African-Canadian history and culture has taken centre stage at Dalhousie University this fall. A new interdisciplinary minor, black and African diaspora studies, will offer a contemporary and historic view of black history in Canada. It’s an area that program creator Afua Cooper says has long been ignored. “It’s still a submerged area of study,” she says. “Frankly speaking, I would say people in the university system haven’t seen black studies as something worthy of scholarly inquiry.”

Many courses only focus on certain branches of black history, and it often tends to be about the United States. Cooper, who is Dalhousie’s James R. Johnston chair in black Canadian studies, finds many Canadians don’t know about our black history beyond this past century. In fact, the presence of blacks in Canada dates back to 1604 and the Port Royal settlement. It’s this 400-year legacy, along with arts, culture and other topics, that Cooper wants to focus on. “Students will learn about the long-lasting black communities all over this country and the struggles and triumphs of black Canadians,” she says. “They faced a lot of discrimination throughout these centuries: social exclusion, segregation, segregated schools.”

Read full story (http://www.macleans.ca/education/a-new-dalhousie-minor-covers-400-years-of-african-canadian-history/)