Middle Passages: A Gendered Diasporas Map Project

For the Spring 2009 semester, we will engage the theme of "Mapping Black Women's Lives." Specifically, we will work with Google Earth and Google Maps to narrate global and transnational stories of how black women cross borders, exchange cultures, and forge diasporic identities. We will link history with the present day as we focus on "gendering" the history of the Middle Passage, highlighting women's stories, and connecting this past with contemporary examples of forced (and voluntary) migration, trafficking, and "roots" tourism. We will also draw from readings, course materials, and original research to complete this project.

Working with technological tools provide a challenge as well as an opportunity. It is tempting to develop an imperialist worldview, through such high-tech surveillance, but the goal of this project is simple: How do we decolonize our worldviews as we center black women in an interactive Diaspora map project?

Important Resource: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

For other educational projects using Google Earth and/or Google Maps, please see the following:

Mapping the African American Past

Crisis in Darfur: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Project

World is Witness: USHMM

Google Lit Trips

Film Location Project for The Golden Compass

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