Where does the “Middle East” end and Africa begin? This course will explore how Arabic-speaking and African-descended peoples have engaged one another and the overlapping configurations of Blackness and Arabness that circulate in the African Diaspora. Against the backdrop of anti-colonialism and Civil Rights, many Africans and African Americans were inspired by Arab anti-colonial political innovations. As Arabs sought to define their independence struggles they looked to the transnational, emancipatory philosophies and movements that African Americans and other African diasporic figures pioneered. These exchanges result in surprising histories of solidarity and collaboration, like the Black Panther Party’s international chapter in Algiers, and the poet Claudia Rankine’s staging of French-Algerian footballer Zinedine Zidane’s coup de boule as a moving poem in Citizen. Through a historical and cultural survey of Black and Arab thought – a field of inquiry we will call “Afro-Arab Studies” – this class will examine the parallel and intersecting narratives of a range of notable Afro-Arab confluences, including but not limited to: négritude and pan-Arabism, the Non-Aligned and Pan-Africanist movements, and recent Black/ Palestinian solidarity organizing. In addition to Afro-Arab literature and poetry, readings will include narrative essays, biography, and cultural theory by such writers and scholars as James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, Shirley Graham Du Bois, and Radwa Ashour.