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Department of African American and Diaspora Studies

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Research Projects and Collaborations

The Department of African American and Diaspora Studies collaborates on a number of important projects and initiatives. Through this involvement, faculty and students extend our exploratory reach.

Blacks in Country Music

To make visible the invisible and herald unsung Black heroes and heroines of country music, we offer a cornerstone course AADS 2166: African-American Influences on Country Music, as well as opportunities for independent study. Independent study is available both to those who have taken AADS 2166 and for those who have not taken the course but have a particular interest in the subject and bring advanced coursework from a related field to their intended independent study.

All students engaged in work around the presence and influence of Blacks in country music are invited to participate in the ongoing mapping of Black presence and influence on country music using a variety of mapping technologies that allow us to share the work beyond the walls of the academy. We have worked in collaboration with the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the National Museum of African American Music, and the tech start-up TunesMap.

Black Foodways

AADS has taken a leading role on the Vanderbilt campus in the use of food and foodways as a lens to explore culture, history, art, identity, health, and health disparity. Our signature course, AADS 3104W: Soul Food as Text in Text: An Examination of African American Foodways, provides both an intensive immersion in African American foodways through engagement with classic African American cookbooks; depictions of African American foodways in literature, painting, song, and film; scholarship that investigates the history and economics of African foodways across the diaspora with a particular focus on both the USA and Nashville; and a general introduction to foodways as an academic discipline and mode of thinking that can be a powerful tool for knowledge workers working in a variety of disciplines and on a variety of cultures and time periods.

Students leave the course with an ability to read cookbooks analytically, with experience in conducting original research on archival material, with experience searching for and often finding “lost” and historically significant artifacts. Students get experience conducting fieldwork that takes them to farms, homes, archaeological dig sites, restaurants, food trucks, and other venues where, after substantial preparation, they interview, photograph, record and/or otherwise document, ultimately analyzing and writing about the research conducted.

Many African American community cookbooks have small print runs, and too many vanish without finding their way into any archive for further research. Every year students in the class find lost Black community cookbooks and document their existence, breaking ground for future scholars to till.

Special topics students have chosen to investigate include:

  • Interview with Secretary of Labor, Alexis Herman for the Paulette Garrett Cookbook Project
  • Interview with poet Kevin Young on his work on representations of African American cooking in 21st century poetry
  • Interview with John Egerton, founder of the Southern Foodways Alliance
  • African American fishing culture at The Hermitage during slavery
  • The evolution of the repast as a post-funeral meal in Black America
  • Black Seventh Day Adventist vegetarianism
  • The origins of the iconic short story “Sweet Potato Pie” by Eugenia Collier
  • Race-based wage discrepancy and job opportunity in a particular barbecue chain
  • Origins, variations, and uses of the song “Welcome Table”
  • The foodways of acclaimed African American outsider artist “Big Al” Carter
  • Yakamein and other intersections of Africa and China in U.S. foodways
  • Intersections of Jewish and African American foodways in the American South
  • Afro-veganism in 21st century Nashville
  • The evolving foodway traditions of the HBCU tailgate
  • African American cooks in predominately caucasian sorority houses on Vanderbilt campus
  • The role of genetics in Type 2 diabetes
  • Soul food recipes appropriate for those battling diabetes
  • Various biographical and autobiographical cookbooks
  • Black church foodways

Group projects have included:

  • Labor of Love, a 58-page biographical cookbook based on the recipes of long time Nashvillian Paulette Garrett, a Black, retired elementary school principal, and 10th generation native of Mobile, Alabama, whose family has cooked at the White House for more than one president.
  • A “virtual table” that connects classroom to community and scholarship to bellies. The culmination of the project was a “virtual soul food feast” a website that identified 10 Soul Food Superfoods, provided recipes, and connected visitors to the website to interviews with African American History Makers who treasured these foods.
  • Hot Fish Repast, a performance art piece in conversation with a series of paintings created by African American artist Allen “Big Al” Carter. It was a welcome table and a repast involving the creation, or elaborate repurposing of tables, chairs, plates, napkins, and more to create a performance space, for a performance centered around a meal, food related music, and the creation of a space for students to host and celebrate significant members of Nashville’s African-American community while honoring Big Al and sharing his work.

The Vanderbilt Curb Center and The History Makers are ongoing partners in this work.

Global Collaborations

The Department of African American and Diaspora Studies has since 2007 engaged in several global collaborations in our commitment to studying the African diaspora. Some of our current intellectual projects engaged by faculty include work with Galerie Eric Dupont in Paris, France; Villa Gillet in Lyon, France; the Groupe de recherche ACHAC in Paris, France; University of Leipzig in Leipzig, Germany; and the Women’s Higher Education Network.

Past collaborations include:

  • The Black Europe Seminar – The 11-minute documentary film Black Europe was the culmination of a seminar conducted by Tracy D. Sharpley-Whiting, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies, and Lucius T. Outlaw, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, emeritus. The documentary has been disseminated to high schools throughout the state of Tennessee.