TOPICS: AFRICAN CIV 1 in Fall 2023 (HI1091A)

African Civilizations I surveys the history of Africa from the Sahara to South Africa from early times to the 17th century. We will visit every major region of Africa at least once during the semester. The course explores Africa’s technological, ecological, economic, and cultural history, while also challenging lingering stereotypes present throughout Western representations of African history.

Outsiders today still frame Africa as a “dark continent” only recently emerging into contact with the rest of the world – but, as we will study in the course, Africa’s proximity to Eurasia, the Mediterranean, and Indian Oceans worlds facilitated long-distance trade and cultural exchanges over the previous millennia. The course ends with the growth of the Slave Trades from Africa in the 16th-17th century, especially those in the Atlantic world, which changed the way most outsiders thought about and treated Africans. Mutual respect was replaced by conflict and emergent European racial ideologies of anti-Blackness. Part II of African Civilizations in the Spring Semester follows chronologically on Part I to explore Africa’s many intellectual, cultural, and political decolonization movements from the 17th century to the present.

Themes of particular interest in African Civ I include Africa’s complex economic past, the role of powerful women in societies large and small, and varied African state building strategies. We will also build essential historical thinking skills for weighing evidence and building historical narratives, with a particular focus on archaeological reports and oral sources. The course is structured around lectures and primary source analysis activities, so students should come ready to engage actively in lively group discussions with peers in every session.