Topics vary by semester
Professor(s)
Notes
“There is no world without Africa, and there is no Africa that is not part of it.” With these words, philosopher Achille Mbembe rejects the Hegelian paradigm and Western narrative that places Africa outside of world history. Reflecting on Mbembe’s concept of “Afropolitanism” in this course, we take up the question of how have Africa and Africans have shaped and experienced the forces of global history since ca. 1500. In the early modern period, we will survey a wide diversity of African histories stretching from the Great Lakes region to the Indian Ocean world to the complex economic networks of the southern tip of the continent to the growing global merchant capital system of the Transatlantic slave trade. From the late 1870s through the 1900s, we will study African responses to European conquest and the impact of colonial rule throughout the continent, followed by a focus on the decolonization process through which African countries became independent. We will read key documents from these periods and learn techniques for interpreting them. We will also explore a range of other kinds of sources—including music, film, painting and sculpture, and literature—to see what they can tell us about how Africans conceptualized fundamental issues of human nature, dealt with change in their own societies, and negotiated their role in regional and global networks.
Learning Outcomes
- Working with primary sources: students will gain experience with how to analyze evidence produced in a specific time and place, and how to contextualize the evidence within a “bigger picture” of local, regional and global dynamics.
- Reading & understanding academic scholarship: in weekly readings assignment for homework, students will continuously practice reading academic scholarship on Africa’s pasts in order to articulate an author’s argument, evidence base, contributions to new knowledge, and potential areas of bias or limitation. Scholarly texts will appropriately challenge students within a 1000-level reading load.
- Argumentative writing for humanities and social sciences: students will improve their written argumentation skills through one analytical paper assignment during the term. The opportunity to resubmit the paper after incorporating instructor feedback will enable students to apply lessons on strengthening analysis and written communication.
- Historical synthesis: students will be able to synthesize complex historical events and processes of colonialism and decolonization in Africa through two written exams. The midterm and final exams will ask students to prepare synthetic study sheets in order to aid memory and better apply their knowledge in the seated exam exercise.
- Meet important African historical figures from the 16th c. to present in order to explain why their stories reverberate with new meaning in different periods of various African and African diaspora struggles.
- Assess the kinds of archives that shape our present understandings of African past, who is typically excluded from these archives, and why.
- Articulate the historical causes and lived dynamics of colonization, decolonization, and “neocolonialism” in a variety of African contexts.
- Place apartheid within a global historical context to be able to explain why the system lasted so long, and how its premises of racial/ethnic segregation and exclusion relate to other colonial contexts of the past and present.
Syllabus
Book List
Title | Author | Publisher | ISBN Number |
---|---|---|---|
Africa in Global History with Sources (paperback) | Robert Harms | Norton | 9780393927573 |
SLAVES FOR PEANUTS: A STORY OF CONQUEST, LIBERATION, AND A CROP THAT CHANGED HIS | LEWIS, JORI | NEW YORK UNIV | 9781620971567 |
Schedule
Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
---|---|---|---|
Monday | 15:20 | 16:40 | C-103 |
Thursday | 15:20 | 16:40 | C-103 |