| SES # | TOPICS | READINGS AND FILMS |
|---|---|---|
| Part 1: Being | ||
| Week 1: Introduction | ||
1 | What does it mean to study “the idea” of Africa? | No readings or films assigned |
2 | Making knowledge, ordering the world (I) |
Readings Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. “Africa, Idea of.” In New Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Encyclopedia.com. 2015. Pierre, Jemima. “Africa/African.” Chapter 1 in Critical Terms for the Study of Africa. Edited by by Gaurav Desai and Adeline Masquelier. University of Chicago Press, 2018. ISBN: 9780226548975. [Preview with Google Books] |
| Weeks 2 and 3: Geography | ||
3 | Making knowledge, ordering the world (II) |
Readings Wainana, Binyavanga. “How to Write About Africa.” Granta 92, 2005. Ferguson, James. “Introduction: Global Shadows: Africa and the World.” In Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Duke University Press Books, 2006. ISBN: 9780822337171. [Preview with Google Books] |
4 | Maps, power, and knowledge |
Readings Turnbull, David. “Tricksters and Cartographers: Maps, Science and the State in the Making of a Modern Scientific Knowledge Space.” Chapter 3 in Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers. Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 9789058230010. Harley, J. Brian. |
5 | Mapping Africa |
Readings Mudimbe, V.Y. “Symbols and the Interpretation of the African Past.” Chapter 1 in The Idea of Africa. Indiana University Press, 1994, pp. 26–30. ISBN: 9780253208729. [Preview with Google Books] Lydon, Ghislaine. Bassett, Thomas J. ———. “Indigenous Mapmaking in Intertropical Africa.” Chapter 3 in The History of Cartography Volume 2, Book Three: Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific Societies. Edited by David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis. University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780226907284. |
| Weeks 4 and 5: History | ||
6 | Historicizing Africa |
Readings Brizuela-Garcia, Esperanza. Peterson, Derek R., and Giacomo Macola, eds. “Introduction: Homespun Historiography and the Academic Profession.” In Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa. Ohio University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780821418796. |
7 | Restoring African histories: Afrocentrism |
Readings Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Diop, Cheikh Anta. “Preface: The Meaning of Our Work.” In The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality. Edited and translated by Mercer Cook. Lawrence Hill Books, 1989. ISBN: 9781556520723. Asante, Molefi Kete. “Dancing between Circles and Lines.” In The Afrocentric Idea. Temple University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9781566395953. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Europe Upside Down: Fallacies of the New Afrocentrism.” Chapter 44 in Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, & Representation. Edited by Roy Richard Grinker and Christopher B. Steiner. Wiley-Blackwell, 1991. ISBN: 9781557866851. |
8 | Guest presentation and workshop by professional Vodou dance practitioner and Vodou priest, Jean-Sébastien Duvilaire | No readings or films assigned |
9 | Remembering |
Readings Blier, Suzanne. “Vodun: West African Roots of Vodou.” Chapter 2 in Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou. Edited by Donald J. Cosentino. UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1995. ISBN: 9780930741471. Rush, Dana. “Introduction.” In Vodun in Coastal Bénin: Unfinished, Open-Ended, Global. Vanderbilt University Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780826519085. ———. “Vodun's Rhizome.” Chapter 2 in Vodun in Coastal Bénin: Unfinished, Open-Ended, Global. Vanderbilt University Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780826519085. ———. “Notes.” In Vodun in Coastal Bénin: Unfinished, Open-Ended, Global. Vanderbilt University Press, 2017, pp. 159–62. ISBN: 9780826519085. Film A Memory in Three Acts. Directed by Inadelso Cossa. Color, 64 min. 2016. |
| Weeks 6 and 7: Race | ||
10 | Blackness and Otherness |
Readings Fanon, Frantz. “The Fact of Blackness.” Chapter 5 in Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Constance Farrington. Grove Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780802150844. Mbembe, Achille. “The Subject of Race.” Chapter 1 in Critique of Black Reason. Translated and with an introduction by Laurent Dubois. Duke University Press Books, 2017. ISBN: 9780822363439. [Preview with Google Books] Senghor, Léopold Sédar. “Négritude: A Humanism of the 20th Century.” Chapter 1 in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Edited and introduced by by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Columbia University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780231100212. [Preview with Google Books] |
11 | Blackness in Africa |
Readings Pierre, Jemima. “Preface,” “Introduction,” and Chapter 1, “Of Natives and Europeans: Colonialism and the Ethnicization of Racial Dominance.” In The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race. University of Chicago Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780226923031. [Preview with Google Books] For those of you who read French (and want more on Négritude): Senghor, Léopold Sédar. “Qu'est-ce que la Négritude?” Études françaises 3 (1967): 3–20. Optional de Sá, Celina. “Becoming Diasporically African: The Cultural Politics Of West African Capoeira.” Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. Scholarly Commons. Penn Libraries, University of Pennsylvania. 2018. |
12 |
The Black African body (I)
|
Reading Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. “Writing Sex, Writing Difference: Creating the Master Text on the Hottentot Venus.” Chapter 1 in Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French. Duke University Press Books, 1999. ISBN: 9780822323402. [Preview with Google Books] Film Maids and Madams. Directed by Mira Hamermesh. Color, 54 min. 1986. |
13 | The Black African body (II) |
Readings Kant, Immanuel. Excerpt from “Of National Characteristics, so far as They Depend upon the Distinct Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime." Section 4 in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime. Translated by John T. Goldthwait. University of California Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780520240780. Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́. “Visualizing the Body: Western Theories and African Subjects.” Chapter 1 in The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. University of Minnesota Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780816624416. [Preview with Google Books] Pierre, Jemima. “'I Like Your Colour!' Skin Bleaching and Geographies of Race in Urban Ghana.” Feminist Review 90 (2013): 9–29. |
| Part 2: Becoming | ||
| Week 8: Africa and / in the world after independence | ||
14 | Africa and / in the world after independence (I) |
Reading Wallerstein, Immanuel. “Africa and the World.” Chapter 8 in Africa: The Politics of Independence and Unity. University of Nebraska Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780803298569. Audio Kwame Nkrumah - Address at Conference of African Freedom Fighters - Accra. YouTube. |
15 | Africa and / in the world after independence (II) |
Reading Sankara, Thomas. “Freedom Must be Conquered in Struggle.” In We Are Heirs of the World’s Revolutions: Speeches from the Burkina Faso Revolution 1983–1987. 2nd ed. Pathfinder Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780873489898. Film Lumumba: La mort du prophète. Directed by Raoul Peck. Color, 69 min. 1990. |
| Week 9: Modernization theory and Africa | ||
16 | Modernization theory and Africa |
Readings Matunhu, J. Ferguson, James. “Decomposing Modernity.” Chapter 7 in Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Duke University Press Books, 2006. ISBN: 9780822337171. Film “TOUKI BOUKI, A VIAGEM DA HIENA (Touki-bouki, Djibril Diop Mambéty 1973) LEGENDADO.” YouTube. |
| Week 10: Development and Structural Adjustment Programs | ||
17 | Development and structural adjustment programs |
Readings The World Bank. “Introduction.” Chapter 1 in Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action, pp. 2–5. 1981. ———. “Basic Constraints.” Chapter 2 in Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action, pp. 9–12. 1981. Geo-Jaja, Macleans A., and Garth Magnum. “Structural Adjustment as an Inadvertent Enemy of Human Development in Africa.” Journal of Black Studies 32, no. 1 (2001): 30–49. Film |
| Week 11: African Renaissance / Africa Rising | ||
18 | The New Africa |
Readings Ferguson, James. “Chrysalis: The Life and Death of the African Renaissance in a Zambian Magazine.” Chapter 5 in Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Duke University Press Books, 2006. ISBN: 9780822337171. Nothias, Toussaint. “‘Rising’,‘Hopeful’,‘New’: Visualizing Africa in the Age of Globalization.” Visual Communication 13, no. 3 (2014): 323–39. |
19 | Africa as the future |
Readings McKenna, John. “6 Numbers that Prove the Future is African.” World Economic Forum. May 2, 2017. UNESCO. African Futures: Towards a Sustainable Emergence? United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2015, pp. 5–37. ISBN 9789231001734. |
| Week 12: Rwanda: An African Miracle? | ||
20 | In-class research and discussion |
Readings Nkusi, Alphonse. “The Rwandan Miracle.” UNESCO Courier, 2019-2. Mugenzi, Rene.“The So-called ‘Rwandan Economic Miracle’ is a Mirage.” Pambazuka News, 2014. Twagiramungu, Noel, and Joseph Sebarenzi. “Rwanda’s Economic Growth Could Be Derailed by its Autocratic Regime.” The Conversation, April 8, 2019. “Reconstruction of Rwanda: ‘Miracle’ or Mirage?” iD4D. April 25, 2019. |
21 | In-class research and discussion | No readings or films assigned |
| Week 13: New Africans? | ||
22 |
Telling stories of African pasts, presents, futures Guest visit by Mozambican filmmaker Inadelso Cossa |
Films A Memory in Three Acts. Directed by Inadelso Cossa. Color, 64 min. 2016. “An African City, Season 1.” YouTube. (*Watch a few episodes) “Pumzi.” YouTube. |
23 | Afropolitanism and its discontents |
Readings Selasi, Taiye. “Bye-Bye Babar.” The LIP, March 3, 2005. Balakrishnan, Sarah. Musila, Grace A. “Part-Time Africans, Europolitans, and ‘Africa Lite’.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 28, no.1 (2016): 109–13. |
| Week 14: Final paper presentations | ||
24 | Final paper presentations | No readings or films assigned |
25 | Final paper presentations | No readings or films assigned |
