AFST 203b / ENGL 2003b / LING 2030b, English in Post-Colonial Africa and the African Diaspora  Staff

This course explores the importance of the English language in Post-colonial Africa. By examining the historical, socio-political, and cultural contexts that have influenced the evolution and adaptation of the English language, students will acquire insights into the linguistic diversity found in post-colonial Africa and its practical implications. The course explores the relationship between English and indigenous languages, focusing on their continuing influence in education, governance, literature, and identity formation. We also look at the linguistic structure of African American Vernacular English and explore possible connections to the languages of Africa and English-based creoles such as Gullah, spoken in the Caribbean and off the South Carolina coast.  HU, SO
MW 1pm-2:15pm

AFST 2170a / ER&M 2568a / LAST 1170a / PORT 2170a, A Luta Continua: African, Asian, and Indigenous Responses to Coloniality in the Lusophone World  Kevin Ennis

What did it mean to be anticolonial in the era of revolution against the Portuguese Empire, and what does it mean today in the twenty-first century across the Portuguese-speaking world? In this course we examine the reverberations of anticolonial movements in Portuguese-speaking African and Asian territories, as well as in Indigenous movements in Brazil. Focusing on political, social, and cultural dimensions of emancipation, we ask: How have African, Asian, and Indigenous writers and artists imagined emancipatory endeavors for their peoples, their countries, and their worlds? What is the role of cultural expression in world-sharing and world-building in response to centuries of colonialism and its legacies? This course also aims to further develop communicative proficiency in Portuguese and enhance knowledge of the diverse cultures of the Portuguese-speaking world.  Prerequisite: PORT 140, or equivalent in placement.  L5, HU
TTh 9am-10:15am

AFST 3340b / HIST 1340b, Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade  Robert Harms

Examination of the tumultuous changes experienced by African societies during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, approximately 1450–1850. Focus on the complex interaction between the internal dynamics of African societies and the impact of outside forces.  HU  0 Course cr
TTh 9am-10:15am

* AFST 3344a / HIST 1344a, African Independence: A Cup of Plenty or a Poisoned Chalice?  Staff

In every African colony after World War Two there emerged nationalist movements which no longer called for civil rights as in the pre-war years but demanded self-determination. While many of them got it easy, some had to fight long and bloody wars for it. By the 1960s the colonial edifice had crumbled except for the few settler colonies in southern Africa. But even here the winds of change could not be stopped. But what did decolonization and independence mean to Africa? Did Africans get what they wanted? Was independence a cup of plenty or a poisoned chalice? In addressing these questions, this course charts the economic, political, and cultural transformations of postcolonial Africa from the 1960s to the present. The argument is this: there can be no understanding of Africa’s challenges today without an inquiry into the nature of what the continent got from the departing colonial powers.   HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* AFST 3351a / CPLT 3351a / ENGL 2831a / FILM 3537a, The Nigerian ‘Video Novel’ and Nollywood  Staff

The course introduces students to an emerging genre of the Nigerian novel in which writers adopt narrative re-purposing strategies that invite transcription and adaptation to films. This evolving ‘Nigerian visual novel’, or ‘video novel’, is defined by its loosely structured, tabloid-themed and reader-friendly style, all reflecting the craft of Nollywood films, a thriving video film culture that emerged in the 1990s and has remained popular globally. Through the study of Nollywood films alongside new Nigerian fiction, the course will examine the techniques adopted by writers to accommodate the aesthetics of popular culture, to revive a declining readership, and to make literature more sellable. As these novels win literature prizes and find their way onto syllabi, the implications they have for our understanding of the African literary canon will be discussed. Students will view selected Nollywood movies and read a number of novels in the new genre in order to appraise the extent to which the serious and the sensuous intersect in this remaking of literariness. Seminar discussions will be accompanied by short lectures in which concepts such as ‘trans-mediality’, ‘reverse-adaptation’, ‘screen-to-page’, ‘appropriation’ and ‘quotation’ will be discussed to build an understanding of how the ‘new’ approach reconfigures Nigerian novels.  HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

AFST 3381a / GLBL 2427a / PLSC 2427a, Government and Politics in Africa  Staff

The establishment and use of political power in selected countries of tropical Africa. The political role of ethnic and class cleavages, military coups, and the relation between politics and economic development.  SO  0 Course cr
HTBA

* AFST 3385a / EP&E 4350a / HIST 2391a / HIST 3344a / PLSC 3439a, Pandemics in Africa: From the Spanish Influenza to Covid-19  Jonny Steinberg

The overarching aim of the course is to understand the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic in Africa in the context of a century of pandemics, their political and administrative management, the responses of ordinary people, and the lasting changes they wrought. The first eight meetings examine some of the best social science-literature on 20th-century African pandemics before Covid-19. From the Spanish Influenza to cholera to AIDS, to the misdiagnosis of yaws as syphilis, and tuberculosis as hereditary, the social-science literature can be assembled to ask a host of vital questions in political theory: on the limits of coercion, on the connection between political power and scientific expertise, between pandemic disease and political legitimacy, and pervasively, across all modern African epidemics, between infection and the politics of race. The remaining four meetings look at Covid-19. We chronicle the evolving responses of policymakers, scholars, religious leaders, opposition figures, and, to the extent that we can, ordinary people. The idea is to assemble sufficient information to facilitate a real-time study of thinking and deciding in times of radical uncertainty and to examine, too, the consequences of decisions on the course of events. There are of course so many moving parts: health systems, international political economy, finance, policing, and more. We also bring guests into the classroom, among them frontline actors in the current pandemic as well as veterans of previous pandemics well placed to share provisional comparative thinking. This last dimension is especially emphasized: the current period, studied in the light of a century of epidemic disease, affording us the opportunity to see path dependencies and novelties, the old and the new.  SO
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* AFST 4406a / GLBL 3363a / PLSC 3457a, Sexual Violence and War  Elisabeth Wood

Analysis of patterns of sexual violence in war. Assessment of how well scholars in various disciplines and policy analysts account for these patterns.  SO
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* AFST 4435a / TDPS 3302a, West African Dance: Traditional to Contemporary  Lacina Coulibaly

A practical and theoretical study of the traditional dances of Africa, focusing on those of Burkina Faso and their contemporary manifestations. Emphasis on rhythm, kinesthetic form, and gestural expression. The fusion of modern European dance and traditional African dance. Admission by audition during the first class meeting.  HU
TTh 10:30am-12:20pm

* AFST 4457a / AFAM 4357a / AMST 4470 / ER&M 4067a / FREN 481 / FREN 4810, Racial Republic: African Diasporic Literature and Culture in Postcolonial France  Fadila Habchi

This is an interdisciplinary seminar on French cultural history from the 1930s to the present. We focus on issues concerning race and gender in the context of colonialism, postcolonialism, and migration. The course investigates how the silencing of colonial history has been made possible culturally and ideologically, and how this silencing has in turn been central to the reorganizing of French culture and society from the period of decolonization to the present. We ask how racial regimes and spaces have been constructed in French colonial discourses and how these constructions have evolved in postcolonial France. We examine postcolonial African diasporic literary writings, films, and other cultural productions that have explored the complex relations between race, colonialism, historical silences, republican universalism, and color-blindness. Topics include the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Black Paris, decolonization, universalism, the Trente Glorieuses, the Paris massacre of 1961, anti-racist movements, the "beur" author, memory, the 2005 riots, and contemporary afro-feminist and decolonial movements.  HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* AFST 4491a, The Senior Essay  Veronica Waweru

Independent research on the senior essay. By the end of the sixth week of classes, a rough draft of the entire essay should be completed. By the end of the last week of classes (fall term) or three weeks before the end of classes (spring term), two copies of the final essay must be submitted.
HTBA

* AFST 4834a / AFAM 4134a / ENGL 4834a, Postcolonial World Literatures, 1945 to the Present  Stephanie Newell

Introduction to key debates about postwar world literatures in English, to the politics of English as a language of postcolonial literature, and to debates about globalization and culture. Themes include colonial history, postcolonial migration, translation, national identity, cosmopolitanism, and global literary prizes.  WR, HU
Th 9:25am-11:15am