African Cultural Traditions

Catalog description

Course examines African culture traditions through select representative African ethnic groups. It focuses on psychosocial and developmental ritual practices - gestation, naming, puberty, marriage, eldership, funerary and medico-magical rites - undergirding life cycles. The course looks at the viability of some cultural practices like female genital mutilation (clitoridectomy), scarifications and sacrifices for magico-medical rituals, as Africans attempt to re-order their lives in a rapidly changing world. Course offering varies.