Africa in the World

Catalog description

This course is a broad survey of African history. The course will explore the African past in its diversity. Students will explore the continent's political complexity and social creativity across a period of several millennia. The class will consider the impact of gender, religion, healing practices, trade, mobility, and the environment on major historical developments in Africa before the continent's colonization by European imperialistic powers, through the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and up to the contemporary period. The course will also introduce students to African history's methodology and to the use of linguistic, material, and oral sources in the writing of history.