Art and Religion in Pre-Colonial Africa

Catalog description

This course explores the relationship between art, religion, and power in pre-colonial Africa from 1500 to 1850, focusing on regions from Senegambia to Angola. Drawing on travelers’ accounts, missionary reports, Portuguese Inquisition documents, and early ethnographic records—alongside museum objects—students will examine how African communities used material culture to express spiritual beliefs, construct political authority, and resist external pressures. A central theme of the course is the study of amuletic bundles that circulated across West Africa and the Atlantic world. These objects serve as a case study for understanding broader African religious systems and the meanings ascribed to sacred materials across diasporic contexts. Students will work directly with primary sources and museum collections, including a visit to the Penn Museum, and will develop object-based analyses grounded in historical and critical methodologies.