African Studies Methodology

Catalog description

This course is an interdisciplinary research seminar in African Studies for graduate students in the humanities. In the seminar, students will explore key debates and issues in the field while examining the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches that scholars of African Studies have used to approach these debates. Through research articles that each employ a different set of methodological tools to examine questions of modernity and tradition, development, gender, ethnicity, conflict, and transnationalism, students will understand the possible approaches that can be employed to identify a research questions, gather evidence, and analyze it. Through reading and discussing such research articles, and discussing with scholars who visit class to present their research, students will gain conceptual tools to advance a research project in methodologically-grounded ways. While some topics will apply more directly to the student's individual research project, the themes studied are those that all scholars of African Studies should have some knowledge and mastery over, and each module will give students an opportunity to experiment by applying the theory and methods referenced in the scholarly literature to primary sources relevant to the student's own research. See syllabus in supplementary materials for more information.