Reimagining Histories of Africa: A Workshop

Catalog description

This class explores, through analysis and practice, the ways in which histories of Africa (with a special focus on Cape Town and South Africa more generally) can be told, narrated, captured, produced, and experienced through means other than what might be called traditional "scholarly" or "academic" historical narratives. While professional historians have long-established methodologies for writing about the past, history is continuously explored by people removed from the academy and uninterested in engaging with many of the historiographical and methodological issues that concern scholars. Put another way, many people think about, relate to, and recreate the past in ways that lack footnotes, citations, and sometimes even words. The course has two main components. First, we will consider how aspects of African history have been treated by non-academics from various walks of life, including artists, writers, archivists, photographers, and engaged citizens. In this aspect of the class, Cape Town will be our laboratory; we will take multiple field trips to museums, historical sites, archives, and other relevant exhibitions. If possible, we will schedule meetings with people working to bring the past to life, either through museum work, archival projects, or artistic expression. Approaches will include graphic histories, creative non-fiction, oral histories, art installations, performance and reenactments, and sites of memory, such as museums. Much of our class discussion will be structured around experiencing, critiquing, and understanding the methods used to produce these reflections on the past. We will assess, through weekly exposure to examples, what works, how it works, what doesn't work, and why. But the course is also essentially a creative and research-oriented endeavor. Our analysis of others' works of exhibitions, art, and documentary is undertaken in the…