Announcing updated course content and new lecturer

Africa has long been portrayed as the “dark continent,” obscuring its rich and complex history. This course sheds light on Africa's history, focusing on the modern period since c.1800. We will pay attention to issues of knowledge production and representation, the slave trade and its abolition, colonial rule and decolonization, post-colonial politics and the Cold War, urban Africa, and gender and women’s rights.

The course will not only provide an understanding of how the economic, political, and social changes in the 19th and 20th century have shaped African politics today, but also provide students with skills to do the work of historical analysis. We will review and discuss primary and secondary sources, novels, autobiographies, documentaries, and films which all provide valuable insights into the history of Africans. The course will equip students with tools to confront single stories, and to come to their own evidence-based conclusions about the past, by unpacking a variety of primary sources. The course provides students with the skills required to write a well-argued essay, based on their own effort at assembling and analyzing information from multiple sources.

The course is designed for students who have and those who don’t have prior knowledge of African history. It is also designed for students who want to improve their academic writing.

Practicalities:

• When: period 1, Monday afternoon and Thursday afternoon
• Language: English
• Admission criteria: elective, open to all BSc and MSc students
• Work forms: lectures; assessment: paper and exam
• Mandatory literature: Erik Gilbert and Jonathan T. Reynolds. (2012). Africa in World History: From Prehistory to the Present. 3rd edition. Several additional texts.