Module description
This module encourages students to analyse and engage with some of the most significant debates in the historiography of modern Africa. Readings and discussions will illuminate and account for the shift away from historical materialism toward analyses of race, gender, sexuality, and culture. Students will evaluate various strategies for incorporating the insights of the cultural and linguistic turns in order to re-examine fundamental questions of African history. A central aim of the module will be to understand African societies on their own terms and through local perspectives. In addition, students will learn to define and apply key concepts such as dependency theory, state formation, resistance, and political consciousness.
Provisional topics covered
- Histories of African History
- Slavery
- Colonialism
- Gender
- Race
- Anticolonialism
- Print cultures
- Orality
- Globalising African History
- The Meaning of the Past
Assessment details
1 x 3,500 words essay (100%)
Educational aims & objectives
This module aims to provide students with: 1. Systematic, thematic, and critical historical engagement with the culture and politics of Africa, including literature, arts, popular culture, religious life, ethnic identity and national politics. 2. Appreciation of and competence in handling a wide variety of historical evidence, including written documentation and material. 3. Understanding and knowledge of the history of Africa, and its relationship with the rest of the world.
Learning outcomes
Students will demonstrate the critical, communicative and transferable skills and depth of knowledge required at Level 7. By the end of the module, students will be able to:
• Demonstrate an advanced understanding of African cultural and political history.
• Consider and critically evaluate the different approaches taken by historians and practitioners of other disciplines to the study of Africa.
• Understand the particular methodological challenges and sensitivities involved in researching and writing about African History.
• Formulate their own arguments and questions about the issues and debates raised in the module.
Teaching pattern
10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Suggested reading list
Suggested introductory reading
This is suggested reading and purchase of these texts is not mandatory
- Frederick Cooper, Africa in the World: Capitalism, Empire, Nation-State (Cambridge, MA, 2014).
- Adom Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton, 2019).
- Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, 1996).
- V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington, IN, 1988).
- Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London, 1972).
- Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London, 1998).