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Reading Responses
You will write a 200–300 word response to the readings / films for each session. These responses are meant to help you synthesize and integrate the readings for your own learning (and give you a starting point for in-class discussion!), and also to help me gauge your understanding of the readings, what they brought up for you, etc., so that I might pitch classes at the right level. To that end, your responses should engage critically with the assigned materials: summarize the questions they raise and their key arguments, and lay out how the pieces relate to one another; state what remains unclear to you or leaves you perplexed, what questions the texts brought up for you, etc. These posts are due by MIDNIGHT the day before class. You may be exempted for one of the 22 required responses during the semester without penalty; in addition, on the day when you lead class discussion (see below), your presentation will count as your reading response (please email it to me by midnight the day before class). In other words, by the end of the semester, to get full credit for reading responses, you must have handed in a total of 20 (20% of your grade).
Presentation of Readings and Class Discussion Lead
You will each lead class discussion on an assigned reading at one point in the semester; this will entail a 15-minute presentation of the reading / film, and 2–3 questions to launch discussion with your classmates.
This will count for 10% of your grade.
Paper 1
This paper is meant as an opportunity for you to take stock of the material we have discussed so far, and formulate key takeaways.
The central concern of this course is how ideas about Africa — about what Africa is, what it means / its place in the world — have been negotiated and articulated in different historical moments. Among other things, addressing this concern requires considering who is involved in these negotiations, what’s at stake in different stories about or conceptualizations of Africa (for various stakeholders), and the specificities of these negotiations in different arenas of knowledge production.
What trends have you identified in the material we have covered so far (through the end of the History unit) in response to the course’s central concern? If you don’t see a single dominant trend, what are the various trends or directions this process has taken? What questions or concerns do the historical cases we have considered to date raise for the idea of Africa and Africa’s place in the world in the present / future, in your opinion?
Please use concrete examples from readings, employ appropriate citations, and include a bibliography (see Chicago Citation Style: Footnotes and Bibliography (PDF)).
The paper should be 1,250 words; 5 pages double-spaced, 12 size font.
Paper 1 will count for 10% of your grade.
Final Paper
This will be a research paper on a topic of your choosing related to course themes. You will build towards the final paper by handing in a proposal and outline first, and you will present the paper during the last week of classes.
For further detail, see Final Project Prospectus Guidelines.
The final paper will count for 30% of your grade.
Extra Credit Possibility
You can earn 5% extra credit (by event) by attending the following movie screenings and discussions and writing a 500-word reflection on the event that engages with course themes and readings. (If you cannot attend these screenings and would like to attend other Africa-related events instead for this extra credit option, please consult with the instructor beforehand.)
“Rafiki.” Women Take the Reel Film Series, MIT List Visual Arts Center.
“Inadelso Cossa: Personal Perspectives on Mozambican History through Film.” MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology.
SES # | TOPICS | KEY DUE DATES |
---|---|---|
Part 1: Being | ||
Week 1: Introduction | ||
1 |
What does it mean to study “the idea” of Africa? Introductions, course overview, how to read |
|
2 | Making knowledge, ordering the world (I) | Reading response #1 due |
Weeks 2 and 3: Geography | ||
3 |
Making knowledge, ordering the world (II) In-class map quiz |
Reading response #2 due |
4 | Maps, power, and knowledge | Reading response #3 due |
5 | Mapping Africa | Reading response #4 due |
Weeks 4 and 5: History | ||
6 |
Historicizing Africa Guest lecture by Prof. Kenda Mutongi, MIT History Department |
Reading response #5 due |
7 | Restoring African histories: Afrocentrism | Reading response #6 due |
8 | Guest presentation and workshop by professional Vodou dance practitioner and Vodou priest, Jean-Sébastien Duvilaire | Reading response #7 due |
9 | Remembering |
Reading response #8 due Paper #1 due |
Weeks 6 and 7: Race | ||
10 | Blackness and Otherness | Reading response #9 due |
11 | Blackness in Africa | Reading response #10 due |
Special event - screening: “Rafiki.” Women Take the Reel Film Series, MIT List Visual Arts Center. |
||
12 |
The Black African body (I) Field trip: “Made Visible: Contemporary South African Art, Fashion and Identity” exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts. |
Reading response #11 due |
13 | The Black African body (II) | Reading response #12 due |
Part 2: Becoming | ||
Week 8: Africa and / in the world after independence | ||
14 | Africa and / in the world after independence (I) | Reading response #13 due |
15 | Africa and / in the world after independence (II) | Reading response #14 due |
Week 9: Modernization theory and Africa | ||
16 | Modernization theory and Africa | Reading response #15 due |
Week 10: Development and Structural Adjustment Programs | ||
17 | Structural adjustment programs |
Reading response #16 due Final paper prospectus due |
Week 11: African Renaissance / Africa Rising | ||
18 | The New Africa | Reading response #17 due |
19 | Africa as the future | Reading response #18 due |
Week 12: Rwanda: An African Miracle? | ||
20 | In-class research and discussion | Reading response #19 due |
21 | In-class research and discussion | Final paper outline / first draft due |
Week 13: New Africans? | ||
Special event: “Inadelso Cossa: Personal Perspectives on Mozambican History through Film.” MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology. |
||
22 |
Telling stories of African pasts, presents, futures Guest visit by Mozambican filmmaker Inadelso Cossa |
Reading response #20 due |
23 | Afropolitanism and its discontents | Reading response #21 due |
Week 14: Final paper presentations | ||
24 | Final paper presentations | |
25 | Final paper presentations | Final paper due |
SES # | TOPICS | READINGS AND FILMS |
---|---|---|
Part 1: Being | ||
Week 1: Introduction | ||
1 | What does it mean to study “the idea” of Africa? | No readings or films assigned |
2 | Making knowledge, ordering the world (I) |
Readings Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. “Africa, Idea of.” In New Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Encyclopedia.com. 2015. Pierre, Jemima. “Africa/African.” Chapter 1 in Critical Terms for the Study of Africa. Edited by by Gaurav Desai and Adeline Masquelier. University of Chicago Press, 2018. ISBN: 9780226548975. [Preview with Google Books] |
Weeks 2 and 3: Geography | ||
3 | Making knowledge, ordering the world (II) |
Readings Wainana, Binyavanga. “How to Write About Africa.” Granta 92, 2005. Ferguson, James. “Introduction: Global Shadows: Africa and the World.” In Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Duke University Press Books, 2006. ISBN: 9780822337171. [Preview with Google Books] |
4 | Maps, power, and knowledge |
Readings Turnbull, David. “Tricksters and Cartographers: Maps, Science and the State in the Making of a Modern Scientific Knowledge Space.” Chapter 3 in Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers. Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 9789058230010. Harley, J. Brian. “Maps, Knowledge, and Power.” (PDF - 3.7MB) Chapter 8 in Geographic Thought: A Praxis Perspective. Edited by George Henderson and Marvin Waterstone. Routledge, 2008. ISBN: 9780415471701. |
5 | Mapping Africa |
Readings Mudimbe, V.Y. “Symbols and the Interpretation of the African Past.” Chapter 1 in The Idea of Africa. Indiana University Press, 1994, pp. 26–30. ISBN: 9780253208729. [Preview with Google Books] Lydon, Ghislaine. “Saharan Oceans and Bridges, Barriers and Divides in Africa’s Historiographical Landscape.” (PDF) Journal of African History 56 (2015): 3–22. Bassett, Thomas J. “Cartography and Empire Building in Nineteenth-Century West Africa.” Geographical Review 84, no. 3(1994): 316–35. ———. “Indigenous Mapmaking in Intertropical Africa.” Chapter 3 in The History of Cartography Volume 2, Book Three: Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific Societies. Edited by David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis. University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780226907284. |
Weeks 4 and 5: History | ||
6 | Historicizing Africa |
Readings Brizuela-Garcia, Esperanza. “Africa in the World: History and Historiography.” (PDF) Oxford Research Encyclopedias. 2018. Peterson, Derek R., and Giacomo Macola, eds. “Introduction: Homespun Historiography and the Academic Profession.” In Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa. Ohio University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780821418796. |
7 | Restoring African histories: Afrocentrism |
Readings Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Philosophy of History (PDF - 1.6MB), pp. 109–17. 1830. Diop, Cheikh Anta. “Preface: The Meaning of Our Work.” In The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality. Edited and translated by Mercer Cook. Lawrence Hill Books, 1989. ISBN: 9781556520723. Asante, Molefi Kete. “Dancing between Circles and Lines.” In The Afrocentric Idea. Temple University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9781566395953. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Europe Upside Down: Fallacies of the New Afrocentrism.” Chapter 44 in Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, & Representation. Edited by Roy Richard Grinker and Christopher B. Steiner. Wiley-Blackwell, 1991. ISBN: 9781557866851. |
8 | Guest presentation and workshop by professional Vodou dance practitioner and Vodou priest, Jean-Sébastien Duvilaire | No readings or films assigned |
9 | Remembering |
Readings Blier, Suzanne. “Vodun: West African Roots of Vodou.” Chapter 2 in Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou. Edited by Donald J. Cosentino. UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1995. ISBN: 9780930741471. Rush, Dana. “Introduction.” In Vodun in Coastal Bénin: Unfinished, Open-Ended, Global. Vanderbilt University Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780826519085. ———. “Vodun’s Rhizome.” Chapter 2 in Vodun in Coastal Bénin: Unfinished, Open-Ended, Global. Vanderbilt University Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780826519085. ———. “Notes.” In Vodun in Coastal Bénin: Unfinished, Open-Ended, Global. Vanderbilt University Press, 2017, pp. 159–62. ISBN: 9780826519085. Film A Memory in Three Acts. Directed by Inadelso Cossa. Color, 64 min. 2016. |
Weeks 6 and 7: Race | ||
10 | Blackness and Otherness |
Readings Fanon, Frantz. “The Fact of Blackness.” Chapter 5 in Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Constance Farrington. Grove Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780802150844. Mbembe, Achille. “The Subject of Race.” Chapter 1 in Critique of Black Reason. Translated and with an introduction by Laurent Dubois. Duke University Press Books, 2017. ISBN: 9780822363439. [Preview with Google Books] Senghor, Léopold Sédar. “Négritude: A Humanism of the 20th Century.” Chapter 1 in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Edited and introduced by by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Columbia University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780231100212. [Preview with Google Books] |
11 | Blackness in Africa |
Readings Pierre, Jemima. “Preface,” “Introduction,” and Chapter 1, “Of Natives and Europeans: Colonialism and the Ethnicization of Racial Dominance.” In The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race. University of Chicago Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780226923031. [Preview with Google Books] For those of you who read French (and want more on Négritude): Senghor, Léopold Sédar. “Qu’est-ce que la Négritude?” Études françaises 3 (1967): 3–20. Optional de Sá, Celina. “Becoming Diasporically African: The Cultural Politics Of West African Capoeira.” Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. Scholarly Commons. Penn Libraries, University of Pennsylvania. 2018. |
12 | The Black African body (I) |
Reading Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. “Writing Sex, Writing Difference: Creating the Master Text on the Hottentot Venus.” Chapter 1 in Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French. Duke University Press Books, 1999. ISBN: 9780822323402. [Preview with Google Books] Film Maids and Madams. Directed by Mira Hamermesh. Color, 54 min. 1986. |
13 | The Black African body (II) |
Readings Kant, Immanuel. Excerpt from “Of National Characteristics, so far as They Depend upon the Distinct Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime." Section 4 in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime. Translated by John T. Goldthwait. University of California Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780520240780. Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́. “Visualizing the Body: Western Theories and African Subjects.” Chapter 1 in The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. University of Minnesota Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780816624416. [Preview with Google Books] Pierre, Jemima. “‘I Like Your Colour!’ Skin Bleaching and Geographies of Race in Urban Ghana.” Feminist Review 90 (2013): 9–29. |
Part 2: Becoming | ||
Week 8: Africa and / in the world after independence | ||
14 | Africa and / in the world after independence (I) |
Reading Wallerstein, Immanuel. “Africa and the World.” Chapter 8 in Africa: The Politics of Independence and Unity. University of Nebraska Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780803298569. Audio Kwame Nkrumah - Address at Conference of African Freedom Fighters - Accra. YouTube. |
15 | Africa and / in the world after independence (II) |
Reading Sankara, Thomas. “Freedom Must be Conquered in Struggle.” In We Are Heirs of the World’s Revolutions: Speeches from the Burkina Faso Revolution 1983–1987. 2nd ed. Pathfinder Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780873489898. Film Lumumba: La mort du prophète. Directed by Raoul Peck. Color, 69 min. 1990. |
Week 9: Modernization theory and Africa | ||
16 | Modernization theory and Africa |
Readings Matunhu, J. “A Critique of Modernization and Dependency Theories in Africa: Critical Assessment.” (PDF) African Journal of History and Culture 3, no. 5 (2011): 65–72. Ferguson, James. “Decomposing Modernity.” Chapter 7 in Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Duke University Press Books, 2006. ISBN: 9780822337171. Film “TOUKI BOUKI, A VIAGEM DA HIENA (Touki-bouki, Djibril Diop Mambéty 1973) LEGENDADO.” YouTube. |
Week 10: Development and Structural Adjustment Programs | ||
17 | Development and structural adjustment programs |
Readings The World Bank. “Introduction.” Chapter 1 in Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action, pp. 2–5. 1981. ———. “Basic Constraints.” Chapter 2 in Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action, pp. 9–12. 1981. Geo-Jaja, Macleans A., and Garth Magnum. “Structural Adjustment as an Inadvertent Enemy of Human Development in Africa.” Journal of Black Studies 32, no. 1 (2001): 30–49. Film |
Week 11: African Renaissance / Africa Rising | ||
18 | The New Africa |
Readings Ferguson, James. “Chrysalis: The Life and Death of the African Renaissance in a Zambian Magazine.” Chapter 5 in Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Duke University Press Books, 2006. ISBN: 9780822337171. Nothias, Toussaint. “‘Rising’,‘Hopeful’,‘New’: Visualizing Africa in the Age of Globalization.” Visual Communication 13, no. 3 (2014): 323–39. |
19 | Africa as the future |
Readings McKenna, John. “6 Numbers that Prove the Future is African.” World Economic Forum. May 2, 2017. UNESCO. African Futures: Towards a Sustainable Emergence? United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2015, pp. 5–37. ISBN 9789231001734. |
Week 12: Rwanda: An African Miracle? | ||
20 | In-class research and discussion |
Readings Nkusi, Alphonse. “The Rwandan Miracle.” UNESCO Courier, 2019-2. Mugenzi, Rene.“The So-called ‘Rwandan Economic Miracle’ is a Mirage.” Pambazuka News, 2014. Twagiramungu, Noel, and Joseph Sebarenzi. “Rwanda’s Economic Growth Could Be Derailed by its Autocratic Regime.” The Conversation, April 8, 2019. |
21 | In-class research and discussion | No readings or films assigned |
Week 13: New Africans? | ||
22 |
Telling stories of African pasts, presents, futures Guest visit by Mozambican filmmaker Inadelso Cossa |
Films A Memory in Three Acts. Directed by Inadelso Cossa. Color, 64 min. 2016. “An African City, Season 1.” YouTube. (*Watch a few episodes) “Pumzi.” YouTube. |
23 | Afropolitanism and its discontents |
Readings Selasi, Taiye. “Bye-Bye Babar.” The LIP, March 3, 2005. Balakrishnan, Sarah. “Pan-African Legacies, Afropolitan Futures: A Conversation with Achille Mbembe.” (PDF) Transition 120 (2016): 20–37. Musila, Grace A. “Part-Time Africans, Europolitans, and ‘Africa Lite’.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 28, no.1 (2016): 109–13. |
Week 14: Final paper presentations | ||
24 | Final paper presentations | No readings or films assigned |
25 | Final paper presentations | No readings or films assigned |
Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for this course.
Course Description
Africa is not a country, but rather a territory covering one fifth of Earth’s land surface, home to over one sixth of the world’s population and more than one thousand languages, and yet “Africa” continues to mean something in the world as a place. The aim of this course is to examine how ideas about the kind of place that “Africa” is have been articulated and negotiated from colonial times to the present. In so doing, we get a glimpse of the politics of knowledge production across the disciplines of geography, history, biology, political science, and the creative industries.
The course is divided into two parts: Being and Becoming. In Part 1, Being, we consider foundational constructions of Africa as a place in the world (what Africa is), through its geographical mapping, debates about its history, and the articulation of race—of Blackness in particular. In Part 2, Becoming, we turn to social science theories and political and cultural movements from the postcolonial period to the present that have sought to conceptualize Africa’s place in the world after independence (what Africa shall become).
Readings and Films
All required readings and films can be found in the Readings and Films section.
Grading
ACTIVITIES | PERCENTAGES |
---|---|
Attendance and class participation | 20% |
Reading responses (20) | 20% |
Reading presentation and class discussion lead (1) | 10% |
Map quiz (P/F) | 5% |
Paper 1 | 15% |
Final paper (Prospectus 5% + Outline 5% + Presentation 5% + Paper 15%) | 30% |
For detail on the activities listed in the table, see the Assignments section.
Writing Support
The Writing and Communication Center (WCC) at MIT offers MIT students free one-on-one professional advice from communication experts. The WCC works with undergraduate, graduate students, post-docs, faculty, staff, alums, and spouses. The WCC helps you strategize about all types of academic and professional writing as well as about all aspects of oral presentations (including practicing classroom presentations & conference talks as well as designing slides). The WCC also helps with all English as Second Language issues, from writing and grammar to pronunciation and conversation practice.
Academic Integrity
MIT students are expected to adhere to MIT’s Academic Integrity policies. All work (research papers, weekly papers, presentations) must be completed independently. Students are encouraged to discuss the readings and their projects with each other (they may, for example, want to practice their presentations for their classmates), but they are individually responsible for all written work.