General Field Seminar in African History (450-2-1)

Instructors

David Lee Schoenbrun
8474917278
Harris Hall - Room 303
David Schoenbrun, PhD, is a teacher, author, and filmmaker. He is a past Director of the Program of African Studies, at Northwestern University. He has worked in Egypt, Ghana, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda.

Meeting Info

Harris Hall room 101: Wed 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

This course introduces you to a field of knowledge called African history by juxtaposing early and recent periods, old and new books, African authors and not. Whatever your specialized interests, you should be familiar with shifting debates over the key questions occupying "specialists" in that vast field and its equally vast past. Such questions include biography, gender, political cultures of centralization and heterarchy, urbanization, belonging, technology, slavery, long-distance and trade diasporas, religion, intellectual history, labor, colonialisms, and so forth. If you develop a reading fluency in all methodological approaches used to explore some of those questions you can engage more history, African or otherwise. Methods include archaeology, language and historical linguistics, oral textualities, art history, photography, materiality, and entanglements with other-than-human beings. Each method often involves the analysis and interpretation of written documents. You should develop the habit of considering the interplay of politics and ideologies with academic African history.

Learning Objectives

Analysis and restatement of historical argument. Assessment of evidence supporting an historical argument. Awareness of contemporary politics of historical argument.

Evaluation Method

Participation. Two 10-page critical review essays on single books.

Class Materials (Required)

All the assigned readings will be uploaded on Canvas

Class Notes

Concentration: Africa/Middle East

Class Attributes

Attendance at 1st class mandatory