New Introductory Courses in History (200-0-26)

Topic

Drugs and Alcohol in Africa

Instructors

Akin Ogundiran
Akin Ogundiran is the Cardiss Collins Professor of Arts and Sciences, Professor of History, and Courtesy Professor of Anthropology and of Black Studies at Northwestern University. His research interests focus on the political, cultural, economic, and social histories of West Africa from 400 BC to the mid-nineteenth century. Ogundiran’s publications include The Yoruba: A New History (Indiana University Press, 2020), recipient of the Vinson Sutlive Book Prize. He directs the Material History Lab at Northwestern University. He is a Senior Fellow of Gardens and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, DC), a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Meeting Info

Kresge Cent. Hall 2-380 Kaplan: Tues, Thurs 9:30AM - 10:50AM

Overview of class

This is the story of the everyday lives in Africa over the past 5000 years told through drugs and alcoholic beverages—beer, palm wine, tobacco, coffee, kolanut, marijuana, aguardiente, ògógóró, heroin, nyaope, etc. Drugs and alcohol have been central to defining sociality, rituality and sacredness, personhood, community, pleasure, and leisure, as well as pain, power, domination, resistance, bondage, and freedom at different times and places. As substances of taste, addiction, and sociality, they are also implicated in the process of negotiating, contesting, enacting, and debating identities, belonging, gender, class, and ideas about wellness and illness. What can the production, circulation, and consumption of alcohol and other psychoactive substances tell us about Africa's past, present, and future? All the topics in this course are designed to answer this question, especially with reference to how the use of drugs and alcohol intersects with everyday lives. For example, the contestation and control over who has the right or privilege to consume which drug or alcohol are tied to the issue of power, identity, and anxieties about social order. Moving between the ordinary and special, playfulness and seriousness, pop culture and policy, the instructors will collaborate with students on how to use the study of drugs and alcohol to learn and think deeply about African history and how the African present came into existence.

Learning Objectives

(1) Acquire knowledge of how drugs and alcohol are relevant to understanding Africa's deep-time cultural, economic, intellectual, political, and social history in local, regional, and/or global contexts and become familiar with relevant primary and secondary sources for studying this history.

(2) Understand the impact of ecologies, local initiatives, and global historical processes on how particular kinds of drugs and alcohol came into existence and how they have been used in Africa.

(3) Develop skills in historical thinking and analysis, using change, continuity, causality, context, complexity, and contingency to investigate how Africa's relationships with drugs and alcoholic beverages have developed and unfolded over a long time. (4) Deploy historical thinking about drugs and alcohol to interpret and narrate key events and experiences of time in Africa.

Evaluation Method

Papers, Quizzes, Discussion, Presentation

Class Materials (Required)

Materials will be posted on Canvas

Class Notes

Concentration: Africa/Middle East

Class Attributes

Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area

Associated Classes

DIS - Harris Hall L05: Fri 12:00PM - 12:50PM

DIS - University Hall 412: Fri 1:00PM - 1:50PM

DIS - University Hall 118: Fri 2:00PM - 2:50PM