Results for AFRICAST

How has Africa been dominantly represented in the media? How are these representations challenged, complexified and reproduced in the postcolonial context? What is the role of African media in these processes? This class is an introduction to the variety of roles played by the media in representing Africa, with a particular focus on the postcolonial context. The topic is particularly relevant to contemporary Africa as the emerging middle-class, economic and cultural globalization, and the uptake for communication technologies are shaping contested images of the continent. You will: develop a theoretical and empirical understanding of the media as instruments of domination but also of resistance; learn how to critically deconstruct media representations in everyday life; understand the challenges of intercultural communication in an unequal world. Key concepts such as: representation, stereotyping, cultural appropriation, afropessimism, afrocentrism, afro optimism, afropolitanism. Readings drawn from media and cultural studies, anthropology, postcolonial theory and literature. In class-analysis of photographs, news articles and broadcasts, PR campaigns, social media, films and documentaries.

Is foreign aid a solution? or a problem? Should there be more aid, less aid, or none at all? How do foreign aid and local initiatives intersect? A clinic in Uganda that addresses AIDS as a family and community problem. Multiple strategies in Tanzania to increase girls' schooling. These are imaginative and innovative approaches to pressing and contested policy challenges. We will examine several contentious issues in contemporary Africa, exploring their roots and the intense conflicts they engender, with special attention to foreign aid and the aid relationship. As African communities and countries work to shape their future, what are the foreign roles and what are their consequences?

Desert environments make up a third of the land areas on Earth, ranging from the hottest to the coldest environments. Aridity leads to the development of unique adaptations among the organisms that inhabit them. Climate change and other processes of desertification as well as increasing human demand for habitable and cultivatable areas have resulting in increasing need to better understand these systems. Namibia is a model system for studying these processes and includes the Sossuvlei (Sand Sea) World Heritable Site. This seminar will prepare students for their overseas field experience in Namibia. The seminar will provide an introduction to desert biogeography and culture, using Namibia as a case study. During the seminar, students will each give two presentations on aspects of desert biogeography and ecology, specific organisms and their adaptations to arid environments, cultural adaptations of indigenous peoples and immigrants, ecological threats and conservation efforts, and/or national and international policy towards deserts. Additional assignments include a comprehensive dossier and a final exam. Students will also carry out background research for the presentations they will be giving during the field seminar where access to the internet and to other scholarly resources will be limited. In addition, we will cover logistics, health and safety, cultural sensitivity, geography, and politics. We will deal with post-field issues such as reverse culture shock, and ways in which participants can consolidate and build up their abroad experiences after they return to campus.

21st-century South Africa continues its literary effervescence. In this class we'll sample some recent novels and related writings to tease out the issues shaping the country (and to some degree the continent) at present. Is `South African literature' a meaningful category today? What are the most significant features we can identify in new writings and how do they relate to contemporary social dynamics? The course will appeal to anyone interested in present-day Cape Town or Johannesburg, including students who have spent a term in BOSP-Cape Town or plan to do so in future. Both undergraduate and graduate students are welcome. 2-3 units. Course may be repeated for credit.nn nnAll students will write short analyses from the prescribed texts. Students taking the course for three units will write an extended essay on a topic agreed with the instructor.

The excitement around social innovation and entrepreneurship has spawned numerous startups focused on tackling world problems, particularly in the fields of education and health. The best social ventures are launched with careful consideration paid to research, design, and efficacy. This course offers students insights into understanding how to effectively develop, evaluate, and scale social ventures. Using TeachAIDS (an award-winning nonprofit educational technology social venture used in 78 countries) as a primary case study, students will be given an in-depth look into how the entity was founded and scaled globally. Guest speakers will include world-class experts and entrepreneurs in Philanthropy, Medicine, Communications, Education, and Technology. Open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

This course explores the central place Africa holds in prose writing emerging during early and modern periods of globalization across the Atlantic, including the middle passage, exploration and colonialism, black internationalism, decolonization, immigration, and diasporic return. We will begin with Equiano's Interesting Narrative (1789), a touchstone for the Atlantic prose tradition, and study how writers crossing the Atlantic have continued to depict Africa in later centuries: to dramatize scenes of departure and arrival in stories of self-making or new citizenship, to evoke histories of racial unity or examine psychic and social fragmentation, to imagine new national communities or question their norms and borders. Our readings will be selected from English, French, Portuguese and Spanish-language traditions. And we will pay close attention to genres of prose fiction (Conrad, Condé, Olinto), epic and prose poetry (Césaire, Walcott), theoretical reflection (Gilroy, Glissant, Mudimbe, Benitez-Rojo), and literary autobiography (Barack Obama, Saidiya Hartman). Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take COMPLIT 145B for a minimum of 3 Units and a Letter Grade.

How has Africa been dominantly represented in the media? How are these representations challenged, complexified and reproduced in the postcolonial context? What is the role of African media in these processes? This class is an introduction to the variety of roles played by the media in representing Africa, with a particular focus on the postcolonial context. The topic is particularly relevant to contemporary Africa as the emerging middle-class, economic and cultural globalization, and the uptake for communication technologies are shaping contested images of the continent. You will: develop a theoretical and empirical understanding of the media as instruments of domination but also of resistance; learn how to critically deconstruct media representations in everyday life; understand the challenges of intercultural communication in an unequal world. Key concepts such as: representation, stereotyping, cultural appropriation, afropessimism, afrocentrism, afro optimism, afropolitanism. Readings drawn from media and cultural studies, anthropology, postcolonial theory and literature. In class-analysis of photographs, news articles and broadcasts, PR campaigns, social media, films and documentaries.

This is a student driven, dialogue based, and intellectual community focused course. We will explore and challenge the taken-for-granted framing of key African issues and debates. Engagement with discussion leaders drawing on their own research and case studies from across the African continent will guide us across shifting terrain. This course centers the scholarship and voices of African students. Topics include: Afropolitanism, Brain Drain/ Gain, Education, Leadership, Global Health, AI Application in Africa, Economic Development, Industrial Policy, LGBTQI Rights, Gender and Sexuality.

May be repeated for credit.

Is foreign aid a solution? or a problem? Should there be more aid, less aid, or none at all? How do foreign aid and local initiatives intersect? A clinic in Uganda that addresses AIDS as a family and community problem. Multiple strategies in Tanzania to increase girls' schooling. These are imaginative and innovative approaches to pressing and contested policy challenges. We will examine several contentious issues in contemporary Africa, exploring their roots and the intense conflicts they engender, with special attention to foreign aid and the aid relationship. As African communities and countries work to shape their future, what are the foreign roles and what are their consequences?

21st-century South Africa continues its literary effervescence. In this class we'll sample some recent novels and related writings to tease out the issues shaping the country (and to some degree the continent) at present. Is `South African literature' a meaningful category today? What are the most significant features we can identify in new writings and how do they relate to contemporary social dynamics? The course will appeal to anyone interested in present-day Cape Town or Johannesburg, including students who have spent a term in BOSP-Cape Town or plan to do so in future. Both undergraduate and graduate students are welcome. 2-3 units. Course may be repeated for credit.nn nnAll students will write short analyses from the prescribed texts. Students taking the course for three units will write an extended essay on a topic agreed with the instructor.

This course examines the ways writers in literature and medicine have used the narrative form to explore the ethics of care in what has been called the developing world. We will begin with a call made by the editor-in-chief of The Lancet for a literature of global health, namely fiction modeled on the social reform novels of the nineteenth century, understood to have helped readers develop a conscience for public health as the field emerged as a modern medical specialty. We will then spend the quarter understanding how colonial, postcolonial, and world literatures have answered and complicated this call. Readings will include prose fiction by Albert Camus, Joseph Conrad, Tsitsi Dangaremgba, Amitav Ghosh, Susan Sontag as well as physician memoirs featuring Frantz Fanon, Albert Schweitzer, Abraham Verghese, Paul Farmer. And each literary reading will be paired with medical, philosophical, and policy writings that deeply inform the field of global health. Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take the course for a Letter Grade.

The excitement around social innovation and entrepreneurship has spawned numerous startups focused on tackling world problems, particularly in the fields of education and health. The best social ventures are launched with careful consideration paid to research, design, and efficacy. This course offers students insights into understanding how to effectively develop, evaluate, and scale social ventures. Using TeachAIDS (an award-winning nonprofit educational technology social venture used in 78 countries) as a primary case study, students will be given an in-depth look into how the entity was founded and scaled globally. Guest speakers will include world-class experts and entrepreneurs in Philanthropy, Medicine, Communications, Education, and Technology. Open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

This interdisciplinary course explores how modern African histories, bodies, and natures have been entangled with technological activities. Viewing Africans as experts and innovators, we consider how technologies have mediated, represented, or performed power in African societies. Topics include infrastructure, extraction, medicine, weapons, communications, sanitation, and more. Themes woven through the course include citizenship, mobility, labor, bricolage, in/formal economies, and technopolitical geographies, among others. Readings draw from history, anthropology, geography, and social/cultural theory.

Guest scholars present analyses of major African themes and topics. Brief response papers required. May be repeated for credit.