printer friendly pageHISTORY 45N: Power, Prestige and Politics in African Societies
This seminar infuses a human dimension into the study of politics in Africa. Considering the 1800s to the present day, the seminar prompts students to creatively connect the political with the personal. We will examine how gender, intimate and romantic relationships, arguments between parents and children, attempts to access and harness the power of the sacred, and fights for status and authority of all kinds, were pivotal forces shaping the form that politics and political activism assumed on the continent.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 45S: Land and Power in the Anthropocene: Perspectives from Africa (AFRICAAM 145S, CSRE 45S)
How and why is land use a contested issue? How can we understand land injustice in light of the Anthropocene, that is, human-induced climate change? How do African knowledges, practices, and experiences inform global debates about environmental, political, and socio-economic well-being? This course considers how racial and colonial thinking and processes compounded discourses about land and examines examples of resistance, legacies of struggle, and possible futures. Centering African perspectives in a global context, we will examine how individual, institutional, and societal conceptions of land are revealed in narratives, practices, and policies created and circulated by Africans as well as outsiders in the continent. We will also analyze how these dynamics have had and continue to have repercussions across the globe. We will engage with diverse written, oral, audio-visual, and digital sources and associated methodologies to explore perceptions of land and land ownership, and discuss various forms of land use including agriculture, pastoralism, conservation, mining, and urbanization, and potential futures.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Ndegwa, J. (PI)
HISTORY 46N: Show and Tell: Creating Provenance Histories of African Art (AFRICAAM 46N, AFRICAST 46N)
Provenance refers to the chain of custody of a particular art object during its lifetime. Put another way, provenance refers to all the individuals, communities, and institutions who have owned (both legally and illegally), kept, stored, exhibited, displayed, managed, and sold an art object. Knowledge of provenance can both inflate and deflate the value of an art object and it can also shed light upon legal and ethical questions including assessing repatriation and restitution claims for African art objects. Furthermore, by telling the story of how a particular object moved through multiple pairs of hands, often over the course of centuries and across several continents, we gain nuanced appreciation of the social currency of artwork as well as of changing perceptions of aesthetic and monetary value, and insight into the extractive dynamics of colonialism and postcolonial global economies. For this class, you will have the unique opportunity to work first hand with an important African art collection in North America: the Richard H. Scheller Collection at Stanford University. You will select one object from the collection and create a detailed provenance history, documenting and detailing its origins, its movement across space and time, and its arrival to the Scheller collection in Silicon Valley. You will use archival materials from Scheller¿s collection, online databases and archives, and secondary literature. Your final project for the class will be to create a visual StoryMap that allows you to display your provenance history with narrative text and multimedia content. In this way, you will not only have completed a class assignment: you will also have constructed for posterity a remarkable hitherto unknown history of an important African art object.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 47: History of South Africa (AFRICAAM 47, CSRE 74)
(Same as
HISTORY 147.
HISTORY 47 is 3 units;
HISTORY 147 is 5 units.) Introduction, focusing particularly on the modern era. Topics include: precolonial African societies; European colonization; the impact of the mineral revolution; the evolution of African and Afrikaner nationalism; the rise and fall of the apartheid state; the politics of post-apartheid transformation; and the AIDS crisis.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-GlobalCom, GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI, WAY-EDP
HISTORY 47S: Black Earth Rising: Law and Society in Postcolonial Africa (AFRICAAM 47S, AFRICAST 90)
Is the International Criminal Court a neocolonial institution? Should African art in Western museums be returned? Why have anti-homosexuality laws emerged in many African countries? This course engages these questions, and more, to explore how Africans have grappled with the legacies of colonialism through law since independence. Reading court documents, listening to witness testimonies, analyzing legal codes, and watching cultural commentaries¿including hit TV series Black Earth Rising¿students will examine the histories of legal conflict in Africa and their implications for the present and future of African societies. This course fulfills the Social Inquiry and Engaging Diversity Ways requirements.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 48: The Egyptians (AFRICAAM 30, CLASSICS 82, HISTORY 148)
This course traces the emergence and development of the distinctive cultural world of the ancient Egyptians over nearly 4,000 years. Through archaeological and textual evidence, we will investigate the social structures, religious beliefs, and expressive traditions that framed life and death in this extraordinary region. Students with or without prior background are equally encouraged.
Last offered: Autumn 2020
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 48Q: South Africa: Contested Transitions (AFRICAAM 48Q)
Preference to sophomores. The inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president in May 1994 marked the end of an era and a way of life for South Africa. The changes have been dramatic, yet the legacies of racism and inequality persist. Focus: overlapping and sharply contested transitions. Who advocates and opposes change? Why? What are their historical and social roots and strategies? How do people reconstruct their society? Historical and current sources, including films, novels, and the Internet.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI, Writing 2
HISTORY 49S: African Futures: Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and Beyond (AFRICAAM 49S)
This course examines decolonization and its aftermath in sub-Saharan Africa. With a "wind of change" sweeping the continent, how did Africans imagine their futures together? From W.E.B. Du Bois to Black Panther, this course will engage in historical readings of political essays, speeches, film, and literature to consider how Africans envisioned their communities beyond empire. Topics will include a variety of projects for African unity, from experiments with Pan-Africanism, to religious revivalism, to Afrofuturist art and aesthetics.
Last offered: Autumn 2019
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 50A: Colonial and Revolutionary America
(Same as
HISTORY 150A. 50A is 3 units; 150A is 5 units.) Survey of the origins of American society and polity in the 17th and 18th centuries. Topics: the migration of Europeans and Africans and the impact on native populations; the emergence of racial slavery and of regional, provincial, Protestant cultures; and the political origins and constitutional consequences of the American Revolution.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 50B: Nineteenth Century America (CSRE 50S)
(Same as
HISTORY 150B.
HISTORY 50B is 3 units;
HISTORY 150B is 5 units.) Territorial expansion, social change, and economic transformation. The causes and consequences of the Civil War. Topics include: urbanization and the market revolution; slavery and the Old South; sectional conflict; successes and failures of Reconstruction; and late 19th-century society and culture.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Twitty, A. (PI)
;
Cortigiani, F. (TA)
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