African/African Diaspora Studies

-The course introduces students to the African continent and its peoples from an interdisciplinary perspective. Among other things, it focuses on pre-colonial and colonial history, modern African states, traditional cultural forms such as kinship, oral and written literatures, human geography, and Africa's role in contemporary world affairs. Students discuss, do presentations, write research papers, and take exams.

This course surveys the quickly growing field of African digital literatures. Social media and online platforms have allowed for the emergence of new, creative ways of producing literature that have shaped how the contemporary field of African literature is developing. We will read online literary magazines like Kwani and Brittle Paper, platforms like Comic Republic, and social media literatures like Facebook and blog serial fiction, twitterature, and Instagram Stories by and about Africans. 

This course is concerned with the poor nations of the world and the institutions that govern them. What role does the government play in the quality of life of the people of developing nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East? What factors inhibit and foster political order, freedom, and human dignity? We will examine the net worked causes of human suffering in developing nations: colonial legacies, poverty, violent conflict, culture, and political and economic instability. 

Slavery and sugar: One brutal, the other (literally) sweet, together they transformed the Atlantic world-Europe, Africa, the Americas (including the eventual United States)-creating simultaneously unimaginable misery for enslaved people and unimaginable wealth for the planters and merchants who profited from their labor. This course explores the emergence, operation, and ultimate demise of the world-altering trans-Atlantic slave system.