Africa: Peoples & Culture
SYLLABUS for FALL 2010 (updated 8 Nov)
Optional readings appear in italics. The book icon indicates longer-than-normal assignments -- don't wait till the last minute.




Africa and Us
  Wed, Sept 01  Music: Solomon Linda & Evening Birds
The Weavers
The Tokens
Miriam Makeba

 Introduction & Overview (ppt)  
  Labor Day
  Wed, Sept 08 Music: Fred Onovwerosuoke;
Lenses Through Which We See Africa ( ppt) Conrad, Heart of Darkness (web);
Kaplan 1994, The Coming Anarchy (web);
Stone and Stone 1996, Out of Africa (web).
Wainaina 1992, How to Write about Africa (web)
OPT: Richburg 1995, Continental Divide; Harrison & Palmer 1986:79-92, News Out of Africa
 
Mon, Sept 13

"Language You Cry In"
Music: Orchestra Baobab; Djembe drumming 		A Story of Americans and African Roots Gullah-Mende handout (web)
OPT: William S. Pollitzer, The Gullah people and their African heritage, esp. "The Gullah Language"


Geography
 
Wed, Sept 15
Quiz 1
Music:Ladysmith Black Mambazo

 		Physical Geography The Map of Africa; Resources (ppt) McNulty 1995, Contemporary Map of Africa (Ares);
Africa maps (web)
 
Mon, Sept 20
Music: Miriam Makeba, Qongqothwane Language and the Culture Map
(ppt) 		Lamphear & Falola 1995:86-94 (part of Aspects of Early African History on the Bantu expansion) (Ares)

First Citizens and Modernity: Two Key Case Studies
  Wed, Sept 22 Bushmen of the Kalahari
 Kalahari film Smith et al. 2000, The Bushmen of Southern Africa, Chaps 1, 4 (web)
  Mon, Sept 27 Ladysmith Black Mambazo Kalahari Peoples (& history of people "without history") (ppt)
Lee 1968, excerpt from What Hunters Do for a Living (Ares); Mail & Guardian 1998, The Tribe Germany Wants to Forget (web); Boynton 1997, Search for Authenticity (Ares); NY Times 2004, For Some Bushmen, a Homeland Worth the Fight (web)
OPT: Smith et al. 2000, The Bushmen of Southern Africa, Chaps 5-10 (web); Gordon 1992 (The Bushman Myth) (Ares); Kalahari cactus (web)
  Wed, Sept 29 Music Boubacar Traore
(Malian), Kongo Magni 
  Mon, Oct 04


Music: Babenzele Pygmies Hindewhu in Western rock & jazz

 Ituri ethnology (html) Appiah on Turnbull (web);
Grinker 1994:1-13, Houses in the Rain Forest (web)
  Wed, Oct 06

Papa Wemba (Congolese rhumba)
Tabu-Ley Rochereau

 Red Rubber and the Fair (html)
Bradford & Blume 1992, Ota: The Pygmy in the Zoo (on Ares)
OPT: Harms 1975, The End of Red Rubber; Grinker 2000, In the Arms of Africa (web)
  Fri, Oct 8 Review session
  Mon, Oct 11

Midterm I

Colonialism, Tribalism, and the African State
 
Wed, Oct 13

Music:
Alhaji Haruna-Ishola Bello (Yoruba). Buy a Yoruba drum!

 Tribalism and Colonialism: Tiv and Hausa (html) Dorwood 1969, Development of British Colonial Admin. among the Tiv ( Ares) (see note on Dorwood)
 
Mon, Oct 18
Music:Fela Kuti, Expensive Shit Postcolonial Africa and States: Nigeria case study (html) Soyinka, A Flawed Origin (Ares -- listed under "Flawed Origin")
OPT: French 1997, A Century Later, Letting Africans Draw Their Own Map (web)
 
Wed, Oct 20
Music: Cecile Kayirebwa; RPF rapper Ben Rutabana

Colonial and postcolonial Rwanda: Hutu and Tutsi (ppt)

Human Rights Watch 1999, Leave None to Tell the Story, pp. 6-37 (up to "The Single Party State") (pdf)
Bowen 1996, Myth of Global Ethnic Conflict excerpt (web)

African Agrarian Societies
 
Mon, Oct 25

Second Nature

Music: Toumani Diabate (Mali) & Taj Mahal, "Kulanjan"

 Introduction to population & agriculture in Africa; Kissi case study (html)

Stone 1991, What is Agricultural Intensification? (web)
Fairhead and Leach 1995 (Local Agro-Ecological Management) (Ares)

 
Wed, Oct 27

Music: Taj Mahal and Toumani Diabate, "Kulanjan"

Quiz 2

 African Population & Agric Change(html)

Is Overpopulation a Problem for Africa? (web)
 
Mon, Nov 01
Music: Babatunde Olatunje, Drums of Passion Crowded agricultural societies: Kofyar (ppt) Stone 1996, Social Organization of Agriculture (web)
Stone 1998, Keeping the Home Fires Burning (pdf)
OPT: Netting et al 1989, Kofyar Cash-Cropping: Choice and Change (web); Stone, Kofyar Slide (web);
 
Wed, Nov 03
King Sunny Ade Tiv: Culture, Agriculture and Conflict (ppt) Stone 1997, Predatory Sedentism
  Mon, Nov 08 Music: Ali Farka Toure (Mali) and Ry Cooder, "Talking Timbuktu" Sahelian Land-Use and Desertification (html) Batterbury and Warren 2001, Desertification (web)
OPT: see refs in lecture notes
 
Wed, Nov 10

AFRICAN FEAST
meet in McMillan cafe

 African foods and foodways Carney & Rosomoff 2009, Food & the African past
Read all the food pages
OPT: Renne 2007, Mass Producing Food Traditions for West Africans Abroad (pdf)

Religion, Philosophy and Witchcraft
 
Mon, Nov 15

Music: syncretic Zap Mama

 World Religious Traditions (html)

Karp 1995, African Systems of Thought (Ares)
Kopytoff 1971, Ancestors as Elders in Africa (pdf)
OPT: Hanson, Islam and African Societies (Ares)

  Wed, Nov 17

Midterm II
  Mon, Nov 22 Azande Oracles Oracles Evans-Pritchard 1937, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (excerpt on witchcraft) (pdf)
  Wed, Nov 24

Thanksgiving break
  Mon, Nov 29   Witchcraft and Religion (map and spellings)  

Medicine, the Body, and Culture
 
Wed, Dec 01

Music: Ethiopiques jazz,Mulatu Astatke father of Ethio-jazz Female Genital Cutting (html) Parker 1995, Rethinking Female Circumcision;(Ares)
Leonard 2000, 'We Did It for Pleasure Only' (Ares)
NYT 2004, Most Private of Makeovers
Obermayer 2003: 401-408 Health Consequences of Female Circumcision
  Mon, Dec 06

Malaria, HIV-AIDS (html)

no reading
  Wed, Dec 08

Final Exam