Perspectives on African experience
- Course Code:
- 155900933
- Unit value:
- 1
- Year of study:
- Year 3 of 3
- Taught in:
- Full Year
Objectives and learning outcomes of the course
The course is designed to provide students with a good general introduction to the work of critics and writers who are either from Africa or of African-descent and who examine the historical legacy of Africa and its Diaspora by engaging with such important themes as self-representation and cultural identity. While helping students come to an understanding of how the African experience has been examined and engaged with in terms of the historical vicissitudes of the people of the continent and its Diaspora, the course also aims at helping and encouraging them to develop critical and analytical skills that move away from dominant Eurocentric and Western perspectives. In this way, the analysis of Africa’s historical legacies vis-a-vis issues and questions of representation and self-representation aims to ultimately to generate new and fresh ways of thinking about African experience.
Workload
Taught over 22 weeks with 2 hours classroom contact per week.
Scope and syllabus
This course exposes students to the varying perspectives from which African experience has been perceived, analysed and interpreted through time. It presents a cross-section of such interpretations and encourages students to evaluate them in their historical and ideological contexts and in terms of contemporary realities in Africa. The course is organised around specific themes: Africa’s contact with Europe; slavery and colonialism; African and Diaspora responses to slavery and colonialism; contemporary thought and the search for a new epistemology. Lectures, seminars and discussions grapple with ideas and perspectives around these themes as a way of generating new and fresh thinking on African experience.
