Gendering African History
- Course Code:
- 15PHIH027
- Status:
- Course Not Running 2012/2013
- Unit value:
- 0.5
- Year of study:
- Any
- Taught in:
- Term 1
This course approaches African history from a gender perspective and challenges students to ask how such a perspective changes our understanding of the major themes of the continent. The focus of the course is continent-wide, including North Africa, and as such is designed to complement the regional focus of a number of existing courses in the MA History programme on southern, eastern and central Africa. A gender-centred approach extends the course offerings on Africa and enhances existing courses on gender and the body in Asia. A key objective is to explore the relevance of gender as an analytical model with reference to African history, from early modern to modern times, paying particular attention to different theoretical models of gender. The course is interested in examining struggles and contestations over gender in different areas of the human experience in Africa – political power, religion, technology, colonialism, labour, health and disease, nationalism and post-colonialism. The course opens by exploring the lively debate between scholars on the relevance of gender to Africa and of western constructs of gender in particular and examines gender models developed by African scholars and theorists. It then moves on apply these theoretical debates in a number of thematic case studies which are organised along broadly chronological lines. For the pre-colonial period: political power, indigenous religious expression and specialised knowledge. For the colonial period: marriage and colonial law, Christianity, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women, nationalism. For the post-colonial period: modernity and morality, (homo)sexuality.
Objectives and learning outcomes of the course
At the end of the course, a student should be able to demonstrate:
- An understanding of the applicability and relevance of gender in the history of Africa.
- A knowledge of the historical development of gendered forms of identity across Africa and their interaction with non-African gender constructs.
- The ability to identify critical approaches and historographical debates in the study 'of the history of gender in Africa.
- The ability to evaluate critically historical literature and summarize these evaluations in written and oral classroom presentations.
- The ability to research and write a history essay using appropriate scholarly language and critical apparatus.
- The ability to draw on the skills and knowledge acquired during the course to answer essay question in an unseen examination.
Workload
2 hours of tutorial per week.
Method of assessment
One two hour Exam (50%) and one 5000 word essay (50%)
