This course offers students the tools they need to understand current events in Africa in historical perspective. The issues that define African politics today are shaped by the economic, political and social changes that attended the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Any student of political science, economics, psychology, business or literature who wishes to understand Africa must study its history, for that history sets the stage for the present.

The course will begin by examining how wide-ranging processes—the slave trade, colonial rule, nationalism, independence—transformed the social and political lives of African people. In the middle part of the course we will explore the dynamics of human rights in contemporary Africa, using a detailed study of a recent court trial in Kenya. Toward the end of the semester we'll study a series of current issues—the political crisis in Zimbabwe; the Rwanda genocide; the end of apartheid in South Africa—in relation to longer-term histories.

The core reading will be a set of primary documents dealing with issues addressed in lectures. By the end of the course, students will have learned how to interpret evidence, synthesize disparate sources, and create compelling arguments about the relation between past and present.

Course Requirements:

Four papers, written over the course of semester

Intended Audience:

Open to all undergraduate students

Class Format:

Lecture and seminar