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This course explores the relationship between contemporary Africa and the world.  Topics include urbanization, “China in Africa,” new city-building projects that mimic the West, exploitation and plunder of natural resources, art and culture, music, and religion. One goal of the course is to critically evaluate how and why Africa is too often portrayed in negative stereotypes. There is an unfortunate tendency in journalistic, scholarly accounts to describe “Africa” in dystopian terms as an example of backwardness, and underdevelopment.  This view that Africa is a place of corruption, violence, and “tribal animosity” (a racist construction!) is a fairly widespread perception that has embedded itself in both academic discourse and in popular culture.  Rather than treating Africa as an undifferentiated place of socio-economic malaise, famine and war, infrastructural failure, and service breakdown, the course seeks to understand the complexity of processes at work that produce the Africa we know today.  The course focuses the multiple ways that places and people in Africa contribute to a global dialogue, but perhaps in ways that are invisible to planners, experts, journalists, and travelers. 

Students will be evaluated through a combination of written assignments and class participation.   The methods of instruction are lecture and discussion.  While some books will be required, most class sessions will revolve around critical readings of three or four articles.