Courses

Instructor: GBOLONYO, JUSTICE

Cultural, historical, and geographical issues of African Studies.

Instructor: GAMBARAGE, JOASH

Linguistic survey of the languages of Africa, including typological and historical connections between languages, individual and comparative surveys of sound systems, word structures, sentence structures, semantics, and sociolinguistic properties of a representative selection of languages.

Instructor: MORTON, DAVID

2023W course description TBD. Cross-listed with HIST 312.

Instructor: MORTON, DAVID

2023W course description TBD. Cross-listed with HIST 313.

Instructor: GAMBARAGE, JOASH

This course covers contemporary issues in African languages, cultures, and linguistic anthropology. It will consider Africa and the origin of language; attitudes towards African cultural traditions; emergent languages and cultures; language and media; language and identity, place and power; plus a range of other contemporary language issues.

Major issues and theoretical approaches.

Not offered in 2023 Winter.

Major issues and theoretical approaches.

Not offered in 2023 Winter.

Instructor: JAMES, SUZANNE

Literary and cultural works from Africa; some sections include Africa and the Middle East. Multiple perspectives on local, national, and global issues including colonialism, migration, transnationalism, education, art and politics. May include fiction, poetry, drama, digital media, and other forms. Consult department website for current year's offerings.

2023W Course Description:

Post-Apartheid South African Literature

“It was easier to write about the past . . . because the past created ready-made stories. There was a very clear demarcation between good and evil . . . Black was good; white was bad.  Your conflict was there. There were no gray areas. We no longer have that. In this new situation, black is not necessarily good. There are many black culprits; there are many good white people. We have become normal. It’s very painful to become normal.” (Zakes Mda)

Fifty years of oppression under the South African apartheid system inspired an impressive corpus of protest literature, but how have writers responded to the collapse of the racist regime and its replacement with a democratic constitution?  Our study of recent South African writing will include Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness, Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow, Kapano Matlawa’s Coconut and Sello Diuker’s Thirteen Cents.

Instructor: PORTO, NUNO

This course is an advanced reading seminar centered in the works of contemporary African artists from around the globe. The course follows key exhibitions that, over time and for specific constituencies, have established the notion of Contemporary African Art as a coherent field of art practice. Drawing from a diversified repository of African epistemologies, perspectives, experiences and aesthetics, the seminar focuses, each week, on a theme, a group of artists and one or more exhibitions, exploring works and trajectories that critically address on-going ethical, social, economic and political issues rooted in specific post-colonial histories. Cross-listed with ARTH 410.

Instructor: MUDZINGWA, CALISTO

African diasporic culture in Canadian society, fostering dialogue with members of African Canadian communities on cultural values, traditions, memory, adaptation and change.

Instructor: GAMBARAGE, JOASH

New course offered in 2023W. Course description TBD.

Instructor: GAMBARAGE, JOASH

New course offered in 2023W. Course description TBD.