Introduction to African Studies:
Cultural, historical, and geographical issues of African Studies (AFST_V 250-A_101)
Instructor: Dr. Justice Gbolonyo
TERM 1: Tuesday/Thursdays 2-3:30pm
This course provides an ethnographic and ethnological survey of Sub-Saharan African peoples and culture. It highlights the change and the resistance to change in the period since the age of exploration through the Berlin Conference of 1885, which redrew the map of Africa to serve the needs of European nations, but it also gives an in-depth look at Africa’s geography including its ecology as well as its ‘traditional’ cultures. The effect of the colonial period upon contemporary economic, political, and socio-cultural development within the context of globalization is examined through a variety of literature, film, music, and field notes. The general focus is on relations between humans and the environment, between cultures, and within societies.
Beginners Swahili I (SWAH_V 101_101)
Instructor: TBD
TERM 1: Monday/Wednesday/Fridays 11am-12pm
Skills in listening to and speaking Swahili, a major language of Africa and one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Emphasizes everyday vocabulary, core grammar, use in context, and connections between the language and African cultures.
Arts of Africa and the African Diasporas (AFST_V 309_201)
Instructor: Dr. Nuno Porto
TERM 2: Tuesday/Thursdays 11am-12:30pm
Engaging with hands-on research based on the African collections of the UBC Museum of Anthropology, this course takes a comparative and historical approach to the arts of Africa and the African diasporas, exploring distinct formulations of what constitutes art in different parts of Africa and diasporic contexts. The course explores key debates that have framed the histories of African Art – tradition vs. innovation vs. authenticity; ethnic arts vs. national arts; art practices under colonial rule; modern African nations and national arts; international circulation of African arts and artists; markets, ownership, repatriation and reparation – and investigates their contemporary resonances.
Credit will be granted for only one of AFST 309 or ARTH 309. Equivalency: ARTH 309
Modern Africa (AFST_V 313_101)
Instructor: Dr. David Morton
TERM 1: Tuesday/Thursdays 11am-12:30pm
Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Islamic revolutions, the end of the slave trades, colonial conquest, labour struggles, Christianity’s new appeal, PanAfricanism, nationalist resistance, and decolonization. Post-independence challenges of nation-building and economic development. Cultural renaissances and the politics of tradition. Credit will be granted for only one of AFST_V 313 or HIST_V 313. Equivalency: HIST_V 313
Topics on African Studies:
Perspectives in Contemporary African Studies: The Politics of Representation, Identity, Development, and Popular Culture (AFST_V 350-A_201)
Instructor: Dr. Justice Gbolonyo
TERM 2: Tuesday/Thursdays 3:30-5pm
This course is a multi-media class that delve into a variety of topics in popular culture, modern African political, ethnomusicology and postcolonial history all delivered through modern African popular music, documentary/film studies and critical theory from and about 20th century Africa to the present. Through a combination of lectures, presentations, and interactive popular music, film/documentary discussions, AFST350 will introduce students to the creative and critical interventions made by African politicians, filmmakers/directors, pop musicians, artists, and thinkers. The course will be in two parts. The first part will examine the histories of “Modern Africa,” itself a problematic idea, from early post-colonial stages to the present. We will explore themes of African societies after independence and colonial legacies, postcolonial conflict and the crisis of the modern African state. While taking a comprehensive approach, particular attention will be paid to case studies drawn from specific countries. In the second part, we will engage with ideas around race, gender, queer identity, spirituality, politics, and capitalism. We will explore how cultural expression intersects with the ideas of Africa in the 21st century. Together we will ask questions like: How has Africa been represented in the popular imagination? How has music and film shaped “African” identity? What can music, film, and documentaries teach us about modern African life including politics and economic development?
Literatures and Cultures of Africa and/or the Middle East:
Alternative Infrastructures in African Literature and Film (AFST_V 370-A_101)
Instructor: Dr. Deena Dinat
TERM 1: Tuesday/Thursdays 9:30-11am
This course looks to global infrastructures, both literal and literary, as a means of conceptualizing the contemporary questions around race, capital and migration. Infrastructure – the physical and metaphorical systems that facilitate and shape flows of goods, people, information and violence – has become an increasingly generative means of engaging with the inheritances of colonial and postcolonial systems of power. This course will look to contemporary novels, poetry, short stories and films to of reckon with the material and ideological systems that determine the cultural and political possibilities of the present. It asks, too, how infrastructure can be modified, reclaimed, and sabotaged as mode of resistance. Readings draw on materials from South Africa, Egypt, India, Angola, the United States, China, and Benin.
African Diasporic Culture in African Canadian Communities (AFST_V 450R _201)
Instructor: TBD
TERM 2: Tuesday/Thursdays 9:30-11am
African diasporic culture in Canadian society, fostering dialogue with members of African Canadian communities on cultural values, traditions, memory, adaptation and change.