Spring, 2009 MW 10–10:50 & sec.
Room: Key 0102
Prof. PAUL LANDAU
2132 TALIAFERRO HALL
Prof. Landau’s office hrs.: MW 2–3:30
Phone: 5-4291; e: PLandau@umd.edu
Teaching assistant: Jeremy Best: jbest@umd.edu)
Clickable MAP OF AFRICA
Sub-Saharan Africa (since 1800)
The course provides an overview of the history of colonial and post-colonial Africa, from the decline of the trans-Atlantic slave-trade, highlighting exemplary events and persons, and long-term processes.
Such will include: African states and nationalities; the question of tribe; race and racism in imperial history; gender, considered in several dimensions; European exploration, missionaries, and conquest; ongoing African indigenous traditions of self-governance from village to kingdom; ecology and land-use; labor, health, mining and peasant farming; postcolonial urbanization, sexuality, art, religion, and disease.
Three paperbacks are purchasable at the University Bookstore (the first two also at the Maryland Book Exchange). They are also available also through Amazon.com, the last book Amazon.uk.
Books
Mack and Boyd: One Woman’s Jihad
Iliffe: The Africans
Armah: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
Grading
Mini-essay questions (MEQs): 20%
Section participation, familiarity with readings: 25%
Mid-term exam: 20%
Final exam: 30%
Attendance, effort, and improvement: 5% (at the discretion of Prof.)
There will be several MEQs during the semester, asking you to answer a question in about two typed pages, due-dates and details to be arranged by me and by Jeremy Best, your T.A. There are two exams. Most of the cumulative final will be devoted to the latter half of the semester. The reading will be on reserve and where marked, available via web portal through McKeldin and/or via the ELMS e-reserves system, now with a common log-in.
Exam make-up policy:
Students who intend to miss the midterm or final exam because of unalterable plans (sports, family, personal) should speak to the professor or T.A. in advance. Students with a bona fide emergency causing them to miss an exam should contact the professor to provide satisfactory proof and to reschedule a time to take the exam as soon as possible. In all other cases, students are expected to be present at the exam.
Recording: No tape recording or digital capture of the professor or discussions in the class is permitted, without prior permission from the professor.
University Policies:
1. Students with disabilities should contact the instructor at the beginning of the semester to discuss any accommodation for this course.
2. The University has approved a Code of Academic Integrity which prohibits students from cheating on exams, plagiarizing papers, submitting the same paper for credit in two courses without authorization, buying papers, submitting fraudulent documents, and forging signatures.
Plagiarism policy: all quotations taken from other authors, including from the Internet, must be indicated by quotation marks and referenced. [Your professor requires history references be to a specific individual who wrote, and the institution publishing his or her words, and for those words to exist on paper (even if accessed via visual simile, i.e. the Internet). Thus there is no specific modality for quoting from the Internet as a resource because the professor does not normally allow it.]
Paraphrasing must be referenced as well. The following University of Maryland Honor Pledge has been proposed by the Council and approved by the University Senate: “pledge on my honor that I have not given or received any unauthorized assistance on this assignment/examination.” This pledge should be handwritten and signed on the front page of all papers, projects or other academic assignments submitted for evaluation in this course.
3. Religious observance: Please inform your instructor of any intended absences for religious observance in advance.
4. This syllabus may be subject to change. Students will be notified in advance of important changes that could affect grading, assignments, etc.
Schedule
The following schedule is your guide to the chronology of the course, all the readings, and the topics for Prof. Landau’s lectures. All readings should be done preferably by Monday morning, but must the latest be completed by the time of your discussion section for the week, or by Wednesday at class time: whichever comes earliest. Reading and attending lectures are together the most important requirement for this course.
Week 1., Jan. 26–30th: Connections
READINGS:
Background reading: Read Iliffe: map, p. 65; pp. 71–82; pp. 103–106; pp. 131 (map: 132)–152; pp. 173–9.
Do not worry overmuch about details, but read. Take one-half page of notes.
Read Mack and Boyd, One Woman’s Jihad, 1-14. Take one-half page of notes.
LECTURES:
Monday: Understanding Africa’s history
Clickable ca. 1800 map of Mwenemutapa domain
Click here for IMAGES of Great Zimababwe
Click here for IMAGES of Great Zimababwe
Wednesday: Jihad in West Africa
Week 2. Feb. 1–Feb. 5: “Saving” Africa
READINGS:
Read Iliffe, the rest of ch. 7 (152–3).
Read Mack and Boyd, One Woman’s Jihad, 15–45; glance over (or “skim”) pp. 46-62; and then read pp. 63–91, and read the poems, esp. 127; 157. Take a page of notes.
LECTURES:
Monday: Slavery and Anti-Slavery in Africa: Benguela, Cokwe, Segu
Wednesday: The Height of the Humanitarian Era
Week 3. Feb. 9–11: Occupying, I.
READINGS TO BE HANDED OUT OR PROVIDED ON ELMS:
Week 2. Feb. 1–Feb. 5: “Saving” Africa
READINGS:
Read Iliffe, the rest of ch. 7 (152–3).
Read Mack and Boyd, One Woman’s Jihad, 15–45; glance over (or “skim”) pp. 46-62; and then read pp. 63–91, and read the poems, esp. 127; 157. Take a page of notes.
LECTURES:
Monday: Slavery and Anti-Slavery in Africa: Benguela, Cokwe, Segu
Wednesday: The Height of the Humanitarian Era
Week 3. Feb. 9–11: Occupying, I.
READINGS TO BE HANDED OUT OR PROVIDED ON ELMS:
Dennis Fowler, excerpt, “Slavery,” from The Ila-Speaking: Records of a lost world (London: Int. Af. Inst., 2002), 58–63: WILL BE HANDED OUT ON MONDAY
Smith and Dale, The Ila-Speaking People, available HERE:
Smith and Dale, The Ila-Speaking People, available HERE:
Read ix -- xv, then: pp. 34 to 42. What sort of history is this? (What does it "cover," what does it leave unsaid?) And look at the pictures carefully: pp. 45, 72-79, 88-91.
And for Wed.:
Adeyemi–Victoria doc. (1888) (clickable)
Rudd Concession doc. (1890)) (WILL BE HANDED OUT)
AND READ: Iliffe, 179–93
LECTURES:
Monday: Slavery vs. ethnicity; warfare and the “Mfecane”
Wednesday: Treaties to Indirect Rule: Overview: Uganda to Sokoto
Week 4: Feb. 16–18th. Coastal Systems and Europe
READING:
Iliffe, 219–237; Review Iliffe, 161–3 for Monday’s class.
ELMS: Robin Law, “Yoruba Liberated Slaves Who Returned to West Africa,” ch. 17 in The Yoruba Diasporas and the Atlantic World, ed. Toyin Falola and Matt Childs (Bloomington: IUP, 2004). What were returning men interested in accomplishing?
ELMS: Peterson, Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, the the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2004), 91–137 (chapters 4, 5). Why were literate Gikuyu-speakers keen on orthography debates?
LECTURES:
Monday: Assimilation and Empire; the Black Atlantic
Wednesday: Two case studies: Yoruba and Kikuyu as writerly projects
Week 5: Feb. 23–27th: Gender and African Economies
READING:
ELMS: Colleen Kriger, ch. 3, “Smelting Iron,” in Pride of Men: Ironworking in 19th Century West Central Africa (Ports.: Heine., 1999), and Glossary xvii–xix. Print it out.
ELMS: Mona Etienne, “Men, Women, Cloth, and Colonization,” via JSTOR. Get the login cookie and you can click HERE. Print it, and bring it to section.
Laura Fair, Pastimes & Politics (Athens: Oh. U.P., 2001), ch. 2, “Dressing up,” and ch 5, “Masculinity and Football.”
LECTURES:
Monday: Challenges to gendered tradition: Gabon, Cote D’Ivoire
Wednesday: Cloves and Sugar: context for Zanzibari life
Week 6: Mar. 2–6: Africa’s cosmopolitan hierarchies/empire
Monday: Swahili (Arab, Belgian, Congolese, Omani, British)
Wednesday: Midterm Examination
Week 7. Mar. 9–13: Occupying, II.
READINGS:
Iliffe, 193–202
Bumbireh: H.M. Stanley, July of 1875: HERE
And further Website documents to be provided.
“The Treaty of Berlin”
LECTURES:
Monday: Technologies of domination (to W.W. I)
Wednesday: “Modern Imperialism,” India, Egypt, and Europe
Spring Break: Mar. 16-20.
Week 8: Mar. 23–27. Rule and Rebellion
ELMS: E.D. Morel, in Journal of the Royal Africa Society, tba.
ELMS: Martin Legassick and Ciraj Rassool, Skeletons in the Cupboard: South African museums and the trade in human remains, 1907–1917 (Cape Town: South African Museum, 2000), 9–24 (actually only 12 ½ pages)
Optional: JSTOR: Thornton, “Narrative Ethnography in Africa, 1850–1920: The Capture of an Appropriate Domain for Anthropology,” Man, n.s., 8, 3 (September 1983), 502–519. 2 Repts./sec. Click HERE if you have the login UMD cookie.
LECTURES:
Monday: Nineteen critical years: 1879-98: Zulu, Sudan, Rhodes, the Sack of Kumase
Read for Wednesday’s class:
Iliffe, 203-219, opt. 273-8.
Wednesday: Red Rubber, Vampires, Maji-Maji (alternative histories)
Week 9/ ½10: Mar. 30–Ap. 3/6: Gender, Money & Labor in the New Century
READING:
ELMS: “Mama Meli’s [Mama Mary’s] Story,” ed. Marcia Wright, from Strategies of Slaves and Women (Pub. data).
ELMS/JSTOR: Judith van Allen, “Sitting on a Man,” Canadian Journ. of Af. Studs., 6, 2 (1972), 165–81.
ELMS: Marc Epprecht, Hungochani: A History of Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa (McGill-Queens, 2004), chapter 2, “Cities.”
Review Iliffe, 219–237; 244–50 (237–44 is optional for this super-week).
LECTURES:
Monday: Land companies, labor, and a rebellion (Malawi)
Wednesday: Women’s war? (Igbo)
Monday: Migrant workers and sex-roles
½ Week 10: April 8: W.W. II, Decolonization and Citizenry.
READING: ELMS/JSTOR: Wm. Roger Louis, with Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Decolonization,” in The Ends of British Imperialism (London, NY: I.B. Tauris, 2006), pp. 451-502, originally Journ. of Imp. & Com’w.. History, 1994
Wednesday: ditto topic.
Week 11: April 13–17. Ethnic and Nationalist Movements
READINGS:
Iliffe, 237–44
ELMS: Tabitha Kanogo, Squatters & the Roots of Mau Mau (London, Nairobi: Currey, 1987), pp. 125–54 (chap. 5)
LECTURES:
Monday: The Mau Mau
Wednesday: The emergence of African-led states: 1955–66
Week 12: April 20-24. Transformations
READINGS: Iliffe, 251–67
hand-out or ELMS: Kwame Nkrumah’s “Call,” short excerpt.
INTERNET: Elizabeth Schmidt, “Top-Down or Bottom-Up? . . . Guinea (French West Africa),” American Historical Review 110, 4 (2005), 975–1014:
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/110.4/schmidt.html
LECTURES:
Monday: Nkrumah and All-Africa-isms to 1970 (Ghana)
Wed.: No Fist Big Enough: from UDI to Comrade Killtheboers (Zimbabwe)
Week 13: April 28–May 3: Postcoloniality
READING:
Iliffe, 267–87
Armah, The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born, entire book
LECTURES:
Monday: The postcolonial state
Wednesday: Refugees /catastrophes: Gr. Lakes & E. Congo (from independence)
Week 14: May 4–8. Africa today
READING: Iliffe, 288–315
ELMS: Hudita Mustafa, “Portraits of Modernity: Dakarois Photography,” in Images & Empires (U. of Cal. Press, 2002), 172–193.
ELMS: Joel Matlou, “Man Against Himself,” Life at Home and other stories (Cosaw, 1991).
ELMS: N. Kristoff, “Dying in Dar Fur,” New York Review of Books, Feb. 2005.
LECTURES:
Monday: Contextualizing AIDS and Coca Cola (the postcolonial state. pt. II)
Wednesday: Mami Wata and urban life
Week 15: May 11. Review
READING:
ELMS: Achille Mbembe, “At the Edge of the World,” trans. Steven Rendall, Arjun Appadurai, Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke, 2001), pp. 22–55
Final Exam time tba
Adeyemi–Victoria doc. (1888) (clickable)
Rudd Concession doc. (1890)) (WILL BE HANDED OUT)
AND READ: Iliffe, 179–93
LECTURES:
Monday: Slavery vs. ethnicity; warfare and the “Mfecane”
Wednesday: Treaties to Indirect Rule: Overview: Uganda to Sokoto
Week 4: Feb. 16–18th. Coastal Systems and Europe
READING:
Iliffe, 219–237; Review Iliffe, 161–3 for Monday’s class.
ELMS: Robin Law, “Yoruba Liberated Slaves Who Returned to West Africa,” ch. 17 in The Yoruba Diasporas and the Atlantic World, ed. Toyin Falola and Matt Childs (Bloomington: IUP, 2004). What were returning men interested in accomplishing?
ELMS: Peterson, Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, the the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2004), 91–137 (chapters 4, 5). Why were literate Gikuyu-speakers keen on orthography debates?
LECTURES:
Monday: Assimilation and Empire; the Black Atlantic
Wednesday: Two case studies: Yoruba and Kikuyu as writerly projects
Week 5: Feb. 23–27th: Gender and African Economies
READING:
ELMS: Colleen Kriger, ch. 3, “Smelting Iron,” in Pride of Men: Ironworking in 19th Century West Central Africa (Ports.: Heine., 1999), and Glossary xvii–xix. Print it out.
ELMS: Mona Etienne, “Men, Women, Cloth, and Colonization,” via JSTOR. Get the login cookie and you can click HERE. Print it, and bring it to section.
Laura Fair, Pastimes & Politics (Athens: Oh. U.P., 2001), ch. 2, “Dressing up,” and ch 5, “Masculinity and Football.”
LECTURES:
Monday: Challenges to gendered tradition: Gabon, Cote D’Ivoire
Wednesday: Cloves and Sugar: context for Zanzibari life
Week 6: Mar. 2–6: Africa’s cosmopolitan hierarchies/empire
Monday: Swahili (Arab, Belgian, Congolese, Omani, British)
Wednesday: Midterm Examination
Week 7. Mar. 9–13: Occupying, II.
READINGS:
Iliffe, 193–202
Bumbireh: H.M. Stanley, July of 1875: HERE
And further Website documents to be provided.
“The Treaty of Berlin”
LECTURES:
Monday: Technologies of domination (to W.W. I)
Wednesday: “Modern Imperialism,” India, Egypt, and Europe
Spring Break: Mar. 16-20.
Week 8: Mar. 23–27. Rule and Rebellion
ELMS: E.D. Morel, in Journal of the Royal Africa Society, tba.
ELMS: Martin Legassick and Ciraj Rassool, Skeletons in the Cupboard: South African museums and the trade in human remains, 1907–1917 (Cape Town: South African Museum, 2000), 9–24 (actually only 12 ½ pages)
Optional: JSTOR: Thornton, “Narrative Ethnography in Africa, 1850–1920: The Capture of an Appropriate Domain for Anthropology,” Man, n.s., 8, 3 (September 1983), 502–519. 2 Repts./sec. Click HERE if you have the login UMD cookie.
LECTURES:
Monday: Nineteen critical years: 1879-98: Zulu, Sudan, Rhodes, the Sack of Kumase
Read for Wednesday’s class:
Iliffe, 203-219, opt. 273-8.
Wednesday: Red Rubber, Vampires, Maji-Maji (alternative histories)
Week 9/ ½10: Mar. 30–Ap. 3/6: Gender, Money & Labor in the New Century
READING:
ELMS: “Mama Meli’s [Mama Mary’s] Story,” ed. Marcia Wright, from Strategies of Slaves and Women (Pub. data).
ELMS/JSTOR: Judith van Allen, “Sitting on a Man,” Canadian Journ. of Af. Studs., 6, 2 (1972), 165–81.
ELMS: Marc Epprecht, Hungochani: A History of Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa (McGill-Queens, 2004), chapter 2, “Cities.”
Review Iliffe, 219–237; 244–50 (237–44 is optional for this super-week).
LECTURES:
Monday: Land companies, labor, and a rebellion (Malawi)
Wednesday: Women’s war? (Igbo)
Monday: Migrant workers and sex-roles
½ Week 10: April 8: W.W. II, Decolonization and Citizenry.
READING: ELMS/JSTOR: Wm. Roger Louis, with Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Decolonization,” in The Ends of British Imperialism (London, NY: I.B. Tauris, 2006), pp. 451-502, originally Journ. of Imp. & Com’w.. History, 1994
Wednesday: ditto topic.
Week 11: April 13–17. Ethnic and Nationalist Movements
READINGS:
Iliffe, 237–44
ELMS: Tabitha Kanogo, Squatters & the Roots of Mau Mau (London, Nairobi: Currey, 1987), pp. 125–54 (chap. 5)
LECTURES:
Monday: The Mau Mau
Wednesday: The emergence of African-led states: 1955–66
Week 12: April 20-24. Transformations
READINGS: Iliffe, 251–67
hand-out or ELMS: Kwame Nkrumah’s “Call,” short excerpt.
INTERNET: Elizabeth Schmidt, “Top-Down or Bottom-Up? . . . Guinea (French West Africa),” American Historical Review 110, 4 (2005), 975–1014:
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/110.4/schmidt.html
LECTURES:
Monday: Nkrumah and All-Africa-isms to 1970 (Ghana)
Wed.: No Fist Big Enough: from UDI to Comrade Killtheboers (Zimbabwe)
Week 13: April 28–May 3: Postcoloniality
READING:
Iliffe, 267–87
Armah, The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born, entire book
LECTURES:
Monday: The postcolonial state
Wednesday: Refugees /catastrophes: Gr. Lakes & E. Congo (from independence)
Week 14: May 4–8. Africa today
READING: Iliffe, 288–315
ELMS: Hudita Mustafa, “Portraits of Modernity: Dakarois Photography,” in Images & Empires (U. of Cal. Press, 2002), 172–193.
ELMS: Joel Matlou, “Man Against Himself,” Life at Home and other stories (Cosaw, 1991).
ELMS: N. Kristoff, “Dying in Dar Fur,” New York Review of Books, Feb. 2005.
LECTURES:
Monday: Contextualizing AIDS and Coca Cola (the postcolonial state. pt. II)
Wednesday: Mami Wata and urban life
Week 15: May 11. Review
READING:
ELMS: Achille Mbembe, “At the Edge of the World,” trans. Steven Rendall, Arjun Appadurai, Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke, 2001), pp. 22–55
Final Exam time tba
