Postgraduate Course: Building Blocks of African Studies (PGSP11417)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course will introduce students to the interdisciplinary study of Africa and will equip them with the key theories and concepts with which to understand the continent in all its complexity. It will survey the history, politics, and anthropology of sub-Saharan Africa, and examine how these and other disciplines have shaped perceptions of and research on Africa, past and present. The course aims to understand the continent's diversity, contradictions, and challenges in its own right as well as in comparative perspective. Students will study the roles of African people, places, and processes in local and regional power structures and global systems, from the micro- to macro-level. The course will use media and popular culture to explore contemporary issues. Students will be encouraged to think critically and creatively about current affairs and African futures. |
| Course description |
a. Academic Description
Africa today faces unprecedented opportunities for growth and prosperity, and ever more complex challenges to peace and sustainability. This course will introduce students to the key theories and concepts needed to understand the world's fastest growing continent. It will break free of common misconceptions of Africa to understand its diverse states, societies, and issues in context. Students will be expected to read widely - gaining familiarity with contemporary issues affecting the continent - and in depth, where they will hone their expertise on selected countries and topics. The course is grounded in the core disciplines of African Studies - politics, history, and anthropology - and will also draw on media, arts, and culture, business and economics, geography, other social sciences. This interdisciplinary approach will prepare students for theoretically rigorous and empirically grounded analysis and understanding.
As a 'building blocks' course, students will leave with a toolkit of disciplinary approaches, theories, terms and concepts, levels of analysis, and empirical case studies, through which to rigorously analyse and understand African issues. Throughout the course, students will be expected to reflect on their own identities and positionality. We will not construct an understanding of 'Africa' as a unified whole, but rather will examine its states and societies, processes and places in their full diversity. The ultimate objective of this course is to give students the tools with which to comprehend Africa's complex issues and seemingly contradictory realities.
b. Outline Content
The course will be delivered over ten weeks through a weekly lecture and a tutorial. The tutorials will be held after the lecture, and will consist primarily of student-led discussions.
The topics that will be covered in the course include:
Representations and Re-presentations of Africa
The State in Colonial Africa
Development, Modernisation and their Antecedents
Nationalism and Independence Struggles
Democratisation(s)
Armed Conflict and Civil War
Religion in Africa
African Political Economies
Law, Human Rights, and Popular Justice
Africa and the Digital Revolution
c. Student Learning Experience
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
1. Demonstrate critical knowledge and understanding of the key theories, concepts and issues most central to African Studies;
2. Apply the knowledge, skills, and understanding gained in the course through academic and day-to-day engagement with research and news about Africa;
3. Critically analyse, synthesize, and evaluate research and contemporary debates about African issues, and navigate complex issues to make informed opinions and analyses;
4. Communicate through empirically grounded and theoretically informed written work and oral presentations, their knowledge of African Studies and related issues
5. Demonstrate autonomy, accountability, and initiative in their ability to question, examine, and understand key issues affecting Africa, through independent research.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate critical knowledge and understanding of the key theories, concepts and issues most central to African Studies;
- Apply the knowledge, skills, and understanding gained in the course through academic and day-to-day engagement with research and news about Africa;
- Critically analyse, synthesize, and evaluate research and contemporary debates about African issues, and navigate complex issues to make informed opinions and analyses;
- Communicate through empirically grounded and theoretically informed written work and oral presentations, their knowledge of African Studies and related issues
- Demonstrate autonomy, accountability, and initiative in their ability to question, examine, and understand key issues affecting Africa, through independent research.
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Reading List
Bates, Robert H., Vumbi Y. Mudimbe, and Jean F. O'Barr (eds) Africa and the Disciplines: The contributions of research in Africa to the social sciences and humanities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. "Africa Observed: Discourses of the imperial imagination." Perspectives on Africa: a reader in culture, history, and representation. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1997. (689-703).
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1965.
Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and Subject. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Mbembé, Achille. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Ranger, Terence. "The invention of tradition in colonial Africa." Perspectives on Africa: A reader in culture, history, and representation. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
By the end of the programme, students will be equipped with new skills in:
1. Synthesising and analysing empirical and theoretical material from a variety of sources;
2. Examining, using and assessing evidence in support of explanatory and normative claims;
3. Developing and evaluating arguments that take different kinds of social complexity into account;
4. Exercising informed independent thought and critical judgment. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr George Karekwaivanane
Tel:
Email: G.karekwaivanane@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Teri Beveridge
Tel: (0131 6)51 3244
Email: tbeveri2@ed.ac.uk |
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