AFRC200 - FRESHMAN SEMINAR: REPRESENTING AFRICA

The purpose of this seminar is to provide students with some basic tools with which to understand and evaluate representations of Africa from colonial times to the present. Using a range of sources including early travel accounts, autobiography, fiction, film, visual arts and contemporary media, we will examine various ways in which discourses on "Africa" as a continent have been produced by the West, but also by African themselves. We will pay particular attention to how these discourses and representations compete with or echo each other, all the while emphasizing, beyond stereotypical representations, the diverse histories, nations, regions, geographies and peoples that make up this vast continent.