Global Arc

Yorùbá is a West African language spoken by about 50 million native speakers. Most of its speakers live in Nigeria. There are also Yorùbá speakers in Togo, Benin Republic, and the Caribbean. This course offers students an intensive training and practice in speaking, listening, reading, and writing Yorùbá. Initial emphasis is on spoken language and conversation all rooted in the culture of the people. During the second term students read and listen to texts that provide an introduction to independent search in the Yorùbá culture.

This course is a continuation of Beginning Yoruba I. It continues to offer students intensive training and practice in speaking, listening, reading, and writing Yorùbá. In Beginning Yoruba II, students read and listen to texts that provide an introduction to independent research in the Yorùbá culture.

This course will further your awareness and understanding of the Wolof language and culture, as well as improve your mastery of grammar, writing skills, and oral skills. Course materials will incorporate various types of text including tales, cartoons, as well as multimedia such as films, videos, and audio recordings.

This course offers a refinement of the student's speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. It prepares the student for further work in literary, language, and cultural studies as well as for a functional use of Yoruba. Study of structure and vocabulary is based on a variety of cultural documents including literary and nonliterary texts.

This course will further develop students' awareness and understanding of the Wolof language and culture, as well as their mastery of grammar, writing skills, and oral skills. Course materials will incorporate various types of text including tales, cartoons, as well as multimedia such as films, videos, and audio recordings.

An exploration of the past, present, and future of Africa in a multidisciplinary setting. A dozen Africanist faculty members collaborate in an effort to shed light on both the huge potential of Africa and its peoples and the enormous challenges the continent faces. Topics vary from politics, economics, conservation, biodiversity, climate change, the environment, health and disease, and written and oral literature, to the impact of the world on Africa as well as Africa's contributions to and place in worlds present and past. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

This course explores the place of religion in shaping modern literature and aesthetics of the African Diaspora. With the model of Paul Gilroy's Black Atlantic as a geographical anchoring point, we will seek to understand how writers (and artists) on both sides of the hemisphere have negotiated different conceptualizations of the African diaspora and different forms of religion (Christianity and Islam, but also indigenous spiritual traditions, such as Odinani) in their aesthetics.

How do religious and spiritual groups and forces exist in dynamic interrelationship with political life and social power across Africa and the diaspora? We study a range of interplays, including those found within slavery and insurgency, post-emancipation struggles, colonial subjection and anti-colonial uprisings, and contemporary postcolonial politics. The course draws upon exemplary case studies that engage anthropology, theology, history, and social theory. The studies illuminate the dynamic allegiances and conflicts among forms of religion and politics, perpetually tracing lines of belonging and exclusion in ever-changing cultural worlds.

This seminar focuses on the causes and aspects of the underdevelopment of Africa. After briefly examining the historical origins of African underdevelopment, the focus shifts to the continent's cultural and social environments, as well as the problem of governance in select African countries. The seminar will address a wide range of problems: the debt crisis, the impact of structural adjustment policies, the problems of access to the international financial markets and how they relate to Africa's current state of development.

Decentralization is widely advocated as a means of enhancing the quality of governance, improving the quality of service delivery, and achieving a variety of related socio-economic development objectives. However, reforms across Africa have often failed to achieve the desired objectives. The course seeks to explain this paradox and to explore the multiple forms of local governance in Africa. We will analyze empirical examples from across the African continent as well as case studies from other regions for comparative perspective, to assess the potential of decentralization reforms and community-driven development projects to improve outcomes.