Global Arc

Moby-Dick traces far more than a whale's voyage. It plunges into the turbulent waters of American history, politics, and the oceanic world itself. We'll explore how the hunt entwines with slavery, empire, Indigenous life, and industry, reading the novel as Melville's prophetic song of America. Attentive to visions of the sea as ecosystem as well as metaphor, the course brings literary study into conversation with environmental history and oceanic ecology, asking what Moby-Dick still teaches us about a planet in peril.

This course is about the Red Sea region as a sculptural, political, and economic domain in antiquity, connecting the Eastern Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds. Students will be introduced to the interactions between African and Arabian societies, understand the Red Sea region as the center of wider historical transformations, and focus on the late ancient/medieval societies of Northeast African and Western Arabia, (now Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, and others). We will explore the development of scriptural communities, (Jews, Christians, Muslims), and examine the Axumite Inscriptions, the Glory of Kings Chronicle, and the Quran.

Branding strategies, master baths, plantation weddings - is there a connection between the lasting vocabularies of white supremacy and global power dynamics today? Has the independence of African nations issued a break with colonialism, or did it begin a more sophisticated subjugation? The global coloniality of whiteness is a term scholars use to describe the everyday impacts of European imperialism, slavery, and uneven development in contemporary societies. This course explores how cultures across Africa reject, resist, and navigate these dynamics both in Africa and outside the continent.

How can we read, write, and critically think (imagine) about African politics and society? The course presents contemporary ethnography on African politics and society during the postcolonial era, emphasizing the multiplicity, complexities, and diversity of African ideas, imaginations, practices, and experiences, in along with the variety of national and international factors that either influence or are impacted by them. Upon completing the course, students will have the essential critical thinking abilities and analytical tools required to recognize and challenge reductionist and biased narratives concerning Africa.

This seminar is an introduction to the Coptic language and its literary and scribal traditions. Students will learn the foundations of Coptic grammar and explore the history of Coptic writings in manuscripts and inscriptions. Students will gain reading competency in the literary Sahidic dialect of Coptic, and an introduction to the other dialects. They will learn about the relationship of Coptic with other Classical Northeast African languages, importantly Ge'ez, Arabic, and Greek. Students will gain exposure to a wide array of texts from the Coptic literary corpus.

Taking a cue from Afrofuturists, this interdisciplinary course frames Africa as a site of technological innovation. We will learn both about the historical context of major technological advancements in Africa and how literature and art have imagined the relationship between Blackness and technology. Drawing on cutting-edge findings in history, archaeology, and other fields, we will explore the development of major technologies in Africa's past, from metallurgy to urban engineering. We will also study how African societies have adopted new technologies in response to enslavement, environmental change, and colonial rule.

This course explores African Islam as a set of interconnected cultural continuums, religio-political movements, & interpretive identities. Lectures will cover significant moments in the burgeoning of African Muslim thought and identities through an array of literary sources. Students will examine writings from different spheres of African Islam on the continent & in African diasporas, from the 6th to the 21st century with literature from the centers in East, North, West, & Sub-Saharan Africa, students will engage with African Muslim diasporic writings from the Near East, the Indian Subcontinent, the Atlantic World, & the Americas.

An interdisciplinary navigation into the field of narratology the structure of (hi)stories centering creation myths and origin stories. African mythogenesis paves our primary path of investigation, but we also consider the universality of myth, and students will write to their interests and experiences. This creative nonfiction class combines ethnographic research, critical reading, and literary hybridity. A polished 10-page piece presents an original, research-intensive mythscape alongside informed analysis and careful contextualization. Every person has a story we should hear. This unconventional class equips Tigers to tell theirs.

How do young people in African cities, other urban landscapes, and their peripheries negotiate power, politics, space, and livelihood, positioning themselves culturally outside (and at times in opposition to) formal institutions and state structures? This course brings together political anthropology, sociology, geography, and cultural studies to examine youth as cartographers of informal economies, digital subcultures, everyday politics and sovereignties, as well as creativity, resistance, and protest.

Democracy requires a proper understanding of the values, and forms of social cooperation, we ought to honor. But it also requires engagement with institutions and practices that make it more likely that those values will be honored. This course will examine institutional practices and political choices required to support a range of values we associate with democracy: equality, representation, deliberation, political competition, rule of law, etc. The course will use classic texts, philosophical papers and case studies to shed light on the institutional working of democracy.