Global Arc

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.

The seminar addresses the structural consequences and responses that African nations and communities developed upon their insertion into global political and economic practice and discourse. Africa's character prior to modern nationhood forms the backdrop to discussions of the development and utilization of social, political, and economic strategies for continued participation in global political and economic intercourse. Themes include: traditional religious practice and the church; global economic interactions; African interstate relations; governance, regime change, and elections; wars and displacement; and women in society.

This seminar will provide an understanding of contemporary Kenya in the context of its historical positioning and modern value to Western political interests, and how this position translates to livelihoods and aspirations of Kenyans. The first part will focus on 3 themes: 1) Kenya as home to earliest human origins; 2) Kenya's evolution as the "anti-socialism" capital of western capitalism in the region; 3) The country's central position in the anti-terrorism war between the west and middle east. We will problematize the image of corruption as the explanation to (under) development that the West paints Kenya and "Africa" as suffering from.

The United Republic of Tanzania is one of the best examples of how African states have struggled to reinvent themselves from a colonial experience and pursue a nationalistic development agenda. Tanzania's initial postcolonial trajectory attempted to ignore the power of neo-colonial capitalism, but failed due to both local and global forces. This course will explore the political, cultural, linguistic and economic experience of Tanzania since its colonization (first by Germany, and then by Britain after World War II), its postcolonial experiment with African Socialism through the cotemporary state of reinventing a new state and society.

Sub-Saharan Africa's record on the use of development aid has been at best mixed. It has received about $1 trillion in foreign assistance since 1960. In the early 1980s, three world regions, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and Pacific, and South Asia had over 50% of their populations living in extreme poverty. Thirty odd years later, Sub-Saharan Africa's figures have barely shifted; they went down from 53% to only 47% in 2011. East Asia and Pacific, and South Asia regions also received substantial assistance and have significantly reduced extreme poverty among their populations. Critics of foreign assistance decry such assistance.

Little writing from Africa conforms to Western understandings of nature writing or mainstream environmentalism. But does that mean that African authors are disinterested in environmental questions? How do African authors represent their relationship to the land and non-human organisms? This seminar will explore acts of environmental imagination by African novelists from around the continent; organized roughly by biome. We will also discuss writerly approaches to environmental activism on the continent. The course will aid students ability to think, speak and write critically about African literature, the environment and relations of power.

In what ways can we understand the current circulation and influence of artistic scientific and technological forms between the West and Africa? Various literary and political movements such as Negritude and the Black Consciousness Movement shaped policies in Africa. Given the multidirectional flow of culture and technology, this seminar will examine: 1) The effect of the legacy of this literary and political movement on the African institutions. 2) Continent's struggle today through cultural expression such as musical styles, poetry, novel and visual art. 3) How immigrants contribute to these cultural expressions.