Michael Joseph Mulvey

Introduction:
In this course, we will reflect on the realities and representations of Africa’s pre-colonial past before the advent of European political domination around 1880. We will consider how Africans, Europeans, and the African diaspora have attributed meaning to someplace called Africa. We will examine how power, trade, and production intersected with human lives on a global stage. We will discuss how humans have tried to make sense of their life situations in relation to Africa and how the diverse peoples of the continent have communicated their particular context.

Our course challenges the old Eurocentric idea that Africa and its peoples lacked a progress narrative. Unfortunately, many contemporary Americans still view Africa as an extreme “Other” full of starving people, irrationality, “tribal” warfare, incomprehensible traditions, and a lack of history. To many Americans, Africa remains a dark continent. Yet many African states and societies were wealthier or as wealthy as their European counterparts until the 1700s. Rather than a primordial land of primitiveness, pre-colonial Africa boasted a history of highly dynamic cultures and social organization as well as constant interaction with world economic systems despite severe environmental challenges. Our class will also remind us that human skin pigmentation never served as a foundation or social hierarchies between peoples until the advent of the Atlantic slave trade and continental colonization.

In 1734, the West African Anton Wilhelm Amo successfully defended his philosophy dissertation (written in Latin) at the University of Hessen. After the defense, professor Johannes Gottfried Kraus publicly praised Amo and “the natural genius of Africa,” its “appreciation for leaning,” and its “inestimable contribution to the knowledge of human affairs” as well as “things divine.” Between Amos and the Second World War, Europeans and Americans questioned the humanity of African peoples as they harvested the continent’s vast resources. Only in the 1950s did powerful intellectual, activist, and academic voices reiterate Kraus’ belief that Africa is central to our collective human history rather than on history’s margins. Africa, these voices observed, was the continent where our species arose and the most ancient civilizations thrived. Prior to the 1950s, the idea that American secondary or university students would study African history and literature or that either even existed would have been unimaginable for all but the most progressive educators. Thankfully, times have changed.

Course Objectives
This class aims to help you to make sense of Africa’s historical predicaments and accomplishments. You will learn about pre-colonial Africa and how humans have debated and remembered that past thereby placing yourself in the unique position to understand what Americans too often consider another world. One way to see and understand a reality is by engaging multiple aspects of that reality through the eyes of Africans and outside observers. We will turn to authors, scholars, and directors to obtain a critical perspective on African experiences.

Africa before 1880 was a diverse continent with thousands of linguistic, ethnic, statist, and proto-statist communities. We cannot explore all these stories in our course. However, you will leave our class with the ability to intelligently write and discuss major themes in African studies with contextual awareness. You will also be armed to challenge common assumptions made about Africa.

Our class will conclude with the moment when Europeans took political possession of African territories in the 1880s. In the next class, we will explore how colonialism, capitalist production, development theory, pan-Africanism, western medicine and education, anti-colonial resistance, nationalism, independence, modernization, post-colonialism, the Cold War, neo-colonialism, apartheid, continental warfare, HIV/AIDS, and neo-liberalism have impacted Africans. So stick around for more!