Discussion
Week 1 2 3
4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15
Week 1 - INTRODUCTION
Discuss (time available):
your assumptions about Africa's past
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Background
Week 2 - GEOGRAPHY
AND THE DAWN OF HISTORY
Be prepared to discuss: “prehistory”
and “history”; do lectures and readings agree?; reading to prepare
for the map quizzes -- Be prepared to take: second map quiz
- Question of the week:
What is "history" and when did history in Africa begin ?
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Week 3 - CREATING
CLASSICAL AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS
Be prepared to discuss: Archaeology
and history; do lectures and readings agree?; Be prepared to take: third
map quiz
- Question(s) of the week:
Again: what is “history”, and when did history in Africa
begin? What challenges did the first humans confront?
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Week 4 -FARMERS
NORTH AND SOUTH OF THE SAHARA
Be prepared to discuss: ancient
Egypt’s place in Africa; linguistics and history; do lectures and readings
agree?; Be prepared to take: fourth map quiz
- Question(s) of the week:
How was foraging “the good old days”? In what senses did agriculture
mean “progress”? In what senses did it not?
- Does it make more sense to look
at ancient Egypt in terms of Africa or ancient Africa in terms of Egypt? Did
“race” matter in ancient Africa? What (else) mattered?
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Challenges of Classical Africa
Week 5 - AFRICAN
CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF LIFE
Be prepared to discuss:
is Africa more “religious” than anyplace else?; how do people “use”
their religious outlooks in daily life?; Be prepared to take:
fifth map quiz
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Week 6 - ENVIRONMENTAL
ADAPTATION AND POLITICAL STRATEGIES (500-1500 CE)
Be prepared to discuss:
What new sorts of communities did people invent for themselves as the settlement
“frontier” closed?; were these “religious”, “political”,
or what?; Be prepared to take: sixth map quiz.
- Question(s) of the week:
Around what local priorities did people of Bantu-speaking background in eastern
and central Africa adapt their shared heritage to build diverse communities
of their own?
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Week 7 - COMPLEXITIES
OF CENTRALIZING POWER 9500-1500 CE)
Be prepared to discuss:
oral traditions as history. Be prepared to take: seventh map
quiz
- Question(s) of the week:
Arabic sources, Islam: religion and history; reactions to Muslims, and/or
commerce, in eastern and western Africa; how did Africans organize polities
in ways unlike our notions of “states”, “empires”,
or “kingdoms”?; how do Mande griots understand politics?;
how do the lectures present “politics”?
- Question(s) of the week:
What does the Garden of Eden have to do with African history? What would Muslims
view history in Africa?
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Week 8 - "STATES"
AND STRATEGIES IN THE FORESTS (500-1500 CE)
Be prepared to review: first mid-term examination.; Be
prepared to take: eighth map quiz
- Question(s) of the week: How did life in the forest differ
from life in the savannas?
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Week 9 - RED SEA
AND INDIAN OCEAN CONTACTS (500-1400 CE)
NO DISCUSSION SECTIONS
- Question(s) of the week:
How did people in eastern and southern Africa re-organize their lives around
environmental resources, cattle, and commercial contact? What does that have
to do with “ethnicity”?
- Do we understand people along
Africa’s Indian Ocean coast better in terms of their local heritages
or the foreign religion they adapted? Place Great Zimbabwe in its African
context.
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Africa 1500-1800
Week 10 - AFRICA
AND THE ATLANTIC ECONOMY
Be prepared to discuss:
What was the importance of the Atlantic slave trade, to Africa?; Be
prepared to take: ninth map quiz
- Question(s) of the week:
Before 1800 or so, how was Africa different from other parts of the Atlantic
world? How did people in Africa experience the same historical processes that
were under way in Europe and the Americas after 1500?
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Week 11 - STRUGGLES
OVER THE ATLANTIC TRADE IN WESTERN AFRICA
Be prepared to discuss:
“Sudanic empires” revisited; politics and protection or exploitation
(collaborators or entrepreneurs)? Be prepared to take: tenth
map quiz
- Question(s) of the week:
What motivated what sorts of people in western Africa to capture others, to
keep some of them, and to sell others to Europeans as slaves? Compare the
desert trade to Atlantic trade
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Week 12 - ORGANIZING
COMMERCE IN CENTRAL AND SOUTHEASTERN AFRICA, 16TH-18TH C.
Be prepared to discuss:
issues raised by Manning; Be prepared to take: eleventh map
quiz
- Question(s) of the week:
How did people in central/southeastern Africa end up selling slaves to Europeans
rather than ivory or other commodities to Indians?
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Week 13 - THE "EUROPEAN"
FACTOR BEFORE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Be prepared to discuss:
culture, race, and identities; Be prepared to review : second
mid-term examination; Be prepared to take: twelfth map quiz
- Question(s) of the week:
In what ways were the people of the coast “European”, and how
were they “African”? Did either matter?
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Week 14 - EXAM
NO DISCUSSION SECTIONS (no map quiz)
- Question(s) of the week: What was the “impact of
the slave trade on Africa”? Or, is it better to ask “How did some
people in Africa turn engagement with commercial economies on it Africa’s
Mediterranean, Red Sea/Indian Ocean, and Atlantic coasts into the tragedy
of slaving?
THANKSGIVING BREAK
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Week 15 -REVIEW
Be prepared to discuss:
the hard questions of African history; preparing for the final examination;
Be prepared to take: thirteenth map quiz
- Question(s) of the week:
What are the most important questions of African history – (a) for people
in early Africa, and (b) for us?
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