Readings
and Sources
Week 1 2 3
4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15
Week 1 - INTRODUCTION
- Reading
- Paul Bohannan and Philip
Curtin, Africa and Africans (4th ed.) (Prospect Heights IL: Waveland
Press, 1995), pp. 6-45,
126-64.
(TOOLKIT)
- Some recent, reliable, and
comprehensive resources for further information --
- Joseph O. Vogel, ed., Encyclopedia
of Precolonial Africa: Archaeology, History, Languages, and Environments
(Walnut Creek CA: AltaMira Press, 1997).
- John Middleton, ed., The
Encyclopedia of Sub-Saharan Africa (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1997), 4 vols.
- Kwame Anthony Appiah and
Henry Louis Gates, eds., Encarta Africana (Redmond WA: Microsoft,
1999). [CD-ROM]
- Print equivalent: Kwame
Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., Africana: The
Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (New
York: Civitas/Persius, 1999).
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Backgrounds
Week 2 - GEOGRAPHY
AND THE DAWN OF HISTORY
- Reading
- Shillington, History of
Africa, ch 1 (pp. 1-13). (TEXT)
- James L. Newman, The Peopling
of Africa: A Geographic Introduction (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1995), chs 1-3 (pp. 1-39). (MAPS PARTICULARLY CLEAR)
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Week 3 - CREATING
CLASSICAL AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS
- Reading
- Thomas T. Spear, Kenya's
Past: An Introduction to Historical Method in Africa (London: Longman,
1981), ch 1 (pp. 1-21).
(METHODS/TOOLKIT)
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Week 4 -FARMERS
NORTH AND SOUTH OF THE SAHARA
- Reading
- Shillington, History of
Africa, chs 2-3, 5 (pp. 14-48, 62-71).
- Newman, Peopling of Africa,
4 (pp. 40-59), 6 (pp. 89-94 only)
- Spear, Kenya's Past,
ch 2 (pp. 22-45)
(part
2). (METHODS/TOOLKIT)
- RECOMMENDED –
- Bruce Williams, “Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction,”
in Joseph O. Vogel, ed., Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa: Archaeology,
History, Languages, and Environments (Walnut Creek CA: AltaMira
Press, 1997), pp. 465-72.
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Challenges of Classical Africa
Week 5 - AFRICAN
CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF LIFE
- Reading:
- Shillington, History of
Africa, ch 5 (pp. 71-77)
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Week 6 - ENVIRONMENTAL
ADAPTATION AND POLITICAL STRATEGIES (500-1500 CE)
- Reading
- Shillington, History of
Africa, ch 8 (pp. 115-21)
- Newman, Peopling of Africa,
ch 8 (pp. 144-49), ch 9 (pp. 158-77).
- Susan Keech and Roderick J. McIntosh, “Finding West Africa’s
Oldest City,” National Geographic, 162, 3 (Sept. 1982),
pp. 396-418. (TOOLKIT IMAGES)
- Susan Keech McIntosh, “Urbanism in Sub-Saharan Africa,”
in Vogel, ed., Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, pp. 461-72.
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Week 7 - COMPLEXITIES
OF CENTRALIZING POWER 9500-1500 CE)
- Reading
- Shillington, History of
Africa, chs 6-7 (pp. 78-107), ch 10 (pp. 138-46).
- Newman, Peopling of Africa,
ch 5 (pp. 77-86), ch 7 (pp. 109-19), ch 8 (pp. 137-44 only).
- D. T. Niane, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali (London: Longmans,
1965). Or any other scholarly edition. (ORAL TRADITION)
Compare: Nehemia Levtzion, “The Early States of
the Western Sudan to 1500,” in J. F. A. Ajayi, and Michael Crowder,
eds., History of West Africa (3rd rev. ed.) (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1985), vol. 1, pp. 138-43
(or pp. 123-28 in the 2nd ed.); and Ralph A. Austen and Jan Jansen, “History,
Oral Transmission and Structure in Ibn Khaldun’s Chronology of Mali
Rulers” History in Africa, 23 (1996), pp. 17-28.
(TOOLKIT).
Compare further:
Dora Jane Hamblin, "Has the Garden of Eden Been Located at Last?"
Smithsonian, 18, 2 (1987), pp. 127-35.
(TOOLKIT)
- Jan Vansina, “Western Bantu Expansion,” Journal of African
History, 25, 2 (1984), pp. 129-45.
(TOOLKIT)
- Jan Vansina, "The Peoples
of the Forest," in David Birmingham and Phyllis Martin, eds., History
of Central Africa (London: Longman, 1983), vol. 1, pp. 75-100
(part
2). (TOOLKIT)
- RECOMMENDED
- John L. Esposito, Islam:
The Straight Path (New York: Oxford University Press, 3rd ed., 1998),
pp. 1-31.
- Nehemia Levtzion and Randall
L. Pouwels, "Patterns of Islamization and Varieties of Religious
Experience among Muslims of Africa," pp. 1-10;
Peter von Sivers, "Egypt and North Africa," pp. 21-28;
Levtzion, "Islam in the Bilad al-Sudan to 1800," pp. 63-73
only; and Ivor Wilks, "The Juula and the Expansion of Islam into
the Forest," pp. 93-101
only, all in Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels, eds., The History
of Islam in Africa (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2000). (TOOLKIT)
- OPTIONAL VIDEO - Basil Davidson,
Africa: A Voyage of Discovery - Program 3, "Caravans of Gold".
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Week 8 - "STATES"
AND STRATEGIES IN THE FORESTS (500-1500 CE)
- Reading
- Newman, Peopling of Africa, ch 7 (pp. 119-23).
- Graham Connah, African
Civilizations: Precolonial Cities and States in Tropical Africa: An Archaeological
Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), ch 6 (pp.
121-49)
(part
2) (part
3). (TOOLKIT)
- Review all preceding assignments
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Week 9 - RED SEA
AND INDIAN OCEAN CONTACTS (500-1400 CE)
- Reading
- Shillington, History of
Africa, ch 8 (pp. 107-15), ch 9 (pp.122-31), ch 10 (pp. 146-56), ch
11 (pp. 157-69).
- Newman, Peopling of Africa,
ch 6 (pp 94-103), ch 9 (pp. 177-83), ch 10 (pp. 184-93).
- John Sutton, "The African
Lords of the Intercontinental Gold Trade Before the Black Death: Al-Hasan
bin Sulaiman of Kilwa and Mansa Musa of Mali," The Antiquaries
Journal, 77 (1997), pp. 221-42
(part
2). (TOOLKIT)
-
- RECOMMENDED
- Peter Garlake, The
Kingdoms of Africa (New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1990), pp.
69-92,
(part
2).
- Esposito, Islam: The
Straight Path, pp. 32-114.
- Michael N. Pearson, "The
Indian Ocean and the Red Sea," pp. 37-49;
Lidwien Kapteijns, "Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa," in Levtzion
and Pouwels, eds., History of Islam in Africa, pp. 227-31;
and Randall L. Pouwels, "The
East African Coast, c. 780 to 1900 c.e.," pp. 251-58
(only), in Levtzion and Pouwels, eds., History of Islam in Africa.
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Africa 1500-1800
Week 10 - AFRICA
AND THE ATLANTIC ECONOMY
- Reading
- Shillington, History of
Africa, ch 12 (pp. 170-80).
- Walter Rodney, "African
Slavery and Other Forms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast
in the Context of the Atlantic Slave Trade," Journal of African
History, 7, 3 (1966), pp. 431-44.
- John D. Fage, "Slavery
and the Slave Trade in the Context of West African History," Journal
of African History, 10, 3 (1969), pp. 393-404.
(both TOOLKIT)
- John K. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic
World, 1500-1680 (2nd ed.) (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1998), intro, chs 1-3 (pp. 1-71).
(Part
II) (Part
III)
- OPTIONAL VIDEO - Basil Davidson,
Africa: A Voyage of Discovery - Program 4, "Kings and Cities".
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Week 11 - STRUGGLES
OVER THE ATLANTIC TRADE IN WESTERN AFRICA
- Reading
- Shillington, History of
Africa, ch 13 (pp. 181-96).
- Newman, Peopling of Africa,
ch 7 (pp. 123-33).
- Claude Meillassoux, "The
Role of Slavery in the Economic and Social History of Sahelo-Sudanic Africa,"
in Joseph E. Inikori, ed., Forced Migration: The Impact of the Export
Slave Trade on African Societies (London: Hutchinson, 1981), pp. 74-99.
(TOOLKIT)
- WEBSITE
- RECOMMEDED
- Levtzion, "Islam
in the Bilad al-Sudan," in Levtzion and Pouwels, eds., History
of Islam in Africa, pp. 73-86;
and Wilks, "Juula and Expansion of Islam," pp. 101-06.
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Week 12 - ORGANIZING
COMMERCE IN CENTRAL AND SOUTHEASTERN AFRICA, 16TH-18TH C.
- Reading
- Shillington, History of
Africa, ch 14 (pp. 197-211).
- Joseph C. Miller, "The
Paradoxes of Impoverishment in the Atlantic Zone," in Birmingham
and Martin, eds., History of Central Africa, vol. 1, pp. 118-51
(part
2). (TOOLKIT)
- Patrick Manning, Slavery
and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 1-37.
- RECOMMENDED
- Newman, Peopling of
Africa, ch 8 (pp. 149-57).
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Week 13 - THE "EUROPEAN"
FACTOR BEFORE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
- Reading
- Shillington, History of
Africa, ch 9 (pp. 131-37), ch 15 (pp. 212-25).
- Manning, Slavery and African
Life, pp. 38-85.
- REVIEW
- Miller, "Paradoxes of Impoverishment."
118-51
(part
2)(TOOLKIT)
- RECOMMENDED
- Newman, Peopling of
Africa, ch 10 (pp. 193-201).
- Pouwels, "East African
Coast," in Levtzion and Pouwels, eds., History of Islam in
Africa, pp. 258-61
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Week 14 - EXAM
- Reading
- Manning, Slavery and African
Life, pp. 86-148
THANKSGIVING BREAK
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Week 15 -REVIEW
- Reading
- (complete assigned materials for the entire semester)
- David Newbury, “Historiography,” in John Middleton, ed.,
The Encyclopedia of Sub-Saharan Africa (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1997), vol. 2, pp. 299-305.
- Joseph C. Miller, “History and the Study of Africa,” in
Middleton, ed., Encyclopedia of Sub-Saharan Africa, vol. 2, pp.
305-11.
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