Current Courses
ANT 301
Peoples and Cultures of Africa
Course Information
Course Registration Number (CRN): 94918
Departmental Course Code: ANT 301-OY1
Semester: Fall 2020
Meetings: M/W/F 1:00pm–1:55pm
Departmental Course Code: ANT 301-OY1
Semester: Fall 2020
Meetings: M/W/F 1:00pm–1:55pm
Course Description
The peoples and cultures of Africa and its diaspora are inherently global. They are, and always have been, central to world events. This course lays the groundwork for an interdisciplinary appreciation of the place of Africa and Africans in human history and current affairs. Housed in the Department of Anthropology, this course is also a showcase for the utility of the ethnographic approach in the study of the human experience across space and time.
While one semester is clearly insufficient for a comprehensive study of the continent, its peoples, and its diaspora, the course selects as foci three pressing contemporary topics shaping life and cultural experience in Africa: religion, urbanization, and infrastructural development. Each focal topic also centers on an ethnography sited in one of the three major sub-Saharan regions: Western, Southern, and Eastern Africa. Alongside and through these three topical and geographical foci, other classic topics are considered, including artistic production, politics and governance, personhood and kinship, and health and medicine. In this way, the course seeks to achieve both breadth and depth in this introduction to the African continent and its peoples.
We begin by assessing how knowledge production about Africa and Afrodescendents has historically reflected outsiders’ perspectives, prejudices, and concerns. We then proceed by reviewing Africanist correctives to such narratives, privileging Afrocentric perspectives and concerns in the present day. The trio of ethnographies that form the core of the course offer in-depth insights into the contemporary concerns and creative actions of families and individuals across the continent. This central set of texts is complemented by readings and assignments selected to broaden course perspectives.
While one semester is clearly insufficient for a comprehensive study of the continent, its peoples, and its diaspora, the course selects as foci three pressing contemporary topics shaping life and cultural experience in Africa: religion, urbanization, and infrastructural development. Each focal topic also centers on an ethnography sited in one of the three major sub-Saharan regions: Western, Southern, and Eastern Africa. Alongside and through these three topical and geographical foci, other classic topics are considered, including artistic production, politics and governance, personhood and kinship, and health and medicine. In this way, the course seeks to achieve both breadth and depth in this introduction to the African continent and its peoples.
We begin by assessing how knowledge production about Africa and Afrodescendents has historically reflected outsiders’ perspectives, prejudices, and concerns. We then proceed by reviewing Africanist correctives to such narratives, privileging Afrocentric perspectives and concerns in the present day. The trio of ethnographies that form the core of the course offer in-depth insights into the contemporary concerns and creative actions of families and individuals across the continent. This central set of texts is complemented by readings and assignments selected to broaden course perspectives.
SYllabus
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One of my most recent publications is my new book, Implementing Inequality: The Invisible Labor of International Development.
A result of my research in Angola, this book explores the international development industry’s internal social dynamics and, in particular, how they unintentionally reproduce the global inequalities. |
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Currently, I am serving as an Assistant Professor of anthropology at SUNY Oswego where I teach courses introducing students to cultural anthropology and advanced courses deepening students’ knowledge of medical anthropology.
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