Spring 2002
Professor Deborah Durham

Course Description
This class will explore peoples and places on the African continent in a variety of anthropological perspectives. The goals of the course are to appreciate and understand the variety of experience and ways of life found across the continent; to understand the distinctive challenges faced by peoples in Africa today; and to think critically about and with the models we use to study other people.

Work and Grades
Grades will be based upon a take-home mid-term and take-home final, two film reviews, a 2-4 page research proposal, and a class presentation on current events and conditions in a particular country.
The course is composed of lecture and discussion, along with in-class films and out-of-class readings. Students are responsible for all material presented in all these forms. At the beginning of each class I will ask if anyone has a question about the previous class’s lecture or other presented material, and about reading assigned. Students should review their previous class meeting’s notes, and other material, and ask questions if they feel they need clarification, or want to ensure accuracy.
The take-home midterm and final will be substantial essays on assigned topics. The topics will be handed out a week before the essays are due (they will be due March 19 and April 26). Students will be expected to use the full week to write the essays (and not one evening), and the essays will be graded with that expectation in mind. The essays are essentially short papers based upon the full range of materials of the course: they should be thoughtful, critically acute, substantial, and make imaginative use of the materials. They should also be well-written.
The film reviews are of films shown in class throughout the term. We will see 5 films throughout the semester (during weeks 1,4,8,10, and 12), and students will write reviews of two of them: which two is up to individual students. The reviews are to be at least 3 pages long, and are to be turned in at the beginning of the next class after the film has been shown (if the film is shown over two days, the review is due on the class meeting after the final viewing). Reviews should go beyond simple recapitulation of the content of the film. They should be intelligent discussion of the issues raised in or by the film, and should support their discussion by careful and detailed reference to the film. It would not hurt also to draw upon readings, lectures, and other materials from the course, or from other references.
A research proposal is due on April 16. Pretend that you are submitting a proposal to do a research project in a specific site in Africa. Propose a research problem, and describe how you would go about researching it (your methodology). Your problem should be well-composed; it should be based on existing knowledge, including previous work on the problem (perhaps similar work done in other countries, or work in your site that seems incomplete), and knowledge of the specific nature of the problem in the country/city/location you propose to work in. Show knowledge of the country/location, and of the nature of the problem in detail. Try to persuade the reader that your project is worth doing, and that you are prepared to do it by previous library research and training. Assemble a list of at least 7 scholarly sources for references supporting your claim to background knowledge, and provide a brief description (2-4 sentences) of what each is about and how it would help your proposed research. The proposal should be 4-5 pages long; the annotated reference list is in addition to those pages.
A class presentation on an African country will be done by students in small teams. The teams should divide the labor of research and presentation. While each team may want to cover different areas, some areas might include: economy, political history and current political events, distinctive cultures, artistic heritage and contemporary arts, contemporary social problems, gender issues, etc. We will set up the teams during the first week of class and devise a presentation schedule.

Grades
Final grades will be based on: Exams (2): 50% (25% each)
Film Reviews (2): 25% (12.5% each)
Proposal: 15%
Presentation: 10%

Course materials
The following books have been ordered for the bookstore:
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands
Mariama Ba, So Long a Letter
Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile
Carol Ann Muller, Rituals of Fertility and the Sacrifice of Desire

Syllabus

Week 1

Jan 15 Our ideas of Africa and why we study Africa
In-class assignment: Write about your ideas of people in Africa

Jan 17 Film: Jaguar
This film is a mix of fictional reconstruction and unplanned filming, made in the 1950s by the innovative French film-maker, Jean Rouche. What questions does it raise about Africa for you?

Reading: Marianna Torgovnick, “Taking Tarzan Seriously.” Chapter 2, pp. 42-72,
in Gone Primitive. (Do not spend too much time on her jargon,
but do read for her analysis of Tarzan, Jane, La and the literary
representations of Africa.)

Week 2

Jan 22 Images of Africa

Reading: P. Brantlinger, “Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Myth
of the Dark Continent.” Critical Inquiry (1985):166-199.
Simon Watney, “Missionary Positions: AIDS, ‘Africa,’, and Race.”
Critical Quarterly 31:45-62.

Jan 24 Lecture on the notion of tribe in African studies. Who are Igbo? Who is Chinua Achebe?
Student reports on Nigeria

Reading: Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart. Finish the whole book by the end of
next week.

Week 3

Jan 29 DISCUSSION of Igbo society. How do Igno live in the early 20th century? What are their subsistence activities? How do they live in households, villages, and beyond the village? How are disputes and troubles worked out? How do women’s and men’s lives differ? How do the old and young differ? To what do people aspire in their lives? Does everyone aspire to the same things? Why/why not? Be prepared to discuss polygyny (having many wives), Ikemefuna, the egwugwu, Ezinma (is she ogbanje?), Chielo the priestess.

Reading: Continue reading Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Jan 31 MORE DISCUSSION OF IGBO AND COLONIALISM. How does this novel depict relations between Okonkwo’s social circle and the wider world? What kind of relations are there with other Igbo? Other Africans? Europeans? What is Achebe saying about colonialism and African society? Why is Okonkwo a tragic figure? What do you think will happen to Ezinma in the future? What is Achebe saying in the last line?
Student reports on Niger

Reading: Finish Achebe, Things Fall Apart.

Week 4

Feb 5 Short film: The Gaze of the Stars
This film takes place on Mozambique, and is part of a series of short films produced for African television by African producers/writers/directors on the theme of “love in Africa.”
Student reports on Mozambique

Reading: Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands, pp. 1-40

Feb 7 Lecture on women in the anthropology of Africa: invisible, silent, patronized. What is “gender”? The Igbo Women’s War (called the Aba Riots by the British) against colonialism.

Reading: Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands, pp. 42-86.

Week 5

Feb 12 Ezinma should have been a woman: Beyond Okwonkwo’s tragedy. Igbo women,
economy and production, households, and politics.

Reading: Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands, pp. 89-132.

Feb 14 Igbo women in the context of colonialism and post-colonial society in Nigeria.
Something to think about: there are many successful Igbo women today in business, academics, and bureaucracy. Igbo men often say they are successful through “bottom power.” What do you think of that?
Student reports on Zimbabwe

Reading: Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands, pp.134-171, 179-183.

Week 6

Feb 19 Lineages: modes of social reproductiion and contexts of politics in precolonial
and colonial Africa. Patrilineages, matrilineages. Lineages’ relationship to clans and households.
Student reports on Zambia

Reading: Victor Turner, Schism and Continuity, pp. 1-18, 58 (from “Summary”)-63 (half-way down), 82-130.

Feb 21 The problems of matrilineal affiliations in village life. Complications in struggles
for political position. The headman in British Central Africa and the headman in democratic independent African states.
DISCUSSION: Sandombu’s dilemma. What is Sandombu’s problem? What motivates him to do what he does? What are his goals? How could he reach them, and what keeps him from succeeding? How is his situation affected not just by local culture, but by the larger political and economic context? Victor Turner likes the imagery of “drama” in his descriptions: Is Sandombu “tragic”? Why/why not?

Reading: Victor Turner, Schism and Continuity, 131-142, 157-168.

Week 7

Feb 26 Relations between men and women, conflict between modernity/ urban lifestyles, and rural-based social lives.
Student Reports on Senegal

Reading: Jane Guyer, “Lineal Identities and Lateral Networks: The Logic of
Polyandrous Motherhood.” In C. Bledsoe and G. Pison, eds., Nuptiality in Sub-Saharan Africa, pp. 231-252.
Mariama Ba, So Long a Letter (to be finished by Thursday)

Feb 28 Polygyny, modernity, class, gender: Conflicts in Mariama Ba’s novel
DISCUSSION: Why does Modou marry again? Why does Ramatoulaye stay married to him? What do you think of Ramatoulaye’s new co-wife and her family? Is Ba arguing a particular perspective with this novel? What other perspectives can you think of, and read into the novel, through and beyond Ba’s own?

Reading: Mariama Ba, So Long a Letter

***Spring Break***

Week 8

Mar 12 FILM: Jit.
MIDTERM EXAM handed out in class. DUE MARCH 19, next Tuesday.

Reading: none: work on the exam

Mar 14 Witchcraft in Africa.
DISCUSSION of film: why does the young man go back to the country?
Student Reports on Zimbabwe

Reading: E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the
Azande, pp.
Jean and John Comaroff, “Introduction,” to Modernity and Its
Malcontents, pp. xi-xxxi.

Week 9

Mid-term exams are due back today at the beginning of class
Mar 19 Witchcraft of the modern world
Discuss preparation of research proposals that will be due April 16
Student Reports on Sierra Leone

Reading: Misty Bastian, “‘Bloodhounds Who Have No Friends’: Witchcraft
and Locality in the Nigerian Popular Press.” In Jean and John Comaroff, Modernity and Its Malcontents, pp. 129-163.
Rosalind Shaw, “The Production of Witchcraft/Witchcraft as
Production: Memory, Modernity, and the Slave Trade in Sierra Leone.” American Ethnologist 24 (1997): 856-870.

Mar 21 (Rosalind Shaw visits)

Reading: TBA

Week 10

Mar 26 Film: Afrique Je Te Plumerai

Reading: Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile, pp. 1-4, 19-51, 53-130
(get through this by Thursday).

Mar 28 Trauma, Memory, and Refugee Life: The Social Contexts of Memory and Identity
Student Reports on Burundi

Reading: Liisa Malkki, as above.

Week 11

Apr 2 Memory and Identity, Memory and Current Social Orientations
Student Reports on Tanzania

Reading: Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile, 130-231,

Apr 4 Refugees, Nations, and Mobility

Reading: Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile, as above. Recommended: pp. 259-97.

Week 12

Apr 9 South Africa and Apartheid
Student Reports: Zaire/Congo
Student Reports on Rwanda

Reading: Carol Ann Muller, Rituals of Fertility and Sacrifice of Desire, xvii-xii,
1-53.

Apr 11 Zionist and Pentecostalist Churches in the Context of Apartheid and the New
South Africa
FILM: Sophia’s Homecoming
Student Reports on Namibia

Reading: Carol Ann Muller, Rituals of Fertility, 54-87.

Week 13

Research proposals are due in class today
Apr 16 Africa and World Culture: The Black Atlantic, and World Music

Reading: Veit Erlmann, African Stars, pp. 54-94.

Apr 18 Nazarite Choirs and the Inventiveness of Community in Apartheid’s Legacy and the
Modern World
Final Exams will be handed out today; they are due Friday, April 26 at 9:00 a.m.

Reading: Carol Ann Muller, Rituals of Fertility, 88-158.

Week 14

Apr 23 Video: Choirs in Botswana and South Africa.
Women, Work, and Sexuality in Shembe’s Church

Reading: Carol Ann Muller, Rituals of Fertility, 220-260.
I heartily recommend Chapters 6 and 7, if you have time! But do read them with a somewhat critical sensibility.

Apr 25 AIDS in Southern Africa

Reading: Mark Hunter, “The Materiality of Everyday Sex: Thinking Beyond Prostitution.” African Studies 61, 1 (1996):99-120

Final Exam essays are due in FRIDAY, APRIL 26, at 9:00 AM