CREATIVITY. AGENCY. RESILIENCE. These are at the heart of the African Studies this course will explore. We will center African scholars and knowledge producers, engaging questions of race, power, and global Blackness. TRADE. RELIGION. CONQUEST. MIGRATION. We will examine the transformations that have shaped African societies across time, asking how Africans have understood, negotiated, and reshaped them. Historical perspectives will situate these transformations within the continent's long and diverse histories. Africa is not simply a place to which ideas and technologies have been introduced, but a site of scientific and technological innovation. We will explore African perspectives and contributions to medicine, technology, environmental change, and debates around artificial intelligence and other emerging sciences. FICTION. NONFICTION. FILM. MUSIC. Creative expression will also enter our conversations, not simply as cultural artifacts but as forms of knowledge and interventions in debates about gender, politics, technology, and social change. Throughout, we will ask who produces knowledge about Africa, how it is produced, and what becomes possible when African perspectives take center stage. This class will meet in Building HISTORY 80.
5 units · Letter (ABCD/NP) · GER: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
CREATIVITY. AGENCY. RESILIENCE. These are at the heart of the African Studies this course will explore. We will center African scholars and knowledge producers, engaging questions of race, power, and global Blackness. TRADE. RELIGION. CONQUEST. MIGRATION. We will examine the transformations that have shaped African societies across time, asking how Africans have understood, negotiated, and reshaped them. Historical perspectives will situate these transformations within the continent's long and diverse histories. Africa is not simply a place to which ideas and technologies have been introduced, but a site of scientific and technological innovation. We will explore African perspectives and contributions to medicine, technology, environmental change, and debates around artificial intelligence and other emerging sciences. FICTION. NONFICTION. FILM. MUSIC. Creative expression will also enter our conversations, not simply as cultural artifacts but as forms of knowledge and interventions in debates about gender, politics, technology, and social change. Throughout, we will ask who produces knowledge about Africa, how it is produced, and what becomes possible when African perspectives take center stage. This class will meet in Building 80.
Offered in Autumn 2026 at Stanford University.