This course introduces students to the early history of the peoples of Africa, with
an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. The course begins with the origins of late
stone-age African civilizations (ca. 25,000 B.C.E.) and runs through the
late-eighteenth-century years of the most intensive exports of slaves. It
concentrates on people and civilizations indigenous to Africa. It therefore
notices Asian and European visitors mostly as Africans influenced them, and
takes up foreigners and outside ideas only as Africans made use of them. Such
extraneous (though related) topics as the origins of Islam, the Atlantic slave
trade, European wars that touched African shores, the African Diaspora in the
New World, and European explorers and missionaries receive only passing
attention. The emphasis in this course on the African sides of these, and other
aspects of world history provide a valuable alternative perspective on apparently
familiar events elsewhere around the globe.
Format: discussion. Evaluation will be based on class participation, two shorts
papers, an hour exam, and a final exam.
No prerequisites. No enrollment limit (expected: 30). Open to all.
Groups C and D